<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: rackjack</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rackjack</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Wed, 13 May 2026 22:50:57 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=rackjack" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by rackjack in "Show HN: PRQL 0.2 – a better SQL"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Obligatory dismissive comment:<p>> 0.2<p>No it ain't (in production).<p>Anyway, this looks great. I LOVE the fact that you've provided a book too. Consider me a fan!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 27 Jun 2022 18:57:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31899076</link><dc:creator>rackjack</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31899076</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31899076</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by rackjack in "Learning Rust – Day 4 – Understanding Modules"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think the most surprising thing about Rust modules is that you need to """pre-declare""" them, especially since Rust doesn't really use function prototypes.<p>So when you try to move a module into its own file, you need to keep the `mod foo` in the original file.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 12 May 2022 16:57:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31356741</link><dc:creator>rackjack</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31356741</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31356741</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by rackjack in "Bits of advice I wish I had known"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Same vibe as diners who put down money on the table and take some away every time they don't feel doted on enough</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 29 Apr 2022 08:15:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31202674</link><dc:creator>rackjack</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31202674</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31202674</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by rackjack in "A 4-year-old can run errands alone and not just on reality TV"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's funny because you'd think this watchfulness + technology like Nextdoor would let kids be more independent, e.g. if anybody tried to snatch your kid they'd be reported by half a dozen busybodies watching through their windows.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 20 Apr 2022 19:16:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31101603</link><dc:creator>rackjack</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31101603</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31101603</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by rackjack in "U+237C ⍼ Right Angle with Downwards Zigzag Arrow"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That rabbit hole of esotericism was pretty cool.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 13 Apr 2022 17:24:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31017427</link><dc:creator>rackjack</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31017427</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31017427</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by rackjack in "Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy-trace_theory" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy-trace_theory</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 12 Apr 2022 17:32:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31005764</link><dc:creator>rackjack</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31005764</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31005764</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by rackjack in "Turning back the clock: Human skin cells de-aged by 30 years in trial"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Biology is not programming, man.<p>We can work on different abstraction levels because in the worst case, we can just crack open a hex editor and write raw assembly or mess with the OS directly. We've built on that to get C, and Java, and Python, and all that other good stuff, but we can go all the way to the bottom if we need to.<p>Now imagine you're working on a computer with proprietary hardware. The easiest way to interact with it is via a provided high level language, like Lua. This is eating, drinking, sleeping, exercising. Now imagine that you crack open the assembly because something is just not working right. Some illness or something. And you come to realize there are thousands of different opcodes (proteins, enzymes, genes, etc.). Not only that, but sometimes they work differently depending on where in the computer they are located or the time of day or whatever (organs, menstrual cycle, circadian rhythm, etc.). You can make some good guesses on what a couple of them do, but you are not sure of the entirety of their effects for the majority of them.<p>So you're looking at the interfaces and you figure out if you send the right data to this and that place, you can get it to work right, maybe with some acceptable or unforeseen consequences. This is medicine, and it is a miserable way to do things due to the complete lack of understanding and control, much like driving your car from the backseat with a 10 foot pole while facing backwards.<p>So you've discovered a lot of hacks, made a lot of medicine, collected a lot of 10 foot poles. And as you look at your ever expanding collection, now easily in the thousands, you begin to get the creeping feeling that (a) you will never find a panacea, (b) the system you are working on is a disgusting mess of patchwork jobs on patchwork jobs developed over millions of years, and (c) there is probably an underlying system directing all of this, but its complexity might not even be better than what you're operating on now, and you definitely lack the technology to utilize it properly anyway.<p>And what you're doing is saving and bettering people's lives on the whole. And then some big shot comes in and says "Ackchyually, why don't you just access the lowest layer directly? Pretty sus." Try to have some perspective and humility on how horrifically complicated biology is. Life was evolved, not designed. Life isn't a computer. The relative simplicity and <i>sanity</i> of technological systems is a blessing absent in biology.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 09 Apr 2022 01:55:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30964598</link><dc:creator>rackjack</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30964598</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30964598</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by rackjack in "Microplastics found in live human lung tissue"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The cynic/conspiracy theorist in me says "Imagine blaming kids for acting weird when they're literally infested with plastic."</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 07 Apr 2022 17:48:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30947952</link><dc:creator>rackjack</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30947952</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30947952</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by rackjack in "I need to stop being boring"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Easy to say this when you don't have 1 billion people also gunning for the opportunities you want (maybe less since they're in Hong Kong and not the mainland)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 06 Apr 2022 18:02:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30935429</link><dc:creator>rackjack</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30935429</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30935429</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by rackjack in "One App – Two Worlds: This Is TikTok in Russia and Ukraine"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It doesn't.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30664769" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30664769</a><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30763209" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30763209</a><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30763216" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30763216</a><p>Look at the author.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 05 Apr 2022 21:25:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30925248</link><dc:creator>rackjack</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30925248</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30925248</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by rackjack in "A few things to know before stealing my 914"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is a very funny article and the reveal that people have actually tried to steal the car was a perfect closer.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 01 Apr 2022 15:28:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30879145</link><dc:creator>rackjack</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30879145</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30879145</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by rackjack in "Each Firefox download has a unique identifier"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>What're the alternatives to Firefox? The only ones that come to mind are Opera and Brave, and Brave had some controversy too.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 18 Mar 2022 02:03:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30717993</link><dc:creator>rackjack</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30717993</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30717993</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by rackjack in "The new silent majority: People who don't tweet"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Fun fact, this theory actually comes from a 4chan post.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 08 Mar 2022 22:58:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30608502</link><dc:creator>rackjack</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30608502</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30608502</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by rackjack in "Show HN: WAPM – WebAssembly Package Manager"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Wasn't there some Wasmer controversy with the CEO or founder or something last year? Not trying to disparage the company or their work, I was just reminded of it by this post.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 02 Mar 2022 21:12:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30533245</link><dc:creator>rackjack</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30533245</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30533245</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by rackjack in "Learn Rust by writing a small OS"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Before anybody takes this specific prediction too seriously, this guy posted numerous misleading claims about Actix's use of `unsafe` in another thread before deleting them and seems to have a strange vendetta against Rust in general.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 25 Feb 2022 22:38:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30473227</link><dc:creator>rackjack</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30473227</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30473227</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by rackjack in "Announcing Actix Web v4.0"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Why don't you provide evidence of extant misused `unsafe` first? Or is the whole software world to believe the words of lambda_dn?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 25 Feb 2022 22:33:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30473178</link><dc:creator>rackjack</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30473178</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30473178</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by rackjack in "Rust 1.59.0 with inline assembly support etc."]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>`ControlFlow` is a nice QoL addition.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 24 Feb 2022 19:33:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30459150</link><dc:creator>rackjack</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30459150</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30459150</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by rackjack in "Hello Many Worlds in Seven Quantum Languages (2021)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>First we build circuits, then we build languages, then we build everything else</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 16 Feb 2022 19:07:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30364279</link><dc:creator>rackjack</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30364279</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30364279</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by rackjack in "Love is biological bribery?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Reminds me of this image:<p><a href="https://i.redd.it/lr5rfu3paen61.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://i.redd.it/lr5rfu3paen61.jpg</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 16 Feb 2022 17:48:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30363153</link><dc:creator>rackjack</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30363153</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30363153</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by rackjack in "DuckDuckGo \u202E"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Easter bug?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 15 Feb 2022 21:22:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30352924</link><dc:creator>rackjack</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30352924</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30352924</guid></item></channel></rss>