Hacker News: tvb12

New comment by tvb12 in "1M Downloads of Zorin OS 18"

tvb12 — Sun, 23 Nov 2025 22:00:11 +0000

It would be a really huge advantage if there were a really clean way to browse, apply, and (extremely importantly) reverse and remove such a configuration script. I've tried using KDE's customization options to tweak my desktop, and what I found is that I'm very capable of creating the worst desktop I've ever used.

New comment by tvb12 in "The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia"

tvb12 — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 23:36:32 +0000

Would it feel better to see your bank account and pay checks shrink by 90%?

New comment by tvb12 in "Adios Chicos, 25 Years of KDE"

tvb12 — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 23:10:01 +0000

For others who might not know, KDE Neon is a distribution. I was initially confused because I thought it might have been an alternative desktop environment to KDE Plasma.

This is probably the greatest curse and blessing of modern Linux: there are an impractical number of distributions. I guess you could probably say the same thing for desktop environments, various services, bootloaders, etc.

New comment by tvb12 in "How to become a pure mathematician or statistician (2008)"

tvb12 — Sat, 13 Sep 2025 01:37:52 +0000

Pure mathemistician

New comment by tvb12 in "Building the mouse Logitech won't make"

tvb12 — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 01:29:07 +0000

On the subject of adding more buttons, I think there needs to be a rethinking of mouse button events at the OS level. Gaming mice with 12-20+ buttons have to resort to creating keyboard events with weird key combinations because there aren't actually that many mouse events, which is insane. There are currently only 12 valid integers (12 types of "click") sent from the raw mouse events. Those need special handling because the numbers are chosen very strangely, but why can't we agree that for any number within some range, the odd number is a key-press and the even number is the key-release, or something like that? You don't have to create named events for all of them, but the raw integers should be valid even if you have to use the lower level events.

If I want to build a mouse with 32,000 buttons, the limit should not be the operating system's mouse event.

New comment by tvb12 in "How to speed up US passenger rail, without bullet trains"

tvb12 — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 01:02:05 +0000

Dang, there's a track on there, within a bike ride from me, that goes all the way to the biggest city in my state and passes within a few hundred feet of the university I attended. That could have made things easier.

New comment by tvb12 in "Trump's Tariff Formula Makes No Economic Sense. It's Also Based on an Error"

tvb12 — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 06:47:50 +0000

I'm beginning to suspect that I've read more of this paper than anyone in the current administration has.

While President Trump has proposed a 10% tariff on the world as a whole, such a tariff is unlikely to be uniform across countries.

Oof.

Once tariffs begin increasing beyond 20% (on a broad, effective basis), they become welfare-reducing

Uh...

How can the U.S. get trading and security partners to agree to such a deal? First, there is the stick of tariffs. Second, there is the carrot of the defense umbrella and the risk of losing it.

Ukraine, Greenland, Canada... They've created so much doubt over the defense umbrella that they've really hurt their position here.

New comment by tvb12 in "Trump's Tariff Formula Makes No Economic Sense. It's Also Based on an Error"

tvb12 — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 04:37:06 +0000

I'm still reading the paper, but Stephen Miran must regret writing this...

A sudden shock to tariff rates of the size proposed can result in financial market volatility. ... A second Trump Administration is likely therefore take steps to ensure large structural changes to the international tax code occur in ways that are minimally disruptive to markets and the economy

New comment by tvb12 in "Mozilla launching “Thundermail” email service to take on Gmail, Microsoft 365"

tvb12 — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 01:14:33 +0000

I can see it. Firefox 137.0 (desktop) with uBlock Origin enabled.

New comment by tvb12 in "Repairable Flatpack Toaster"

tvb12 — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 05:14:51 +0000

I've always wanted toasters to have a lid to keep dust out. That's one thing I would add to their design.

New comment by tvb12 in "I struggled with Git, so I'm making a game to spare others the pain"

tvb12 — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 05:22:03 +0000

I recognize that URL! Git-sim is so cool!

New comment by tvb12 in "Tattoo ink sold on Amazon has high levels of weird and rare bacteria"

tvb12 — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 00:51:45 +0000

I've been using alibris.com

New comment by tvb12 in "A small lathe built in a Japanese prison camp (1949)"

tvb12 — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 04:25:18 +0000

Machining metal parts is pretty loud. How was any of this done in secret?

New comment by tvb12 in "A practical guide to quitting your smartphone"

tvb12 — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 04:05:14 +0000

I like my Garmin, but map updates are surprisingly expensive.

New comment by tvb12 in "Infinite Craft"

tvb12 — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 22:27:44 +0000

I got dragon from fire + swamp.

Another strange one was puddle + rock = pudding + dragon = custard.

New comment by tvb12 in "Harnessing heat from wastewater"

tvb12 — Mon, 15 Jan 2024 18:39:23 +0000

$851?!

Well, at second glance, it's definitely larger than it appeared to be in the picture. Home depot says 35 pounds, so ~$100 worth of copper.

New comment by tvb12 in "RIP Microsoft WordPad"

tvb12 — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 00:58:23 +0000

Most of the machines have hundreds of settings divided across a dozen different sections. Simple things like bold and underline make it much easier to visually parse the sections.

New comment by tvb12 in "RIP Microsoft WordPad"

tvb12 — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 00:26:23 +0000

This is such an annoying change. I work in a production facility and I don't get to choose what is installed on the computers. It's either WordPad, notepad, or open a browser for Word. WordPad is obviously a step up over notepad if you need any sort of formatting.

Now imagine a machine is malfunctioning and you need to look up the last known "good" settings to see if anything changed. First open a browser, then go to the office site, then fish out your cell phone because you're going to need the authentication code to log in, then dance around for a bit because you're in a warehouse and the reception is terrible, then open the Word app, then wait ages for it to "work on it".

All I'm trying to do is quickly read some text. I don't see how this is better than clicking a text file icon on the desktop.

New comment by tvb12 in "Pluto, a Modern Lua Dialect"

tvb12 — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 00:32:57 +0000

Even though it would make the language a little more verbose, I would love if Lua had a 'global' keyword and declaring global/local was required. With that one change, I think Lua would have the best implementation of scope out of any language I've used.

New comment by tvb12 in "The Art of Electronics (2015)"

tvb12 — Mon, 25 Dec 2023 04:32:18 +0000

Hmm. My hardcover copy has a mangled end-page, as seen in the last example on that page. Everything else looks pretty good, though, and my order history from 2017(!) says it was sold by Amazon Services LLC. I got it for about $59, which is the lowest price recorded on camelcamelcamel. I wasn't aware I'd bought it right at the dip. Today it's $111, which would have been brutal at the time.

I can't really say I've gotten my money's worth, but there's still time. I still want to learn more electronics, but I was left wondering "what's next?" at the end of my Physics BA classes and I haven't stumbled onto the answer yet.