Hacker News: phibz

New comment by phibz in "What British people mean when they say 'sorry'"

phibz — Fri, 08 May 2026 20:32:09 +0000

If someone said Sorry and just sat there expectantly in front of my bag, I would strongly have the urge to look and say "use your words..."

New comment by phibz in "EvanFlow – A TDD driven feedback loop for Claude Code"

phibz — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 15:16:40 +0000

... thoughts arrive like butterflies Oh he don't know, so he chases them away Oh someday yet, he'll begin his life again Life again, life again

New comment by phibz in "I just want simple S3"

phibz — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 22:50:00 +0000

Why do rust compile times matter for a production deployment?

New comment by phibz in "Buying the Kinesis Advantage 360 keyboard was a mistake"

phibz — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 06:20:42 +0000

I got a keyboard.io when they first came out. On staggered layouts i was >85 wpm. But switching to ortholinear knocked me down to 25 wpm with excessive errors. It took several months before I got back up to about 60wpm. I stayed at that speed for a year or two before finally edging back up to 80wpm.

It did hurt my ability to use staggered but only at first. I was able to switch freely after about 3 months.

Those sound like huge trade offs. And they are. But for me carpal tunnel was quickly becoming a problem. Switching to ortholinear completely resolved my carpal tunnel pain. And that is priceless.

I still find the top row reach on my Model 100s a bit much, but I've gotten the hang of lifting my palms forward a little, especially for my pinkies.

Also the palm keys are amazing.

New comment by phibz in "Every GitHub object has two IDs"

phibz — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 01:52:28 +0000

In database design typically it recommends giving out opaque natural keys, and keeping your monotonically increasing integer IDs secret and used internally.

New comment by phibz in "James Moylan, engineer behind arrow signaling which side to refuel a car, dies"

phibz — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 05:03:13 +0000

On cars without the arrow they often follow the convention where the gas filler handle is depicted on the same side of the gas icon as the filler door is in the car.

New comment by phibz in "Worlds largest electric ship launched by Tasmanian boatbuilder"

phibz — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 17:52:05 +0000

Calling it the largest electric ship seems wrong or at least requires extra specificity compared to nuclear aircraft carriers.

New comment by phibz in "Thoughts on Go vs. Rust vs. Zig"

phibz — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 23:10:21 +0000

I feel like this misses the biggest advantage of Result in rust. You must do something with it. Even if you want to ignore the error with unwrap() what you're really saying is "panic on errors".

But in go you can just _err and never touch it.

Also while not part of std::Result you can use things like anyhow or error_context to add context before returning if theres an error.

New comment by phibz in "Why don't people return their shopping carts?"

phibz — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 19:15:05 +0000

Independent thought and personal accountability are sadly lacking in the US. "I see a bunch of unreturned carts. I must follow and fit it. See im justified in not returning it." :-(

New comment by phibz in "Microsoft confirms Windows 11 is about to change"

phibz — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 19:36:54 +0000

Kdenlive isnt bad

New comment by phibz in "He Chunhui's Tiny386 Turns an ESP32-S3 into a Fully-Functional 386-Powered PC"

phibz — Sun, 09 Nov 2025 21:51:03 +0000

Seems like a better fit for Win 3.11.

New comment by phibz in "Mr TIFF"

phibz — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 19:59:52 +0000

I've seen Ken Shirriff do this. You mention him and suddenly he's there.

New comment by phibz in "Why engineers can't be rational about programming languages"

phibz — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 06:16:08 +0000

Isn't senior leadership choosing languages or core technology, doing things wrong? Shouldn't senior leadership focus on outlining the business opportunities, value case, and requirements for their solution?

New comment by phibz in "Rust Contagious Borrow Issue"

phibz — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 22:28:45 +0000

For this example id probably accumulate the score total in a local variable. Then once iterating over all the children i would call parent.add_score() with the accumulated total

New comment by phibz in "I almost got hacked by a 'job interview'"

phibz — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 17:46:28 +0000

I wonder what their reaction was when he discovered the malware. Did you confront them or just ghost?

New comment by phibz in "Should I choose Ada, SPARK, or Rust over C/C++? (2024)"

phibz — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 02:21:02 +0000

If its a personal project then try each and see what you like. Work project then follow your company development guidelines.

New comment by phibz in "NixOS on a Tuxedo InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 AMD Laptop"

phibz — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 02:05:03 +0000

Excellent write up and great real world review. You mentioned wanting to become a generalist.

The missing applet for tuxedo-rs would be a great opportunity to "scratch an itch" and learn some new technology.

You have some options on the language you write the applet in if you're not ready to jump in to Rust or C.

Might be a great way to learn some stuff outside of web development.

Good luck.

New comment by phibz in "The X Window System didn't immediately have X terminals"

phibz — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 01:08:49 +0000

Even today in my day job I still spend 90% of my time in a No Machine NX session to a remote linux desktop where I do my work.

We do it as an extreme form of access control. Our workstations cannot reach any of our systems. Thus if a laptop is stolen, nothing if real value is lost.

New comment by phibz in "If you are useful, it doesn't mean you are valued"

phibz — Mon, 02 Jun 2025 17:43:03 +0000

I think a lot of this distinction comes down to individual vs group focus.

Being good at your own work makes you useful.

However being strategic, thinking about the bigger picture, AND being able to effectively communicate that while navigating the complex social interactions of your leadership team, that makes you valued and will lead to a path to leadership (managerial or technical).

So many of is have poor social skills. It pays to focus on them and not just the skills relevant to your tasks at hand.

New comment by phibz in "Librarians are dangerous"

phibz — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 06:44:06 +0000

Simple: information is power. Why else would so many go so far to control it.

Also librarians are some of the most overeducated and underpaid people out there. Thank you for what you do.