<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: scratcheee</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=scratcheee</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sat, 07 Nov 2026 16:57:17 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=scratcheee" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scratcheee in "US FAA says it will phase out floppy disks from air traffic control by 2028"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Survivorship bias. Floppies failed all the time. Flash can be unreliable if you’re talking about the cheapest or abused the wrong way, but flash SSDs handled wisely are much better than hdds , which in turn are much better than floppies.<p>If you compare the thumb stick that came free from a convention then compare it to a floppy that came free with a magazine. And in the end neither matters because they’re both cheapest possible junk, not fair examples of the tech.<p>Similarly, the cheapest led bulbs (put in poorly ventilated fittings) have crappy lifetimes, but that’s not the techs fault, it’s because they weren’t engineered to last, they are cheap crap. Well designed leds placed sensibly are vastly better than bulbs, but that’s hidden by the cheap end of the market</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 07 Nov 2026 13:07:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50404241</link><dc:creator>scratcheee</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50404241</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50404241</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scratcheee in "September in Servo: <progress>, rounded rectangles, and more"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I get what you’re saying, but LLMs really aren’t great at writing code for use in “key” codebases where every line needs to be clear and clear easy to review, not adding to the maintenance burden any more heavily than necessary.<p>Now reviewing code, finding flaws? They’re great at that. Prototyping new ideas, and suggesting potential solutions? Amazingly useful. Writing lots of code solving problems in projects focused on having the features not on being long term secure and easy to extend? They seem to do this very well.<p>But the actual code going into a web browser engine needs to be very carefully produced.<p>So I’d compare it more to how c++ going into safety critical systems cannot use any of the “cool” features of c++. Code going into a web browser cannot be generated without a human hand tightly on the tiller.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 07 Nov 2026 11:57:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50403770</link><dc:creator>scratcheee</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50403770</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50403770</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scratcheee in "Hunger beats tenure: Advice for junior engineers"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You’re not wrong, if someone is willing to let family, friends, hobbies, etc fall to the wayside and dedicate themselves to work above all else, that isn’t inherently wrong, and could be a satisfying life.<p>But do consider the implications. I’d argue that the compensation you need to seek changes. Working for others in such a context is throwing away the only autonomy you have (having discarded other avenues), so if work is your life, you really need to work for yourself, or at least own and control your working conditions to some extent. Otherwise you’re just a hamster in a wheel. Clearly money is of little value once you decide to forgo any real use of money. The only thing you can trade for your work is ownership of the product you produce.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 28 Oct 2026 19:42:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50279746</link><dc:creator>scratcheee</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50279746</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50279746</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scratcheee in "DOJ says presidents should be able to sell secrets on eBay"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Whomsoever</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 27 Oct 2026 22:45:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50266927</link><dc:creator>scratcheee</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50266927</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50266927</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scratcheee in "Industry Knew for Decades That Microplastics Could Infiltrate Human Bodies"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I can believe that 100x the exposure is a lowball estimate, but surely the danger is much much lower? Like it’s low enough we still struggle to define it, compared to asbestos which was incredibly deadly just on a 2 decade delay compared to most deadly things.<p>We’d know by now if plastic was anything like asbestos, it’s been around for long enough.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 27 Oct 2026 21:50:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50266339</link><dc:creator>scratcheee</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50266339</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50266339</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scratcheee in "A Printer Printing onto Paper"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Hah! Some jobs just make you a social pariah no matter how interesting.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 27 Oct 2026 21:43:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50266266</link><dc:creator>scratcheee</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50266266</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50266266</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scratcheee in "'I Felt Blind Panic.' They Opened Their New $2k iPhone Duo–and It Broke"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think if I thought I’d wasted a paycheck on a broken gadget I’d feel blind panic for a second, I’d eventually think through the reality that they’ll probably cover such an obvious fault, but I’d still feel incredibly stupid for wasting my money at first.<p>Of course, that’s why i wouldn’t buy this thing in the first place, but i can empathise with those who were less willing to wait and see.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 27 Oct 2026 21:20:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50265989</link><dc:creator>scratcheee</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50265989</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50265989</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scratcheee in "Meta Ignores Brazilian Court Order to End Bolsonaro Favoritism"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Or maybe AfD hasn’t targeted you for other reasons, so you’re not fighting against a marketing team to avoid the videos, only against the “pure” form of the algorithm.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 25 Oct 2026 09:48:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50229810</link><dc:creator>scratcheee</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50229810</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50229810</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scratcheee in "Canadians are running out of time to oppose Bill C-22"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Not going to support the “stupid” claim, I suspect the French public do have alternative solutions to their predicament in mind, some better than others no doubt, but ill take a stab at the answer:
Context: The French government is underfunded, their debt burden is not healthy and if nothing changes they’re headed towards Greek-style economic problems (ie cost of debt gets too high, nobody trusts them enough to lend them the money they need, default could mean nobody will lend them money in future, so high risk, but avoiding default could mean enforced austerity as conditions of bailouts, which would be far more painful than just a retirement age change).
Answer: Increasing the retirement age increases the working population (ie taxable population) and decreases the pension burden, so it’s one of the most effective levers to ease the costs to the government. The downside of course is it’s reneging on a contract with their own population, people working their whole lives with the promise of retirement are understandably not impressed when the goalposts are moved.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:48:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50229246</link><dc:creator>scratcheee</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50229246</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50229246</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scratcheee in "Apple Security Research Device"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I mean, I’d assume that’s the case regardless of the wording. They’re giving you a device on a repeating lease. If you piss them off (ie release publicly when they’re not ready, regardless of who’s at fault for screwing up the disclosure timing), then they’ll take their toys away in a huff.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 25 Oct 2026 07:29:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50229167</link><dc:creator>scratcheee</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50229167</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50229167</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scratcheee in "New plastic pollution discovered: 'Plasticorals' coral rubble fused with plastic"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That’s only in the short term. It doesn’t touch on natures capacity to bounce back over millions of years.
We could kill off entire branches and trunks of the tree of life, crash every ecosystem on the planet, and life would still bounce back eventually. Molds would grow on the debris, some would find the slurry of radioactive plastics a tasty treat, and eventually it would rebuild.<p>We could ruin the planet in the “short” term, but we probably cannot extinguish life, even if we tried our hardest.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 22 Oct 2026 11:54:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50194111</link><dc:creator>scratcheee</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50194111</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50194111</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scratcheee in "Margaret Hamilton has died"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>They’re not software engineers, they’re software farmers. Very different kind of job</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 08 Oct 2026 06:41:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50002497</link><dc:creator>scratcheee</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50002497</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50002497</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scratcheee in "Nature's capacity to 'bounce back' when species are lost is overestimated: study"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>They are meaning experiments in the sense of adjusting the state of the thing being experimented upon. Astrophysics and economics experiments are both limited to adjusting the way we collect the data, not the subject itself (you can’t practically poke a star or an economy with a stick). Presumably the reason they’re using this line in the sand is that it is the key technique to separate correlation from causation, which is a limitation that tends to be more of a problem in economics than astrophysics (but certainly does frustrate in both fields).<p>The real problem of course is that economics is like astrophysics with only 1 star (or maybe 100 stars that bump into each other constantly… the analogy is imperfect)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 07 Oct 2026 09:34:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49990347</link><dc:creator>scratcheee</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49990347</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49990347</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scratcheee in "LeCun has "zero concerns" about AI wiping out humanity, recent "rogue" incidents"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You could argue in return that humans only have electro-chemistry as our one perceivable dimension. We only indirectly perceive light through the signals our eyes send to our brains.<p>In my mind general intelligence is pretty much by definition a virtual machine, so the mechanisms behind thought are only relevant for the sake of efficiency (ie you can argue that LLMs make a poor basis for intelligence because tokens and natural language are a poor way to encode the world, but if you can run it on a big enough computer to counteract the inherent wasteful virtualisation then who really cares how it works under the hood?)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 04 Oct 2026 14:19:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49954148</link><dc:creator>scratcheee</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49954148</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49954148</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scratcheee in "Back and shoulder surgery is often worse than useless"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Not how it works in the UK, everyone pays into public single-payer healthcare, but you’re free to buy your own private healthcare on top if you like.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 25 Sep 2026 06:02:44 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49840672</link><dc:creator>scratcheee</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49840672</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49840672</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scratcheee in "Keys Not Included: recovering the signing keys for US driver's license barcodes"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Depends, if the only id checks are performed by trained officials/administrators for legally significant purposes then yeah I’d agree.<p>But if you need to be ID checked entering a club or just buying a beer… they’re not training for that, and they’re not buying the hardware to handle it automatically either. Looking at a photo is an appropriate level of security for that purpose.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 17 Sep 2026 17:31:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49743944</link><dc:creator>scratcheee</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49743944</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49743944</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scratcheee in "Saving Jet Fuel"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Which is why work on fixing contrails is so important, it’d be insane to leave 50% improvement at a tiny cost unresolved whilst clawing back small percentage efficiency gains in co2 release from incremental and hideously expensive engine improvements.<p>We need to do both of course, but contrails should’ve been resolved the moment they were identified as so significant, it’s frustrating how slowly the industry responds to such an enormous opportunity (“we halved our climate impact last year” would be easy marketing)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 16 Sep 2026 10:43:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49724540</link><dc:creator>scratcheee</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49724540</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49724540</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scratcheee in "The purpose of DNS is to spread scams"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It was in parentheses, that does usually imply irrelevant sideband information.<p>Perhaps more importantly, the “handsome and talented” sidebar was actually a tongue in cheek acknowledgment that the author himself was speaking, I suspect, compare the usernames and they match up suspiciously well.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 07 Sep 2026 12:31:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49597586</link><dc:creator>scratcheee</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49597586</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49597586</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scratcheee in "Dwarf Fortress is getting the mother of all magic updates"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I don’t think it has anything to do with their gaming specific capabilities, just their general philosophy matches poorly with the games industry.<p>Apple insist on having their own apis and they don’t maintain compatibility for older software for very long, these 2 facts explain things fine on their own. Game devs don’t want a major support burden, they’re happy to patch here and there but constant dropping of apis or even architectures is a lot to handle. The bigger impact is that macOS ends up with a lot less old games that still run, if you need a critical mass of games to become a gaming platform, that constant bleed of legacy games will always slow macOS down.<p>As for gaming specific features, Metal is a perfectly fine api whose only real problem is that it’s different from the other platforms. Maybe not the best, but certainly not terrible. They also have a really nice capability floor, it’s practical to make a modern game work on any Mac from the last X years (maybe the neo complicates that a bit).<p>There’s probably a few gaming specific capabilities they could improve on, mouse input especially, but that’s never been the real issue.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 31 Aug 2026 22:04:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49515408</link><dc:creator>scratcheee</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49515408</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49515408</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by scratcheee in "Splitting a Git Commit"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Describing something in less detail doesn’t in fact make it simpler.<p>It’s nice you’ve done this before, so have I, but until git history it remained weirdly lacking in user friendly support infrastructure compared to most “common” tasks. Git history isn’t a major improvement, but it’s an improvement on a major weak point.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 19 Aug 2026 18:48:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49365617</link><dc:creator>scratcheee</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49365617</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49365617</guid></item></channel></rss>