Hacker News: randrus

New comment by randrus in "Switch to Claude without starting over"

randrus — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 11:23:17 +0000

I ask gpt a lot of questions about plants and gardening - I’m happy that it remembers where I live and understands the implications. I could remind it in every question, but this is convenient.

New comment by randrus in "Halt and Catch Fire: TV’s best drama you’ve probably never heard of (2021)"

randrus — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 05:29:34 +0000

I joined DG in their last days, largely due to kidders book.

Also, I really liked DG/UX, for reasons I no longer recall.

New comment by randrus in "I replaced Windows with Linux and everything's going great"

randrus — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 03:17:38 +0000

My mother in law asked for help with her computer. I went in dreading the whole windows mess - only to find somebody had set her up with Linux Mint - I was actually able to help her with her internet issue, and am so happy for that unsung hero.

New comment by randrus in "Why does a least squares fit appear to have a bias when applied to simple data?"

randrus — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 00:24:41 +0000

I’m not an SME here and would love to hear more about this.

New comment by randrus in "Ask HN: What tech purchase did you regret even though reviews were great?"

randrus — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 01:18:23 +0000

I paid full boat 20+ years ago but I’ve spent more time in that chair than my car and bed combined, and it’s always got my back. Best purchase ever.

New comment by randrus in "Installing and using HP-UX 9"

randrus — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 13:45:37 +0000

I seem to remember something like that in DG/UX too.

New comment by randrus in "Stephen Miller's Quota Likely Drove Korean Arrests in Immigration Raid"

randrus — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 22:53:12 +0000

Absolutely this.

New comment by randrus in "Why do we keep gravitating toward complexity?"

randrus — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 00:04:46 +0000

This rings almost true for me - but “addiction” makes it seem like some sort of personal failing, whereas I think the cost of that backtracking and the probability of finding another Balrog in the woodpile later makes it seem like a perfectly reasonable choice.

Source: been there, done that.

New comment by randrus in "New Bill Would Give Marco Rubio "Thought Police" Power to Revoke U.S. Passports"

randrus — Sun, 14 Sep 2025 14:38:30 +0000

What’s your favorite democratic institution? My favorite is separation of powers.

Would you say it’s holding?

New comment by randrus in "I won't connect my dishwasher to your cloud"

randrus — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 23:13:48 +0000

Philip K Dick includes this as a side bit in Ubik - iirc there’s a great scene where the main character is broke and trying to get the front door to let him in to his apartment.

New comment by randrus in "Gradual Disempowerment: How Even Incremental AI Progress Poses Existential Risks"

randrus — Sat, 01 Feb 2025 16:43:36 +0000

AI - red in tooth and claw.

New comment by randrus in "Ask HN: Recommend me some silent movies"

randrus — Sun, 01 Dec 2024 15:00:13 +0000

Koyaanisqatsi

New comment by randrus in "After decades, FDA moves to pull ineffective decongestant off shelves"

randrus — Fri, 08 Nov 2024 04:32:26 +0000

Seems like it varies by state - I’ve purchased Sudafed in at least two states other than my own.

New comment by randrus in "Sci-fi books that you may never have heard of, but definitely should read"

randrus — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 03:17:35 +0000

Samuel Delaney - Nova, Babel-17

Clifford Simak - City

Alan E Nourse - The Universe Between

New comment by randrus in "Good Retry, Bad Retry"

randrus — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 18:11:12 +0000

My interpretation of Conways Law is that social problems) in development organizations) are isomorphic to (gross) technical problems, and that leverage works both directions.

New comment by randrus in "Python for Inversive and Hyperbolic Geometry"

randrus — Sat, 28 Sep 2024 00:58:28 +0000

In case this is relevant to your reasons for posting … every time I see one of the fact free posts the slam Python to promote Julia it pushes me further from considering Julia for anything.

New comment by randrus in "Moxie Marlinspike: Agile is killing software innovation"

randrus — Sat, 10 Aug 2024 14:09:41 +0000

IIRC LiquidPlanner models uncertainty.

New comment by randrus in "Glibc Buffer Overflow in Iconv"

randrus — Sun, 21 Apr 2024 14:55:34 +0000

…languages which are mad..

Reference to “Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge”?

New comment by randrus in "Loading a trillion rows of weather data into TimescaleDB"

randrus — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 20:50:40 +0000

Somewhat relevant (which I posted a while back):

https://climate.metoffice.cloud/

New comment by randrus in "Ask HN: What things are happening in ML that we can't hear over the din of LLMs?"

randrus — Thu, 28 Mar 2024 12:51:56 +0000

A very apt reference to the story

The ones who walk away from Omelas

Dunno how pasting a link works but here it is:

https://shsdavisapes.pbworks.com/f/Omelas.pdf