Hacker News: shawn_w

New comment by shawn_w in "Nintendo announces new product revisions in Europe with replaceable batteries"

shawn_w — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 22:49:56 +0000

That's clever.

New comment by shawn_w in "The GNU Emacs Architecture: Unlocking the Core [pdf]"

shawn_w — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 23:41:32 +0000

Lots of things don't work with clisp.

New comment by shawn_w in "As downtown Seattle offices empty, city facing years of 'zombie' towers"

shawn_w — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 06:02:17 +0000

The area around 3rd and Blanchard is sketchy, but in the rest of Belltown the biggest hazards are incompetent Uber/lyft/doordash/etc. drivers and drunk people on lyme scooters.

New comment by shawn_w in "America, 1926: A forgotten 100-year-old report"

shawn_w — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 03:32:37 +0000

If you're talking about casu martzu cheese, Wikipedia says

>Due to these risks, Italian authorities have banned the sale of this cheese, deeming it dangerous. Consequently, it is also prohibited across the European Union, as EU food safety regulations mandate that only food safe for consumption can be sold.

New comment by shawn_w in "Costco is the anti-Amazon"

shawn_w — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 23:01:37 +0000

>There was also a company I think who spent hundreds of millions of dollars (IIRC) in creating a large grocery website with buying large warehouses then and basically losing a ton of money. That business also failed quite drastically.

Probably thinking of HomeGrocer or WebVan (which bought out the former and then went bankrupt too)

New comment by shawn_w in "Costco is the anti-Amazon"

shawn_w — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 22:55:53 +0000

People go to Costco and only get a couple of things and not a cart load? You've got more self control than I.

New comment by shawn_w in "German button maker searched rivers of American Midwest for valuable shells"

shawn_w — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 23:23:11 +0000

There's a simple solution to that. Tax the rat farms.

New comment by shawn_w in "Underarm bowling incident of 1981"

shawn_w — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 02:52:08 +0000

What do the grabbers do?

New comment by shawn_w in "Solving Wordle using information theory"

shawn_w — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 22:33:28 +0000

Until I read some of the comments here, I didn't realize anyone used any other approach with Wordle. A word that doesn't include the known letters is just unnecessarily increasing the number of guesses it takes to solve and doesn't make sense...

New comment by shawn_w in "Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids"

shawn_w — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 01:52:54 +0000

And an even bigger influence in Stephenson's first book, The Big U.

New comment by shawn_w in "Kirkland Roundabouts"

shawn_w — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 01:44:43 +0000

There are multiple left lane exits (and onramps!) on I5 in downtown Seattle. Fun times.

New comment by shawn_w in "Kirkland Roundabouts"

shawn_w — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 01:42:15 +0000

We have one of those diverging diamond ones in the general area too (at the I90/SR18 junction). It's interesting to drive through until you get used to it.

New comment by shawn_w in "US Air Force B-52 bomber crashes after takeoff, Edwards Air Force Base says"

shawn_w — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 03:26:23 +0000

The Tu-22M is almost as old as the B-52. They don't want to make more.

New comment by shawn_w in "Lisp's Influence on Ruby"

shawn_w — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 11:52:39 +0000

Taking the object as the last argument works just as well. Just needs to be consistent whichever way is chosen.

New comment by shawn_w in "Perlisisms (1982)"

shawn_w — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 11:33:23 +0000

And, for anything but a throwaway one-liner, it shouldn't be made scary at all.

New comment by shawn_w in "Lisp's Influence on Ruby"

shawn_w — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 21:18:10 +0000

Put the s-expressions back too.

New comment by shawn_w in "Lisp's Influence on Ruby"

shawn_w — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 21:14:29 +0000

You see that style in SQL too.

New comment by shawn_w in "Perlisisms (1982)"

shawn_w — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 19:00:02 +0000

I read this as "Perlism" at first and got excited to see perl on HN.

New comment by shawn_w in "Law Enforcement's "Warrior" Problem (2015)"

shawn_w — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 23:01:58 +0000

Troops?

New comment by shawn_w in "Ten Years of Franz"

shawn_w — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 06:09:27 +0000

Apparently not about the makers of Allegro Common Lisp¹ and assorted graph database tools.

1: https://franz.com/