Hacker News: insane_dreamer

New comment by insane_dreamer in "Show HN: Pardonned.com – A searchable database of US Pardons"

insane_dreamer — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 15:44:58 +0000

Presidential pardons should be banned, period. All presidential pardons are political in nature, and therefore not based on justice.

New comment by insane_dreamer in "Molotov cocktail is hurled at home of Sam Altman"

insane_dreamer — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 14:33:24 +0000

because in America, if they don't have a job (because a robot replaced them), they can't get healthcare

New comment by insane_dreamer in "Molotov cocktail is hurled at home of Sam Altman"

insane_dreamer — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 14:32:01 +0000

The Ministry of The Future (Kim Stanley Robinson) lays this scenario out clearly -- people will resort to violence to try to stop what they consider to be the destruction of their lives or society.

New comment by insane_dreamer in "Molotov cocktail is hurled at home of Sam Altman"

insane_dreamer — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 14:27:18 +0000

Are you kidding? Read the news. Many Americans are totally fine with dropping bombs on other countries (which, you know, kill human beings) if they feel that their cause is "just". They're also OK with violence against human beings in their own country if those people happen to not have the proper documentation, or they're protesting against violence.

New comment by insane_dreamer in "Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989"

insane_dreamer — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 21:34:11 +0000

Fair points. I'd argue that realtime spellcheck doesn't provide a lot of value -- when you're writing you want to focus on the writing and go back and fix the spelling when you do the editing.

I'd argue it was a combination of "now we have more processing power lets see how we can use it up" and "we don't have to make so many hard design and programming decisions thanks to the extra power", with the result being that you "had" to get the new chips in order to run the new software that was replacing the old software

Repeat that a number of cycles and we wound up with Windows Vista ;)

Since we're discussing word processors, I would say that WordPerfect5 for DOS was the best word processor I've used to date (Pages on Mac comes in second). It did almost everything that Word does today in terms of word processing (not page layout but Word is terrible at that anyway, you really need InDesign to do that properly), was fast and easy to work with (keyboard shortcuts for operations is much faster than a mouse/GUI), and didn't require nearly as much processing power.

New comment by insane_dreamer in "The effects of caffeine consumption do not decay with a ~5 hour half-life"

insane_dreamer — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 21:04:30 +0000

I used to drink two double-espressos (technically a latte with a double-espresso in it) a day -- one in the morning, one early afternoon -- for many years.

~5 years ago I stopped drinking the afternoon coffee, and have subjectively noticed improvements in my sleep -- less wakeful in the night. It also fits better with my sleep habits, where when I was younger I commonly worked past midnight whereas now I'm asleep by 10 pm and wake up early.

I still drink the morning coffee and I wouldn't switch to another stimulant because the main reason I drink coffee is because I enjoy drinking coffee :)

New comment by insane_dreamer in "Instant 1.0, a backend for AI-coded apps"

insane_dreamer — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 17:36:47 +0000

validation -- you're using already validated components instead of relying on the LLM to create them and ensure they are validated

New comment by insane_dreamer in "Show HN: Is Hormuz open yet?"

insane_dreamer — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 17:30:34 +0000

This site has a lot of detailed data -- not sure what their sources are: https://insights.windward.ai

Number of ship crossings is definitely trending upward as of today.

New comment by insane_dreamer in "Show HN: Is Hormuz open yet?"

insane_dreamer — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 17:28:38 +0000

> Even so, the UNCLOS convention (2) requires free transit:

Neither Israel nor the US have signed/ratified the UNCLOS. So Iran has no incentive to abide by it.

New comment by insane_dreamer in "Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989"

insane_dreamer — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 17:05:53 +0000

> But when Word 97 arrived with real-time spelling and grammar checking and Clippy, the 486 couldn’t keep up. You really needed a Pentium or equivalent to do all three at once without noticeable lag as you typed.

In other words, faster hardware was needed because the quality and performance of the software dropped. I was doing spell-checking with WordStar on an CP/M Apple II with zero lag -- and WordStar fit on one side of a 5' floppy.

New comment by insane_dreamer in "Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers"

insane_dreamer — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:20:00 +0000

factories aren't as automated as data centers (at least not yet) and still contribute more to the local economy than data centers

New comment by insane_dreamer in "Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers"

insane_dreamer — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:15:29 +0000

I don't have a problem with NIMS -- which isn't the same as NIMBY. It's one of the reasons the US is a federation.

New comment by insane_dreamer in "Trump administration orders dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service"

insane_dreamer — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 22:21:41 +0000

> A lot of national forest land was formed from land that was more or less abandoned after the initial logging. Especially as you go east.

I can't speak to the Eastern US, but this is not the case in the West.

New comment by insane_dreamer in "EFF is leaving X"

insane_dreamer — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 22:16:16 +0000

closed my Twitter/X account when Elon bought it. I was an early adopter of Twitter and a heavy user prior to that (in consuming if not posting). But it turns out I don't miss it. Freed up time (to read HN, LOL).

New comment by insane_dreamer in "Trump administration orders dismantling of the U.S. Forest Service"

insane_dreamer — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 14:24:06 +0000

Insanity. The US' untouched forests and other wilderness lands is one of its greatest attributes and only possible because so much land in the West (mostly) was designated as such. Sadly destroying one of things that actually makes America great.

Once it's gone, it's not coming back.

New comment by insane_dreamer in "Show HN: Is Hormuz open yet?"

insane_dreamer — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:37:31 +0000

Very cool. I agree with some others that the YES/NO is confusing since we actually don't know due to the lag.

And wtf is a _fishing_ ship from Panama doing in the middle of the straight?

New comment by insane_dreamer in "Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire"

insane_dreamer — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:34:15 +0000

The UNCLOS, you say? Guess which two countries haven't signed/ratified it: US and Israel.

So yeah, I don't see Iran paying much attention to the UNCLOS.

New comment by insane_dreamer in "Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire"

insane_dreamer — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 15:56:21 +0000

the issue is the US' ability to freeze USD bank accounts on its soil or pressuring other banks to do the same

New comment by insane_dreamer in "Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire"

insane_dreamer — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 15:54:41 +0000

No - the Iranian's didn't say they were letting ships through for free

New comment by insane_dreamer in "Iran demands Bitcoin fees for ships passing Hormuz during ceasefire"

insane_dreamer — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 15:53:22 +0000

> extortion

not really; you would have to pay to run an oil pipeline through another country's territory even if that country wasn't bearing the cost of maintaining the oil pipeline

the strait isn't international waters -- it's part of Iran and Oman's territorial waters