Hacker News: ropable

New comment by ropable in "What happened to TheNumbers.com"

ropable — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:25:36 +0000

This is another reason we can't have nice things. The level of entitlement required to send an angry message to someone complaining about their free resource being offline is mind-boggling, though.

New comment by ropable in "HPV vaccine cuts risk of dying from cervical cancer before 30"

ropable — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 03:29:39 +0000

There exists a possibility that they were correct and you are not.

New comment by ropable in "How to earn a billion dollars"

ropable — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:11:25 +0000

It's almost as though people and culture change over time.

To be less glib, that amount of time is more than ample to see a generational change in a sector as fast-moving as technology. Perhaps some robust push-back on his ideas better represents the a zeitgeist of people being less happy with a maximalist winner-takes-all attitude to business or personal success.

New comment by ropable in "They’re made out of weights"

ropable — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 02:50:18 +0000

I have no idea why this post got such a large volume of upvotes. It's a clever remix on the original story, but that's about it. There's no great insight to be found here, IMO.

New comment by ropable in "Private equity bought America's essential services"

ropable — Thu, 28 May 2026 01:45:22 +0000

Everybody gangsta about privatisation until it starts affecting services they personally use.

PE funds seem a bit like the latest manifestation of the 80s corporate raiders to me.

New comment by ropable in "Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools"

ropable — Wed, 27 May 2026 23:24:31 +0000

Nice straw man! Be a shame if it was a logical fallacy.

New comment by ropable in "Spain blocks prediction markets Polymarket, Kalshi over lack of gambling licence"

ropable — Wed, 27 May 2026 07:35:55 +0000

See also: How Insider Trading Destroys Armies (Perun): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lz3vTUbClc

New comment by ropable in "Spain blocks prediction markets Polymarket, Kalshi over lack of gambling licence"

ropable — Wed, 27 May 2026 07:31:09 +0000

Kalshi, Polymarket and every other prediction market should have been drowned at birth by regulators. They offer zero positive utility to the world. I hope that we follow Spain's example here in Australia; we have a hard enough time with legal gambling as it is.

New comment by ropable in "LAN-LOK: The Antarctic DOS Sabotage Game Lost for 34 Years"

ropable — Mon, 25 May 2026 03:02:58 +0000

I'm curious if you have any evidence stronger than your own vibes about this one sentence. I didn't get that sense from the article at all, and continue to assume that it's a genuine piece of history.

New comment by ropable in "I spent 50 hours drawing a line graph"

ropable — Mon, 25 May 2026 01:04:11 +0000

Never, ever ask for forgiveness for, purely for the love of it, learning skills and creating by hand anything that can be mass-produced. Learning and craftsmanship are their own rewards.

New comment by ropable in "Wake up! 16b"

ropable — Sun, 24 May 2026 23:57:12 +0000

Really, really small generative code like this has me shouting "Witch!"

Bravo.

New comment by ropable in "Mozilla to UK regulators: VPNs are essential privacy and security tools"

ropable — Mon, 18 May 2026 03:15:40 +0000

You say that like it's a bad thing. Not everyone thinks so.

New comment by ropable in "Rotten Dot Com"

ropable — Sun, 10 May 2026 23:48:09 +0000

Oh my word. This site, orsm, ebaumsworld, etc. I'm glad to say that none of these were formative for me, but that were always morbidly entertaining to a young man still firming up his prefrontal cortex. They were like reliable garbage fires that you couldn't help but go look at sometimes.

Yeesh, the things we put on the internet.

New comment by ropable in "California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy"

ropable — Wed, 06 May 2026 05:36:23 +0000

Everybody gangsta about not needing government handouts until it's their own livelihood at stake.

New comment by ropable in "Google removes "Doki Doki Literature Club" from Google Play"

ropable — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 23:35:38 +0000

Doki Doki Literature Club is a game that I played, and then replayed, purely on the basis of recommendations by trusted reviewers. The genre (visual novel) and theme (anime pin-up schoolgirl) are ones that I have no interest in. I was extremely glad that I did play it, though; it was a profoundly thought-provoking experience. It was extremely disturbing in the best possible way.

Definitely not for kids, though, and it's worth taking the content/trigger warnings seriously.

New comment by ropable in "US and Iran agree to provisional ceasefire"

ropable — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 07:45:42 +0000

It's very hard for me to see this war (regardless of final outcome) as anything other than a massive strategic loss for the USA. The US has spent a stunning amount of materiel and political capital to achieve nothing of lasting benefit to themselves, and have killed thousands while further destabilising and impoverishing the region. A catastrophic outcome.

It's absolutely possible for both sides in a major conflict to lose, and they've managed to do so in this case.

New comment by ropable in "Miscellanea: The War in Iran"

ropable — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 23:44:10 +0000

As evidence supporting the "bright side" outcome of this conflict, two separate people I know here is Australia have fast-tracked a decision to replace their ICE vehicles with an EV. It only took a week's sticker shock at the fuel bowser to take them from "Eh, sometime next year" and "comparing a hybrid with ICE" to "Buying a BYD car ASAP". I'd be curious to know if there has been any significant effect of the market for electric scooters and bikes, also.

New comment by ropable in "How the Turner twins are mythbusting modern technical apparel"

ropable — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 04:45:07 +0000

I didn't quite clock what they meant in that paragraph. I'm pretty sure that a 1.8 degree drop in body temp is approaching hypothermia.

New comment by ropable in "The American Healthcare Conundrum"

ropable — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 23:56:05 +0000

You mean that there is a rule which prevents for-profit companies offering personal health insurance from pocketing more than 20% of revenue?

Those poor, benighted shareholders. What a socialist hellscape.

New comment by ropable in "Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting"

ropable — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 23:59:07 +0000

"New account". Meanwhile, the account is 4.5 years old with 2600 karma and has hundreds of thoughtful comments.