Hacker News: gilrain

New comment by gilrain in "Show HN: Physically accurate black hole you can put in your room"

gilrain — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 12:42:08 +0000

> completely arbitrary

You agree that it isn’t “physically accurate”, then… but seem to argue that you shouldn’t be called out for the false title?

It’s fair enough to be called clickbait when you really did score extra clicks with a slick falsehood, surely?

New comment by gilrain in "Show HN: Physically accurate black hole you can put in your room"

gilrain — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 12:33:13 +0000

Keep your need for simplified representations of reality (which claim to be complete) out of our information-based community.

New comment by gilrain in "Show HN: Physically accurate black hole you can put in your room"

gilrain — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 12:30:54 +0000

The person you’re replying to did not hold it to that standard — they only pointed out that the standard it claimed to hold itself to was not actual.

If correcting misinformation is “harsh”, reality is fucked.

New comment by gilrain in "Back to Kagi"

gilrain — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 12:06:07 +0000

> I invite you to spend 10$ to try Kagi for 1 month.

What a generous invitation!

New comment by gilrain in "Vint Cerf, “father of the Internet”, is retiring"

gilrain — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 12:10:22 +0000

And that was true, within his context as senator. He was instrumental in passing the laws that fostered the Internet.

It’s astonishing, I know, but the heavily-parroted meme was always reductive and is, at this point, misnformation.

New comment by gilrain in "Firefox 12.58% for Desktop Browser Market Share in North America June 2026"

gilrain — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 01:47:52 +0000

Because it’s BS. Firefox usage telemetry is public. There is no such increase.

New comment by gilrain in "AI 2040 and the cult of intelligence"

gilrain — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 19:05:30 +0000

> … like those ICE guys terrorizing all the Latino guys.

… and the white guys they don’t like, like nurses with empathy. Don’t you dare think you’re safe because of your color. Unless you’re a monster or willing to become one, they want you oppressed.

New comment by gilrain in "AI 2040 and the cult of intelligence"

gilrain — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 19:00:40 +0000

> Seems like being directionally right early that AI would be a Big Deal and scary should count for something?

Only if it was an uncommon prediction; otherwise, it’s just evidence of common sense.

New comment by gilrain in "Leaded Gas Was a Known Poison the Day It Was Invented (2016)"

gilrain — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 18:57:22 +0000

> The custom is dying with the veterans

You might want to update your knowledge.

New comment by gilrain in "Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)"

gilrain — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 18:51:37 +0000

…but is exhausting at volume from most small aircraft you see. I say sadly, as an aviation geek; we can do better!

New comment by gilrain in "AI 2040: Plan A"

gilrain — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 12:06:08 +0000

> Not believing that AGI is possible is irrational and unscientific imo

This is an objectively wrong opinion.

New comment by gilrain in "Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July"

gilrain — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 12:28:56 +0000

I grew up in southern CA, in a dry pine forest. I can assure you the children I knew traded and set off fireworks. We were all envious of the families who brought them back from Mexico — they had the best stuff.

I guess rules-followers assumed we were all doing as they did.

New comment by gilrain in "Valve open-source the Steam Machine e-ink screen so you can make your own"

gilrain — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 18:25:04 +0000

It’s a cultural difference you’re unaware of, not an error.

New comment by gilrain in "Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation falls to lowest in 50 years"

gilrain — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 21:08:20 +0000

I did retire somewhat early but also somewhat involuntarily and only after a somewhat fruitless search.

New comment by gilrain in "This blog is written in en-GB"

gilrain — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 12:43:43 +0000

Nobody said it was.

New comment by gilrain in "More evidence is consistent with possible ancient life on Mars (2025)"

gilrain — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 21:45:17 +0000

Because honorary degrees are not credentials.

New comment by gilrain in "Regular expressions that work “everywhere”"

gilrain — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 13:59:33 +0000

We must find a way to return to SNOBOL/PITBOL. It’s so elegant and effective in Ada (where it’s in the standard library).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNOBOL

> In the 1980s and 1990s, its use faded as newer languages such as AWK and Perl made string manipulation by means of regular expressions fashionable. SNOBOL4 patterns include a way to express BNF grammars, which are equivalent to context-free grammars and more powerful than regular expressions. The "regular expressions" in current versions of AWK and Perl are in fact extensions of regular expressions in the traditional sense, but regular expressions, unlike SNOBOL4 patterns, are not recursive, which gives a distinct computational advantage to SNOBOL4 patterns.

New comment by gilrain in "Zuckerberg's war on whistleblowers"

gilrain — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 16:06:17 +0000

Oh, well better let them destroy everything with greed then. Wouldn’t want to break, like, five eggs to save every other egg in the world…

The ethics become laughably simple, with as far as they’ve taken the resource imbalance. They should be very worried.

New comment by gilrain in "OpenTTD 16.0-Beta1"

gilrain — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 12:42:51 +0000

Thanks for recommending this! It’s looks exactly to my taste, but I hadn’t heard of it.

New comment by gilrain in "GameBoy Workboy"

gilrain — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 12:29:16 +0000

> ...but what do you do with it? Play emulators?

Yep!

> The Playdate has bespoke games designed for it …

Not quite as many as [every 2D home or portable console]. For instance, I enjoy [dozens and dozens of Nintendo games], but there are thousands of others to choose from.