<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: merryocha</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=merryocha</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2026 19:38:39 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=merryocha" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by merryocha in "Britannica11.org – a structured edition of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>A book in my collection that I love is The Treasury of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, a greatest hits collection from Britannica over the years. It has articles written by many famous names like James Maxwell, T.E. Lawrence, Einstein, JFK, Arthur Koestler, and many more. I love how Britannica articles are written by a single expert, giving the articles a bit of bias, humor, and character.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 22 Apr 2026 13:43:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47863533</link><dc:creator>merryocha</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47863533</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47863533</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by merryocha in "Tell HN: I'm sick of AI everything"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I noticed recently that there are new "AI Widget" and "Chat Widget" EasyList filters in the uBlock Origin Annoyances filter lists. I'm not sure when they were added but they weren't checked by default for me. They definitely help clear some of the clutter.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 22 Apr 2026 02:42:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47858191</link><dc:creator>merryocha</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47858191</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47858191</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by merryocha in "The Xkcd thing, now interactive"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I knew exactly what this would be before even clicking it. Someone had to make it!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 03 Mar 2026 14:09:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47232566</link><dc:creator>merryocha</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47232566</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47232566</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by merryocha in "A lot of population numbers are fake"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I was in Chile in 2017 for a census operation and the whole country shut down to conduct the census. It was a pretty big deal while I was there (and also a bit inconvenient because everything was closed). There was a lot of talk about how there had been a previous attempt at conducting the census which had ended up being a huge failure and how getting the 2017 census done right was a point of national pride.<p>I also worked as a canvasser in 2019 and 2020 for the US census and, while we were about as thorough as you could reasonably get, the whole operation made me somewhat skeptical of official statistics in general. 2020 in particular was a bit of a disaster due to the pandemic and when the statistics were published, a bunch of mainstream news outlets published stories about certain areas experiencing "population decline" and all I could think was that those were actually the areas where the census didn't manage to count everyone.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 29 Jan 2026 15:04:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46811148</link><dc:creator>merryocha</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46811148</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46811148</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by merryocha in "Why do Americans hate A.I.?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The problem is that it's being used for things it shouldn't be used for. Everyone these days knows that you shouldn't use a microwave to cook a steak, but I'm sure when it was first invented there were many chefs who tried.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 02 Jan 2026 16:14:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46466253</link><dc:creator>merryocha</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46466253</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46466253</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by merryocha in "High air pollution could diminish exercise benefits by half – study"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I wish more people paid attention to air quality. I'm a delivery driver and air quality has a noticeable effect on my energy levels throughout the day and also my mood. Slightly rainy days are probably my favorite days to work because no one is outside digging up roads and kicking up tire dust with leaf blowers and the rain seems to clean the air a bit.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 29 Nov 2025 14:23:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46087754</link><dc:creator>merryocha</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46087754</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46087754</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by merryocha in "Internet's biggest annoyance: Cookie laws should target browsers, not websites"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>uBlock Origin can block these if you check the "Annoyances" filter in the filter list. I think it's disabled by default because it has a higher risk of breaking sites, but I never have a problem. I haven't seen a cookie banner in a long time!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 22 Oct 2025 13:17:51 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45668663</link><dc:creator>merryocha</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45668663</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45668663</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by merryocha in "The best YouTube downloaders, and how Google silenced the press"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is what I use and it works great. I mainly use it to download things like 3-hour music playlists ahead of long drives to avoid wasting mobile bandwidth.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 20 Sep 2025 16:47:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45314955</link><dc:creator>merryocha</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45314955</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45314955</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by merryocha in "The loneliest people (and places) in America"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The color shading on those maps seems deceptive to me. It suggests a starker contrast than what the numbers tell.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 27 Mar 2025 12:24:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43492847</link><dc:creator>merryocha</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43492847</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43492847</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by merryocha in "F-Droid's Progress and What's Coming in 2025"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Others have mentioned many good apps, but I'll add this one:<p>Forkyz: Crossword puzzle app, a fork of the Shortyz app. If you like crossword puzzles, this pulls from a bunch of daily crosswords.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 23 Jan 2025 13:19:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42803693</link><dc:creator>merryocha</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42803693</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42803693</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by merryocha in "Why is the American diet so deadly?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>One thing I rarely see discussed is the possibility of contaminants like machine grease, spray lubricants, and dust getting into food. When the process for making food is automated, it seems much more likely to me that some of the moving parts in the process end up getting coated with small amounts of machine grease or lubricants. Maybe a moving machine part was sticking, so a technician used some spray lubricant on it, some of which found its way to the conveyor belt that was transporting the food to the next stage of the process. Maybe a metal part that is used in the process was coated in some kind of oil to protect it during storage. Someone may install it without cleaning it off with a solvent. Maybe something is being stored in an open-air vat, and work is being done nearby that generates dust. The more processed a food is, the more opportunities there are for contaminants to find their way into the food.<p>I think of these things because I worked in a kitchen that made dough, and our dough mixer always needed to be lubricated. I once found grease that had dripped from above into the mixing bowl. Luckily I am someone who takes such things seriously, but there are a lot of careless people out there. Even if you wipe off grease, an invisible trace amount will remain on the surface unless you clean it with a solvent. I also worked in a warehouse that stored machine parts used in food packaging equipment. There was drywall work being done at the time and the whole place was coated in gypsum dust. I remember handling "food grade" lubricant and looking up its safety data sheet (SDS) out of curiosity, and my takeaway from reading it was that it's still probably not something you would want to eat.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 07 Jan 2025 16:38:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42624331</link><dc:creator>merryocha</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42624331</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42624331</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by merryocha in "Mitochondria Are Alive"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>If you want a fun scifi horror novel to read related to this topic, check out Parasite Eve by Hideaki Sena. It's the novel that inspired the PSX game. The whole plot revolves around mitochondria and was inspired by the author's time as a grad student. I read it a few months ago and really enjoyed it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 09 Nov 2024 13:30:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42094308</link><dc:creator>merryocha</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42094308</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42094308</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by merryocha in "Gettiers in software engineering (2019)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I was a philosophy major in college and semantic quibbling over Gettier problems was popular while I was there. I have always believed that Gettier's popularity was due to the fact that the paper was only three pages, and therefore it was the only paper that the academics actually read to the end. I never thought there was anything particularly deep or noteworthy about the problem at all - it is fundamentally a debate over the definition of knowledge which you could debate forever, and that's exactly what they were doing - arguing about the definition of knowledge, one 30-page paper at a time.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 15 Oct 2024 12:46:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41847997</link><dc:creator>merryocha</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41847997</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41847997</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by merryocha in "Is My Blue Your Blue?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I thought my results were a bit strange until I remembered that I leave Night Light on 24/7 on my PC.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Sep 2024 12:30:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41444867</link><dc:creator>merryocha</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41444867</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41444867</guid></item></channel></rss>