Hacker News: kevin_thibedeau

New comment by kevin_thibedeau in "Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers"

kevin_thibedeau — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:34:25 +0000

Sanctioned killing to defend or strengthen the tribe is generally not equated with murder.

New comment by kevin_thibedeau in "Many African families spend fortunes burying their dead"

kevin_thibedeau — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 04:58:02 +0000

This "tradition" isn't possible without refrigeration technology to delay the burial. It is a modern aberration.

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

kevin_thibedeau — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 00:13:33 +0000

Is a data center worse than an iron smelter or aluminum refiner? The negative backlash is way out of proportion to the actual harm of a light industrial activity with minimal pollution. Put in requirements for responsible caps on electricity usage and ban "temporary" generators so they don't get a backdoor public subsidy on their power consumption. The market will sort the rest out.

New comment by kevin_thibedeau in "Netflix Prices Went Up Again – I Bought a DVD Player Instead"

kevin_thibedeau — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 22:07:09 +0000

The EFF doesn't decide what is legal. Unauthorized copies of commercial videos are still a copyright violation in the US. The DMCA anti-circumvention provisions aren't relevant. The AHRA permits private copies of audio recordings with the proviso that SCMS (or equivalent) must be implemented to prevent multi-generational copying. That last requirement has never been enforced and is now unworkable but it's still in effect.

New comment by kevin_thibedeau in "EFF is leaving X"

kevin_thibedeau — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 18:59:19 +0000

This stuff sold well in the 20s and 30s and contributed to the initial wishy washy US response to the start of WW2. Imagine a priest way more influential than Rush Limbaugh rooting for the 3rd reich. Now imagine a rich Afrikaner who doesn't begrudge their precarious social standing.

New comment by kevin_thibedeau in "Wit, unker, Git: The lost medieval pronouns of English intimacy"

kevin_thibedeau — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 18:31:49 +0000

Persian is PIE and had influence over semitic languages in cultural contact. The connection could be there.

New comment by kevin_thibedeau in "Wit, unker, Git: The lost medieval pronouns of English intimacy"

kevin_thibedeau — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 18:24:10 +0000

I grew up saying it and consciously eradicated it around 3rd grade. I probably shouldnt've but it would seem forced to do it now.

New comment by kevin_thibedeau in "Show HN: BAREmail ʕ·ᴥ·ʔ – minimalist Gmail client for bad WiFi"

kevin_thibedeau — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 16:11:30 +0000

In a better world we'd still be using a common protocol to interact with mail submission/delivery agents.

New comment by kevin_thibedeau in "F-35 Got Hit"

kevin_thibedeau — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 15:38:12 +0000

Worth pointing out that the Chinese have consumerized sufficiently high resolution thermal sensors with high enough frame rates to be used in a guidance system. I'd bet that Iran is taking advantage of those in this case.

New comment by kevin_thibedeau in "We found an undocumented bug in the Apollo 11 guidance computer code"

kevin_thibedeau — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:43:36 +0000

They sent people up in a tin can with the bare minimum computational power to manage navigation and control sequencing. It was barely safer than taking a barrel over Niagara Falls. We do have much more capable and reliable technology.

New comment by kevin_thibedeau in "Show HN: TTF-DOOM – A raycaster running inside TrueType font hinting"

kevin_thibedeau — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 03:49:30 +0000

> TrueType MUL does (ab)/64, not ab

This is how fixed-point arithmetic works. For multiplication of Q26.6 numbers you clear the squared scaling factors (2^6) by dividing/shifting one of them away.

New comment by kevin_thibedeau in "After 20 years I turned off Google Adsense for my websites (2025)"

kevin_thibedeau — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:36:16 +0000

It's an act of self-protection. I'm not anti-advertising. I'm anti-running-untrusted-software on my property. If they had stuck to adwords and static images with no invasive tracking I'd let their ads run. But the surveillance capitalists can't help themselves and want to run their 50MB spyware payload on my computer. I say no to that garbage.

New comment by kevin_thibedeau in "Phone-free bars and restaurants on the rise across the U.S."

kevin_thibedeau — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 16:58:15 +0000

Actual service dogs are uncommon. Lots of emotional support proxy children out there but they have no business around food service.

New comment by kevin_thibedeau in "Understanding young news audiences at a time of rapid change"

kevin_thibedeau — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 18:15:12 +0000

Local US television news is coöpted by conservative media empires that routinely insert propaganda pieces into the stations they control.

New comment by kevin_thibedeau in "LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions"

kevin_thibedeau — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 18:33:09 +0000

They get demographic data on their customers and can use that for marketing and setting prices.

New comment by kevin_thibedeau in "Artemis II Launch Day Updates"

kevin_thibedeau — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 13:20:05 +0000

It is like a runway taxi test on a plane that is fully capable of flight. Sometimes the plane takes off unexpectedly but the plan is not to do it. Starship can do orbital insertion now despite no plan to do it yet.

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

kevin_thibedeau — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 01:19:03 +0000

Have an LLM rewrite it in Seussian verse.

New comment by kevin_thibedeau in "NASA’s Artemis II Crew Launches to the Moon"

kevin_thibedeau — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:37:04 +0000

It isn't moving forward. It's an ill-conceived Apollo 1.5 with the MIC calling all the shots and a lander that is MIA. China is doing Apollo 2.0 which is fine considering this is their first attempt. The US needs a modular launch system with orbital booster tugs that can be mixed in various combinations for different mission profiles. One big booster with all of the risk stacked onto billion dollar launches is not the future we should be working toward.

New comment by kevin_thibedeau in "AI for American-produced cement and concrete"

kevin_thibedeau — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 17:45:35 +0000

> As a result, producers need a way to rapidly explore and validate new formulations without spending months in the lab.

How do you bypass the normal process of pouring test articles and testing them months and years after cure? This is fundamentally a research activity that needs to conduct verifiable science. Not something you can guess at with an LLM.

New comment by kevin_thibedeau in "Digitizing photos from the 1998 Game Boy Camera"

kevin_thibedeau — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 14:43:57 +0000

I recently played through a battery backed DMG game I last played in 1994 and the saved games were still good.