Hacker News: qsi

New comment by qsi in "The buns in McDonald's Japan's burger photos are all slightly askew"

qsi — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:57:22 +0000

Here in Singapore the terminals work well! The latency has definitely gone down. Ironically the Japanese McDonald's website loads faster than the Singapore one... so they've got some work to do.

New comment by qsi in "Backblaze has stopped backing up OneDrive and Dropbox folders and maybe others"

qsi — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:34:11 +0000

As others have said, this is something that should have been communicated very clearly. The reason for using Backblaze is to have my data backed up, and not to worry about it. You say so yourself on your website.

Could you also provide an exhaustive list of items that are NOT being backed up, e.g. the .git folder? I can't find any reference to that anywhere on your website or in the app. What else is not being backed up? I know about the exclusion list in the app, which I have adjusted to suit my requirements, but you need to be clear, explicit and upfront about what you are not backing up. This is critical information.

New comment by qsi in "Backblaze has stopped backing up OneDrive and Dropbox folders and maybe others"

qsi — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 03:12:23 +0000

Just checked the Backblaze website where you can find the following page https://www.backblaze.com/computer-backup/docs/supported-bac... which says:

This article answers the question, "What does Backblaze back up?" Backblaze backs up all of your data across all of the user profiles that are on your computer as soon as you install the client.

Backblaze believes that you do not need to worry whether you selected all of the files that you care about, put any files in a different location on your computer, or added new files that may not be included in your online backup. Therefore, Backblaze automatically selects all of your data.

This is at best flat out wrong, at worst a blatant lie. But this was what I thought I was buying and paying for. Turns out you do have to worry!

Don't lie about other stuff you don't back up. Very disappointed in Backblaze.

New comment by qsi in "Backblaze has stopped backing up OneDrive and Dropbox folders and maybe others"

qsi — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 02:59:37 +0000

This is very well put, and echoes my sentiments! I had installed Backblaze on my own home machine many, many years ago, and it has saved my bacon a few times. Since then I've also installed it on any family members' machines that required backup and recommended it to friends. And I've been happy to pay for the service.

The deal was that Backblaze backs things up and I don't have to worry about it. Learning that it does not back things up is a punch to the gut. I am familiar with the exclusions and I have a look at that list to make I'm not missing anything from my backups. I had always thought the exclusions list was exhaustive.

Excluding other files and folders without telling me about it breaks the deal. Dropbox is important to several of the users I installed it for. Ignoring .git folders is another one that affects me and I had not known about. Ouch.

I will now have to look for alternatives. It has to be easy to install, run seamlessly on non-technical users' machines and be reliable.

I find it hard to be think of a worse breach of trust for a backup service than not to back up files!

New comment by qsi in "DaVinci Resolve – Photo"

qsi — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 06:09:57 +0000

It is not entirely clear to me from reading TFA, but infer from its description and other comments here that Photo only works with RAW input files. Is this correct? Or can I use it on JPEGs?

New comment by qsi in "False claims in a widely-cited paper"

qsi — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 02:45:50 +0000

I did, thanks for the suggestion.

New comment by qsi in "False claims in a widely-cited paper"

qsi — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 01:36:30 +0000

Ooops, sorry... I cannot edit the URL in the submission. I should have checked.

False claims in a widely-cited paper

qsi — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:46:31 +0000

Article URL: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/03/24/false-claims-in-a-published-no-corrections-no-consequences-welcome-to-the-business-school/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47525378

Points: 341

# Comments: 169

New comment by qsi in "PC processors entered the Gigahertz era today in the year 2000 with AMD's Athlon"

qsi — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 23:34:37 +0000

Moving from floppy disk to hard disk was pretty big for me. :)

New comment by qsi in "I don't know how you get here from “predict the next word”"

qsi — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 05:55:37 +0000

Maybe because it quotes (at length) AI-generated output?

New comment by qsi in "I don't know how you get here from “predict the next word”"

qsi — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 05:55:09 +0000

The article as written is entirely consistent with John Cochrane's style. I have been reading him off and on over the years so I think I have a decent baseline for comparison. It doesn't smell of AI to me.

If anything, even the included quotes from Refine don't smell much of typical AI, but maybe I am less discerning there. I did notice the em-dashes though!

I don't know how you get here from “predict the next word”

qsi — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 04:59:01 +0000

Article URL: https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/refine

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47162059

Points: 168

# Comments: 260

New comment by qsi in "Elsevier shuts down its finance journal citation cartel"

qsi — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 12:25:38 +0000

Well, I was in a rush writing that. I omitted the fact that not only did he publish his own papers bypassing peer review, he also set up a citation mill with a number of other Elsevier journals and was apparently involved in other shady business. It's detailed in the article... There is a personal component to it, but that's a very minor part of the article which documents the various misdeeds.

New comment by qsi in "Elsevier shuts down its finance journal citation cartel"

qsi — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 10:11:02 +0000

Elsevier editor published his own papers in the Elsevier journal bypassing peer review.

Elsevier shuts down its finance journal citation cartel

qsi — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 08:22:34 +0000

Article URL: https://www.chrisbrunet.com/p/elsevier-shuts-down-its-finance-journal

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47119530

Points: 561

# Comments: 108

New comment by qsi in "Show HN: A physically-based GPU ray tracer written in Julia"

qsi — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 22:07:10 +0000

Heh. I grew up writing C code and had real trouble adapting to Matlab's 1-based indexing. Much later I tried Python and was constantly confused by 0-based indexing.

I don't think one is better than the other but my mind is currently wired to see indexing with base 1.

Then there's Option Base 1 in VBA if you don't like the default behavior. Perfect for creating subtle off-by-one bugs.

New comment by qsi in "A word processor from 1990s for Atari ST/TOS is still supported by enthusiasts"

qsi — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 13:54:07 +0000

Some of the best ST software came from Germany, where the it had a high market share driven by DTP applications. IIRC at one point the ST had a bigger installed DTP base in Germany than the Mac.

There was an annual fair in Düsseldorf, the Atari ST Messe, which was impressive in its size. I went for several years in a row until the ST sadly started losing its relevance.

New comment by qsi in "A word processor from 1990s for Atari ST/TOS is still supported by enthusiasts"

qsi — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 13:45:47 +0000

Ah, it was actually STeve:

https://ataricrypt.blogspot.com/2024/03/steve.html

An application that was more a random selection of tools than a cohesive whole but some people swore by it.

New comment by qsi in "A word processor from 1990s for Atari ST/TOS is still supported by enthusiasts"

qsi — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 13:37:47 +0000

I still have the printed documentation and floppy for Tempus, the editor which I think is the predecessor to the linked word processor. It was blazing fast because it had been written in 68000 assembly IIRC. Even then it would handle giant documents with ease.

New comment by qsi in "A word processor from 1990s for Atari ST/TOS is still supported by enthusiasts"

qsi — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 13:33:38 +0000

Signum! was highly opinionated. It ran on the Atari ST but did its own thing for the user interface. You could access a lower layer of drawing primitives and obviate GEM. In those days multitasking did not exist.

There were a good number of these kinds of application back then. Steve was one, GFA Basic another.