Hacker News: lotophage

New comment by lotophage in "Thoughts on Mechanical Keyboards and the ZSA Moonlander"

lotophage — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 00:00:50 +0000

I struggled with the Moonlander although it is a wonderful keyboard.

I mapped it to a Colemak layout varient when I first got it. I was constantly discovering key combos that didn't quite work for whatever reason and made tweaks to the layout or the shortcuts in various editors. Forever tying my brain in knots learning and relearning mappings and combos. Then I'd frequently jump on other peoples computers/laptops to help out with small things and have to switch back to the old mode of thinking.

It ended up being a productivity sink rather than a boon. I don't know whether I would have crossed some inflection point if I had persevered, but there was always this fixed cost of tweaking shortcuts when using new software that was more burdensome than with a plain qwerty keyboard.

Maybe I was too ambitious and should have avoided the Colemak-esque layout, but I haven't managed to summon the stamina to give it a fair go again. I still use one half of it for gaming though. It's really sweet for that.

New comment by lotophage in "The ChompSaw: A benchtop power tool that's safe for kids to use"

lotophage — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 03:50:00 +0000

I have the makedo and the screws are legit amazing. I never imagined that they could possibly work so well. It's one of those things I always recommend to other parents.

The very real downside is that your kids become attached to their creations. So you end up with a house perpetually full of cardboard and fighting a constant battle to part with some of it.

New comment by lotophage in "The truth about soft plastic recycling points at supermarkets"

lotophage — Mon, 26 May 2025 12:36:59 +0000

In Australia a company called REDcycle supposedly recycled soft plastics from all the major supermarkets. After a decade or so operating the business collapsed and it was discovered that they had about 11,000 tonnes of the stuff stockpiled in 40+ warehouses across the country because they hadn't figured out how to recycle it.

New comment by lotophage in "The guide to reduce screen time"

lotophage — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 13:08:16 +0000

I've used NextDNS.io in the past and setup schedules to block the reddit domain during work hours.

The problem that I found is that sometimes it's not just a place of procrastination but the place you want to search for a useful answer to your question.

New comment by lotophage in "Today Google bricked my Chromebook by force-installing a hidden extension"

lotophage — Sat, 29 Mar 2025 11:25:07 +0000

Pause and resume across devices even. Pure psychological torture.

Close your laptop and then pick up your phone later and it resumes right where you last saw it. You immediately put your phone down to cut it off because you want to relax. Go make a cup of tea then sit down on the couch and turn on the TV for a minute...

It resumes.

New comment by lotophage in "Show HN: Proxmox VE Helper Scripts"

lotophage — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 22:07:52 +0000

Oh wow, this is truely sad news.

I only recently went down the homelab/selfhosted path and the majority of my containers were setup using tteck's scripts.

New comment by lotophage in "How to Train Yourself to Go to Sleep Earlier"

lotophage — Sat, 02 Nov 2024 13:31:26 +0000

That's a great idea! I'm kicking myself for not thinking of it because I did the opposite for my toddler to let him know when it was okay to get up in the morning (otherwise he'd be up before 5am). I had a dim red as a whole room nightlight that transitioned to dim yellow-green to signal that is was now okay to get up.

New comment by lotophage in "How to Train Yourself to Go to Sleep Earlier"

lotophage — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 23:19:19 +0000

I didn't know that "revenge bedtime procrastination" was a term but it definitely describes me.

I have to set an alarm for bedtime, but I still struggle with being disciplined about it.

New comment by lotophage in "AirTags key to discovery of Houston's plastic recycling deception"

lotophage — Sun, 01 Sep 2024 02:39:56 +0000

Something similar happened in Australia on a large scale. A soft plastic (single use shopping bag) recycling company called REDcycle which partnered with all the major supermarkets was discovered to be just stockpiling it in warehouses. They'd been doing that for about a decade before they were discovered.

New comment by lotophage in "Slow is smooth, smooth is fast: Navy SEALs' efficiency secret"

lotophage — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 23:02:34 +0000

Ambulance personnel/paramedics very much do this, in Australia at least.

They never run, never rush, and don't get sucked in to the panic and chaos.

New comment by lotophage in "Jelly Star – The Smallest Android 13 Smartphone"

lotophage — Sat, 13 Jul 2024 22:44:24 +0000

I'm curious if people actually use the IR in place of their TV remote as in the promo. For me personally, I think the friction of having to fire up an app first would preclude me from ever using it in earnest.

New comment by lotophage in "De-googling, so far"

lotophage — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 03:00:37 +0000

I was very much in the Google ecosystem and although privacy became an increasing concern, the final push for me was the horror stories who had their accounts suspended or were otherwise locked out with no recourse.

New comment by lotophage in "Cannabis use linked to epigenetic changes, study reveals"

lotophage — Sat, 25 May 2024 23:54:42 +0000

Could these changes be attributed to smoke inhalation?

New comment by lotophage in "The Reddits"

lotophage — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 00:16:50 +0000

I played with the python PRAW package to scrub old comments a while ago. Even iterating through the different sorts (new/hot/controversial/etc) I could remove everything there, but different comments would appear there after some time.

My theory was Reddit ran batch jobs on some cadence (daily maybe?) to generate the topN comments lists for each users profile page. Running my script a couple of times over a several days seemed to clear everything.

New comment by lotophage in "DIY Book Scanner"

lotophage — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 00:54:12 +0000

I love the idea (as long as they are not rare out of print books). Then burn the loose pages of all the books you've scanned in a bonfire to complete the ritual. The books have now transcended the physical realm and it felt really wrong while doing it. History warns us that people will be next, are they right?

New comment by lotophage in "Wasabi linked to "substantial" boost in memory, Japanese study finds"

lotophage — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 01:39:49 +0000

In addition to the previously mentioned places, it is grown in Tasmania, Australia too (https://shimawasabi.com.au/pages/about).

New comment by lotophage in "Berlin's indoor pools"

lotophage — Sun, 19 Nov 2023 08:22:04 +0000

"Sir, you'll have to take your junk out or I'll have to ask you to leave"

New comment by lotophage in "Bhutan declares its entire street dog population fully sterilized and vaccinated"

lotophage — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 11:24:26 +0000

I believe they're asking, "why go to the effort when 'euthanizing' them would be easier and cheaper?"

New comment by lotophage in "A group of open source Android apps without ads and unnecessary permissions"

lotophage — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 09:50:37 +0000

I'm surprised at the amount of negativity in the comments. I use several of the tools and they are great. They do one thing well and don't have the feature bloat that a lot of apps suffer from.

New comment by lotophage in "Bloomsday: The library’s one-of-a-kind copy of “Ulysses”"

lotophage — Tue, 27 Jun 2023 13:47:53 +0000

I only recently discovered his letter to Nora Barnacle professing his fondness of her farts. Quite possibly the funniest thing that I have ever read, although I did feel a tinge of guilt since it was never intended for the public.