Hacker News: nikolay

New comment by nikolay in "Beer CSS – Build material design in record time"

nikolay — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 16:59:46 +0000

I agree. In Chrome, vertical and horizontal padding aren't even; some text is a pixel or two offset.

New comment by nikolay in "HackerRank open sourced its ATS. My resume scored 90/100. Oh wait 74. No – 88"

nikolay — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 16:42:41 +0000

Roll the dice, HR folks!

New comment by nikolay in "Epidurals are a miracle technology"

nikolay — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 17:24:52 +0000

It surely is. Ascetism and stoicism are extinct virtues, maybe venerated only in Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Many of our holy fathers have suffered terrible torture and death, but they even welcomed it. That's why Orthodoxy is so hard to grasp in the West, where people damage their livers just to tame their headache a bit, let's say.

New comment by nikolay in "Epidurals are a miracle technology"

nikolay — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 17:04:16 +0000

... Except when they injure your spine, like with one of my friends. I'm not sure why women choose painless childbirth, which is not only potentially bad for them, but for their newborns as well. My wife gave birth to 3 children, two in the US, and doctors were shocked she didn't want them. Yes, it hurts. The moment your child is born, all pain is gone, and you're in the most beautiful state ever, and this creates even a stronger bond, knowing what you had to go through to bring a child to life! Men, women - we're all weaklings today. When I think about our ancestors and the sword-and-spear bloodbath battles they fought in to protect their families, we don't have such men and women anymore! Pain is an essential part of life. Chronic pain is a different story, of course.

New comment by nikolay in "HPV vaccine cuts risk of dying from cervical cancer before 30"

nikolay — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 05:46:29 +0000

We forgot to get another vaccine shot. On the form, they ask if we want Gardasil. We declined. Then they took our daughter to administer the shots. They brought her back and started to apologize: "We're sorry, we didn't see that you declined, and we gave her the shot anyway." We could've sued them, especially with the adverse effects, but we're coming from a culture that's not overly litigious.

And this is not the first time doctors in leading Southern California medical groups have completely ignored what's on the form! My son was going to have a minor surgery, so they asked me: "Oh, we give an anesthetic before we actually administer the actual one, because some kids are afraid of shots." I told them he's one of those kids and always liked, actually, even watching when they administer the shot, and never cries. This is given he's already on IV! Another doctor came a minute later and started changing the IV. I asked him, "What are you doing?" He said he was administering the pre-anesthetic. And I said that we declined it on the form, but it was too late. Then another doctor came and started to apologize - they don't read, they assume what people want! And this was at CHOC, the most prestigious children's hospital! Of course, as I said, we didn't sue.

So, I know that you should double-check and ask exactly what they are doing. Unfortunately, you can do this only if you're present. And you should always require them to repeat what they plan to do to your kids if they are taking them away from you. And... you should sue, as commercial entities, just like people, learn best when it hurts.

New comment by nikolay in "HPV vaccine cuts risk of dying from cervical cancer before 30"

nikolay — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 05:32:22 +0000

Except that HPV vaccines are not mandatory in most states [0].

[0]: https://www.immunize.org/official-guidance/state-policies/va...

New comment by nikolay in "HPV vaccine cuts risk of dying from cervical cancer before 30"

nikolay — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 23:44:43 +0000

My oldest daughter almost died from the first Gardasil, so you may not die from cervical cancer, but die from something else. I am not against vaccines; my kids are all fully vaccinated on a spaced-out schedule and not taking more than one shot in at least 2 months, and so am I, but the HPV vaccine was not mandatory, so, given the experience and the similar genetics, we didn't do it for the other two kids. Yeah, there's a risk of cancer, which might be curable 5-10-15 years from now, but the risk of side effects is here now... for some. So, it's not always a win-win, and we've got no interest from health authorities in assessing the risk for my other two kids, so they also seem very risk-averse and want us to assume all the negatives.

New comment by nikolay in "I feel like giving up on coding"

nikolay — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 04:50:32 +0000

Maybe if you looked at it as "software engineering" or the old-fashioned "programming," you wouldn't be so fed up after all.

New comment by nikolay in "Made a free macOS menu bar app that fixes typing in the wrong keyboard layout"

nikolay — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 04:47:14 +0000

I will "Show HN" it when it's done, so don't worry!

New comment by nikolay in "The average SpaceX buyer post-IPO is almost under water after two-day slide"

nikolay — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 04:46:10 +0000

Not today, not tomorrow, not 5 years from now. Meanwhile, everybody's working on reusable rockets, including the Chinese.

New comment by nikolay in "The average SpaceX buyer post-IPO is almost under water after two-day slide"

nikolay — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 19:08:09 +0000

It's a fantasy market. You shouldn't be able to make hundreds of billions only because the stock market is full of illiterate optimists. I don't believe in the Wisdom of the Crowd. This is the political populism turned financial. People abandoned cryptocurrency (at least one positive thing), precious metals, and fundamentals-based stocks to free up funds for overhyped IPOs. This really removes any incentives to start a legit business, as it's much more profitable to launch a bubble. I'm not saying SpaceX isn't a real business, but it can't be worth more than the combined economies of many countries, for example. Just convert a few trillion dollars into Albanian or Greek islands, for example. It's crazy, really! And is, for example, Anthropic worth over a trillion dollars only because it's just less than 6 months ahead of the Chinese?! This lead will not last forever, and it will only get shorter.

New comment by nikolay in "DuckDB Internals: Why Is DuckDB Fast? (Part 1)"

nikolay — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 18:52:05 +0000

DuckDB is a major RDBMS, yet there's almost no support for it from DB migration frameworks, etc.

New comment by nikolay in "Made a free macOS menu bar app that fixes typing in the wrong keyboard layout"

nikolay — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 03:21:14 +0000

Is it just site vibe-coded or the whole thing?

New comment by nikolay in "US Government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5"

nikolay — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 02:31:23 +0000

Big deal! Can't wait for the Chinese models to catch up - cheap, no marketing gimmicks, no politics, humble, hardworking, and they are only getting better. America is no longer a trustworthy technology partner! No wonder Europe is trying to detach itself from the present and future Trumps, Pete Hegseths, and other deranged narcissists. But I wonder why Anthropic is cutting my access, too, as I'm a US citizen residing in America? They could've vibe-coded a self-improving ID verification in no time, right? Should US models in the future require biometric verification to make small CSS tweaks to a vibe-coded website?!

New comment by nikolay in "InkyCap – Typst-based PKM for academics, writers, and everyone"

nikolay — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 04:24:50 +0000

Source Code: https://codeberg.org/InkyCap/app

InkyCap – Typst-based PKM for academics, writers, and everyone

nikolay — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 04:08:57 +0000

Article URL: https://inkycap.org/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48499812

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by nikolay in "Notes on DeepSeek"

nikolay — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 08:08:42 +0000

> steve hsu?

Actually, just searched my history, and it was Alexander Unzicker [0], actually.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuLjsFMzZrE

New comment by nikolay in "Notes on DeepSeek"

nikolay — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:02:08 +0000

I can't recall the scientist's name, but he said months ago that DeepSeek is best for Physics (maybe it was on The Diary of a CEO podcast). So I had a long chat about the Simulation Hypothesis, and I was really surprised by how good, deep, and straight to the point it was.

What's brutal is that Google, which started this AI revolution, has literally the worst coding model! I tried 3.5 Flash last week (the stupid still pays for Ultra due to Google One's storage), and before I gave up on 3.1 Pro, I saw a coding agent hallucinate for the first time in months, even at the highest effort level!

Meanwhile, I've tried DeepSeek with the DeepSeek TUI (now CodeWhale), and it didn't do any worse than Codex or Claude Code. I know there are benchmarks and all, some of them gamed, I'm sure, but in real-world experience, DeepSeek is absolutely amazing for its price! If you have software engineering skills and are not an accidental vibe-coder, honestly, try it out and stop burning money. I'm sure you will get even better results with OpenCode! Human Intelligence + Artificial Intelligence beats the highest AI model without the guidance of a HI!

Meanwhile, I burned through my entire budget on the $200 Max for Fable 5, for a modest-amount project in Python using its own CLI coding agent. What a waste!

I keep hearing "always use the bestest model" - no, always use the most practical one for the job! I got so many issues with Fable on a very small project that even Copilot found that it's simply not worth it for 99% of your tasks!

New comment by nikolay in "Albania Is Not for Sale: Kushner's $4B Resort Triggers'Flamingo Revolution'"

nikolay — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 21:46:47 +0000

Albanians should realize that $4B will not change their lives a bit, but they will look like submissive sheeple. I hope they prove to be brave and determined. Their president is a total madman - I'm not sure why they elected him, which makes me think Trump's corrupt family will get what they want.

New comment by nikolay in "Albania Is Not for Sale: Kushner's $4B Resort Triggers'Flamingo Revolution'"

nikolay — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 21:41:59 +0000

Was this going to Epstein Island 2.0?