Hacker News: michaeljx

New comment by michaeljx in "When War Crimes Rhetoric Becomes Battlefield Reality"

michaeljx — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 10:30:50 +0000

Accept that you lost. Apologize for the mistake. Pay a few billions for repatriations, lift sanctions and open dialogue. But engaging into a multi-year trillion war is more likely, than accepting defeat upfront

New comment by michaeljx in "Afroman found not liable in defamation case"

michaeljx — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 12:52:45 +0000

My mind went to K&P rap confession skit : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14WE3A0PwVs

New comment by michaeljx in "Soldering Prototypes with Enamel Magnet Wire (2020)"

michaeljx — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 07:05:19 +0000

Any recommendations on pre-cut wiring kits?

New comment by michaeljx in ""Anyone else out there vibe circuit-building?""

michaeljx — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 19:38:40 +0000

I ve modified my ZigBee bathroom led light. Replaced the daughterboard with an esp32, integrated a humidity sensor and a presence sensor, another rely and a power circuit, and I now have a bathroom light that lights up automatically when someone is in the room, and turns on the extractor only if the humidity is a ove a certain level.

I ve done all this by taking photos of the circuits and asking Gemini how to do it.

New comment by michaeljx in "Non-Zero-Sum Games"

michaeljx — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 20:19:44 +0000

Look into cooperative game theory. If I remember correctly, trust is modelled as a way of exchanging information and influencing the probabilities that other players place on your next action

New comment by michaeljx in "YouTube's CEO limits his kids' social media use – other tech bosses do the same"

michaeljx — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 13:17:54 +0000

It's part of the parental responsibility to provide enough structure and instill enough discipline to your kids so that they grow to be complete persons. Sure it will be nice if social media was restricted like tobacco, and I am sure one day it will, but you can't relegate all responsibility for everything to the state. I don't want to live in a bubble wrapped society for the sake of the children.

New comment by michaeljx in "YouTube's CEO limits his kids' social media use – other tech bosses do the same"

michaeljx — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 12:37:52 +0000

I am sure the coca-cola boss limits his kids soft drink consumption too.

New comment by michaeljx in "The Death of Arduino?"

michaeljx — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 20:35:36 +0000

I've been programming esp32 connected with soil moisture sensors and solenoid valves to water each individual pot of plants according to its own readings, instead of having a centrally controlled irrigation system. Overkill, I know, but with a cost of 8-10usd per set up it is not expensive

New comment by michaeljx in "Ultrasound is ushering a new era of surgery-free cancer treatment"

michaeljx — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 10:42:20 +0000

Don't know about mRNA but individualized remedies based on CAR-T technology have been making significant strides in this area, with major commercialisation expected in the next 1-2 years

New comment by michaeljx in "Humanely dealing with humungus crawlers"

michaeljx — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 21:28:57 +0000

For some reason I thought this would be about dealing with very large insects

New comment by michaeljx in "A statistical analysis of Rotten Tomatoes"

michaeljx — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 05:09:19 +0000

I am doing my movie selection via Plex, which has both tomatoes' and IMDb scores in the movie description

New comment by michaeljx in "Musk-Trump dispute includes threats to SpaceX contracts"

michaeljx — Sat, 07 Jun 2025 14:29:01 +0000

You grossly underestimate the pettiness and pedantry of those involved

New comment by michaeljx in "Ask HN: Earth's Pulse"

michaeljx — Mon, 02 Jun 2025 15:55:15 +0000

Thank you

Ask HN: Earth's Pulse

michaeljx — Mon, 02 Jun 2025 13:39:40 +0000

TIL that the earth is pulsing every 26 seconds, the so called earth heartbeat. However, it seems impossible to verify from a reputable source. Gemini very assertively declares the fact to be true, but it only cites an article from Discover Magazine, which I've never heard before. Is it possible to verify such claim?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44158743

Points: 1

# Comments: 2

New comment by michaeljx in "Mr. Secretary, Reclassify the Statin"

michaeljx — Sun, 18 May 2025 09:00:19 +0000

My layman take is that like the oil in your car, there is a minimum value you need to be above, and a maximum value you need to stay below. Statin is for treating people that are above the max, so that they drop within acceptable range. Not for lowering the cholesterol to be a slow as possible

New comment by michaeljx in "Scraperr – A Self Hosted Webscraper"

michaeljx — Sun, 11 May 2025 21:24:31 +0000

I was in a similar boat with my scrapers. Started with Selenium 5-6 years ago and only discovered Playwright 2 years ago. Spend a month or so swapping the two, which was well worth it. Cleaner API, async support.

New comment by michaeljx in "You sent the message, but did you write it?"

michaeljx — Sat, 03 May 2025 21:12:30 +0000

I "prompt prong", i.e pass all the AI emails that I receive through an AI and ask it to write a response. At what point do we get the 2 AIs to email each other directly, without as bio-agents having to pretend that we wrote/read them?

New comment by michaeljx in "Engineers Who Won't Commit"

michaeljx — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 13:17:31 +0000

Exactly. I think both parties (him and his VP) are now realising that maybe this person will be happier/better suited as an IC

New comment by michaeljx in "Engineers Who Won't Commit"

michaeljx — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 13:13:30 +0000

Thinking about this more. I guess my n=5 observation is that committal engineers tend to have specific expectations about the performance of their teammates, and hence produce similarly performing teams to them

New comment by michaeljx in "Engineers Who Won't Commit"

michaeljx — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 13:01:27 +0000

We have 5 different engineering teams in our company.

The 4 are being led by benevolent-dictator-type of engineers, the 5th by a person extremely non-commital. This person avoids exerting any technically authority, so as not to disturb the team's balance. All decisions are made democratically, all votes being equal regardless experience/seniority. Same goes when being called for estimates.

Two of the 4 teams have become so big and independent, that the dictator-leads no longer need to participate in the d2d operations/decisions, to the point where they now work mostly on individual RnD projects.

The other 2 are small specialized teams, whose members have become domain experts in specific areas, to the point that they can talk with the business and move on development, with little need of interaction with their lead, and absolutely no need for a PM/PO layer.

The only team that struggles to perform is the one with the non-commital lead. It became so bad, that the current discussion is to dissolve the team, and have it's members/responsibilities be absorbed by the 2 big ones.