Hacker News: smlavine

New comment by smlavine in "Show HN: Tiao, A two-player turn-based board game"

smlavine — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 15:42:50 +0000

Finally won a game against the Easy bot on the 9x9 board after around 10 tries.

Seems like if you want to force a win, you have to think about how to put your opponent in "Zugzwang" (to borrow a Chess term).

New comment by smlavine in "Show HN: Tiao, A two-player turn-based board game"

smlavine — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 14:52:48 +0000

Very fun game! Has this been released before? This is the only place I can find that mentions it.

New comment by smlavine in "Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS"

smlavine — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 17:35:43 +0000

I like mine. the moto g line of phones are like $200, unlocked. They're fast enough for anything I do with a phone. It runs android. It's fine. I've thought about GrapheneOS before but I a) don't want to give Google money to rely less on Google and b) Pixels are expensive. If Motorola can change those points then I'd definitely be interested.

New comment by smlavine in "I am directing the Department of War to designate Anthropic a supply-chain risk"

smlavine — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:54:57 +0000

Ever heard of the Constitution?

New comment by smlavine in "The normalization of corruption in organizations (2003) [pdf]"

smlavine — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 18:02:00 +0000

Or, larger districts of ~5 or so representatives. In the US, Representatives are already barely "local" -- 700k+ people to a single district.

New comment by smlavine in "Gentoo on Codeberg"

smlavine — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 00:50:28 +0000

> LibreOffice is eating Microsoft 365 lunch

This one misses the point entirely, I'm sorry to say. Microsoft 365's "lunch" is that a majority of US businesses, schools, and governments are reliant on 365 for anything in their organization to function.

New comment by smlavine in "GrapheneOS – Break Free from Google and Apple"

smlavine — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 15:50:37 +0000

It's a Half-Life 2 reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJshjMyg6no

New comment by smlavine in "Error payloads in Zig"

smlavine — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 01:47:21 +0000

I thought so too at first, coming from a language (Hare) where they are very easy and common, but the Diagnostics pattern isn't that bad once you expect it. Various examples: https://ziggit.dev/search?q=Diagnostics

New comment by smlavine in "Why is the sky blue?"

smlavine — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 19:38:27 +0000

"tell"?

New comment by smlavine in "Bun v1.3.9"

smlavine — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 18:20:06 +0000

When talking in terms of software parallelism, "parallel" and "sequential" are more common to describe, for example, multi-threaded vs. single-threaded implementations.

New comment by smlavine in "Every country should set 16 as the minimum age for social media accounts"

smlavine — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 20:34:15 +0000

No, it is a protocol that allows a user to create their own social network within their Messaging app.

New comment by smlavine in "Confidence Required"

smlavine — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 17:59:51 +0000

(2009)

New comment by smlavine in "I canceled my book deal"

smlavine — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 19:11:26 +0000

It says the first half of the advance would be paid on approval of the first third of the book. It also says that the first third of the book was never submitted. So I don't think the advance was ever paid out.

New comment by smlavine in "Flame Graphs vs Tree Maps vs Sunburst (2017)"

smlavine — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 01:57:28 +0000

QDirStat is a Linux equivalent: https://github.com/shundhammer/qdirstat

New comment by smlavine in "Replacing JavaScript with Just HTML"

smlavine — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 01:40:35 +0000

The Pentagram at the top of the page does not load without JS enabled.

New comment by smlavine in "Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features"

smlavine — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 19:46:17 +0000

I use Firefox on Android perhaps entirely because it supports uBlock Origin and my other extensions.

I would guess that of people that would ever go out of their way to use a non-Chrome browser on Android, the fraction who care about extensions is pretty significant.

New comment by smlavine in "GPT Image 1.5"

smlavine — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 22:20:54 +0000

This is terrifying. Truth is dead.

New comment by smlavine in "United States Antarctic Program Field Manual (2024) [pdf]"

smlavine — Sat, 06 Dec 2025 23:41:40 +0000

Related: a cool blog from a year or two ago from a participant in this program: https://brr.fyi

New comment by smlavine in "I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla"

smlavine — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 14:33:11 +0000

> They're all using it.

Not really. Go talk to anyone who uses the internet for Facebook, Whatsapp, and not much else. Lots of people have typed in chatgpt.com or had Google's AI shoved in their face, but the vast majority of "laypeople" I've talked to about AI (actually, they've talked to me about AI after learning I'm a tech guy -- "so what do you think about AI?") seem to be resigned to the fact that after the personal computer and the internet, whatever the rich guys in SF do is what is going to happen anyway. But I sense a feeling of powerlessness and a fear of being left behind, not anything approaching genuine interest in or excitement by the technology.

New comment by smlavine in "WriterdeckOS"

smlavine — Sat, 08 Nov 2025 20:29:42 +0000

Because then you'd have to do that.