Hacker News: havblue

New comment by havblue in "JetBrains reported a net financial loss first time in its tracked history"

havblue — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 12:54:12 +0000

It isn't as much the price of a license as much as the time it takes to get approval for newer engineers and contractors. You can just say, "we use vs code with these extensions and wsl2" and the discussion is over.

New comment by havblue in "Pixel 11 doesn't yet meet the GrapheneOS security standards and may be skipped"

havblue — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 17:56:13 +0000

I fried my 8 pro wifi but I attributed it to listening to it inside my shower where it would get the full force of steam damage. So at least on my part I can admit that was a mistake.

New comment by havblue in "Ask HN: What are you reading?"

havblue — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 12:15:11 +0000

The funny thing about Musashi was for years I thought the cultural relevance was based on historical texts... But really it was thanks to Yoshikawa and the many subsequent adaptations that the swordman is relevant in pop culture.

It's the same thing with Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which has a ton of video games and shows based off of it. People in Japan weren't reading Guanzhong in Chinese, they were reading Yoshikawa's adaptation. Oddly, the Japanese Sangokushi hasn't been localized until now, and it's currently being released on Kindle. So if we wait just a little more we should be able to read it in print.

New comment by havblue in "Ask HN: What are you reading?"

havblue — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 13:19:41 +0000

After reading some of the manga Vagabond, I decided to go straight to the source material and read Yoshikawa's Musashi, a historical fiction account of Miyamoto Musashi at the start of the Edo period. Despite it having roots as a serialized novel with a few pages released every day in a Japanese newspaper almost a century ago, the book feels very modern. It's surprising to see how many ideas like recurring comical villains, kidnapping plots, younger boy hero prototypes and love triangles were already established. The spiritual quest of Musashi and his evolving understanding of warfare is probably the most rewarding part of it though. It's worth reading.

New comment by havblue in "California farmers are struggling to sell grapes as demand for wine drops"

havblue — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 17:24:34 +0000

I was at an engagement party of some in-laws over the weekend: people getting married in their mid-twenties. The alcohol selection was mimosas (low gravity champagne mixed with juice) as well as Coors Light, which few people drank. Nothing at 5% or greater and no red wine. The younger people were there and gone in about an hour. So what little was served wasn't anything that people could get a buzz from while many of the middle aged adults have started to abstain.

New comment by havblue in "Everybody’s home. No one’s coming over"

havblue — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 14:54:47 +0000

I was going to spout off my opinion without reading the article but well, yeah they covered the exact reasons why we don't host more: my wife and I are too busy, the kids have taken over too much of the house with toys to clean it fast and elaborate hovering play dates have taken the place of what would have been adult time in decades past. For better or worse, probably better, people also don't seem to want to drink as much anymore and many people have restrictive vegan gluten free diets. It's more about finding parents of kids who are friends with your kids

New comment by havblue in "Has Violence Against Teachers Become Accepted by Society?"

havblue — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 12:46:11 +0000

At my public high school there were the usual assortment of troubled students: chronic absenteeism, disrupting class, drugs, theft, and in one case, attempted arson. One of them vandalized my bike, even though I never reported it.

In each case in the years ahead I caught wind that things went right for them after they found that their options were limited. One showed up at our graduation but wasn't able to walk with us. One sheepishly asked if he could attend the reunion even though he didn't graduate with everyone else. Another enlisted. I think they all felt responsible in the end. Point being there was always a network of second chance options of varying levels of strictness. Just letting them move forward would have been unfair to my classmates and my teachers who were hired to teach and not mold rough teenagers into mature adults. Alternatives were always there but now we err on the side of making sure they move forward because it jeopardizes the district's funding.

New comment by havblue in "Has Violence Against Teachers Become Accepted by Society?"

havblue — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 15:35:04 +0000

"and then what" is the common retort to when people suggest removing the problem students, it's practically a cliche now. Then what is the students are held accountable now and won't be able to harm the education of their classmates and continue to harass their teachers. Then what is we don't have to pad grades as much and lie so that we can meet a fake metric. Then what is we stop doubling down on an approach that doesn't work.

New comment by havblue in "Car touchscreens are cheap, not good"

havblue — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 17:38:14 +0000

I have a Mazda that uses the knob implementation of Android Auto... It's just okay. The first problem is that the screen cracks under heat, which is cheap to fix diy, expensive otherwise. Second is the firmware is difficult to update. Again, it's free diy, but you'll brick your infotainment if you screw up. The old firmware is bad: frequent disconnects and screen blackouts. Dealers don't seem to care much about patching it though. I know a mechanic that refused to touch the infotainment as well. You kind of need to flex your nerd abilities or go aftermarket if you want to keep a decent android auto experience.

New comment by havblue in "The primary purpose of code review is to find code that will be hard to maintain"

havblue — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 15:22:31 +0000

I've been at a lot of companies where code is held hostage by the reviewers, specifically leads or wannabe leads. Interfaces matter. Maintainability matters. Memory allocation certainly matters. Code reviews frequently go down the rabbit hole of how the reviewer would prefer to design it and a long back and forth until the developer has, "explained himself", like it's a Breaking Bad confrontation. I think it devolves into a status battle.

New comment by havblue in "Why I Stopped Arguing with People"

havblue — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 14:37:31 +0000

I'm realizing how frequently people don't have to agree with me. I need to be valued at my company to stay employed certainly, and of course I need to be valued by my family. There's a far narrower set of opinions where I need to be agreed with, such as if everyone is making plans that I'm certain are going to turn out poorly. Usually though you can just let bad ideas slide away, especially when I know I can't change an opinion about them. It's more important that I back up someone's feelings at that point.

New comment by havblue in "Dostoyevsky isn't difficult"

havblue — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 15:31:44 +0000

As I get older I appreciate more how much nineteenth and twentieth century literature has in common with the modern era. Notes From the Underground was a great example of this where the narrator feels that he's destined for great things but self-sabotages along the way, becoming more and more isolated. He isn't that much different from the many educated, underemployed and frustrated, or even insufferable, people on the Internet. We haven't changed that much at all.

New comment by havblue in "The Low-Tech AI of Elden Ring"

havblue — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 22:23:00 +0000

Not really an ai response but I remember the path following and aggro is really smart in Elden Ring and earlier Dark Souls. That is you try to run away after pulling aggro and when you think you're safe you'll run into some other strong enemies, after which, oops, the original enemy followed you down a ladder and stabbed you in the back. Of course they have a bunch of occasions where enemies are in places you don't expect them as well. It isn't really about the mob ai as much as level design and the balance of difficult-to-kill enemies at inconvenient times.

New comment by havblue in "Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?"

havblue — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 13:20:22 +0000

Craig Ferguson is magnetic isn't he? Great monologue.

I think with ai, when you get feedback, you are putting in a form of work though. You're practicing recall of previous concepts and having them reinforced while you can get on a narrower and narrower path of what worked and what didn't.

Granted, I have no clue whether this is better than other forms of doing the work like going to a support group or filling out worksheets and journaling, but I do think it is beneficial.

New comment by havblue in "Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?"

havblue — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 21:58:47 +0000

I'm going to admit that I tend to hit a brick wall when these books tell me I need to fill out a worksheet if I really want to make a difference. You're telling me I have to do homework now? But ai can give me feedback on my thoughts anyway, directly what I'm interested in, and provide sources, even though it's probably patronizing me? Not a difficult decision.

New comment by havblue in "Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb"

havblue — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 18:28:43 +0000

I believe that the party with the most clout is the one that controls the frame. So yes, some parents may keep Slaughterhouse Five out of libraries. Meanwhile those same parents become strawmanned villains in mainstream movies like Footloose. So I don't think pulling a book is that effective when it winds up on a "you can't read this" list.

New comment by havblue in "Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb"

havblue — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 15:57:52 +0000

On my news feed today I saw a Newsweek story about how someone found a dvd of Birth of a Nation at Goodwill, not knowing what the plot was.

As far as I can tell the standard for a book being "banned" is just that the librarian or the bookseller is sympathetic to the book's message and thinks it should be more widely read while politicians or parents might think it's inappropriate or they disagree with the message.

If you put the shoe on the other foot and name a book that's out of print because publishers dislike the material or it's problematic in the eyes of librarians, I don't think it fits the standard. Birth of a Nation for example is not a "banned movie" and neither is Song of the South. So the standard is entirely set by teachers, librarians and booksellers.

New comment by havblue in "Britain’s output per person is now only just above that of Mississippi"

havblue — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 15:13:46 +0000

I doubt there are many people at the Atlantic who voted for Trump and the author has worked for the Economist before. So I'm not sure what you're asking for, unless you're saying he should move back to London if he's to write about the UK.

New comment by havblue in "Britain’s output per person is now only just above that of Mississippi"

havblue — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 15:06:37 +0000

The article never said poverty is only a function of gdp, so I'm not sure who your comment is directed to. The article discusses gdp per capita, the devaluation of the pound, declining wages and the decline of health care all in the free paragraphs. If those things go in the wrong direction you can indeed be as poor as Mississippi.

New comment by havblue in "The placeholder name for the Windows 8 experience was "modern""

havblue — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 14:32:03 +0000

I was one of the few people that thought people would like it. That is, why shouldn't it be better to have a bunch of tiles on your desktop that have the most important information and then you choose the one you really want to concentrate on full screen? Well, of course the problem is you aren't using a tablet. It's trying to fix something that never needed to be fixed.

But yes, Linux is great now and most people on the site can easily debug potential problems they run into on it and not look back.