Hacker News: rfrey

New comment by rfrey in "Why Estonians invite strangers into their back gardens each summer"

rfrey — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 10:03:18 +0000

Just go take the food.

New comment by rfrey in "Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots"

rfrey — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 17:50:19 +0000

There is a lot of variance in the price of cleaning tied to location. Cost of living in the area for sure, but also presence or absence of economic migrants and new immigrants.

New comment by rfrey in "Writing by hand is good for your brain"

rfrey — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 18:26:58 +0000

The studies I'm familiar with have tested recall at various intervals, not brain activity.

New comment by rfrey in "Is The Economist Always Wrong?"

rfrey — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 03:13:46 +0000

He made money when he was working for other people. He did not make money when he tried to trade off his ideas. That was 25 years ago, since then he just broadcasts his ideas.

No skin in the game, as it were.

New comment by rfrey in "Leaking YouTube creators' private videos"

rfrey — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 05:19:44 +0000

If the toilets at all those firms started operating in reverse, very little would get built. The conclusion is that plumbers are extremely important, not that plumbing is de facto engineering.

New comment by rfrey in "Scientists reverse brain aging, with a nasal spray"

rfrey — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 03:54:10 +0000

I know lots of writers who have (reluctantly) stopped using em-dashes. Many replaced them with colons, and are now wondering what they will replace colons with.

New comment by rfrey in "Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)"

rfrey — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 02:41:02 +0000

Yes, but do their publishers need to be compensated for a century after their death?

New comment by rfrey in "Google Books (or similar) all book scans – $200k bounty (2025)"

rfrey — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 02:39:33 +0000

We certainly wouldn't want to return to the pre-1976 era, where, as we all know, no books were written.

New comment by rfrey in "Scientists reverse brain aging, with a nasal spray"

rfrey — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 02:30:44 +0000

Anybody who still writes using their own mind has stopped using that pattern, along with others. "The thing nobody tells you:" is no longer used by decent writers.

New comment by rfrey in "Tacky men with ridiculous glasses want you to wear them too"

rfrey — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 22:33:24 +0000

Somebody saying hello to you has you reaching for pepper spray?

New comment by rfrey in "South Korean forums will need to scan every images with AI censorship tools"

rfrey — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 04:25:04 +0000

So what accounts for the current state of the USA? Not exactly platonic ideals of courage these days.

New comment by rfrey in "Trump signs downsized AI order after weeks of reversals"

rfrey — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 03:52:15 +0000

Federal crimes such as having an Hispanic name.

New comment by rfrey in "The dead economy theory"

rfrey — Sat, 30 May 2026 02:30:53 +0000

This time, there is nowhere to move to. And there is no interest in supporting the displaced people in any way.

New comment by rfrey in "Microsoft open-sources “the earliest DOS source code discovered to date”"

rfrey — Mon, 25 May 2026 05:25:23 +0000

In the opinion of the champaign socialists in the West. In the opinion of people who lived under that regime... Not so much.

New comment by rfrey in "Build Adafruit projects right from Firefox"

rfrey — Mon, 25 May 2026 04:26:16 +0000

I think it is uncharitable to say "your convenience". It's more like "your vision as a creator". We're talking about developer intent that isn't possible otherwise. You can say "good, it shouldn't be", but don't characterize it as convenience.

New comment by rfrey in "Vivaldi 8.0"

rfrey — Thu, 21 May 2026 21:39:47 +0000

What would that "you problem" look like? Bought the wrong laptop? Bad aura? Clicking links wrong?

New comment by rfrey in "OpenAI is connecting ChatGPT to bank accounts via Plaid"

rfrey — Fri, 15 May 2026 17:25:15 +0000

Man, I remember when the common wisdom was that there would NEVER be enough people willing to put their credit card into a web browser to support a business.

I never expected to be nostalgic for those days.

New comment by rfrey in "Cursing the government does not fix potholes. Spray-painting them does"

rfrey — Fri, 15 May 2026 13:34:56 +0000

Although if a big pothole remains for several years amid many complaints, it's reasonable to think there's no such list. Or there is a list, but it's so long that it might as well not exist.

New comment by rfrey in "Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school"

rfrey — Fri, 08 May 2026 03:24:15 +0000

Countries taking care of their citizens is communism? A social safety net leads to empty store shelves? Am I the latest victim of Poe's Law here?

Every advanced economy in the world except for the United States has a well developed social safety net, and I assure you our shelves are not empty and I can listen to all the Mötley Crüe I desire.

New comment by rfrey in "DeepSeek v4"

rfrey — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 13:15:20 +0000

Many of us (worldwide, I'm not American) watched China massacre thousands of its own children at Tiananmen Square. The US is descending into totalitarianism, but it hasn't reached that level yet.

And China may have changed in some ways but there have been no signals it would not repeat that event if it thought circumstances warranted.