Hacker News: romanhn

New comment by romanhn in "eBay Rejects GameStop's $56B Takeover as Not Credible"

romanhn — Tue, 12 May 2026 16:30:34 +0000

Just saw this for the first time. How someone can show up on a major network like this is beyond my understanding. Literally couldn't answer where the money would come from.

New comment by romanhn in "AI slop is killing online communities"

romanhn — Thu, 07 May 2026 20:05:20 +0000

Neither are most humans

New comment by romanhn in "We gave an AI a 3 year retail lease and asked it to make a profit"

romanhn — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 15:50:02 +0000

A bit of a non sequitur, but am I the only one finding the use of "she" to refer to the AI in the post jarring?

New comment by romanhn in "Two Months After I Gave an AI $100 and No Instructions"

romanhn — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 13:57:37 +0000

I'm guessing one of those agents wrote this post as well? The LinkedIn broetry style is so jarring, I had to quit after a few paragraphs. Probably still spent more effort on reading than the author on generating this.

New comment by romanhn in "EFF is leaving X"

romanhn — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 19:47:40 +0000

North Idaho specifically has been a hub for white power movements for a while: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2024/mar/27/north-idaho-an...

New comment by romanhn in "Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?"

romanhn — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 22:27:11 +0000

I always assumed that newer banknotes are always going to be easier to obtain than older ones. But the hyperinflation of late imperial, early Soviet times means a ton of paper money was printed and is still available at cheap prices. On the other hand, Soviet money from between 1922 and before 1961 can be quite rare and sometimes very very expensive.

New comment by romanhn in "Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?"

romanhn — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 22:13:26 +0000

I haven't really had a hobby until last summer, when I took up collecting banknotes. Growing up in the USSR, I had a few imperial notes as a kid and wanted to expand my "collection", but didn't actually start in earnest until decades later. Got a few late 19th / early 20th century pre-revolution notes, and then found myself in the abyss of Russian Civil War, where every city and local municipality were printing their own money. Anyways, it's a journey without an end, and I saw an interviewee describing this hobby as a "sickness, do not start", which sort of resonated.

As a history lover with appreciation for tactile aspects of history (love 100+ year old books), this scratches this itch better than anything else, while leaving me wanting more. I research and write up every banknote I acquire, and the sense of history I get from browsing my album is like nothing else.

For anyone interested, here are the photos of my collection circa end of last year: https://imgur.com/a/zmCXd8l

OpenAI's Sam Altman tells companies to try four-day working week

romanhn — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:25:21 +0000

Article URL: https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/openai-chief-backs-four-day-week-to-spread-ai-benefits-to-workers-v08zwq3w2

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47676836

Points: 3

# Comments: 2

New comment by romanhn in "Playing Wolfenstein 3D with one hand in 2026"

romanhn — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 19:36:06 +0000

I don't understand the intent behind this article. Old game feels dated compared to newer games in the genre it created, news at 11. And calling the design anachronistic would make sense in a new game adopting it, not in the game where it was cutting edge at the time. It all feels rather calorie-free.

New comment by romanhn in "Bring Back MiniDV with This Raspberry Pi FireWire Hat"

romanhn — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 05:38:37 +0000

Went through a very similar journey recently as well. In my case using a Macbook was a non-starter, as certain adapters are prohibitively expensive these days, if you can even get your hands on one. Thankfully my son has a desktop Windows PC and Firewire PCI cards are cheap and plentiful, so getting connected that way worked out. Much better than an earlier attempt via RCA cables (simple but digital -> analog -> digital is not the way to go).

My pipeline was camera -> WinDV -> DVdate (to extract exact datetimes into srt subtitles) -> Handbrake (to convert to mp4).

New comment by romanhn in "Ask HN: Any recommended engineering/dev related Slack channels?"

romanhn — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 18:26:36 +0000

+1 for Rands Leadership Slack, it's a great community. While the general slant and audience are eng leadership heavy, there are definitely non-engineer and non-management folks there.

New comment by romanhn in "My astrophotography in the movie Project Hail Mary"

romanhn — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 18:20:39 +0000

Since you have multiple times refused to answer the question of whether your have read the book, I'm going to assume you have not. I found the movie to be a pretty close adaptation to the written material, so your strong feelings seem entirely misplaced (and I guess you don't like Ryan Gosling, fine).

That said, my family - both kids and adults, with entirely different interests and preferences - enjoyed the hell out of it. That, to me, makes for a good movie, whatever your definition of "objectivity" is. Listen, it's OK not to like something popular, but consider that the downvotes and responses you're getting are not astroturfing, but simply you swimming against the current. Sincerely, - real human.

New comment by romanhn in "Chuck Norris has died"

romanhn — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 15:51:54 +0000

Found out about his passing from my teenage kids. They knew him as some legendary tough guy based solely on the jokes, but had no idea who he actually was. To be fair, looking at some other comments here about his political and personal leanings, I didn't know who he actually was either.

Why aren't AI productivity gains higher?

romanhn — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 17:29:22 +0000

Article URL: https://newsletter.getdx.com/p/why-arent-ai-productivity-gains-higher

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47442870

Points: 6

# Comments: 1

New comment by romanhn in "Ask HN: Can we please stop with the posts about Claude outages?"

romanhn — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 18:50:17 +0000

I hear what you're saying, but currently 4 out of 29 Ask HN submissions I see have to do with Claude outages. A 14% ratio feels high. But yeah, I'm tilting at windmills here, flagging and moving on is the right strategy.

Ask HN: Can we please stop with the posts about Claude outages?

romanhn — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 18:29:42 +0000

Yes, I get it, you're impacted and it sucks. But given how frequently it occurs, these posts are starting to feel very spam-like. HN is not your favorite tool's status page, and in fact Claude has one already (even if it doesn't update as immediately as you'd like). I much prefer interesting discussions under Ask HN than yet another status question with a chorus of me-toos. And yes, I recognize this meta-rant might be one as well. Thank you!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47429510

Points: 4

# Comments: 4

New comment by romanhn in "Source code of Swedish e-government services has been leaked"

romanhn — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 05:14:23 +0000

Let's not forget white pages, those door stopper telephone books containing everyone's name, phone and address that everyone had (along with yellow pages for business listings).

New comment by romanhn in "Ask HN: Is Claude down again?"

romanhn — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 15:43:34 +0000

If only this was correlated with something else going on in the industry...

New comment by romanhn in "Meta acquires Moltbook"

romanhn — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 01:51:51 +0000

Tons of critical comments on HN at the time, for one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3817840. And most of the positive ones viewed it as a defensive measure rather than another Google + YouTube story.

New comment by romanhn in "Arabic document from 17th-cent. rubbish heap confirms semi-legendary Nubian king"

romanhn — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 13:27:25 +0000

I did not expect the recovered order that confirmed the existence of a (semi-)legendary Nubian king to basically be "Dear X, when you get here, please take some sheep from Y in exchange for some cotton cloths. Kthxbye! -King Qashqash".