<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: stdbrouw</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=stdbrouw</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sun, 05 Apr 2026 12:05:14 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=stdbrouw" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stdbrouw in "AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The AITA comparison seems apt insofar as chatbots function as a second opinion. You're consciously or subconsciously looking for an outside perspective that might differ from that of your friends, provided to you by a computer that doesn't need to care about your feelings, unlike a friend. If the chatbot ends up mimicking what (not very close) friends do, you might falsely conclude that two very different kinds of sources have converged on the same answer, whereas you are really just getting two flavors of the same diplomatic interaction.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 30 Mar 2026 06:35:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47571109</link><dc:creator>stdbrouw</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47571109</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47571109</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stdbrouw in "AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>My subjective impression is that 5 years ago AITA was actually quite wholesome and the top comments tended to be insightful. The shift towards "set boundaries, always choose yourself, you don't owe anybody anything" seems fairly recent.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 30 Mar 2026 06:29:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47571068</link><dc:creator>stdbrouw</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47571068</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47571068</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stdbrouw in "What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I read the Norwegian article that was linked, and it isn't actually similar: you would only have to pay taxes on food you've grown on your balcony (and mean to consume yourself) if you are a farmer, are growing it during regular working hours, and have an insanely huge balcony.<p>Another thing that makes home construction a bit different in this regard is that you could claim to build a house for yourself, live in it for a bit, and then sell it on a couple of years later. That'd be an easy way to avoid or evade taxes. Not so easy with lettuce -- once you've eaten it, you've eaten it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 25 Mar 2026 11:17:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47515845</link><dc:creator>stdbrouw</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47515845</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47515845</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stdbrouw in "Debunking Zswap and Zram Myths"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I get the impression that most desktop users enable zram or zswap to get a little bit more out of their RAM but there is never any real worry about OOM, not regularly anyway, so then (according to the principles laid out in the article) it shouldn't matter much.<p>On my workstation, I run statistical simulations in R which can be wasteful with memory and cause a lot of transient memory pressure, and for that scenario I do like that zswap works alongside regular swap. Especially when combined with the advice from <a href="https://makedebianfunagainandlearnhowtodoothercoolstufftoo.computer/doku.php?id=start:memmanagement" rel="nofollow">https://makedebianfunagainandlearnhowtodoothercoolstufftoo.c...</a> to wake up kswapd early, it really does seem to make a difference.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 24 Mar 2026 18:47:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47507360</link><dc:creator>stdbrouw</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47507360</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47507360</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stdbrouw in "Debunking Zswap and Zram Myths"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It doesn't really need any config on most distros, no.<p>That said, if you want it to behave at its best when OOM, it does help to tweak vm.swappiness, vm.watermark_scale_factor, vm.min_free_kbytes, vm.page-cluster and a couple of other parameters.<p>See e.g.<p><a href="https://makedebianfunagainandlearnhowtodoothercoolstufftoo.computer/doku.php?id=start:memmanagement" rel="nofollow">https://makedebianfunagainandlearnhowtodoothercoolstufftoo.c...</a><p><a href="https://documentation.suse.com/sles/15-SP7/html/SLES-all/cha-tuning-memory.html" rel="nofollow">https://documentation.suse.com/sles/15-SP7/html/SLES-all/cha...</a><p>I don't know of any good statistics script for zswap, I use the script below as a custom waybar module:<p><pre><code>  #!/bin/bash
  stored_pages="$(cat /sys/kernel/debug/zswap/stored_pages)"
  pool_total_size="$(cat /sys/kernel/debug/zswap/pool_total_size)"
  compressed_size_mib="$((pool_total_size / 1024 / 1024))"
  compressed_size_gib="$((pool_total_size / 1024 / 1024 / 1024))"
  compressed_size_mib_remainder="$((compressed_size_mib * 10 / 1024 - compressed_size_gib * 10))"
  uncompressed_size="$((stored_pages * 4096))"
  uncompressed_size_mib="$((uncompressed_size / 1024 / 1024))"
  uncompressed_size_gib="$((uncompressed_size / 1024 / 1024 / 1024))"
  uncompressed_size_mib_remainder="$((uncompressed_size_mib * 10 / 1024 - uncompressed_size_gib * 10))"
  ratio="$((100 * uncompressed_size / (pool_total_size + 1)))"
  echo "$compressed_size_gib.$compressed_size_mib_remainder"</code></pre></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 24 Mar 2026 18:33:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47507122</link><dc:creator>stdbrouw</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47507122</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47507122</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stdbrouw in "What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You don’t get more income, but you do get more disposable income.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 23 Mar 2026 11:59:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47488252</link><dc:creator>stdbrouw</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47488252</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47488252</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stdbrouw in "What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You don't have to pay VAT on things you fix for yourself, because you don't pay yourself at all. This is in fact a kind of (legal) tax avoidance, but not (illegal) tax evasion. Given the cost of housing, being able to build your own house or even just doing small fixes here and there, leads to a big increase in perceived income. The tradies I know can afford whatever kind of car they want, whatever kind of holiday experience, and they live in a nice home. Mind you, they typically work 50h+ a week so there's that.<p>Of course, the parent may also have been referring to getting clients to pay in cash and not putting anything on the books, at the expense of getting barely any pension in the end, but that's not how I read it. This is getting somewhat less common because people are more likely than 20 years ago to get a loan from a bank to pay for renovation work, and the bank will want to see invoices.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 23 Mar 2026 09:44:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47487199</link><dc:creator>stdbrouw</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47487199</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47487199</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stdbrouw in "How the Sriracha guys screwed over their supplier"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Well, it implies that the "grassroots" element of it is fake, the message itself being false is optional.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 09 Mar 2026 13:23:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47308741</link><dc:creator>stdbrouw</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47308741</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47308741</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stdbrouw in "Does that use a lot of energy?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Doesn't this argument hinge on equivocating between two different definitions of aversion, though? I'm averse to bananas, but that doesn't mean I think it's immoral to eat them. The moral dimension kicks in if somebody else had to ride that stationary bike for you, because then you'd be wasting their time on frivolities.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 04 Mar 2026 22:01:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47254583</link><dc:creator>stdbrouw</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47254583</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47254583</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stdbrouw in "Major European payment processor can't send email to Google Workspace users"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>So if I send an email that lacks a feature that MUST be there, will the email police come get me? At a certain point, looking for an analogy stops making sense I think.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 13 Feb 2026 10:50:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47001303</link><dc:creator>stdbrouw</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47001303</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47001303</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stdbrouw in "Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>One of the things I like most about CachyOS is that the configuration is all just in text files, one of the things I like least is that I am never quite sure whether to modify the systemd unit settings that are usually in /usr/lib somewhere, the app settings in /etc or the personal configs in ~/.config. For packages that I am unfamiliar with, I usually end up trying all three locations until I notice that my changes seem to stick.<p>The installer also completely broke the Windows partition that came with the workstation even though I was  planning on dual booting, but oh well, no great loss there.<p>Other than that, there are some small conveniences and apps that I miss from MacOS (the mac calendar and mail apps are just so nice!) but the Niri window manager is just so amazing that at this point I don't think there's anything that could make me switch back.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 28 Jan 2026 16:03:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46797109</link><dc:creator>stdbrouw</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46797109</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46797109</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stdbrouw in "Novo Nordisk launches Wegovy weight-loss pill in US, triggering price war"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Hah! Thanks for the correction.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 06 Jan 2026 09:17:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46510248</link><dc:creator>stdbrouw</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46510248</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46510248</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stdbrouw in "Novo Nordisk launches Wegovy weight-loss pill in US, triggering price war"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Cute and thus worthy of an upvote, but whenever I see scientists or economists refer to first or second order effects it pertains to things that are subsequent to each other in time, or at least intended vs. ancillary. I don't think anyone except for a Stafford "the purpose of a system is what it does" Beer acolyte would designate new demand of pill bottles as the first order effect of a new medication.<p>It's just something that statisticians have observed across many fields: you theorize about how potentially huge a particular interaction effect or knock-on effect could be relative to the main effect, you read about the Jevons Paradox and intuitively feel that it can explain so much of the world today... and then you get the data and it just almost never does. No reason why it couldn't, just empirically it rarely happens.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 05 Jan 2026 22:05:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46505677</link><dc:creator>stdbrouw</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46505677</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46505677</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stdbrouw in "Novo Nordisk launches Wegovy weight-loss pill in US, triggering price war"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The thing about second order effects is that they are almost never larger than the first order effect.<p>Furthermore, GLP-1 users report having fewer cravings or just reduced appetite in general, whereas what you describe would require some sort of "calorie reduction pill" which would allow people to lose weight without altering their relationship to food. But that pill does not exist.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 05 Jan 2026 20:03:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46504031</link><dc:creator>stdbrouw</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46504031</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46504031</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stdbrouw in "Why does a least squares fit appear to have a bias when applied to simple data?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>(Generalized) linear models have a straightforward probabilistic interpretation -- E(Y|X) -- which I don't think is true of total least squares. So it's more of an engineering solution to the problem, and in statistics you'd be more likely to go for other methods such as regression calibration to deal with measurement error in the independent variables.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 05 Jan 2026 08:18:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46496439</link><dc:creator>stdbrouw</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46496439</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46496439</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stdbrouw in "Meta is using the Linux scheduler designed for Valve's Steam Deck on its servers"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I feel like all of the elements are there: zram, zswap, various packages that improve on default oom handling... maybe it's more about creating sane defaults that "just work" at this point?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 23 Dec 2025 20:10:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46368943</link><dc:creator>stdbrouw</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46368943</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46368943</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stdbrouw in "Over fifty new hallucinations in ICLR 2026 submissions"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yeah, I didn't want to be contrary just for the sake of it, the heuristics you mention seem like good ones, and if followed would probably already cut down on quite a few superfluous references in most papers.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 08 Dec 2025 07:39:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46189498</link><dc:creator>stdbrouw</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46189498</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46189498</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stdbrouw in "Over fifty new hallucinations in ICLR 2026 submissions"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Do you still feel the same way if the froiznok method is an ANOVA table of a linear regression, with a log-transformed outcome? Should I reference Fisher, Galton, Newton, the first person to log transform an outcome in a regression analysis, the first person to log transform the particular outcome used in your paper, the R developers, and Gauss and Markov for showing that under certain conditions OLS is the best linear unbiased estimator? And then a couple of references about the importance of quantitative analysis in general? Because that is the level of detail I’m seeing :-)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 07 Dec 2025 19:39:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46184423</link><dc:creator>stdbrouw</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46184423</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46184423</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stdbrouw in "Over fifty new hallucinations in ICLR 2026 submissions"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The idea that references in a scientific paper should be plentiful but aren't really that important, is a consequence of a previous technological revolution: the internet.<p>You'll find a lot of papers from, say, the '70s, with a grand total of maybe 10 references, all of them to crucial prior work, and if those references don't say what the author claims they should say (e.g. that the particular method that is employed is valid), then chances are that the current paper is weaker than it seems, or even invalid, and so it is extremely important to check those references.<p>Then the internet came along, scientists started padding their work with easily found but barely relevant references and journal editors started requiring that even "the earth is round" should be well-referenced. The result is that peer reviewers feel that asking them to check the references is akin to asking them to do a spell check. Fair enough, I agree, I usually can't be bothered to do many or any citation checks when I am asked to do peer review, but it's good to remember that this in itself is an indication of a perverted system, which we just all ignored -- at our peril -- until LLM hallucinations upset the status quo.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 07 Dec 2025 16:12:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46182744</link><dc:creator>stdbrouw</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46182744</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46182744</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by stdbrouw in "Python Data Science Handbook"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Arguably Spark solves a problem that does not exist anymore: single node performance with tools like DuckDB and Polars is so good that there’s no need for more complex orchestration anymore, and these tools are sufficiently user-friendly that there is little point to switching to Pandas for smaller datasets.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 02 Dec 2025 18:47:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46124881</link><dc:creator>stdbrouw</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46124881</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46124881</guid></item></channel></rss>