Hacker News: skirmish

New comment by skirmish in "LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent"

skirmish — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 20:31:28 +0000

Just found another mouse shape comparison site that may help:

https://www.rtings.com/mouse/tools/3d-model-shape-compare/

New comment by skirmish in "LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent"

skirmish — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 19:32:27 +0000

Mousereview reddit always recommends looking at Chinese gaming mice, they have reasonable prices, often clone popular mouse shapes from large brands (see [1]) and have the latest sensors.

[1] EloShapes find similar: https://www.eloshapes.com/mouse/find-similar

New comment by skirmish in "Demis Hassabis has a plan to harness AI safely"

skirmish — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 01:37:16 +0000

Quite right, there is nothing to discuss since qualia don't exist. See Daniel Dennett.

New comment by skirmish in "The revenge of the philosophy majors"

skirmish — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 03:17:41 +0000

Marxist-Leninist Philosophy was a required course for all undergrads in my time studying in USSR. Strangely enough, the professors made it into an overview course on history of philosophy, which was quite enjoyable, with just some mention of Marxism-Leninism in the last lecture.

New comment by skirmish in "Factorio 2.1 Experimental Release"

skirmish — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 20:01:48 +0000

Ditto, I never could get into Factorio, it was just too depressing for me to be a tiny human running around in an all-brown landscape (that was years ago, no Space Age), then getting attacked for pollution. Tried Dyson Sphere, and immediately got hooked: a flying robot as the avatar, and you very soon need interplanetary and interstellar exploration and resource exchange. Just felt more techno-optimistic in its mood.

BTW in one playthrough (in DSP) I tried to avoid destroying any native vegetation at all, so obviously no blueprints, just lots of fun figuring out factory placement and routing belts around all the bushes.

New comment by skirmish in "DSpark: Speculative decoding accelerates LLM inference [pdf]"

skirmish — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:47:32 +0000

But then it's not a problem of speculative decoding, fix your dam main model.

BTW, in case there is confusion, we are not talking about CPU speculative execution affecting model inference at all, just about this specific technique: predict tokens via a smaller drafter model, then validate them against the main model in batch.

New comment by skirmish in "More evidence is consistent with possible ancient life on Mars (2025)"

skirmish — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 05:36:54 +0000

Coprolites.

New comment by skirmish in "DSpark: Speculative decoding accelerates LLM inference [pdf]"

skirmish — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 22:31:04 +0000

Don't think so because all tokens predicted speculatively are still validated against the main model (which is faster than predicting them from scratch) and only accepted if they match exactly.

New comment by skirmish in "How Many Elementary Particles Are There, Really?"

skirmish — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 21:20:04 +0000

See "Schild's Ladder" by Greg Egan: a science experiment creates a bubble of new physics expanding at 0.5 c, and humanity is forced to flee the expansion while some stay right next to the expanding boundary to investigate the inside.

New comment by skirmish in "Oracle shed about 20k roles globally in the last year"

skirmish — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 23:01:56 +0000

Ask AI to test and deploy them. /s

New comment by skirmish in "Job application asked for my SAT scores"

skirmish — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 05:21:22 +0000

Have to make sure all coworker's coffee cups are full.

New comment by skirmish in "I Hate (Most) Keyboard 'Fn' Keys"

skirmish — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 20:37:19 +0000

What works well for me is a taskbar icon with mouse scrolling (Waybar pulseaudio module on Sway). You see 50% and a speaker icon, hover and scroll up or down to instantly change.

New comment by skirmish in "Making peace with your unlived dreams (2023)"

skirmish — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 05:29:09 +0000

BTW, a very common name in Poland, a diminutive form of Jadwiga. If you ever read any Polish history, it almost seems like most of noblewomen were named Jadwiga.

New comment by skirmish in "Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?"

skirmish — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 22:44:25 +0000

Is it this: GitLab Duo Agent Platform with Claude accelerates development [1]? Well, Gitlab itself promotes hooking them up!

[1] https://about.gitlab.com/blog/gitlab-duo-agent-platform-with...

New comment by skirmish in "Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?"

skirmish — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 22:17:56 +0000

In other words, engineers are becoming (bad) middle management: happy to take credit on wins and quick to blame underlings (LLMs in this case) for any mishaps. As long as managers are allowed to play politics in workplace, of course engineers will try to do the same!

New comment by skirmish in "The real cost of owning a home"

skirmish — Wed, 27 May 2026 04:09:14 +0000

> a real estate agent just walked into my home without any notice

Just open the door stark naked, you are in your private home.

New comment by skirmish in "The real cost of owning a home"

skirmish — Wed, 27 May 2026 03:54:47 +0000

Contractor costs are insane, our recent experience. Gas heater wouldn't start:

-- diagnosis: $180 flat fee

-- quote for replacing a failed igniter: plus $300, one week waiting for parts

-- I found the part on eBay and replaced it myself for $20, delivered in 2 days

Trimming an (admittedly large) tree in the backyard: $2,500. One guy in the tree with a chainsaw, 3 guys carrying branches to a wood chipper truck.

New comment by skirmish in "I manage teams without a single call"

skirmish — Mon, 25 May 2026 23:12:33 +0000

OTOH, there are people who just don't retain information from hearing it. In college, it was useless for me to attend lectures without taking notes, I would immediately forget most of them. Now taking detailed notes and reviewing them at the end of the day, that was my superpower.

New comment by skirmish in "I manage teams without a single call"

skirmish — Mon, 25 May 2026 23:01:23 +0000

> just to check how things are going

If you work remotely, a certain fraction of managers always carry a suspicion: he is probably slacking off right now, maybe napping; let me call and check.

New comment by skirmish in "I manage teams without a single call"

skirmish — Mon, 25 May 2026 22:55:43 +0000

If the company does not want you to work, just coast and enjoy. I feel zero guilt when I slack in an overcrowded noisy open plan office too.