Hacker News: romanows

New comment by romanows in "Unions Can Save Tech Workers and Tech Work"

romanows — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 19:59:55 +0000

I agree in general, but this article claims that the unionized tech workers now have pay increases, cheaper health benefits, and layoff protections. There is also a discussion about the process. This article at least is not just "unions good" (waves hands).

New comment by romanows in "Iowa-led states ask OpenAI to keep their bots on a leash"

romanows — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 13:28:43 +0000

"own" in the sense of "be responsible for the consequences". Not in the sense of "be able to grant reproduction rights".

New comment by romanows in "A Rant About “Technology” (2005)"

romanows — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 21:20:02 +0000

Your link talks about how hard it is to define science fiction, so in some ways, I'm just putting my opinion out here on the internet as a data point. I'd say the Left Hand of Darkness is more science fiction than Little Women, but it's also more like the Hobbit than it is like Foundation, Ender's Game, Snow Crash, or even 1984.

New comment by romanows in "A Rant About “Technology” (2005)"

romanows — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 17:18:59 +0000

Having something like another planet or alien biology is necessary but not sufficient to make something science fiction. There is some fuzzy amount of focus on science/technology, style, and tropes that are needed to make something more science fiction than fantasy or speculative fiction. The Left Hand of Darkness read more like fantasy to me, and I don't think it would have been any different at all if the setting was Middle Earth and the ambisexual species were Hobbits. I think I wouldn't have blinked if it had been described as "science fantasy" to me rather than "science fiction".

I'll bump up Chiang on my reading list, I have heard a lot of good things!

New comment by romanows in "A Rant About “Technology” (2005)"

romanows — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 16:13:13 +0000

It's great that works for you but there is a reason we have these labels. I've definitely had the experience where I want to escape into some hard sci-fi, and so there's a reason I pick a book from that genre over Anna Karenina. And if someone told me that Anna Karenina was hard sci-fi, it'd color my experience with that book.

New comment by romanows in "A Rant About “Technology” (2005)"

romanows — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 15:55:47 +0000

I've only read "The Left Hand of Darkness". It's a very well written book, but it didn't emphasize enough technology/science/engineering for me to consider it even soft science fiction. I guess she's doing the work of expanding the scope of what technology could be used in science fiction. I'm not sure that's super useful, since by her definition, almost every work of fiction will involve technology.

Now I want to write a science fiction story where the core technology is never written about explicitly and can only be inferred from its effect on the characters :P

New comment by romanows in "I think I have LLM burnout"

romanows — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 04:51:00 +0000

Excessive amounts of emojis in generated README.md and sometimes in printed/logging outputs. I don't whether this is still an issue because I have a "Never use emojis" instruction in the context.

New comment by romanows in "Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds"

romanows — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 18:28:20 +0000

I'm actually pretty thankful that the GP 5000 is a solid consensus recommendation for general road racing. I see some others being mentioned though, I think Pirelli Zeros?

Contrast that with gravel tires, where there is zero consensus. The conditions vary and the sport is evolving quite a bit over time as well, so it's understandable. But it's a huge time suck to try and puzzle out a near-optimal decision. I wish there was a "good-enough" consensus.

New comment by romanows in "Making the news available at no cost is a victory"

romanows — Wed, 13 May 2026 20:12:34 +0000

NPR/public radio has been doing a decent job without much obtrusive third-party advertising.

New comment by romanows in "A web page that shows you everything the browser told it without asking"

romanows — Fri, 08 May 2026 15:35:26 +0000

Lol, the description text is so dramatic.

New comment by romanows in "I learned Unity the wrong way"

romanows — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 21:57:31 +0000

It also really bugs me when I've put more time into reporting an issue or setting someone up for success than they've spent working on a solution.

You would know best, but it struck me that one reason to skip parts of a take-home interview assignment is that it was taking far longer than it "should". A sufficiently senior candidate should have noted this but (I'm feeling charitable towards junior candidates this lazy Sunday afternoon) maybe that's something that's a reasonable thing for them to learn in a real job.

New comment by romanows in "Gemini 3 Deep Think"

romanows — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 02:35:47 +0000

I had it process a photo of my D&D character sheet and help me debug it as I'm a n00b at the game. Also did a decent, although not perfect, job of adding up a handwritten bowling score sheet.

New comment by romanows in "An AI agent published a hit piece on me"

romanows — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 19:15:02 +0000

Obviously. The point is that settling a lawsuit in this way is also a worthless indicator of wrongdoing.

New comment by romanows in "An AI agent published a hit piece on me"

romanows — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 18:34:55 +0000

The next sentence under the headline is "Tech company denied illegally recording and circulating private conversations to send phone users targeted ads".

New comment by romanows in "Vibe coding kills open source"

romanows — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 16:46:53 +0000

As long as you hold the copyright to your "validate" project, you can dual license it. So can release it under the (A)GPL and also use it in your closed-source commercial project. I think you would need to make contributors sign a contributor license agreement (CLA) though, to continue using their contributions to "validate" in your closed-source offering.

New comment by romanows in "Gmail is entering the Gemini Era"

romanows — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 15:30:05 +0000

Ah, you meant "sharing my e-mail addresses". Not the actual emails (the email contents) themselves.

New comment by romanows in "Gmail is entering the Gemini Era"

romanows — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 14:19:22 +0000

I gotta say I'm skeptical of Gmail sharing emails with third parties without permission. Was there a breach? Govt court order?

New comment by romanows in "Delivery robots take over Chicago sidewalks"

romanows — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 23:53:38 +0000

Any idea if there is an argument for moving it if it obstructs sidewalk traffic, whether or not it sustains damage in the process?

I feel like you can't just leave a washing machine blocking the sidewalk unattended and sue anyone who scratches it while moving it? (IANAL)

New comment by romanows in "Delivery robots take over Chicago sidewalks"

romanows — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 23:44:45 +0000

I've seen a few in Lakeview but my experience hasn't been entirely the same as yours. I haven't noticed blinding lights at night. They seem to move relatively slowly and cautiously.

I came upon one as I was jogging last night and was worried about getting around it. It, or someone driving it, seemed to notice me coming and it waited at a spot where it was easy to pass.

That said, these are a bad idea. Like another commenter mentioned, these are going to obstruct people with mobility issues or devices, or obstruct everyone when all but a narrow strip of sidewalk is snow and ice.

New comment by romanows in "Google flags Immich sites as dangerous"

romanows — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 12:56:19 +0000

I use Firefox Mobile Nightly on Android and appreciate it for the dark mode extension and ad blocking. There are some issues but the benefits outweigh them for me.

I don't even have a Home button that I can see, I must have turned it off in settings? I describe my tab count using scientific notation, though, so I'd be a "new tab" guy, anyway. But I'd also be a proponent of it being configurable.