Hacker News: madcaptenor

New comment by madcaptenor in "Alberta to hold referendum on whether to remain in Canada"

madcaptenor — Fri, 22 May 2026 16:19:18 +0000

Another case: when Brexit happened, IIRC some people in Scotland were suggesting secession from the UK post-Brexit so they could rejoin the EU.

New comment by madcaptenor in "Michael Keating has died"

madcaptenor — Thu, 21 May 2026 15:39:38 +0000

Michael J. Fox's middle name is Andrew. But he didn't want to be Michael A. Fox because that sounded too much like "Michael, a fox."

New comment by madcaptenor in "Greek Alphabet Cards"

madcaptenor — Sat, 16 May 2026 21:43:49 +0000

right, but giving English-speaking kids the following would help them:

- a bear that looks like B

- an orange that looks like O

- a snake that looks like S

- a tree that looks like T

(and so on; that's just what I can think of off the top of my head)

New comment by madcaptenor in "Extremely Low Frequencies"

madcaptenor — Tue, 12 May 2026 15:11:52 +0000

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/03/02/eureka-funny/

(in short, people have found the "Eureka" part in Asimov but not the "that's funny" part)

New comment by madcaptenor in "The smelly baby problem"

madcaptenor — Sat, 02 May 2026 01:54:38 +0000

It also helps that newborn poop doesn't smell particularly bad. It only starts smelling like poop when they start eating real food.

New comment by madcaptenor in "Reverse Engineering SimTower"

madcaptenor — Fri, 01 May 2026 14:43:55 +0000

I had SimTower but could never quite figure it out - might be time to give it another shot.

New comment by madcaptenor in "You can beat the binary search"

madcaptenor — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 14:50:44 +0000

Isn't it a bit better on average, although not as much as you'd hoped? For example 19 steps of binary search get you down to 1/524288 of the original search space with 19 comparisons. 12 steps of ternary search get you down to 1/3^12 = 1/531441 of the original search space with, on average, 12 * 3/2 = 18 comparisons.

New comment by madcaptenor in "Talkie: a 13B vintage language model from 1930"

madcaptenor — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 15:37:26 +0000

For a moment there I thought "sanguinary struggle" meant a cheerful one - but that's "sanguine". "Sanguinary" has the more literal meaning of "bloody".

New comment by madcaptenor in "The Beauty of Bonsai Styles"

madcaptenor — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 18:23:42 +0000

Seconded. They also have an excellent pipe organ; I'd recommend checking their web site to see when someone will be playing it.

New comment by madcaptenor in "Jar of NIST peanut butter for $2,050"

madcaptenor — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 13:10:43 +0000

I've been getting ads for this. I have a seven-year-old who's particular about her peanut butter sandwiches, but I don't need Science Peanut Butter.

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

madcaptenor — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 17:45:51 +0000

Similarly, Spanish "vuestra merced" evolved to "usted".

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

madcaptenor — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 17:22:45 +0000

meanwhile, my New Jersey-born boss uses "you guys" despite herself being female and having lived in the South longer than I have

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

madcaptenor — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 14:54:46 +0000

No, because "you in the back" could refer to just one person in the back, instead of several. So "y'all in the back" is more specific. (Of course names are an option in this context.)

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

madcaptenor — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 14:53:58 +0000

No. As far as I can tell, singular "y'all", when it exists, is an implied plural. What you might hear as singular "y'all" is, say, when you go into a restaurant and say "do y'all have Coke?" to the server - that doesn't refer to just the server but to the restaurant as a whole. But I'm not a linguist and also I don't spend much time among people with heavier Southern dialect, so you shouldn't believe what I say.

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

madcaptenor — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 14:18:30 +0000

What if you're addressing part of the class, though? Like "y'all in the back, you need to get back to your work".

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

madcaptenor — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 14:17:35 +0000

Before I moved to the South I (a non-Southerner) did not feel comfortable saying "y'all". But "you guys" seemed sexist. I have since spent a decade in the South and I have not picked up much of the dialect, but I definitely say "y'all" now.

"W'all" would be nice to have. I guess it's not a thing because it sounds too much like the things that separate rooms.

New comment by madcaptenor in "A pound of ground beef now costs more than the federal minimum wage"

madcaptenor — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 16:31:38 +0000

Anecdotally, I bought a pound of ground beef a few days ago for $8 in the suburbs of Atlanta. Minimum wage here is $7.25 (federal). Actually Georgia's state minimum wage is $5.15 but that's only allowed in certain rare cases.

New comment by madcaptenor in "Windows Notepad to Receive New Age Verification Feature"

madcaptenor — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 17:28:36 +0000

I wasn't totally sure either. But other stuff in the same "Series" on the web page (https://lzon.ca/posts/series/duck/) includes:

- Statistics Canada to replace Food & Gas with "Huge TVs" in inflation reporting

- New study says gnomes are responsible for breaking your electronics

- Local LLM experiences burnout, wishes it could go back to writing code snippets

- Android sideloading to require helmet, life jacket

- Nvidia CEO envisions a future of AI-powered gamers

- Elon Musk announces ClipX

So yes, I think it's satire

New comment by madcaptenor in "Niche Museums"

madcaptenor — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 13:58:04 +0000

I think the site is compiled by one person. If you look at the map (https://www.niche-museums.com/map) it's heavily biased towards the southern UK and the SF Bay Area.

New comment by madcaptenor in "Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar"

madcaptenor — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 20:20:12 +0000

I didn't realize "boomhauer" could be verbed.