Hacker News: nradov

New comment by nradov in "My old job feels distant now"

nradov — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 01:33:43 +0000

You can also ignore it without reading it.

New comment by nradov in "90% of US working hours are spent on tasks not covered well by AI benchmarks"

nradov — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 18:33:53 +0000

Not just cleaning. There are huge opportunities in snaking out plugged toilets. Let's see an LLM do that!

New comment by nradov in "Meta’s new commercial terms will allow the scraping of news sites: experts"

nradov — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 05:02:06 +0000

This is an agreement between two businesses, not a clickwrap license being forced upon consumers. Businesses have plenty of alternatives to Meta; they can just close their accounts if they don't like the terms.

New comment by nradov in "Tesla Roadster"

nradov — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 02:03:47 +0000

This type of vehicle isn't intended to drive at speed, at least not very far. It's targeted at collectors who will park it in a garage with their other supercars. It's a status symbol with wheels, not transportation or even a toy for track days. (And I don't mean that as a criticism, there's nothing wrong with wealthy people buying collectibles.)

New comment by nradov in "Creating a Garmin "MCP""

nradov — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 00:40:48 +0000

Some users may be confused about Garmin functionality. If you select the Track Run activity profile on a standard 400m track then it will generate a perfectly smooth and consistent route every time. This is only possible because it knows the exact shape of a standard track and can adjust the location data points to fit.

All fitness trackers (and mobile devices in general) do some level of smoothing on location data before recording it to an activity. There is no "raw data" to get back. The developers try to select smoothing algorithms that produce a good result in most cases but there will always be occasional discrepancies. This is usually due to poor signal quality including multipath reflections when the device doesn't have a clear line of sight to the sky due to structures or trees.

Garmin devices don't only use "GPS". They support multiple GNSS constellations including Glonass and Galileo, and depending on the selected mode may use all of those simultaneously to improve location accuracy.

New comment by nradov in "Suicide rates highest ever among middle-aged men"

nradov — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 17:18:38 +0000

The Trump administration has made numerous foreign policy errors but when it comes to nuclear proliferation there is plenty of blame to go around. The Budapest Memorandum was signed under the Clinton administration, and it specifically didn't require the USA to defend Ukraine. Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014 and the Obama administration didn't do much about it (and other EU/NATO countries also did effectively nothing). Russia then re-invaded Ukraine in 2022 and the Biden administration provided a little support but still the Ukrainians were largely left to fend for themselves. I'd like to see the Trump administration do more (short of direct military involvement) but still this is primarily a European issue. Why have the other European countries been so lazy and passive instead of asking their citizens to accept the risks and sacrifices necessary to defeat Russian aggression?

We'll probably see more nuclear proliferation going forward, regardless of who sits in the White House. No way to stop it now.

New comment by nradov in "Suicide rates highest ever among middle-aged men"

nradov — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 17:03:22 +0000

If you don't understand the basics of how NATO operates then I really can't help you. All of the signatories clearly understand that it's a mutual defense treaty, requiring more than just diplomatic or economic assistance. Which is why the US threatened to withdraw from the treaty after repeated failures of many other members to meet their defense spending targets while freeloading on US security guarantees. If the US government didn't believe that the North Atlantic Treaty obligated us to do anything then they wouldn't have bothered to threaten to withdraw in the first place.

New comment by nradov in "Creating a Garmin "MCP""

nradov — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 15:31:22 +0000

All of that data is on the device and can be copied as .FIT files. Some of the fields aren't publicly documented, though.

New comment by nradov in "Suicide rates highest ever among middle-aged men"

nradov — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 15:08:53 +0000

What a weird non sequitur. Unlike the North Atlantic Treaty which established NATO, the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 was explicitly not a mutual defense treaty (or even a treaty at all). It merely required the USA to bring violations to the UN Security Council, which we did in 2022. Promises made, promises kept.

New comment by nradov in "AdFection: Targeted ads turned into a pipeline for zero-click mercenary spyware"

nradov — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 14:50:26 +0000

One factor is that Israel generally refuses to extradite their citizens who are accused of crimes in foreign countries. So they effectively operate with a certain level of legal immunity.

New comment by nradov in "Suicide rates highest ever among middle-aged men"

nradov — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 14:45:34 +0000

Ukraine was never under the US nuclear umbrella. Where are you getting these crazy ideas?

New comment by nradov in "Suicide rates highest ever among middle-aged men"

nradov — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 13:07:17 +0000

Again, I think the US should do more but it's really not our problem. We never guaranteed Ukraine's sovereignty. If you're referring to the Budapest Memorandum, it contains no such promise.

New comment by nradov in "Things to know when you get cancer"

nradov — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 05:15:36 +0000

From the perspective of both individual patients and the system as a whole, the best long term potential lies in more accurate and widespread cancer screening. If it can be detected earlier then treatment becomes much easier and cheaper. The liquid biopsy assays available today still aren't accurate enough to recommend for everyone but they should improve. In a few decades I expect adults to be getting them every few years.

New comment by nradov in "Suicide rates highest ever among middle-aged men"

nradov — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 04:49:14 +0000

We're talking about regular middle-aged men here, not elites.

New comment by nradov in "Suicide rates highest ever among middle-aged men"

nradov — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 03:12:37 +0000

Ya, that's basically nothing. None of those European countries have asked their citizens to sacrifice. The welfare state continues uninterrupted. They were still buying Russian fossil fuels instead of telling people to put on a sweater.

As a US citizen I think that our country should also do more to assist Ukraine. But fundamentally this is a European problem. They need to find a solution instead of expecting the US to bail them out again.

New comment by nradov in "Suicide rates highest ever among middle-aged men"

nradov — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 02:20:53 +0000

In wealthy first-world countries we're already post-scarcity to a first approximation for stuff like food, clothing, and consumer electronics (I do understand that a minority of people are still desperately poor). But the stuff that people really covet will always be scarce. For example, AI can't create new real estate in prime locations.

New comment by nradov in "Suicide rates highest ever among middle-aged men"

nradov — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 02:16:24 +0000

For most people, the real physical deterioration doesn't have to kick in until age 65 or so (plus or minus). But you do have to show up every day and hit it hard. In the last triathlon I raced there were men in that age group still finishing with fast times. And they're not genetic freaks either, just consistent.

New comment by nradov in "Suicide rates highest ever among middle-aged men"

nradov — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 01:59:32 +0000

I don't doubt that social media and dating apps may have broken the "market", but if you're living for revenge then women can probably pick up on that.

New comment by nradov in "Suicide rates highest ever among middle-aged men"

nradov — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 01:47:33 +0000

None of the European countries are doing much relative to their economies. Russia's GDP is about the same as Italy's. The rest of the EU and NATO countries together have an economy that is enormously larger than Russia's. So why do they allow Russia to push them around?

New comment by nradov in "Suicide rates highest ever among middle-aged men"

nradov — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 23:48:44 +0000

That's such a naive comment. Any negotiated "settlement" that Russia would accept would leave Ukraine effectively defenseless and no longer a sovereign state. It would be only a temporary truce, which Russia would use to rebuild their military and then renew the invasion in a few years on some other artificial pretext.

The only possible way to bring the conflict to a lasting peace is to kill enough Russians (including civilians) that they simply no longer have the capability to conduct war. That is the reality.