Hacker News: pif

New comment by pif in "Let's make quality the norm again"

pif — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 12:47:51 +0000

> The CE mark is worthless, since it is a self-certificaton.

Boeing 737 MAX tragedy did happen because of self-certification abuse, still I would not call FAA certification worthless.

New comment by pif in "Let's make quality the norm again"

pif — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 11:37:22 +0000

Quality was never the norm: cheap always beat quality with a hand tied behind his back!

Western working class has spent decades complaining about cheap imports from China... while feeding that market with their own money.

Western frequent fliers keep reminiscing about the grandiose pre-deregulation era or air travel, but cry a river when their low-cost carrier of choice actually enforces the limit on cabin baggage.

Everybody hates ads, but no-one is willing to pay a penny for a service they use daily.

New comment by pif in "How to write an effective software design document"

pif — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 15:17:19 +0000

The software development realm is bigger than web programming.

New comment by pif in "Instagram's head says engagement falls by half without the algorithm"

pif — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 12:34:04 +0000

You get that when you refuse personalised ads.

New comment by pif in "Teen reading slumps to worst this century due to surge in screen time"

pif — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 13:12:55 +0000

> Discord chats, AI and social media videos

A.k.a: no trustable source.

New comment by pif in "Researchers Spot Fake Ancient Pottery Using the Earth's Magnetic Field"

pif — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 13:08:11 +0000

Mathematics is a tool. What make such understanding possible are the relentless, disciplined, often-pointless-looking collection and categorization of data of any kind, by generations and generations of selfless scientists.

New comment by pif in "The Two Factions of C++ (2024)"

pif — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 10:20:07 +0000

> it’s at least a bitter awareness of the fact that the industry doesn’t care to refactor existing code

Refactoring working, terrain-tested code?!?

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...

New comment by pif in "The Mysterious Syndrome Destroying Endurance Athletes"

pif — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 11:30:17 +0000

> They are renowned for their form of prayer that involves running for extended periods of time.

Mark me as atheist!

New comment by pif in "Devtools must be open source"

pif — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 20:12:08 +0000

> Several times a day I'll prompt regular Claude chat to "Clone x/y from GitHub and tell me how Z works".

In principle, you should not need the source code: the AI should be able to answer by examining the binaries.

New comment by pif in "Golang proposal: container/: generic collection types"

pif — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 08:03:06 +0000

People still calling themselves developers and choosing a language that was created for poor programmers...

New comment by pif in "UEFA and its national associations will not participate in FIFA competitions"

pif — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 14:55:58 +0000

OK, just forbid commencial during those 3-minute breaks. Have some other kind of entertainment organised.

New comment by pif in "UEFA and its national associations will not participate in FIFA competitions"

pif — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 14:53:47 +0000

> About increasing teams to 48, now to 64?

I still hope we Italians will eventually be able to participate again, thus I approve the 64 team formula ;-)

New comment by pif in "Netflix employee fired for sharing personal details in retreat trust exercise"

pif — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 08:59:37 +0000

> classic problem of "Engineering isn't shipping features fast enough" and "Sales is selling features before even consulting with engineering"

That's not a problem, in the sense that there was never any possible debate: if I make a promise on your behalf, I am a di*k.

New comment by pif in "Netflix employee fired for sharing personal details in retreat trust exercise"

pif — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 08:56:54 +0000

> I think most people think of it as a free vacation.

I'm shocked that someone does NOT think so!

New comment by pif in "Why do we think we understand the world more than we actually do?"

pif — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 07:37:51 +0000

> pockmark the landscape of their knowledge with exploratory boreholes

I've got a PhD in particle Physics. I develop the geometry module of machine tools.

I got lost when an auntie tried to explain crochet to me.

New comment by pif in "Why do we think we understand the world more than we actually do?"

pif — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 07:34:37 +0000

> the meaning of existence, universe, and the like

And the child will be too young to accept 42 as a satisfactory answer...

New comment by pif in "If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?"

pif — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 16:07:09 +0000

> Nothing works

It depends on whose perspective you consider the problem. An enterprise produces software for one reason only: make money out of it. And it works great!

if you are a paying customer, and if you can choose among a few different solutions, then you will get the good stuff. But for the rest...

1. Free apps? They just need to take ads in front of your eyes.

2. Software embedded in cars? You choose the car based on other merits, the software just needs to not by horrible.

3. Automated customare support? When was the last time you choose a fridge over another because of the quality of its customer support?

New comment by pif in "I wrote an bash enumerator because I was sick of xargs"

pif — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 12:55:09 +0000

> Or maybe you pipe into xargs and pray your filenames don’t have spaces

So they wrote a new tool and posted it on HN before checking the manual about null character termination... Not trustable at all, what a waste of time!

New comment by pif in "The family keeping watch over a 52-year-old pot of soup"

pif — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 15:30:30 +0000

This Italian here has never heard nothing like that. Tomato sauce can be simmered for several hours, but there is no refill.

New comment by pif in "98% Isn't Much"

pif — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 15:18:24 +0000

The author is confusing visitors with customers. Refusing entry to 2% visitors? No, no! Forgetting about non-interesting 2% visitors? Not even a blink!