Hacker News: insensible

New comment by insensible in "The Gregorio project – GPL tools for typesetting Gregorian chant"

insensible — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 17:23:49 +0000

I’m interested in what may exist for Byzantine notation.

New comment by insensible in "Does coding with LLMs mean more microservices?"

insensible — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 12:40:20 +0000

So test it separately.

New comment by insensible in "We rewrote JSONata with AI in a day, saved $500k/year"

insensible — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 08:30:56 +0000

Yes, the factors to consider include:

- cost of the effort

- probability of success

- trade-offs in the case of success or of failure

- the possibility of only partial success creating an even messier situation than the existing one

Having a way to do the whole thing on a much smaller timescale and budget lets decision makers focus more on those externalities, and also can simplify them. This kind of bit rot is somewhere (often everywhere) in many fast-moving businesses, as a natural consequence of the value tradeoffs we have had up to now. Now there are machines that can speedrun the grunt work of clearing them.

New comment by insensible in "I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978"

insensible — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 16:43:12 +0000

She should have sent it! The first person to disrespect a child is the loser, and shouldn’t be the child’s parent.

New comment by insensible in "Fix the iOS keyboard before the timer hits zero or I'm switching back to Android"

insensible — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 20:43:07 +0000

I understand your point and have a long list of bitter grievances against Apple, but OS X triggered a large influx of geeks to the Mac world. It was a Unix that just worked, and there were all kinds of important ways that appealed to key tech people.

New comment by insensible in "An AI agent published a hit piece on me"

insensible — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 17:54:28 +0000

Why not? I kinda like the idea of PGP signing parties among humans.

New comment by insensible in "QR-style codes could replace barcodes 'within two years'"

insensible — Mon, 30 Dec 2024 19:20:24 +0000

For a very long time now, homeopathic remedies have been regulated by specific US law, called HPUS, and are labeled accordingly. They’re actually required to include examples of what they treat even though many in the homeopathic community would rather it be labeled more generally.

If you are of the opinion that there’s something that needs to be changed about this arrangement, your lawmaker is the one to contact.

New comment by insensible in "After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code"

insensible — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 06:59:30 +0000

What we don’t understand yet is what that means. We have never had such a thing before and it’s not clear what the patterns are that will make the best use of its known attributes with the least exposure to downsides — whether those be related to the tools, the end users, or the business stakeholders, or any other parties. Volumes more nuance to understand, and we’re just getting started.

New comment by insensible in "In the US, regenerative farming practices require unlearning past advice"

insensible — Sun, 27 Oct 2024 18:06:37 +0000

The idea is that the crops are more profitable per unit of time spent. The pasture operations are very low labor.

New comment by insensible in "In the US, regenerative farming practices require unlearning past advice"

insensible — Sun, 27 Oct 2024 18:05:29 +0000

I have never seen a permaculture designer, or anyone, make such a claim. We aim to reduce maintenance by design, using methods that overlap with Lean Manufacturing and other process study, but it would be absurd to claim that it’s possible to reduce gardening to zero maintenance. Fukuoka was more extreme than many permaculture specialists by quite a large factor but he put his maintenance right in the title of his signature work: “one-straw revolution”.

New comment by insensible in "In the US, regenerative farming practices require unlearning past advice"

insensible — Sat, 26 Oct 2024 05:48:23 +0000

Permaculture designer here. That’s a pretty good take. Biggest aspect missing is that once you abandon the “parking lot” approach to farming, you get many niches where you can profit from multiple crops on the same land. The farmer in the article is grazing under productive trees, for one example. Another opportunity is to stack a bunch of berry bushes of graduated height next to rows of trees. And to graze chickens after a larger animal, yet another enterprise on the same land. And with all the added fertility from the grazing, now you can sell a cutting of hay you didn’t have before.

The profit per unit area can become very high.

New comment by insensible in "Build systems, not heroes"

insensible — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 07:05:28 +0000

I’m a permaculture designer and have run a small vegetable farm. I have visited Polyface twice and spoken personally with Joel Salatin both times. I’ve read several of his books. I think that Polyface shows up in this discussion very much on the side of the systemic safeguards the article recommends. His farm is full of systems and safeguards a great many things by design. He plans for every risk he can think of and adapts his system in response. He got the farm from his father and has largely transferred it to his son, and they have built a business training both interns and the interested public in their methods.

Safety measures ≠ world-dominating industrial scale.

New comment by insensible in "A day in the life of a Walmart manager"

insensible — Sun, 14 Apr 2024 15:39:28 +0000

You’d probably enjoy the book Turn the Ship Around about a Navy submarine captain who transformed a low-performing crew into a strong, cohesive, autonomous crew.

New comment by insensible in "What it was like working for Gitlab"

insensible — Sun, 11 Feb 2024 11:16:20 +0000

Yes, it’s a mistake to design your company’s output in a way that results in shipping a defective product.

New comment by insensible in "Losing my son"

insensible — Thu, 18 Jan 2024 05:31:16 +0000

Looks like an Orthodox Christian family? If so I will write your baptism names down at church if you are willing to share them.

New comment by insensible in "Async Ruby"

insensible — Sun, 31 Oct 2021 14:12:32 +0000

Right, don’t use that, but there are well-implemented timeouts in network libraries, etc.

New comment by insensible in "Apple’s new keyboard feature in iOS 15 is insult to Cantonese speaking community"

insensible — Thu, 17 Jun 2021 09:05:37 +0000

Hopefully people speaking up will change that equation so that everyone is served.

New comment by insensible in "Pass: The standard Unix password manager"

insensible — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 11:30:57 +0000

I use Keybase git for this reason, and it works great.

New comment by insensible in "Signal Is a Government Op"

insensible — Thu, 08 Apr 2021 08:49:36 +0000

This assumes that the NSA and CIA are partners, not adversaries.

New comment by insensible in "Female Founder Secrets: Men Clamming Up"

insensible — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 19:44:01 +0000

I made a successful complaint to my HR department when someone used that very phrase. I very much agreed with the part of the person's intent to support and embolden the woman. But it's not OK to attack other people in the effort to support someone. Why not say something positive like "other people can do it, so can you"?