<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: hapless</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=hapless</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Tue, 14 Apr 2026 17:12:56 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=hapless" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hapless in "If you started a company two years ago, many assumptions are no longer true"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>the best/worst part of this is that it is obviously not written by steve blank.  it does not look, read, or track like a steve blank blog piece<p>he obviously generated large parts of this with claude or chatgpt or whatever.<p>i don't know what that means for the rest of us, but boy it's a big ole spike of signal</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 14 Apr 2026 03:08:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47760775</link><dc:creator>hapless</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47760775</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47760775</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hapless in "81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Go ahead and require a special gadget to get an "electronically transferrable ticket," no skin off my back.  That is a feature I will never use.<p>Don't bother your season ticket holders about getting their own person admitted! I am standing in front of you, bearing identification, and you are whining about a mobile app?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 19:09:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47665410</link><dc:creator>hapless</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47665410</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47665410</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hapless in "81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Forgery is a non-issue -- this guy is a season ticket holder.   Literally all they need is his government ID checked against a list.<p>The "problem" they were trying to "solve" is letting people sell <i>some</i> of their tickets to third parties, but not <i>all</i> of them.   That is understandably how they arrived at a mobile application as a solution<p>But the problem of admitting <i>the original ticket holder</i> is simple as shit.   Just .... check his ID?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 19:08:12 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47665395</link><dc:creator>hapless</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47665395</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47665395</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hapless in "81yo Dodgers fan can no longer get tickets because he doesn't have a smartphone"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Forgery isn't relevant.<p>He's a known individual, a season ticket holder.   He's not some random dude showing up with a paper ticket.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 19:06:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47665355</link><dc:creator>hapless</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47665355</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47665355</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hapless in "Jack Dorsey says Block employees now bring prototypes, not slides, to meetings"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>After his stunt with the mass firings "because of AI," employees now bring prototypes, not slides, to meetings <i>with Jack Dorsey</i>.<p>These clowns live in a dreamworld created by their PAs and cronies</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 04 Apr 2026 13:35:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47638957</link><dc:creator>hapless</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47638957</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47638957</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hapless in "IronGlass Brings Legendary Soviet Cinema Lenses to Mirrorless Cameras"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The Concorde and the Tupolev both relied on afterburners, because they operated under similar design constraints -- the "western" jet engines in the Concorde were not <i>that</i> much better than what Soviet design bureaus could produce.<p>The Concorde was much smaller, and lacked one of the major innovations of the Tu-144 -- forward flap canards to improve handling on a larger jet.<p>Probably for the better.   The Tupolev killed a lot of its passengers, and it was almost immediately withdrawn from service after the first few incidents.  The Concorde, a simpler and smaller design, served for decades.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 06:18:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47583405</link><dc:creator>hapless</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47583405</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47583405</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hapless in "IronGlass Brings Legendary Soviet Cinema Lenses to Mirrorless Cameras"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Chaika was not a copy of a Packard.  (They certainly admired the Packard bodywork, but Soviet industry was in no way ready to clone a Packard sedan)<p>Tu-144 was not a copy of the Concorde.  (Convergent evolution is not the same as copying a design!)<p>The Soviets did clone a lot of DEC gear but I don't think SM-1, specifically, was a DEC clone.  (In this lastmost case, the Soviets were left cloning computer equipment because it was forbidden to export to COMECON states)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2026 01:14:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47581649</link><dc:creator>hapless</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47581649</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47581649</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hapless in "Death to Scroll Fade"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>the reason "reader mode" isn't the default is to discourage website authors from intentionally breaking reader mode<p>-_-</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 18 Mar 2026 18:07:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47429154</link><dc:creator>hapless</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47429154</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47429154</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hapless in "Beyond has dropped “meat” from its name and expanded its high-protein drink line"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>beyond meat was a super cynical bet that ordinary non-vegetarian consumers would no longer be able to afford meat, so they would turn to meat substitutes even if they were more costly than meat had been in the psat<p>now they are publicly listed, and their cynical premise has not born fruit<p>time to pivot!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 17 Mar 2026 05:01:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47408836</link><dc:creator>hapless</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47408836</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47408836</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hapless in "Oracle may slash up to 30k jobs to fund AI data-centers as US banks retreat"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Clown shit.<p>Sell your ORCL while you can, folks</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 08 Mar 2026 17:46:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47299286</link><dc:creator>hapless</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47299286</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47299286</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hapless in "I ported Linux to the PS5 and turned it into a Steam Machine"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You don't have to actually <i>do</i> #3.   What most companies do is just get a UL certification (to reassure consumers) and put the label "no user-serviceable parts inside" on the case (to meet UL mandates for safety)<p>That's more than enough to avoid civil liability for user stupidity<p>Locking shit down is something you do for other reasons entirely</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 08 Mar 2026 17:42:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47299262</link><dc:creator>hapless</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47299262</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47299262</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hapless in "I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>humans without credentials are bad at basic algebra in a word problem, ergo the large language model must be substantially equivalent to a human without a credential<p>thanks but no thanks<p>i am often glad my field of endeavour does not require special professional credentials but the advent of "vibe coding" and, just, generally, unethical behavior industry-wide, makes me wonder whether it wouldn't be better to have professional education and licensing</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 16 Feb 2026 08:13:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47032298</link><dc:creator>hapless</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47032298</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47032298</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hapless in "DECwindows Motif"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>spiritual successor? how about "ghoulish horror" ;)<p>the worst example of "second system effect" i have ever heard of</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 29 Jan 2026 09:31:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46807778</link><dc:creator>hapless</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46807778</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46807778</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hapless in "DECwindows Motif"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>amusingly Motif and CDE were derived from HP attempts to copy Windows 2.x and the betas of Windows 3.0<p>not windows 3.1 -- windows 3.1 was popular!  Windows before 3.1 was distinctly unpopular.   It had basically no installed base.   The only Windows 2.x applications I know of actually shipped an embedded Windows copy <i>on the floppy disk</i>.<p>HP was carefully tracking all the much less popular stuff Microsoft was doing in the late 80s because they thought this "WIMP" paradigm had staying powers, even if Microsoft was not exactly selling a lot of units</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 29 Jan 2026 09:29:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46807767</link><dc:creator>hapless</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46807767</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46807767</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hapless in "DECwindows Motif"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>the common element between VMS (the subject of this post) and Windows NT, is Dave cutler.<p>Cutler lived in an extremely overcomplicated world of VMS kernel primitives, and given the chance to let his freak flag fly, he <i>really</i> overcomplicated his past work for Windows NT<p>In case you ever wonder why your 1 gb/s ssd has ~100 mb/s throughput on windows.   there are often quite literally hundreds of layers of filters on even the simplest i/o<p>but it is super flexible! just slower than iced treacle.  aren't you glad you had an object oriented I/O subsystem supporting microkernel services and aspect-oriented programming? i bet you use those features way more often than you read or write files from disk</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 29 Jan 2026 09:23:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46807721</link><dc:creator>hapless</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46807721</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46807721</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hapless in "DECwindows Motif"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>motif had the opposite of versionitis<p>from 1989 to 2005 everyone used more or less the same version (from 1989) because vendors and standards are painful<p>it wasn't like, meaningfully standardized.  just no one ever updated anything.  or set a meaningful version string.   you just guessed which bugs were un-fixed based on `uname`</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 29 Jan 2026 09:19:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46807687</link><dc:creator>hapless</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46807687</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46807687</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hapless in "DECwindows Motif"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The Motif default theme was quite handsome, and the "demo" Motif Window Manager worked pretty well, but Motif was something of a nightmare to work with<p>The API sucks real bad, and even at the height of Motif popularity, the package itself was riddled with bugs because proprietary UNIX vendors <i>never</i> updated that shit<p>Motif was super-obviously designed by C++ programmers who could not ship a C++ library for technical reasons.   So they tried to do a C++ API in C.   And it hurts like a pineapple thrust into the wrong orifice, leafy-part-first.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 29 Jan 2026 09:12:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46807633</link><dc:creator>hapless</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46807633</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46807633</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hapless in "DECwindows Motif"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think aix still ships CDE, too<p>which would be unremarkable except none of the UNIX vendors has produced a new build in like 30 years<p>so if they are still shipping CDE it is probably 32 bit binaries from AIX 4 or AIX 5L</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 29 Jan 2026 09:08:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46807608</link><dc:creator>hapless</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46807608</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46807608</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hapless in "DECwindows Motif"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>"deprecated" is not "removed"<p>it can take literally decades for a deprecated package to actually get removed, because customers get mad</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 29 Jan 2026 09:08:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46807603</link><dc:creator>hapless</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46807603</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46807603</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hapless in "DECwindows Motif"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's Motif on VMS, which is not remotely UNIX-like<p>eventually HPE got tired of dealing with VMS customer requests and sold the rights to VMS Software Inc, who ported it from Itanium to x86 as soon as humanly possible<p>now VMS Software Inc, is stating that they wish to support ye olde DECWindows and Motif on the modern, x86-enabled VMS</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 29 Jan 2026 09:06:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46807593</link><dc:creator>hapless</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46807593</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46807593</guid></item></channel></rss>