Hacker News: sylvainr65

New comment by sylvainr65 in "'The French people want to save us': help pours in for glassmaker Duralex"

sylvainr65 — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 13:42:16 +0000

French Canadian here - I remember my mom loving these glasses, back in the 70s-80s. We still use some of them 50 years later. They last for decades.

New comment by sylvainr65 in "Samsung makes ads on smart fridges official with upcoming software update"

sylvainr65 — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 20:09:15 +0000

Apparently, you can turn off ads quite simply.

* How to turn off ads on your Family Hub The widget will appear by default on the fridges as part of the software update. However, Samsung is giving users the option to turn off ads. To do this, go to the Settings page on the fridge, scroll to Advertisements, select it, and you’ll be taken to a screen where you can toggle off ads.

This will remove the widget entirely. If you think you might actually like the widget’s other features (calendar, weather, and news), you can “X” out a particular ad, and it won’t pop up again. But then you’ll get another ad.

New comment by sylvainr65 in "Big Tech Killed the Golden Age of Programming"

sylvainr65 — Wed, 30 Jul 2025 20:09:35 +0000

Still hiring every other months in my company. Hard to find real talented developers. My guest : most of them are already employed. This article does not reflect my reality at all.

New comment by sylvainr65 in "Grand Theft Auto VI Is Now Coming May 26, 2026"

sylvainr65 — Fri, 02 May 2025 20:02:18 +0000

Still playing GTA IV. Hope they'll take more time for GTA VI.

New comment by sylvainr65 in "'It's better for humans in general': The 4-day workweek is closer than you think"

sylvainr65 — Fri, 31 May 2024 18:13:20 +0000

This is a cultural thing, I think. I'm proud to work more hours than my boss expects. My relative never brag about the number of days off they have, but will quickly tell you that they only took one week off last year. The expected reaction is: wow, you're a great worker.

New comment by sylvainr65 in "Why I hate your Single Page App (2016)"

sylvainr65 — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 22:25:58 +0000

Looking at your login, you probably gone through a lot more before cgi-bin. Nice.

New comment by sylvainr65 in "3x new books added to the Pirate Library Mirror"

sylvainr65 — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 17:52:59 +0000

I really like the Amazon Prime model: author are payed depending on the number of pages read. They get something like $4 to $5 per 1000 pages read.

New comment by sylvainr65 in "Ask HN: Why do people write comments?"

sylvainr65 — Tue, 27 Sep 2022 06:48:11 +0000

I often take a lot of time to write a comment. I think, I research, I change a word, remove a paragraph, move phrases around. And then, often, I just don't post it.

The reason I do this: It makes me think.

New comment by sylvainr65 in "Counterfeits, fraud, and theft: Why Silca changed its return policy"

sylvainr65 — Tue, 09 Aug 2022 16:21:19 +0000

I think I'm the average Amazon customer. If I buy something cheap and it breaks or doesn't work as expected, I just throw it away. If it's expensive, then I ask for a return, but I really take care to return it as new. If I command something and change my mind afterward, I just keep it and take it as a lesson.

New comment by sylvainr65 in "Why Ruby Is More Readable Than Python"

sylvainr65 — Tue, 26 Jul 2022 17:58:40 +0000

Not on topic but a little rant about dark themes. After years of reading code displayed in dark mode on a white page (high contrast), I still wonder why. It's really hard to see, at least for me. Most of the time, I end up selecting the whole piece of code to have white text on a black background - it's not as good as black text on a white background, but it's much better than dark blue or dark red on a black background.

This interesting article uses dark red for operators (".", "=", "<", etc.). This is one of the worst choices. On a dark background, please do not use dark color.

New comment by sylvainr65 in "Euro Truck Simulator 2: ZX Spectrum Edition"

sylvainr65 — Sat, 02 Apr 2022 16:01:26 +0000

Would love this !

New comment by sylvainr65 in "In Moscow, McDonald's packs up, radio falls silent and the brain drain begins"

sylvainr65 — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 22:31:53 +0000

CNN, command.

New comment by sylvainr65 in "Principles of Green Software Engineering"

sylvainr65 — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 21:00:15 +0000

I don't follow. We wrote fax softwares that eliminated the need to buy a fax. We wrote accounting softwares that eliminated the need to have hundred of accountants to get to the office every day, using cars! We wrote softwares that eliminated the need to sell and buy physical encyclopedias, dictionaries, watches, photo albums, typewriters, books, compasses, maps, calculators, tickets, cameras, VHS, calendars, answering machines, telephones, flashlights, radios, newspapers, agendas, snail mail, sound systems, physical money. We wrote softwares that get anything delivered to your door without having you getting in your car and spending hours in 3 physical stores. We wrote softwares that make it possible to share your neighbor car for a little fee. We wrote softwares that can assess climate changes effects.

To me, softwares are the greenest inventions ever.

New comment by sylvainr65 in "World on 'catastrophic' path to 2.7C warming, warns UN chief"

sylvainr65 — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 06:28:46 +0000

> are skeptics even making predictions?

I think that this is their point: predictions cannot be made with our current understanding of climate.

New comment by sylvainr65 in "World on 'catastrophic' path to 2.7C warming, warns UN chief"

sylvainr65 — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 06:21:06 +0000

> and give it away

But who would pay for this? At the end, the States can only take the money in the pocket of its citizens, present or future.

New comment by sylvainr65 in "World on 'catastrophic' path to 2.7C warming, warns UN chief"

sylvainr65 — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 06:14:51 +0000

> A&W tried introducing a 1/3 lb burger, and it failed horribly because the average consumer couldn't understand that 1/3 is greater than 1/4.

Why then they didn't come up with a 1/5 lb burger?

New comment by sylvainr65 in "How to Be Clear"

sylvainr65 — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 20:25:58 +0000

Excellent post. I should add that text formating is almost as important as what you want to say.

11 short sentences addressing 4 points packed in a single paragraph is really painfull to read.

Use paragraphs, new lines and bullet points as much as you can.

Let the reader breath.

New comment by sylvainr65 in "Thank You, Apple for Standing Strong for Privacy"

sylvainr65 — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 19:57:29 +0000

Mozilla tries to find a niche to survive. But I really think that personalized adverts are a better thing that random adverts.

New comment by sylvainr65 in "The strange economics of open-source software (2015)"

sylvainr65 — Sun, 24 Jan 2021 00:54:25 +0000

Your premise is false: Open source software has nothing to do with communism, Marxism or socialism.

How many successful open source software created in communist countries do you know? Isn't it surprising that most successful open source software have been developed in capitalist countries ?

In fact, only capitalist countries give you enough wealth to spend a lot of time on hobbies, like developing open source software. If you were living in a communist country, you would probably spend most of your time searching for food.

New comment by sylvainr65 in "How Microsoft crushed Slack"

sylvainr65 — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 00:03:10 +0000

No. I was using Netscape in the 90s. Somewhere, Netscape published a new version that was very buggy. I switched to IE because it was way more stable. And never come back.

Same thing for MS Word vs Wordperfect and Excel vs Lotus 123.