Hacker News: hliyan

New comment by hliyan in "Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator"

hliyan — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 06:28:24 +0000

If Forbes misidentifies the wrong person as a billionaire, then yes, it is a problem.

New comment by hliyan in "Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator"

hliyan — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 06:27:05 +0000

Consider the following hypothetical: you have a safe in your home with a substantial sum of money in it, and you consider its presence, the location and contents private knowledge. However, someone uses publicly available information to infer the rough location and contents of your safe and makes it public. You are robbed shortly after. What percentage of responsibility lies with that person?

New comment by hliyan in "The Importance of Being Idle"

hliyan — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 06:17:30 +0000

Show whom?

New comment by hliyan in "Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold"

hliyan — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 12:34:36 +0000

Sometimes this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is the novice users who, over time, become power users through repetitive usage. If there are no user efficiency gains to be had through experience in a UI, then it just prevents the emergence of power users. Users just have to wait until a product manager or designer somewhere notices their pain and create a new feature through 10x the effort it would have taken to simply maintain the lower level shortcuts (e.g. keyboard accelerators, simple step automations).

New comment by hliyan in "Ariane 6 user's manual [pdf]"

hliyan — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 02:31:42 +0000

I think the Spacecraft Interfaces section (starting page 84) is the bit that might interest HN readers. It describes (to potential customers) the dimensions of the payload bay, electrical and comms interfaces available, conditions the payload must be able to tolerate (vibration, temperature etc).

'Spin-flip' in metal complexes can help solar cells leap beyond limits

hliyan — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 15:26:46 +0000

Article URL: https://www.kyushu-u.ac.jp/en/researches/view/377/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47602180

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by hliyan in "My MacBook keyboard is broken and it's insanely expensive to fix"

hliyan — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 15:32:00 +0000

I assume you consider this a bad solution because the free market would always converge on the right solution(s), including reparable machines.

However, if all participants (in this case manufacturers) in a market conclude that:

(1) product B has a lower profit margin than product A, and

(2) product B is superior enough to eventually become the dominant variant and

(3) the market size is fairly static and

(4) the first mover on product B is unlikely to maintain a lead for very long,

then all participants would choose to suppess product B, even without having to resort to collusion.

Not only that, if the manufacturers consider regulation to be a market in its own right, i.e. it is available for purchase (which it de facto is in countries where lobbying is legal), then market forces will also drive regulation away from product B.

To me, this explains why some products peak in build quality sometime after innovation plateaus, and the continue to diminish over time (usually measured in decades). Some household appliances have already reached this stage. For Apple products, this phenomenon may still be in the future.

User Mode Linux

hliyan — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 09:47:22 +0000

Article URL: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v5.9/virt/uml/user_mode_linux.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47572325

Points: 11

# Comments: 0

New comment by hliyan in "No-build, no-NPM, SSR-first JavaScript framework if you hate React, love HTML"

hliyan — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 11:17:48 +0000

That reminded me of another complexity: virtual DOM diff.

New comment by hliyan in "Qite.js – Frontend framework for people who hate React and love HTML"

hliyan — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 10:56:26 +0000

I'm starting to wonder whether reactivity (not React specifically) was the originally sin that led to modern UI complexity. UI elements automatically reacting to data changes (as oppposed to components updating themselves by listening to events) was supposed to make things easier. But in reality, it introduced state as something distinct from both the UI and the data source (usually an API or a local cache). That introduced state management. It was all downhill from there (starting with two way data binding, Flux architecture, Redux, state vs. props, sagas, prop drilling, hooks, context API, stateful components vs. stateless components, immutability, shallow copy vs. deep copy, so on and so forth).

New comment by hliyan in "Windows native app development is a mess"

hliyan — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 13:53:08 +0000

I've recently discovered FLTK: https://www.fltk.org/doc-1.4/intro.html

Haven't used Qt in a while, but at first glance, seems simpler: https://github.com/fltk/fltk/blob/master/examples/menubar-ad...

New comment by hliyan in "Iran war energy shock sparks global push to reduce fossil fuel dependence"

hliyan — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 14:43:48 +0000

I heard somewhere that there is some sort of evangelical Christian sect in Korea that believes the current US president was sent by God. Not as a positive force, but as a force to end the global status quo (which I suppose they consider unjust). I find this fascinating because the US president's actions so far have: exposed decade-old myths about the rule-based international order, caused the EU to seek more self-reliance, caused former enemies in Asia to consider alliances and now accelerate the end to fossil fuel dependence. One could argue that the results of his actions are indistinguishable from that of a double agent's.

New comment by hliyan in "Afroman found not liable in defamation case"

hliyan — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 14:34:38 +0000

If only your country operated on the Peelian principles of policing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles

Relevant fictional quote:

There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people. - William Adama

New comment by hliyan in "Trevor Milton is raising funds for a new jet he claims will transform flying"

hliyan — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 14:11:33 +0000

Isn't this also in line with recent proclamations by at least two venture capitalists that they do not reflect / introspect / dwell on consequences in any way?

New comment by hliyan in "Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act"

hliyan — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 12:29:22 +0000

Why can't we handle this the same way we handle knives, guns and chainsaws: require adults to secure the device before letting minors near them? All the devices need is the ability to create limited access profiles. A human adult performs age verification by only providing the minor with creditals to a limited profile. Trying to perform that verification so far away from the minor, after they have got to the last gate, seems like the worst way to do it.

New comment by hliyan in "Kagi Translate now supports LinkedIn Speak as an output language"

hliyan — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 05:22:05 +0000

Your comment, translated:

It looks like the system is picking up anything in the URL parameter as the target output language. Always interesting to see how these edge cases play out in production! #TechInsights #SoftwareDevelopment #Localization

Stop trying to sell me things while I'm trying to use the thing you already sold

hliyan — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 16:48:41 +0000

This may be an exercise in screaming into the aether, but I wanted to check how many others feel this way (and how strongly) when using modern software:

When opening GMail to send an email, I frequently have to dismiss a banner that tries to upsell a higher service tier that promises to either secure some drive files it claims are insecure, or promises better AI tools to manage my work. When opening a food delivery app, I first have to dismiss a number of promotions before I can get to the ordering screen. Even at work, where I might not be the person who makes purchasing decisions, I'm frequently presented with an itchy red notification dot, or a chirpy popup that breathlessly describes some new feature that came with the last refresh of the tab, no doubt put there by a product manager whose quarterly KPIs include a certain minimum usage of the new feature they championed. There are hardly any software where one can get in, do the thing and get out. And the trend does not seem to be plateauing. Where does this end? Will legislation be required to regulate ads that interrupt people's tasks (personal or work)?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47401440

Points: 6

# Comments: 1

New comment by hliyan in "Show HN: s@: decentralized social networking over static sites"

hliyan — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 02:58:51 +0000

Please feel free to do so. Years ago, another HN user and I tried to make some headway, but our day jobs intervened. Now that we have LLMs at our disposal, you might have better luck!

New comment by hliyan in "The MacBook Neo"

hliyan — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 07:33:49 +0000

I used have a netbook as a second personal device around 2013 and loved it. Very easy to carry around and work on the go, and it could do everything except development work (web browsing, Word, Excel). I actually miss the form factor.

New comment by hliyan in "Show HN: s@: decentralized social networking over static sites"

hliyan — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 05:49:40 +0000

Many years ago, I had an idea to use specially formatted emails as a transport layer for a social network. Predictably, it too, went nowhere: https://medium.com/@hliyan/email-re-skinned-as-a-social-netw...