Hacker News: giraffe333

New comment by giraffe333 in "Ask HN: What did you find out or explore today?"

giraffe333 — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 04:36:10 +0000

I was reminded of the US Constitution's 10th amendment and reading some of the history around it.

> The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Very relevant to what's going on today with National Guard and ICE deployments.

https://www.axios.com/2026/01/14/10th-amendment-ice-trump-il... (or please google whatever source you find reliable about the topic)

New comment by giraffe333 in "Show HN: Books mentioned on Hacker News in 2025"

giraffe333 — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 19:05:17 +0000

I thought this was "the Dragon Book" Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools

by Aho, Lam, and Sethi

https://www.amazon.com/Compilers-Principles-Techniques-Tools...

New comment by giraffe333 in "What happens to our breath when we type, tap, scroll"

giraffe333 — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 22:32:00 +0000

Also don’t forget to blink while you are at it.

https://uihc.org/health-topics/computer-vision-syndrome

New comment by giraffe333 in "Do not try to be the smartest in the room; try to be the kindest"

giraffe333 — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 18:50:11 +0000

TIL: Spanish has a sort of written contractions. I speak conversational Spanish so I’ve heard people talk this way, like Puerto Rico or Dominican Republic speakers shortening things, just hadn’t seen it written before. tó = todo ná = nada

https://www.spanishdict.com/guide/shortening-of-words > There are a few apocopes of very common words that are pronounced and written in informal Spanish as monosyllabic words. These popular apocopes include na, pa, and to, that stand for nada (nothing), para (for), and todo (all). You may find these words written with an apostrophe at the end, but spelling experts advise against it.

New comment by giraffe333 in "Should I replace my 56k modem with a 28.8K Modem? (2001)"

giraffe333 — Sun, 19 Nov 2023 21:32:16 +0000

Worked at AOL tech support back in the day and I also still have the occasional flashback to the pain these so called modems caused us all.

New comment by giraffe333 in "Car allergic to vanilla ice cream (2000)"

giraffe333 — Wed, 20 Sep 2023 21:29:19 +0000

I have this exact problem and (mostly) fixed it by swapping the sensor and transmitter. I just cut the wires and spliced with electrical tape. Now the problem still happens but only sometimes in the fall and spring when the sun's angle is just right. This is with a west facing garage about 41°N latitude USA.

But yeah, why this isn't laser based, or using a light frequency that is less affected by sunlight? Probably cost, or ignorance.

New comment by giraffe333 in "FTC fines Twitter $150M for using 2FA phone numbers for ad targeting"

giraffe333 — Thu, 26 May 2022 01:56:14 +0000

why aren't these fines percent of revenue, or a multiple of the number of people affected?

New comment by giraffe333 in "How to use weekends for mental health"

giraffe333 — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 03:27:09 +0000

You can't "catch up" on sleep. The only way to get enough sleep is to have a schedule that you stick to.

It's ok to think about work off hours. Write down your thoughts, do some meditation practice to learn to let the work thoughts flow by and notice them, but let them go.

New comment by giraffe333 in "Developers spend most of their time figuring the system out"

giraffe333 — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 02:35:35 +0000

One place I worked, the rule was "always have two pairs of eyes on code". Each team got to decide whether that rule was met with some mix of mob or pair programming, or just code reviews/pull requests. We could change depending on the needs of the project and team members. If management forces any of these options on teams it is a huge mistake. The point of pair programming is to share knowledge, reduce bugs, etc. and making it into a metric to measure teams by doesn't work.

It's a lot like setting a minimum code coverage rule like 80 or 90%, people end up cursing the rule as it makes them do stupid things to satisfy the rule. Code coverage is one great tool to explore where your code needs more tests, but it's not the only one, and it's not the point. The point is writing code that's easily maintained, safely changed, and can be delivered to meet customer needs.

You hired really smart people (hopefully) and you should let them decide how to work.

Homie lays off one-third of its staff

giraffe333 — Sat, 12 Feb 2022 00:39:05 +0000

Article URL: https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/11/homie-lays-off-1-3-of-its-staff/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30308807

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by giraffe333 in "Tesla moving headquarters to Texas from California"

giraffe333 — Fri, 08 Oct 2021 01:54:22 +0000

Duplicate: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28793615

New comment by giraffe333 in "Reflections on 10k Hours of Programming"

giraffe333 — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 20:55:05 +0000

At least where I work, the DNS rule is "Batten's Law" because that guy's said it so many times, and been right so many times.

https://www.battenworks.com/

  It's DNS
  And, when you're sure it's not DNS, it's DNS

New comment by giraffe333 in "The Tyranny of Spreadsheets"

giraffe333 — Tue, 27 Jul 2021 15:26:39 +0000

Why don't excel and all the things that can read excel kill the old xls (2^16 limit) format? I mean still let excel read the file, but don't allow changing the file. Only allow saving the old file to the new format.

New comment by giraffe333 in "Drunk Post: Things I've Learned as a Sr Engineer"

giraffe333 — Sun, 30 May 2021 20:01:46 +0000

Adding on to the thoughts about everyone writing terrible code sometimes, there is also “terrible code makes lots of money”.

Source: over 20 years doing software dev at various companies with terrible code that makes millions. Happily my current job has really great code (imho).

New comment by giraffe333 in "Counterexamples in Type Systems"

giraffe333 — Mon, 24 May 2021 12:08:31 +0000

Is it this issue for Firefox? https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1520157

New comment by giraffe333 in "2021 will demand new kinds of video conferencing"

giraffe333 — Mon, 11 Jan 2021 06:27:01 +0000

I think VR could be really cool solution to some of the problems with video calls, but the headsets are just too heavy at this point. I have an oculus quest 1 and can't stand wearing it more than maybe 30 or 40 minutes, it just hurts my face. I've tried adding weight to the back, etc., but haven't found a good solution. I have a 20th percentile head size (a really big noggin) so maybe I'm in the minority that wouldn't like this... yet. Maybe some VC could help push to lighter tech.

I haven't tried the Quest 2, but I hear it's lighter. Also have yet to try a Valve Index.

At this point in my experience with video calls, I'm just happy when everybody's wearing headphones so they don't get their audio dropped when somebody talks over them.

New comment by giraffe333 in "Herd of Fuzzy Green 'Glacier Mice' Baffles Scientists"

giraffe333 — Sat, 23 May 2020 13:48:25 +0000

I agree with your general thought about this, but in this specific article one of the scientists was quoted saying he was "baffled", but only "kind of". Maybe the title should be "Herd of Fuzzy Green 'Glacier Mice' Kind of Baffles Scientists". I would be more likely to read that!

New comment by giraffe333 in "The Light Phone"

giraffe333 — Sat, 04 Jan 2020 16:29:26 +0000

I backed the Light Phone 2 with the thought that it's kind of like being an early Tesla buyer. People buy the Tesla to look cool, sure, but some also buy it because they want to see a world where cars become something they weren't before, and solve problems with existing cars (pollution, etc).

I'd love to see a world where people talk to each other again rather than sit at lunch, dinner, watching TV, whatever, with their phones out and ignoring each other. There aren't a lot of phones in this space so backing something like this may help create the market I want to see. I don't want to "live disconnected", but I do want to limit my behaviors like "hey let me interrupt this conversation so you can watch while I google that random thing we'll forget about in a minute".

Previously I had an LG slider phone with a physical qwerty keyboard for 5-6 years before buying the Light Phone 2.

I also hate the size of current smart phones, they're just so big. I'm weird I know, but I actually liked the size of my iphone 3G.

As a software engineer I'm hoping they get the custom "tools" available soon so I can tinker with that. I'd like to experiment with making a 2FA tool like Authy or some kind of push notification.

All in all, the Light Phone 2 is kind of slow to use, but it works, and it's not red like my LG was, so it starts less conversations when I use it.

New comment by giraffe333 in "The Light Phone"

giraffe333 — Sat, 04 Jan 2020 16:13:50 +0000

About a day and a half, making a few calls and texting a bit. So effectively I have to charge it every night.