Hacker News: markus_zhang

New comment by markus_zhang in "Ask HN: Do you know of any company that went back to hand-written code?"

markus_zhang — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 01:21:43 +0000

Thanks. That's tough. Did you only interview at big tech?

New comment by markus_zhang in "Ask HN: Do you know of any company that went back to hand-written code?"

markus_zhang — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 16:12:15 +0000

Senior. So I still get coding tests. I wouldn’t worry if I’m Staff and above.

New comment by markus_zhang in "Ask HN: Do you know of any company that went back to hand-written code?"

markus_zhang — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 12:03:57 +0000

We don’t have a no-AI policy but I’m trying to hand roll some code, because it is useful for interviews. It is very difficult to memorize the exact syntax unless I hand write code everyday.

New comment by markus_zhang in "Abdominal fat predicts heart disease risk better than BMI"

markus_zhang — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 11:48:15 +0000

People regain those weight. I have gone through many sessions of those, and I have realized that the only effective way to do this is to change the whole lifestyle. My lifestyle nowadays makes my weight stable around 75-77KG.

But changing lifestyle is virtually impossible for parents who also work, and have a bunch of issues here and there. Remaining the current lifestyle without dropping to a worse one is difficult enough.

New comment by markus_zhang in "In 1962, Egypt's Missile Program Lost Its Key Scientist Without a Trace"

markus_zhang — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 12:17:06 +0000

I read from somewhere that Italy, Libya and some South America country were developing missile programs together, too. Probably from a book about Fiat I think.

New comment by markus_zhang in "Deutsche Bank becomes first foreign yuan clearing bank in Europe"

markus_zhang — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 17:06:32 +0000

My observation is that the Globalization that started from the late 80s/early 90s following the fall of the USSR and the opening of China gives tremendous wealth to the elites based in the US and the EU.

However, its foundation was laid decades ago in the ruins of Western Europe, where financial and intelligence power combine to rule over the Western world. The immense wealth was but a mundane by-product that corrupted the mind.

Fast forward to today, it takes a lot of effort to reverse the trend and remake the US into an industrial superpower.

New comment by markus_zhang in "People who grew up with high economic connectedness earn more"

markus_zhang — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:32:29 +0000

Thanks. Actually I already reconsidered due to my difficulties to hop into the next more technical job.

New comment by markus_zhang in "People who grew up with high economic connectedness earn more"

markus_zhang — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 21:25:28 +0000

Or something they are not willing to do. Genuinely, my career development plan is to be so good at a certain technical niche that people are still going to hire me even if I spit before them.

Of course reality hits hard so I’m now good with people. Not my taste but I can fake it easily.

New comment by markus_zhang in "U of Michigan drops first-semester grades to ‘curb mental health crisis’"

markus_zhang — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 14:39:06 +0000

I don't know. Why are they lowering the standards again? Maybe they should raise the standard of high schools instead?

Or maybe they can help them by giving access to mental health practitioners, or maybe set some mandatory sessions to help them for the transition.

Anyway I think dropping first semester grades is a huge band-aid that they should never use. If we keep lowering the standards, maybe the whole education system is failing our children.

New comment by markus_zhang in "Ask HN: If Social network is created today, what do you want to see?"

markus_zhang — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 00:42:36 +0000

Yep and BBS is good too. Like, HN actually only has part of the functionality of a BBS — back then you could post pictures on BBS, download warez, and even play games. It is way more colorful and fast than any other format afterwards.

If we enjoy HN, we should enjoy more about BBS. The only problem is that people don’t know about it.

New comment by markus_zhang in "Ask HN: If Social network is created today, what do you want to see?"

markus_zhang — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 00:10:12 +0000

I just need forums, social network can go away.

New comment by markus_zhang in "US Military's cyber command unit grapples with cluster of deaths by suicide"

markus_zhang — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 16:21:51 +0000

This thing probably never stops and doesn’t have holidays. I read about Operation Gladio back in the day, which was not a cyber operation, but a preparation of guerrilla operations in case the WP occupied EU. But I got the feeling that the war in darkness (cyber is part of it) is non-stop.

New comment by markus_zhang in "Carl's Required Reading"

markus_zhang — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 20:55:38 +0000

DDIA is great. I read and re-read the small section about LSM merge tree in the first and second edition of the book and got interested in this stuff. It is always a pleasure to read about internals.

New comment by markus_zhang in "Assembly Hall of Shame"

markus_zhang — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 20:52:07 +0000

Does that mean Chris Domas is ready for his next adventure?

New comment by markus_zhang in "GitHub Actions and Pages are experiencing degraded availability"

markus_zhang — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 19:54:10 +0000

At least they are reliable in/after the Windows 2000/XP/7 era? Even as I don't like Windows 10, I haven't reinstalled it for years.

Back then the other options for home computers are just too technical for normies. I tried to install Linux back in early 2000 and I couldn't even get through the install process. Skill issue for sure, but if I couldn't do it back then I'm sure none of my class mates could.

New comment by markus_zhang in "GitHub Actions and Pages are experiencing degraded availability"

markus_zhang — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 02:15:38 +0000

Thanks for sharing. It was that bad back then? As a consumer user the stability brought by the NT kernel was great back then, but maybe enterprise wise it was a different story? I never worked as a sys admin so can't say.

For the last point what was the golden standard back in the mid-late 90s, if we don't include mainframe/minicomputers? Was it Solaris or BSD?

Now that I think about it, I feel sad that I do not have the technical prowess to compare operating systems :/

New comment by markus_zhang in "Quake – 30th Anniversary Update"

markus_zhang — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 21:19:46 +0000

I see it at the bottom once you select "NEW GAME".

New comment by markus_zhang in "GitHub Actions and Pages are experiencing degraded availability"

markus_zhang — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 20:00:24 +0000

They definitely managed to create a lot of reliable products.

Windows NT was one of them. Up to Windows XP the products were pretty solid and each had visible improvement against the previous one.

Their language products were/are still solid IMO. Maybe Visual Studio is sluggish, but we can still use an older version if we want. Plus they put a lot of effort optimizing VSCode, too.

Even back in the MS-DOS/16-bit Windows days, when things broke down quite easily, I think they still provide the best bang for individual users and developers. There was no competitors who could provide so much value back then.

New comment by markus_zhang in "GNU Hurd News 2026-Q2"

markus_zhang — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 20:45:35 +0000

Maybe they are still in the same level of forever. Oh well.

New comment by markus_zhang in "Born Against, or why hobby programming communities are against LLM usage"

markus_zhang — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 20:37:01 +0000

I think this is why that I limit the use of LLM in my hobbyist project, but not in my work. I found LLM particularly useful of generating say VSCode configuration JSON files and it saved me a lot of headaches. It is also very good at finding the right tool for the job (e.g. which binary to use to write a floppy image).