Hacker News: tobinfricke

New comment by tobinfricke in "Why Can't Walnut Creek Build 3 Bedroom Apartments with a Playground?"

tobinfricke — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 22:20:14 +0000

This seems like a specious argument:

"Most of the apartments have a window on just one side. The interior facing rooms on the lower floors are going to have a lot of trouble getting light in. With a window on only one side, you can't ventilate your apartment by opening windows on multiple sides. This increases the demand for HVAC, which increases the cost of living."

I doubt A/C costs are anything but negligible compared to the other design decisions.

New comment by tobinfricke in "The desperation of NYTimes"

tobinfricke — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 18:23:02 +0000

Any place that allows easy instantaneous subscription by a simple web form, but makes you call and talk to a person during limited business hours, is a toxic place.

Happily, this practice is illegal in California. Sometimes consumer-protection laws work ... and are necessary.

(As a hackaround, try using a VPN to make it appear as if you are connecting from California...)

New comment by tobinfricke in "It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12"

tobinfricke — Fri, 29 May 2026 17:38:52 +0000

Is it feasible to run Linux on the Apple hardware? Seems like that could meet your requirements, except possibly "align with my values." I saw https://asahilinux.org/ but don't know how usable it is, or whether the long battery life and hardware support is preserved.

New comment by tobinfricke in "2-D Mathematical Curves"

tobinfricke — Tue, 05 May 2026 18:01:41 +0000

Reminds me of the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences https://oeis.org/

But I was somewhat surprised when my first click in this encyclopedia of 2d curves landed me on a 3d sponge https://www.2dcurves.com/3d/3dm.html

New comment by tobinfricke in "New 10 GbE USB adapters are cooler, smaller, cheaper"

tobinfricke — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 20:18:17 +0000

How about 10 GbE switches/routers? I have 10 GbE fiber-to-the-home via Sonic, but so far just have it plugged into a Google Wifi router with gigabit ethernet. Would love to have 10 GbE wired to my desk.

New comment by tobinfricke in "What is jj and why should I care?"

tobinfricke — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:35:12 +0000

Here are some notes on Jujutsu from Evan Martin that I found interesting/useful:

https://neugierig.org/software/blog/2025/08/jj-bookmarks.htm...

New comment by tobinfricke in "VitruvianOS – Desktop Linux Inspired by the BeOS"

tobinfricke — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 16:09:24 +0000

I ran OS/2 Warp and was a fan of it... But to say that it was simply "better" than Windows 95 is a bridge too far. It had its strengths (rock solid multitasking) but also plenty of rough edges.

New comment by tobinfricke in "The Physics and Economics of Moving 44 Tonnes at 56mph"

tobinfricke — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 22:53:22 +0000

Seems like a game-theoretic problem

Taking their foot off the gas for a second only hurts them

New comment by tobinfricke in "California is free of drought for the first time in 25 years"

tobinfricke — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 23:59:33 +0000

This is practically all that need be said on the topic

New comment by tobinfricke in "Ask HN: My family business runs on a 1993-era text-based-UI (TUI). Anybody else?"

tobinfricke — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 08:13:45 +0000

Yeah so does CostCo

New comment by tobinfricke in "Do Users Verify SSH Keys? (2011) [pdf]"

tobinfricke — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 15:26:53 +0000

Also in compliance with Betteridge's law of headlines: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

New comment by tobinfricke in "Scientists may have found a way to eliminate chromosome linked to Down syndrome"

tobinfricke — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 01:29:31 +0000

NIPT is non-invasive compared to amniocentesis

New comment by tobinfricke in "Driverless semis have started running regular longhaul routes"

tobinfricke — Sat, 03 May 2025 00:23:13 +0000

Unlike "the way oversized cargo/load moves today," the chase vehicle is just another Peterbilt truck pulling cargo, but with a safety driver. It's not a flag car or something like that.

New comment by tobinfricke in "Boom XB-1 First Supersonic Flight [video]"

tobinfricke — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 05:56:25 +0000

What cargo would justify a supersonic flight?

New comment by tobinfricke in "Noise Filtering Using €1 Filter (2020)"

tobinfricke — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 20:17:02 +0000

This has the same vibes as "Tan's method", wherein someone managed to rediscover and publish the well-known trapezoidal rule for integration from Calculus in a medical journal

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9602/rediscover...

New comment by tobinfricke in "How do you juggle WFH with a baby?"

tobinfricke — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 22:18:33 +0000

I'm sure that some people are able to make it work, but in general the answer is: you don't. Taking care of a baby is a full time job in and of itself, associated with frequent interruptions and sleep deprivation.

New comment by tobinfricke in "FDA Proposes Ending Use of Oral Phenylephrine as OTC Nasal Decongestant"

tobinfricke — Fri, 08 Nov 2024 05:05:34 +0000

Well, it doesn't work.

New comment by tobinfricke in "The Visualization of Differential Forms (2021)"

tobinfricke — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 20:06:47 +0000

The same could be said when they are written using Gibbs notation with div and curl. Surprisingly, when Einstein wrote his paper on special relativity, Gibbs vector notation had not yet been widely adopted, and Einstein himself wrote out Maxwell's equations in component form.

New comment by tobinfricke in "Why does the chromaticity diagram look like that?"

tobinfricke — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 22:59:53 +0000

Wavelength (or frequency) is linear but light, in general, is made up of many wavelengths -- an entire spectrum.

New comment by tobinfricke in "Tokens are a big reason today's generative AI falls short"

tobinfricke — Sat, 06 Jul 2024 20:23:24 +0000

The output of ChatGPT almost always sounds good. That's the point.

But I would wager that its answer was at least wrong, and perhaps total nonsense.

That's the real hazard of using ChatGPT as a learning tool. You are in no position to evaluate whether the output makes any sense.