Hacker News: inoffensivename

New comment by inoffensivename in "Meta tells staff it will cut 10% of jobs"

inoffensivename — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 03:47:42 +0000

Pilot at a major airline here: 1.5 hours of interviews with two people (recruiter and another pilot). Technical and HR-style questions, a personality test, no other homework.

Blood test, background check including all prior training records that are reported to the FAA.

Not a lot of work for the candidate in the interview, but it's easy to fail one too many training events or accumulate a violation and become radioactive.

New comment by inoffensivename in "Open source is not about you (2018)"

inoffensivename — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 17:07:44 +0000

I love this article.

Nobody owes you a new release, or a signed binary, or a feature you care about.

New comment by inoffensivename in "Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe"

inoffensivename — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 05:33:40 +0000

There are retrofit ballistic recovery systems available as a Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) for several existing airframes, e.g. https://brsaerospace.com/cessna/

New comment by inoffensivename in "Nearly 90% of Windows Games Now Run on Linux"

inoffensivename — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 23:47:31 +0000

Yeah I have hundreds of hours or more in Rocket League on Linux, all competitive multiplayer. I use the Heroic launcher: https://heroicgameslauncher.com/

New comment by inoffensivename in "Next steps for BPF support in the GNU toolchain"

inoffensivename — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 15:04:31 +0000

I wish these articles would have a one sentence description of what BPF stands for. It would help passers-by.

New comment by inoffensivename in "Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left"

inoffensivename — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 04:26:25 +0000

Generally, if it's legal to take off, we're going.

(Source: am airline captain)

New comment by inoffensivename in "Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left"

inoffensivename — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 18:17:46 +0000

Airline captain here.

We definitely involve the dispatcher in the diversion decision. Especially if it's an unplanned diversion, where the big-picture view the dispatcher has is very useful for us in our metal tube.

New comment by inoffensivename in "GNU Midnight Commander"

inoffensivename — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 04:18:06 +0000

Can I get it in a Docker container?

New comment by inoffensivename in "Objects should shut up"

inoffensivename — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 13:41:38 +0000

Autopilot disengage is heard every single flight and is completely benign... unless neither pilot was expecting it in which case it is very effective at getting our attention.

New comment by inoffensivename in "Programmers aren’t so humble anymore, maybe because nobody codes in Perl"

inoffensivename — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 13:23:30 +0000

I was a young teen when the world wide web became a thing, my Dad to gave me a copy of the camel book. I used Perl to write everything... A message board, a stats website for a MUD I was playing on, basically anything I could think of to drop in that cgi-bin directory.

All of my code was garbage of course, but it was an incredible amount of fun, a very valuable learning experience.

I miss those days, but that probably has less to do than the programming language and more to do with the carefree days. :-)

New comment by inoffensivename in "Show HN: I'm an airline pilot – I built interactive graphs/globes of my flights"

inoffensivename — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 00:48:46 +0000

I fly the mighty Bombardier CRJ for a certain Utah-based regional airline in the US :)

New comment by inoffensivename in "Show HN: I'm an airline pilot – I built interactive graphs/globes of my flights"

inoffensivename — Sat, 28 Jun 2025 14:09:15 +0000

I love what you've done with your logbook, but the coolest part of the page was the photo of you on the flight deck with your Dad.

I'm an airline pilot here in the US and it would be the privilege of a lifetime to be able to do that with one of my kids.

New comment by inoffensivename in "WASM 2.0"

inoffensivename — Fri, 09 May 2025 13:30:54 +0000

I've been working on Webassembly runtimes for the last year or so, specifically on spec compliance and performance. I came to it as a neophyte, but I've become quite fond of the specification. It's a bit hard to get started with the notation, but it's refreshing to have such a thoroughly specified language. There is a reference interpreter generated directly from the spec, which is very useful for resolving questions about what a runtime should do in a given situation.

The provided specification tests allow implementers to be confident that their runtime conforms to the spec.

Overall I think it's an impressive specification and is worth studying .

New comment by inoffensivename in "Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport"

inoffensivename — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 14:24:07 +0000

It's 900ft AGL and below while descending

(CRJ pilot here)

New comment by inoffensivename in "Why is Git Autocorrect too fast for Formula One drivers?"

inoffensivename — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 05:57:40 +0000

Maybe a not-so-hot take on this... The only option this configuration parameter should take is "never", which should also be the default. Any other value should be interpreted as "never".

New comment by inoffensivename in "Why was there a wall near runway at S Korea plane crash airport?"

inoffensivename — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 04:09:46 +0000

> I'm speculating, of course

People should stop doing this. Transport category airplanes are designed to suffer multiple failures and still be controllable. Why the airplane landed where it did, when it did, and how fast it did are the relevant questions.

New comment by inoffensivename in "Why was there a wall near runway at S Korea plane crash airport?"

inoffensivename — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 01:56:59 +0000

Are you talking about Asiana 162? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_162

That one touched down short of the runway at a much lower speed and configured for landing.

New comment by inoffensivename in "Why was there a wall near runway at S Korea plane crash airport?"

inoffensivename — Sun, 05 Jan 2025 22:59:47 +0000

Lots of airports have obstacles not far from the end of the runway. Burbank, Midway, Orange County are a few that come to mind.

Why did they need to land when they did?

Why did they need to land so soon after the mayday call? (only 8 minutes from mayday to crash, as I understand it)

Why couldn't they land on a longer runway?

Why did they land so far down the runway?

What forced them to land in a clean configuration?

As an airline pilot, these are some of the questions I have. The flight data and cockpit voice recorders should be able to answer these questions.

New comment by inoffensivename in "Sora is here"

inoffensivename — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 19:58:28 +0000

Great. In a world awash with disinformation, we're making it easier to create even more of it.

I don't see any good coming from tools like these.

New comment by inoffensivename in "Both KDE and GNOME to offer official distros"

inoffensivename — Sat, 30 Nov 2024 12:32:40 +0000

Yawn, it's been a fantastic daily driver for 20 years now.