<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: samatman</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=samatman</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Thu, 09 Apr 2026 15:54:57 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=samatman" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by samatman in "Use Long Options in Scripts"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Is it? I'm with you on gobsmackingly ancient, but it's "doesn't support long options" which I haven't bumped into.  I do replace some coreutils, but not all of them.<p>What's a good example of such a utility?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 22 Mar 2025 19:40:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43448079</link><dc:creator>samatman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43448079</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43448079</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by samatman in "Crabtime: Zig’s Comptime in Rust"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Ok, sure, we can reason about anything.  We could reason about machine code, if we had the time and inclination.<p>I barely participate in Hacker News anymore because it seems to have collectively lost the ability to extract meaning from words, unless an exhausting and totally excessive amount of attention is put into satisfying a misplaced sense of precision.  There's no intellectual charity left and it sucks.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 22 Mar 2025 19:35:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43448047</link><dc:creator>samatman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43448047</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43448047</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by samatman in "Crabtime: Zig’s Comptime in Rust"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The central claim is that Zig's use of comptime is similar enough to templates to conflate them.  That's simply incorrect.  There's no value in trying to extract information from something which makes such a basic mistake as that, it doesn't contribute to a discussion, it distracts that discussion down a blind alley.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 22 Mar 2025 19:33:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43448037</link><dc:creator>samatman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43448037</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43448037</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by samatman in "Crabtime: Zig’s Comptime in Rust"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This blog post is disqualified from any serious discussion, because it doesn't know the distinction between templates, which Zig's comptime constructs are not, and partial evaluation with reified types, which Zig's comptime constructs are.<p>It's not possible to make a positive contribution after a mistake that basic.<p>Here's an example of someone getting the design space correct, and therefore contributing to the discussion in a positive way. He doesn't end up liking Zig, for reasons I disagree with, but he does completely evade being not-even-wrong, which is table stakes.<p><a href="https://hirrolot.github.io/posts/why-static-languages-suffer-from-complexity.html" rel="nofollow">https://hirrolot.github.io/posts/why-static-languages-suffer...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 22 Mar 2025 17:17:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43447198</link><dc:creator>samatman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43447198</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43447198</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by samatman in "Crabtime: Zig’s Comptime in Rust"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You can't reason about macros, that's not how they work.<p>You can read their definition, you can expand them, but there's no way to look at a macro call and reason about it, it can do anything at all. In C you don't even know what is and isn't a macro, so Rust has a modest edge in that respect.<p>Zig just doesn't have this problem to begin with.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 22 Mar 2025 17:10:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43447159</link><dc:creator>samatman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43447159</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43447159</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by samatman in "Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>My life would rapidly fall apart.<p>I use Siri for about three things: timers, reminders, and asking about the weather.  But the reminders are mission critical.  I use the watch, and any time my flighty brain hits on something, I set a reminder for it on the spot.<p>I literally couldn't get along without it. The only killer feature of Siri is accurate voice transcription, and that's all I need (and it could be more accurate, I just get used to comical translations when I use a rare word).<p>I guess I wouldn't mind if it were better, but I don't need it to be. Reminders are enough.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 21 Mar 2025 18:36:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43439440</link><dc:creator>samatman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43439440</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43439440</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by samatman in "Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I've never heard from anyone who likes the Apple Mouse enough to use it, but doesn't like the charging from the bottom.  It's frequently cited as a 'flaw' by those who don't use it, this has become a bit of conventional wisdom.  In reality it's a non-issue.<p>I <i>have</i> heard from a whole lot of people who don't like the Apple Mouse. I don't like that mouse.  But it isn't because of the charge port.  It's an uncomfortable shape for my hand, and I prefer a trackball.<p>I think it's fine for Apple to have one peripheral which appeals to a minority taste.  We're not short of mouse designs and they all work with the operating system. It's not even the main peripheral Apple sells for the purpose, that's the trackpad and everybody likes it. I still prefer a trackball, Tim Cook uses some kind of oddball vertical mouse with a bunch of buttons. It's a big design space.<p>If they wanted to please the maximum amount of people, they'd need to clone Microsoft's mouse, and that would be boring.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 21 Mar 2025 18:22:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43439272</link><dc:creator>samatman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43439272</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43439272</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by samatman in "The Burnout Machine"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Cars and medical equipment are already heavily regulated.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 21 Mar 2025 13:20:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43435335</link><dc:creator>samatman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43435335</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43435335</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by samatman in "The Last Drops of Mexico City"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>People do this all the time actually.  "Cotton is fungible", "oil is fungible".<p>The grading is assumed.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 21 Mar 2025 13:15:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43435283</link><dc:creator>samatman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43435283</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43435283</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by samatman in "The Last Drops of Mexico City"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>No, almonds are grown in California because of a uniquely favorable climate. They're profligate with water because they're allowed to get away with it.<p>If water were priced by auction, which I support, almond growers would invest in less wasteful irrigation methods, mostly subsurface drip: <a href="https://wcngg.com/2018/08/02/subsurface-drip-irrigation-has-pros-and-cons-in-almonds/" rel="nofollow">https://wcngg.com/2018/08/02/subsurface-drip-irrigation-has-...</a><p>More to the point, if water had a market-clearing price, California would stop growing so much alfalfa.  Alfalfa uses half, <i>half</i>, of California's water, and California has no unique advantages at all in growing alfalfa.<p>But to reiterate, your first paragraph is absurd and very silly indeed. Lots of places have super cheap water but California still grows four out of five almonds on Earth.  It baffles me that you thought cheap water was a plausible explanation for this.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 21 Mar 2025 13:14:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43435272</link><dc:creator>samatman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43435272</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43435272</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by samatman in "The Last Drops of Mexico City"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>If "grow them elsewhere" were plausible, California wouldn't be growing 77% of them.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 20 Mar 2025 23:48:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43430360</link><dc:creator>samatman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43430360</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43430360</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by samatman in "The Burnout Machine"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>When would it kick in, do you think?<p>Would you need a JSON loisence? A bash loisence? Is Javascript ok but only in the browser, and only under 500 lines?<p>At what point does the bobby say Oi! ?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 20 Mar 2025 23:39:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43430301</link><dc:creator>samatman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43430301</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43430301</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by samatman in "The Burnout Machine"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Perhaps that's why I've met so many engineers from these normal countries in my own, abnormally wealthy one.<p>In fact, they've told me so, in so many words.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 20 Mar 2025 23:05:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43430075</link><dc:creator>samatman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43430075</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43430075</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by samatman in "The Last Drops of Mexico City"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The existence of various grades of a commodity says nothing about whether that commodity at those grades is fungible.  Mostly it implies the opposite, in fact.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 20 Mar 2025 21:47:12 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43429352</link><dc:creator>samatman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43429352</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43429352</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by samatman in "The Last Drops of Mexico City"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That water grows 77% of all almonds, worldwide.<p>Is there some better use for roughly 15% of California's water consumption?<p>Are you sure?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 20 Mar 2025 21:42:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43429320</link><dc:creator>samatman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43429320</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43429320</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by samatman in "A mouseless tale: trying for a keyboard-driven desktop"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>System Settings / Accessibility / Keyboard / Full Keyboard Access<p>This is macOS we're talking about.  You can move the pointer with your face if you want (or more likely, if you need to).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 02 Feb 2025 05:32:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42906209</link><dc:creator>samatman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42906209</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42906209</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by samatman in "String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>What is "unintentionally dog-whistling" supposed to mean?<p>Isn't intention the essence of the concept of the "dog whistle"?<p>I'd also like to observe that Scott Alexander does a yearly survey, which provide unusually robust evidence that if we're going to impute to him the cultural affiliations of those who read his posts, his politics can only be "all of it".</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 02 Feb 2025 00:19:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42904066</link><dc:creator>samatman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42904066</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42904066</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by samatman in "String of recent killings linked to Bay Area 'Zizians'"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Communities are people.  They are not definitions.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 01 Feb 2025 21:55:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42902774</link><dc:creator>samatman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42902774</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42902774</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by samatman in "The past, present, and future of UI at GitHub"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Is your Markdown renderer ever going to figure out how to reflow paragraphs with hard newlines in them?<p>Will there ever be a way to dispose of the enormous header blocking me from reading source code?<p>Those are what I want from the future of UI at GitHub.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 25 Jan 2025 00:24:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42818251</link><dc:creator>samatman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42818251</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42818251</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by samatman in "Wild – A fast linker for Linux"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>They have! It's called Julia and it's great.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 24 Jan 2025 23:31:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42817971</link><dc:creator>samatman</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42817971</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42817971</guid></item></channel></rss>