Hacker News: theFco

New comment by theFco in "Claude Opus 5"

theFco — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 15:11:11 +0000

maybe we need to consider becoming re-sensitized because our lives may become harder.

Even if our collective ability to support an prosperous existence improves, it will take decades to adjust to loss job, and a new notion of who gets to have money to buy food and a peaceful life (and this is a good scenario).

It's also possible that this increases our ability to wage war without military life loss (but with civilian loses).

Or maybe it will be much less relevant, but we should keep an eye on to see which is the outcome...

New comment by theFco in "College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work"

theFco — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 01:04:46 +0000

In my undergrad, coursework did not count towards the grade for the module. But you earned the right to sit for the final exam by passing the courswork.

New comment by theFco in "Writerdeck.org"

theFco — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 16:20:07 +0000

I agree with this. I would add that the important part of the practice of writing is not the tools, but once you are writing you can try tools that help you continue. For my creative writing (that I do mostly as a hobby) I have a nice notebook with a nice pen that I use to write short stories and world building excercises, and characters, etc. I don't need the nice notebook, I did not get it before starting, but it does feel nice to come home having thought of what to write and have a pleasant notebook and pen.

My job includes writing technical documents but I use latex and emacs because that's what I have always used.

But practice > tools!

New comment by theFco in "Intel Foundry demonstrates first Arm-based chip on 18a node"

theFco — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 13:56:14 +0000

As I understand it, Intel's strength was in manufacturing their own design in their exclusive (and most advanced) process. So the advantage was being vertically integrated. State of the art processes are too expensive these days. x86 CPUs alone cannot sustain them. Specially, when AMD builds their CPU also with state of the art processes. So by becoming a foundry, Intel may be able to have state of the art fabs and use it in their own designs of x86 CPUs, GPUs, etc.

New comment by theFco in "RFK Jr is wrong – there's a rich history of autistic poets"

theFco — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 13:58:52 +0000

I feel the statement "autistic people will never write a poem" may be trivially true, because (I suspect) many people will never write a poem. The implication that this is invalid or wrong is perverse. And the fact that now we have to argue for the dignity of autistic people by saying that there are autistic poets is also non-sensical.

These are all cruel suggestions about people, we should challenge why RFK makes statements like this. Not take them at face value, as if they merit being answered.

New comment by theFco in "Elon Musk spells danger for Accenture, McKinsey and their rivals"

theFco — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 13:46:41 +0000

Institutional knowledge stays in the institution and builds up after people have moved from those roles even. Consulting companies bring the operational knowledge to help with a specific situation. Sometimes you may need the institutional knowledge (if it aligns with the mission of the organisation) and sometimes it is better to concentrate on your mission and use the consultancy's knowledge to help you. Blanket statements are problematic. Particularly for something as complex of the goverment as a whole.

New comment by theFco in "Nobody gets fired for picking JSON, but maybe they should?"

theFco — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 11:51:23 +0000

The argument that it is tested 10 trillion times a day is a fallacy (because it can't be that only the most popular option should be the best forever). And furthermore, in this context "tested" is a bit of an overstatement, I would say "used" many gazillions of times a day.

New comment by theFco in "I tried every top email marketing tool"

theFco — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 17:06:43 +0000

While I think (as others say) we should not police op's time, I would like to know what is the reasoning the used when choosing between focusing and not having all your eggs in one basket.

I think arguments by people making these choices would be very educational to me (as a person with a bit of a scatterd brain).

New comment by theFco in "Cheap Thrills, an album cover by Robert Crumb (2020)"

theFco — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 11:12:11 +0000

and furthermore, "families that are a bit off" are still plenty today, and people still do the best with what they got. I don't see the need to say that was that way then...

New comment by theFco in "Move Fast and Abandon Things"

theFco — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 08:48:08 +0000

The MVP shows if the idea would get traction. But what good is an idea that gets traction if it is unfeasible to scale, or the organisation is not willing to support it. I think this is what google does with many of its products that end up cancelled. They tested the MVP, people bought in, but the organisation already moved on, so there is no will to support and further develop it. We should be responsible and do an MVP only after deciding if the organisation would be able and interested to scale a product and support it. Otherwise, the downsides are a toxic crunch to support the product, customers are unhappy with yet another product dies, etc...

New comment by theFco in "Apple Watch sleep apnea detection gets FDA approval"

theFco — Mon, 16 Sep 2024 19:34:38 +0000

What do you mean? The article is about how they got FDA approval... Isn't that the way to go? As in, it's a much higher bar than having a medical license and insurance no?

New comment by theFco in "Gdi.js: JavaScript Runtime Written in Object Pascal"

theFco — Tue, 10 Sep 2024 05:10:10 +0000

I got confused with window’s graphics device interface (GDI). Is this related? It is for windows after all.

New comment by theFco in "Understanding the Y Combinator"

theFco — Fri, 06 Sep 2024 15:28:50 +0000

It’s the representation of a natural number in the lambda calculus that Church proposed.

New comment by theFco in "Y Combinator backs its first defense startup, Ares Industries"

theFco — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 00:52:57 +0000

And don’t forget the occasional uncomfortable democracy that needs to be crushed (think Allende’s Chile)

New comment by theFco in "Rabbit R1 can be run on a Android device"

theFco — Sun, 05 May 2024 12:58:07 +0000

Now the question is: would you want to?

New comment by theFco in "Takeaways from the Jane Street bond prospectus"

theFco — Thu, 02 May 2024 14:48:39 +0000

but the other part of the definition is also important: "without political institutions or hierarchical government; anarchism". So the typical corporation is not exactly an anarchy according to the definition.

New comment by theFco in "The History of Microsoft Encarta"

theFco — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 11:26:06 +0000

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy[1], while restricted in scope, takes the approach of having experts write the articles that are then revised and evolve with time. So a different approach is possible, but I think it would be hard for an encyclopedia with the breadth of wikipedia to do it. Maybe there is space for more specialised encyclopedias that take the approach of articles having authors and revisions instead of wikis. But all in all, I think both approaches compliment eachother.

[1]: https://plato.stanford.edu/

New comment by theFco in ".KKRIEGER – Fully Functional Sci-Fi FPS into Just 96kb"

theFco — Tue, 05 Sep 2023 20:29:08 +0000

Only of poetry. It is a reference to "The road not taken" by Robert Frost. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44272/the-road-not-ta...

I suspect everyone may know, but some may not and it's a great poem!

New comment by theFco in "A novel the CIA spent a fortune to suppress"

theFco — Wed, 24 May 2023 08:40:59 +0000

In this scenario, the CIA is not protecting against greater evil for the people of the country. They are just protecting the interests of the US. Now, the CIA's mission is to protect the US interests, there is nothing wrong. However, the means they use to do so may have something wrong with that. Installing and protecting dictators that are favorable to the US is unethical. Also the CIA does not furter "American values" in these interventions, for instance when suppressing weak democracies with strong dictators (Think Chile's Pinochet). This kind of intervention can easily go wrong, and will often do go wrong (Chile's case was but one example, the Guatemalan novel discusses another).

New comment by theFco in "Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder."

theFco — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 17:11:15 +0000

I suspect the brain alone cannot do it. At a some point the chemistry needs to happen, and it has to be in the right place (so the physics of moving liquids inside your body is also required).