Hacker News: radicalcentrist

New comment by radicalcentrist in "The Myth of the ThinkPad"

radicalcentrist — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 08:28:58 +0000

I believe there is a kernel of truth here, but having used both the mainstream products and their "underdog" alternatives, this is completely counter to my experience.

Nokia is a bit before my time, but I've used both iPhones and Androids and simply cannot suffer iPhones anymore. There are so many features of Android that are impossible to replicate on Apple products. Even something as simple as blocking ads is a fool's errand on iOS. I make extensive use of third-party app stores, patching .apk files, and my device's filesystem. I laugh when iOS introduces a new features that's been included in Android for half a decade.

I've had to suffer many work Macbooks and vastly prefer both the hardware and (Linux) software stack on non-Apple laptops. The history of Apple hardware and OS X (sorry, macOS) is littered with blunders such as the touchbar, keyboard issues, and now Liquid Glass. Is a ThinkPad the holy grail of PCs? Probably not, but they've been a lot more reliable in my experience.

NVIDIA's Linux drivers are especially laughable. After years of wrangling their drivers, struggling to make sleep work, and getting X/Wayland rendering working reliably, at this point I can't bother. I simply disable any discrete NVIDIA laptop GPUs entirely and use the integrated graphics. It just works better and doesn't drain my battery. On a desktop I'm with AMD all the way.

I promise you, I have plenty of experience with both sides and I am most definitely not "suffering under inferior tech", at least not anymore.

New comment by radicalcentrist in "I announced my divorce on Instagram and then AI impersonated me"

radicalcentrist — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 03:17:01 +0000

filing jointly

New comment by radicalcentrist in "The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?"

radicalcentrist — Thu, 22 May 2025 20:09:46 +0000

Well that's what I don't get, how is spending the money bad faith? Aren't they getting the money ahead of time so they can spend it before the world ends? If they have to keep the world-still-here money tied up in escrow I don't see why they would take the deal.

New comment by radicalcentrist in "The "AI 2027" Scenario: How realistic is it?"

radicalcentrist — Thu, 22 May 2025 19:04:57 +0000

I still don't get how this is supposed to work. So let's say I give you a million dollars right now, with the expectation that I get $10M back in 10 years when the world hasn't ended. You obviously wanted the money up front because you're going to live it up while the world's still spinning. So how am I getting my payout after you've spent it all on hookers and blow?

New comment by radicalcentrist in "Show HN: Learn where countries are on the world map with Spaced Repetition"

radicalcentrist — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 17:58:25 +0000

This is awesome, I got way more sucked into this than I expected. If you're open to adding more features, a "custom playlist" would be really cool. I'd love to drill myself on the Balkans or West Africa, for instance.

New comment by radicalcentrist in "Show HN: Learn where countries are on the world map with Spaced Repetition"

radicalcentrist — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 17:47:32 +0000

Interesting, thank you for the link. This answers a few questions I had about preferred country names while trying out the game, such as Czech Republic/Czechia, Swaziland/Eswatini, Turkey/Turkiye. I also found the partially recognized states curious, especially Palestine being reduced to "West Bank".

New comment by radicalcentrist in "No Calls"

radicalcentrist — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 10:49:57 +0000

No it's not called supply and demand, it's called price discrimination. The way things should be priced is based on the value it gives the market as a whole. Anything further is an anti-competitive attempt to vacuum up more of the buyer surplus.

New comment by radicalcentrist in "Nobody cares"

radicalcentrist — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 04:04:49 +0000

They have an option to do an ACATS to another brokerage account. They do not mention specifically, but it looks like this would be considered a stock transfer "in kind" which should not be considered a taxable event.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Fidelity/comments/la7tj6/can_someon...

https://cash.app/help/5026-transferring-stock-to-another-bro...

New comment by radicalcentrist in "E.U. Agrees on Artificial Intelligence Rules with Landmark New Law"

radicalcentrist — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 23:37:46 +0000

Sounds like 7% of revenue rather than profit. But I agree it seems weird to cap it at 7.

New comment by radicalcentrist in "You are never taught how to build quality software"

radicalcentrist — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 23:20:29 +0000

To quote Donald Knuth, "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."

New comment by radicalcentrist in "9th Circuit rejects TSA claim of impunity for checkpoint staff who rape traveler"

radicalcentrist — Tue, 26 Sep 2023 18:01:57 +0000

Calling it a jobs program is overly generous. It's broken windows fallacy. Considering the ineffectiveness of the TSA as shown by multiple audits, opportunity cost of waiting in security lines, lost revenue to airlines, and increased road fatalities due to flight aversion, it's a massive net loss to the economy for no actual benefit to safety.

New comment by radicalcentrist in "The risks of cleaning with bleach and other disinfectants"

radicalcentrist — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 22:24:17 +0000

Is that on the ground floor of the neutral milk hotel?

New comment by radicalcentrist in "Reddit has been down for more than an hour"

radicalcentrist — Tue, 14 Mar 2023 21:25:04 +0000

I really hope this site doesn't become the next reddit. I don't think a massive influx of new users would be healthy for good faith discussion here.

New comment by radicalcentrist in "I hired 5 people to sit behind me and make me productive for a month"

radicalcentrist — Sun, 05 Feb 2023 02:36:09 +0000

Okay this part has me convinced this post is satire. The hackernewsiness is simply off the charts. As the kids would say, ain't no way.

New comment by radicalcentrist in "Is remote work bad for the economy?"

radicalcentrist — Wed, 01 Feb 2023 03:03:11 +0000

Great writeup. It seems like a strange variant of the broken windows fallacy to imply that workers need to be shuttling to and from work and spending money on brick and mortar restaurants and stores. Of course remote workers will have extra spending money that's still going into the economy, whether that's delivery services mentioned in the article, local restaurants in their personal time, etc.

New comment by radicalcentrist in "Disabling the Intel Management Engine"

radicalcentrist — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 18:27:10 +0000

The risk of bricking isn't so bad as long as you keep a copy of the original firmware. If the patched firmware doesn't boot, you can always revert back.

New comment by radicalcentrist in "Cocaine Paraphernalia Ads in the 70s"

radicalcentrist — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 18:41:24 +0000

Don't forget video games and rock & roll.

New comment by radicalcentrist in "Closure vs. derivation in the Nix package manager"

radicalcentrist — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 22:43:46 +0000

https://archive.md/wpvR3

New comment by radicalcentrist in "Space Station 14 – Open-source remake of Space Station 13"

radicalcentrist — Fri, 05 Nov 2021 00:44:52 +0000

Hahaha, the issues are hilarious! A few examples:

* You can put yourself into disposals while dead

* Bullets rotate with the station

* Pulling doesn't know what newton's 3rd law is

* You can select wires hidden under walls and zap yourself with them

Where are all the mundane build problems and crashes? Their issue page is full of the type of zany interactions gone wrong I love to debug.

https://github.com/space-wizards/space-station-14/issues

New comment by radicalcentrist in "How long does it take ordinary people to get good at chess?"

radicalcentrist — Sun, 31 Oct 2021 05:12:35 +0000

https://lichess.org/@/PeshkaCh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tykhon_Cherniaiev