Hacker News: lexicality

New comment by lexicality in "Japanese symbols that speak without words"

lexicality — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 12:17:08 +0000

I didn't say they were stupid, I said I was concerned about their level of education

> If someone is a new driver, who hasn't seen the symbolic signs enough, the word signs are a good fallback. The goal is to maximize accessibility.

That's the thing I'm concerned about! In Europe you're not allowed onto the road unless you have already proven that you have memorised all the symbols and can identify them on demand. You don't need to maximise accessibility because the required level of education is higher.

New comment by lexicality in "Memory crisis is getting so bad that even retro RAM prices are going to the Moon"

lexicality — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 21:32:31 +0000

It was introduced barely 20 years ago. By that rationale the PS3 is a retro console

New comment by lexicality in "Japanese symbols that speak without words"

lexicality — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 21:20:44 +0000

It was very surprising for me when I visited the US to see just how much space was wasted writing everything out on every sign and sometimes in giant words on the road.

It did also make me a bit worried about the expected level of driver education...

New comment by lexicality in "Blogger defeats photographer's copyright claim"

lexicality — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 20:23:55 +0000

Hell of a photo, it almost looks like an oil painting!

New comment by lexicality in "Chuwi Minibook X"

lexicality — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 07:20:22 +0000

I don't know, I've never touched one

New comment by lexicality in "Chuwi Minibook X"

lexicality — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 11:08:01 +0000

I just tested and yes - if I press the exact corner of the key with a pencil then it doesn't register correctly. Everywhere else seems absolutely fine and given how small the keys are I genuinely wasn't able to recreate this with my finger. In order to actually press the key I have to push down on enough of the key for it to register.

New comment by lexicality in "Chuwi Minibook X"

lexicality — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 10:29:48 +0000

> the issues the author describes - particularly with the keyboard and trackpad

I don't have the same problems with my model, possibly theirs is bad. I don't like that the keyboard is teeny and in the ANSI layout but I got used to it.

The trackpad isn't great but that's just yet another reason to avoid using the mouse and do everything with the keyboard.

That being said, I would never use it for fulltime use. I'm not even using it to type this message even though it's right next to me. I use it while travelling and it remains off at all other times.

New comment by lexicality in "Chuwi Minibook X"

lexicality — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 06:31:59 +0000

I have one of these. It's an awful piece of shit and I love it.

I bought it because I was going on holiday and didn't want to take a real laptop both in case it got stolen and to dissuade me from using it. I ended up using it more than I would have a normal laptop because it's so small and easily carried.

My current use case is for my commute into the office, it easily fits on the microscopic train tables and doesn't add much weight to my bag. Highly recommended.

New comment by lexicality in "The dead economy theory"

lexicality — Sat, 30 May 2026 11:57:29 +0000

I disagree - finding a relevant stock photo requires you to do some searching and filtering. Using an obviously flawed generated image makes it look like you typed a vague prompt in and picked the first thing that came up without doing any refinement.

New comment by lexicality in "Python 3.15: features that didn't make the headlines"

lexicality — Thu, 21 May 2026 12:16:43 +0000

a lot of the training data is either for python 2 or just generally very low quality

New comment by lexicality in "NASA still maintains some of the Voyager spacecraft code from the 70s era"

lexicality — Mon, 18 May 2026 13:07:31 +0000

I think people tend to squander door openers with bad layouts or information density. Most CVs are essentially the same as each other, just a bullet point list of jira ticket titles.

Do I care if someone has won the world championship for ping-pong 3 years in a row? Not particularly. Does it make them stand out against a sea of slop? Only if I actually see that info when skimming! But if I do see it, I'm probably going to stop and re-read the whole thing, which is a tactical advantage.

New comment by lexicality in "NASA still maintains some of the Voyager spacecraft code from the 70s era"

lexicality — Mon, 18 May 2026 12:53:48 +0000

> But would you give them a job?

That's what the interview is to find out, isn't it?

> Would they even match the requirements?

I would assume if they got a job at NASA working on mission critical systems, they probably exceed the requirements of my startup

New comment by lexicality in "NASA still maintains some of the Voyager spacecraft code from the 70s era"

lexicality — Mon, 18 May 2026 11:32:16 +0000

If I'm reviewing CVs and I see that you worked at NASA on the Voyager code, you're getting an interview just so I can ask about it.

I wouldn't normally approve of CV driven development, but for this?!

New comment by lexicality in "Why did Clovis toolmakers choose difficult quartz crystal?"

lexicality — Sun, 17 May 2026 07:17:39 +0000

Given I've spent the last few weeks teaching myself CAD and completely designing a custom 3d printed racking system for my consumer networking gear from scratch, I would like to think that "I decided to do this ostensibly stupid and pointlessly difficult thing for a minor aesthetic improvement even when a blatantly easier (and possibly better) option is available" is a valid reason for humans to do things.

Besides, that green quartz crystal is beautiful. If you can only afford to carry a limited number of objects then I personally would try to find a way to turn it into an object I can hold, use, and admire every day.

New comment by lexicality in "Tesla Wall Connector bootloader bypasses the firmware downgrade ratchet"

lexicality — Fri, 15 May 2026 06:22:57 +0000

some people have variable electrical tariffs, so electrical use in the middle of the night is usually much much cheaper than the middle of the day.

New comment by lexicality in "If AI writes your code, why use Python?"

lexicality — Tue, 12 May 2026 08:34:46 +0000

I remember when having as little code to maintain as possible was an engineering goal. My professors were adamant that code reuse was a virtue. I had "less code = less bugs" drilled into me.

I'm sure the new way is better though, given how much my boss seems to be tracking my token usage these days...

New comment by lexicality in "Postmortem: TanStack NPM supply-chain compromise"

lexicality — Tue, 12 May 2026 08:21:59 +0000

Depending on how badly you nuked it, it's probably still in your `git reflog` locally. Normal git hangs on to orphaned commits too. (Until `git gc` runs)

New comment by lexicality in "Floats Don't Agree with Themselves"

lexicality — Fri, 08 May 2026 12:35:46 +0000

> -ffast-math default, often on without intent

Ah yes -ffast-math, also known as -fincorrect-math

New comment by lexicality in "Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license"

lexicality — Wed, 06 May 2026 21:38:54 +0000

You could get entire publisher catalogues for peanuts. I think at least half my steam library is useless filler because I bought every game WB ever published for $40 to get the new batman game or similar.

New comment by lexicality in "Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license"

lexicality — Wed, 06 May 2026 21:29:06 +0000

so he can count to three after all, interesting