Hacker News: shmel

New comment by shmel in "Smoking ban for people born after 2008 in the UK agreed"

shmel — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 15:23:33 +0000

Right, because it totally worked with drugs. People just don't use them anymore. Weed is impossible to come by nowadays.

New comment by shmel in "Sauna effect on heart rate"

shmel — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 15:24:26 +0000

Not saying you are wrong, but I'd like to see some evidence on that. Just because your heart is pumping faster doesn't mean your cardio fitness is getting better. Otherwise we could all just snort cocaine and skip the gym. Alcohol does that too, anyone with a fitness tracker can check that.

New comment by shmel in "Thoughts on slowing the fuck down"

shmel — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 12:38:08 +0000

I think it will be more similar to the cloud. I remember people predicted that once you move to the cloud, you'll realize how expensive it actually is, but the cost of migration back will be high. While, yes, the cloud is expensive, most people realized that it is kinda worth it.

New comment by shmel in "Waymo Safety Impact"

shmel — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 13:47:25 +0000

There are even people who listen to music at home! They even buy expensive speakers just for this purpose =) I listen to music pretty much all the time except when I talk to other people and sleep.

New comment by shmel in "Ask HN: How is AI-assisted coding going for you professionally?"

shmel — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 22:00:42 +0000

I got insanely more productive with Claude Code since Opus 4.5. Perhaps it helps that I work in AI research and keep all my projects in small prototype repos. I imagine that all models are more polished for AI research workflow because that's what frontier labs do, but yeah, I don't write code anymore. I don't even read most of it, I just ask Claude questions about the implementation, sometimes ask to show me verbatim the important bits. Obviously it does mistakes sometimes, but so do I and everyone I have ever worked with. What scares me that it does overall fewer mistakes than I do. Plan mode helps tremendously, I skip it only for small things. Insisting on strict verification suite is also important (kind of like autoresearch project).

New comment by shmel in "Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place"

shmel — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 08:35:46 +0000

I grew up in Siberia where it gets cold down to -40C (coincidentally it's also -40F). I don't recall power going out for more than a few seconds. 24h without power or heating sounds batshit crazy for me. If it's a regular occasion it means either the infrastructure is outright non-existent or it gets literally blown up like in Ukraine. Same goes for shoveling snow. Yeah, I did it. Probably about 5 times in 20 years.

New comment by shmel in "Retiring GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and OpenAI o4-mini in ChatGPT"

shmel — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 23:31:54 +0000

Retiring the most popular model for the relationship roleplay just one day before the Valentin's day is particularly ironic =) bravo, OpenAI!

New comment by shmel in "Retiring GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and OpenAI o4-mini in ChatGPT"

shmel — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 23:14:50 +0000

It reminds me that story about a teenage learning Rust that got a refusal because he had asked about "unsafe" code =)

New comment by shmel in "Retiring GPT-4o, GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, and OpenAI o4-mini in ChatGPT"

shmel — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 23:13:18 +0000

what about laws against porn? Oh, wait, no, that's a legitimate business.

New comment by shmel in "AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected"

shmel — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 22:52:04 +0000

> Have we? It feels like a lot of stuff in my life is unnecessarily expensive or hard to afford.

We have, yes. If you notice things to be too expensive it's a result of class warfare. Have you noticed how many people got _obscenely rich_ in the last 25 years? Yes, that's where money saved by technology went to.

New comment by shmel in "Polymarket refuses to pay bets that US would 'invade' Venezuela"

shmel — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 20:34:49 +0000

Who knows? Might have been a special military operation, right? /s

New comment by shmel in "Chainalysis Successful Deanonymization Attack on Monero"

shmel — Sat, 29 Nov 2025 19:16:43 +0000

It's literally in their FAQ: https://www.getmonero.org/get-started/faq/

Anyone curious about how Monero is implemented would immediately understand why it's a bad idea to use remote nodes.

>What is the difference between a lightweight and a normal wallet?

>For a lightweight wallet, you give your view key to a node, who scans the blockchain and looks for incoming transactions to your account on your behalf. This node will know when you receive money, but it will not know how much you receive, who you received it from, or who you are sending money to. Depending on your wallet software, you may be able to use a node you control to avoid privacy leaks. For more privacy, use a normal wallet, which can be used with your own node.

New comment by shmel in "Molly: An Improved Signal App"

shmel — Sat, 29 Nov 2025 13:15:28 +0000

I really hate that the desktop app unlinks after a relatively short period of time. I rarely use Signal, so few of my friends are there, so I have to relink the desktop app almost every time I open it. I wouldn't mind scanning a qr code every now and then, but then the history refuses to sync because security. So far I haven't find how to change it.

The Android app is stable enough, but the UX of having to look at the phone while typing a reply on a normal keyboard is annoying. This is why I prefer Telegram every time.

New comment by shmel in "Molly: An Improved Signal App"

shmel — Sat, 29 Nov 2025 13:04:59 +0000

Which is pretty odd as WhatsApp allegedly uses the very same E2E encryption and has no problem implementing a web client. I really don't see the point of Electron if it doesn't allow you to provide a web client.

New comment by shmel in "Show HN: Glasses to detect smart-glasses that have cameras"

shmel — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 14:13:26 +0000

... by using your own glasses with a hidden camera? Sounds like a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun.

New comment by shmel in "Passing the Torch – My Last Root DNSSEC KSK Ceremony as Crypto Officer 4"

shmel — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 08:17:29 +0000

Equally there are security concerns having sites inside the US.

New comment by shmel in "Vitamin D reduces incidence and duration of colds in those with low levels"

shmel — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 15:51:38 +0000

You can't possibly have the same recommendation for all geographies. Florida and Scotland have somewhat different level of UVB especially throughout the winter, come on.

New comment by shmel in "French ex-president Sarkozy begins jail sentence"

shmel — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 09:01:27 +0000

I think we can clear the backlog real quick if we use LLM-As-A-Judge =)

New comment by shmel in "Imgur pulls out of UK as data watchdog threatens fine"

shmel — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 16:38:14 +0000

Perhaps they just don't care enough? I got unsupervised internet access when I was 10 and I don't see what's wrong with that. Similarly, video games didn't make me a psycho.

New comment by shmel in "What if I don't want videos of my hobby time available to the world?"

shmel — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 15:40:58 +0000

Do you also support a blanket ban of CCTV in public spaces? I am pretty sure that the bank had a camera in the ATM recording a public pavement 24/7 and nobody bats an eye.