Hacker News: rmwaite

New comment by rmwaite in "Windows 9x Subsystem for Linux"

rmwaite — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 21:11:41 +0000

This matches me experience as well. Some of my earliest rsync experiences were with the Cygwin version and I can remember scratching my head and wondering why people raved about this tool that ran so slowly. Imagine my surprise when I tried it on Linux. Night and day!

New comment by rmwaite in "YouTube users get option to set their Shorts time limit to zero minutes"

rmwaite — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 01:20:25 +0000

In my case, once I set the limit to 0 minutes and refreshed the home tab I don't see Shorts recommendations at all. There is still a Shorts tab at the bottom that tells me I have no remaining time (and allows me to trivially override it, sigh). But otherwise this seems to have cleaned up the "feed" that I see in the app of anything Shorts related (for now, at least).

New comment by rmwaite in "There's no single best way to store information"

rmwaite — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 18:54:54 +0000

Relevant: https://sqlite.org/mostdeployed.html

New comment by rmwaite in "IPv6 just turned 30 and still hasn't taken over the world"

rmwaite — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 20:11:41 +0000

IP addresses were always meant to be globally reachable. Of course, NAT has corrupted this - which is why NAT is a scourge.

New comment by rmwaite in "I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla"

rmwaite — Sat, 15 Nov 2025 01:44:57 +0000

I think AI can add a lot of functionality but on the margins. Making things “work better”. I think AI as a focal point—in that it is The feature is a mistake for most things. But making code completion work better or suggestions more accurate? Things that are largely invisible UI-wise.

New comment by rmwaite in "The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity (1987) [pdf]"

rmwaite — Sat, 08 Nov 2025 19:52:30 +0000

I’ve always seen the hubris as an essential component of doing things “you didn’t know you couldn’t do.” A lot of great ideas are discounted as impossible and it takes hubris to fly in the face of that perceived impossibility. I reckon most of the time it doesn’t work out and the pessimism was warranted—but those times it does work out make up for it.

New comment by rmwaite in "Jujutsu at Google [video]"

rmwaite — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 15:32:50 +0000

To be honest, if you’re using a tool that stores things as trees and blobs and almost every part of its functionality is influenced by that fact, then you just need to understand trees and blobs. This is like trying to teach someone how to interact with the file system and they are like “whoa whoa whoa, directories? Files? I don’t have time to understand this, I just want to organize my documents.” Actually I take that back, it isn’t /like/ that, it is /exactly/ that.

New comment by rmwaite in "Discussion of the Benefits and Drawbacks of the Git Pre-Commit Hook"

rmwaite — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 05:30:02 +0000

Thanks for this, I can’t believe this never occurred to me to try to do.

New comment by rmwaite in "Why the push for Agentic when models can barely follow a simple instruction?"

rmwaite — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 16:47:32 +0000

If you read carefully you will see that they never said AI has a theory of mind.

New comment by rmwaite in "Reasons to Not Use ChatGPT"

rmwaite — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 20:15:13 +0000

Then what do we do? lol.

New comment by rmwaite in "Move over Dijkstra: New algorithm just rewrote 70 years of computer science"

rmwaite — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 18:04:40 +0000

Personally, I think you need to chill. He wasn’t “attacking” it, he was just commenting and includes his interpretation about it being from AI. Why don’t YOU just focus on the primary point of his comments instead of latching onto the AI part—or is it okay when you do it?

New comment by rmwaite in "GenAI Predictions"

rmwaite — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 23:13:07 +0000

Exactly. I mean, if you asked people how probable the current LLMs would be (warts and all) 20 years ago I think there would have been a similar cynicism.

New comment by rmwaite in "Show HN: Autism Simulator"

rmwaite — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 23:09:21 +0000

“You can’t tell people anything” I read this on a blog article a long time ago and I’m constantly reminded of it. This gives me that same feeling where someone is attempting to give some insight into their POV (precisely /because/ it’s alien to so many) and the responses (well, some of them) miss this point entirely.

New comment by rmwaite in "Any level of alcohol consumption increases risk of dementia"

rmwaite — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 11:45:57 +0000

I dunno, usually when I eat chocolate it makes me want to eat more chocolate. What is the mechanism for this?

New comment by rmwaite in "Failing to Understand the Exponential, Again"

rmwaite — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 11:41:48 +0000

My problem with takes like this is it presumes a level of understanding of intelligence in general that we simply do not have. We do not understand consciousness at all, much less consciousness that exhibits human intelligence. How are we to know what the exact conditions are that result in human-like intelligence? You’re assuming that there isn’t some emergent phenomenon that LLMs could very well achieve, but have not yet.

New comment by rmwaite in "Show HN: Lego Island Playable in the Browser"

rmwaite — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 04:54:59 +0000

I think kids are smarter than you give them credit for. You’re right that they randomly click around and will do so for hours. But they /will/ do so for hours. And when it finally clicks - that time was not entirely wasted. Kids in my observation essentially brute force everything. Their one resource is time and they will happily use it for as long as they feel.

New comment by rmwaite in "First thoughts on o3 pro"

rmwaite — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 04:44:31 +0000

“Haters gonna hate”, as the old saying goes.

New comment by rmwaite in "Getting Past Procrastination"

rmwaite — Sat, 07 Jun 2025 17:39:49 +0000

If you do this often enough you can create a simple commit hook that searches for these markers and will fail to commit if it finds them.

New comment by rmwaite in "Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot"

rmwaite — Thu, 22 May 2025 18:18:24 +0000

I’ve been using Raindrop and have used the Permanent Copy (offline) feature enough that I wouldn’t consider doing without it. It’s worth every penny if you ask me. And you can host it yourself AFAIK, I just haven’t looked into it much.

New comment by rmwaite in "I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)"

rmwaite — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 01:40:40 +0000

I must shamefully admit that I did indeed read this and think RMS himself came out singing.