Hacker News: grvbck

New comment by grvbck in "The curious case of the disappearing Polish S (2015)"

grvbck — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 14:32:48 +0000

Sure, a common use of bread, potatoes, cabbage/other vegetables, hearty meat dishes etc but the Polish kitchen is closer to Ukrainian/Russian in technique/ingredients.

Barszcz, pierogi, fermented everything, pickles, sour rye, and many dishes built around wheat/rye, mushrooms, dairy, and Eastern-style fillings are much more like Ukrainian/Belarusian/Russian food.

The biggest German influences are probably the sausages and the beer culture.

New comment by grvbck in "Commodore Releases Flip Phone"

grvbck — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 10:21:02 +0000

I really want to like this, but does it bring anything new to the table? I see the same low-effort buzzwords I've seen on other "dumb" phones.

And the design…it looks like a Motorola.

New comment by grvbck in "sRGB profile comparison"

grvbck — Tue, 05 May 2026 14:47:03 +0000

It is a rabbit hole. I just checked the latest release of GiMP (3.2.4). The "GiMP built-in sRGB" profile is supposed to be a functional match to the ArgyllCMS sRGB color space – the true sRGB profile according to the addendum in the above profile comparison.

But if I embed it in a photo and then open the photo in GraphicConverter, it shows up as "sRGB IEC61966-2.1", which to my understanding is identical to Apple’s sRGB Color Space Profile.icm.

But that's an sRGB v2 profile. Should I download and use a v4 profile instead? Or download the ArgyllCMS sRGB.icm [1] and convert all photos to it? Or just select the Apple default sRGB profile everywhere?

I'm not a pro and don't have a calibrated display, but it annoys me when photos I upload online look vastly different in my browser than they look in my editing software on the same display.

[1] https://argyllcms.com/icclibsrc.html

New comment by grvbck in "The Mushroom That Makes People Have the Exact Same Hallucination"

grvbck — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 19:24:40 +0000

I'd bet my money on no. To my understanding, those hallucinations are basically brain-level disturbances in perception, where the brain does its best to fill in ambiguous activity with known objects. So I guess if you've never seen hats (or men), your brain would just interpret the signal as something different.

Extreme tangent but interesting (to me): people in different cultures experience voice hallucinations differently. In the west, "hearing voices" is often frightening because the voices are hostile. In other cultures, the voices are friendly!

https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2014/07/voices-culture-luh...

New comment by grvbck in "1-Bit Hokusai's "The Great Wave" (2023)"

grvbck — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 23:54:54 +0000

> This masterpiece by an unknown artist

Not unknown. It is signed "G. Clement", for Gerald Clement. The title is "Lesson 3d" because it actually is the third lesson in a tutorial for MacGrid, a software developed by Clement that teached people how to draw in MacPaint.

https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/macgrid

New comment by grvbck in "You don't need advice from editors on rejected manuscripts"

grvbck — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 20:18:36 +0000

> You don't need advice from editors on rejected manuscripts.

Continues to tell us how he did listen to the advice because the editor actually had a point that made the story better, got the book published and won him an award.

New comment by grvbck in "The paper computer"

grvbck — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 09:53:50 +0000

On one of my first qualified jobs, my manager (a lovely older lady) did exactly this. All incoming emails were printed and put into a binder. Then she would go home, write an answer with a pen on the back side of every single one, and on the next day write a new email to the recipient. 10-15 % of all emails she sent this way would bounce because she had written the address incorrectly.

When I showed her the reply button in Eudora (this was in 2001), she was so happy that she bought me a cake.

She struggled with IT but was tack sharp otherwise. So far she's the only boss I've ever really liked.

New comment by grvbck in "Darkbloom – Private inference on idle Macs"

grvbck — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 09:42:36 +0000

Broken calculator or am I missing something here?

  Macbook Air M2  8GB   12h/day -> $647/month

  Mac Mini M4     32GB  12h/day -> $290/month

I mean, I'd be happy to buy a few used M2 Airs with minimal specs and start printing money but…

New comment by grvbck in "Filing the corners off my MacBooks"

grvbck — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 12:03:25 +0000

Not strictly DIY because a professional anodizing workshop did the actual anodizing, but cool results nevertheless:

https://lowendmac.com/2024/ryan-andersons-colorized-anodized...

New comment by grvbck in "You can't trust macOS Privacy and Security settings"

grvbck — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 18:10:56 +0000

That is really poorly worded by Apple, because if I understand it correctly, the "Files & Folders" list is just a list of apps that have requested Full Disk Access/FDA (or other locations).

It's really confusing that some of those settings can be toggled on/off, while the Full Disk Access is greyed out and can only be toggled under "Privacy & Security".

To add to the confusion, toggling FDA off just protects a few selected folders that Apple decided are extra sensitive, like:

  Messages                     ~/Library/Messages
  Safari browsing history      ~/Library/Safari
  Cookies                      ~/Library/Cookies
  Identity services            ~/Library/IdentityServices
  Spotlight data               ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight
  Phone call history           ~/Library/Application Support/CallHistoryDB
  Facetime data                ~/Library/Application Support/Facetime
  TCC database                 ~/Library/Application Support/com.apple.TCC.db

"Normal" files and folders on your disk (including Desktop, Documents, Downloads, network volumes, and removable volumes) can always be accessed (even with FDA permission revoked!) after a simple prompt. [1]

[1] https://support.apple.com/guide/security/controlling-app-acc...

New comment by grvbck in "Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones"

grvbck — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 16:07:09 +0000

Won't those cut right through the ANC just by volume alone? A domestic fire alarm is 85–120 dB, I don't think my airpods can mute that.

And of course there will always be fringe cases. What if I go to sleep with regular foam earplugs, what if I take a sleeping pill etc. Or what if the warning sound can't be engineered to fit a ANC friendly frequency, like somebody screaming, a car tire screech behind me and so on.

New comment by grvbck in "Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones"

grvbck — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 14:51:15 +0000

> imagine if you were at the grocery store, blocking the isle and someone lightly chimed a bell at you instead of just saying "excuse me"

Greetings from Sweden, where some people will verbally announce "honk honk" (tuut tuut) while avoiding eye contact – then bump into your leg with their grocery cart.

New comment by grvbck in "Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones"

grvbck — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 14:43:07 +0000

I don't know… If I'm sitting at home or at a cafe working, I want my headphones to block all bicycle bells and ambulances on the street. Those in traffic could perhaps just turn their ANC off?

New comment by grvbck in "Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones"

grvbck — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 13:22:30 +0000

For anyone that wants to actually hear the bell before reading all the marketing material:

Bell sound starts at 2:09 in the video.

New comment by grvbck in "Artemis II will use laser beams to live-stream 4K moon footage at 260 Mbps"

grvbck — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 20:16:37 +0000

> Things leave your field a view much faster than anticipated.

Not sure about that. NASA has been using Kineto Tracking Mounts and ROTI (radar-assisted and optical tracking) since 1981. Those systems were developed for the Columbia launch. I find it hard to believe that today's computer-guided cameras would let anything slip out of frame unintentionally.

President's new science council: 9 billionaires and 1 scientist

grvbck — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 15:45:22 +0000

Article URL: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trumps-new-science-panel-includes-9-tech-billionaires-and-just-one-scientist/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47589111

Points: 53

# Comments: 15

New comment by grvbck in "Gonon: Building a Clock with No Numerals"

grvbck — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 12:09:03 +0000

That's what I was thinking too. A clock without any culture-specific aspects could just rely on astronomy. The most objective form of that would just be a progress bar, from zenith to zenith. Perhaps with a marker half-way, and so on.

New comment by grvbck in "How the Turner twins are mythbusting modern technical apparel"

grvbck — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 10:08:38 +0000

Most likely Ansel Adams, famous landscape photographer.

New comment by grvbck in "Honda is killing its EVs"

grvbck — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 17:34:18 +0000

> you can put panels on your rooftop and slow charge it during the day

The real Mad Max will be roaming the apocalyptic wasteland in a Kia EV5.

New comment by grvbck in "Pentagon formally labels Anthropic supply-chain risk"

grvbck — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 20:17:47 +0000

For now it's in-house counsel Jeffrey Bleich, former special counsel to President Obama.

https://www.inc.com/chris-morris/legal-legend-leading-anthro...