Hacker News: watt

New comment by watt in "Python 3.14 garbage collection rigamarole"

watt — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 08:55:11 +0000

Instead of "Reference counting primer" I would like to see a primer on how exactly such a huge change can go into Python without formal PIP process.

New comment by watt in "AI agent bankrupted their operator while trying to scan DN42"

watt — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 11:47:54 +0000

the billing alerts DO NOT help. you may rack many thousands of $$$ before you know it.

New comment by watt in "Frontier AI has broken the open CTF format"

watt — Sun, 17 May 2026 11:57:54 +0000

If you think you know what every acronym stands for, I recommend CBT.

New comment by watt in "Accelerando (2005)"

watt — Sun, 17 May 2026 10:27:58 +0000

gets more conventional, you mean. the book is outstanding.

New comment by watt in "Accelerando (2005)"

watt — Sun, 17 May 2026 10:23:52 +0000

Reynolds' Aurora trilogy (of Revelation Space - Aurora Rising, Elysium Fire, Machine Vendetta) hits very close.

New comment by watt in "Accelerando (2005)"

watt — Sun, 17 May 2026 10:22:23 +0000

try M. John Harrison - he has similar command of the word. His Kefahuchi Tract trilogy (Light, Nova Swing, Empty Space).

New comment by watt in "Zed 1.0"

watt — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 15:23:08 +0000

And the icons are too small. It's vaguely a mystery meat navigation.

New comment by watt in "Tim Cook Is Leaving. Good"

watt — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 13:40:11 +0000

HomeKit cooking your phone battery, period.

New comment by watt in "The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code"

watt — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 17:57:47 +0000

It is full of these short sentences that AI writing loves, sort of to feel "punchy". Normally you would copy-edit that stuff, join them up, have the writing have some rhythm. I agree with GP, the article is hard to read because it seems to have a lot of https://tropes.fyi/

New comment by watt in "The "Passive Income" trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs"

watt — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 18:42:23 +0000

> if they wanted to switch to pumping out destroyers, missiles and drones

This is such a naive take. Nobody is coming to US to try to outgun you. The moment petrodollar wobbles, the moment US Dollar stops being the world reserve currency, the game will be over for you. You will discover what it really means to be competitive, once the world stops giving you goods essentially in exchange for glass beads.

New comment by watt in "Anthropic downgraded cache TTL on March 6th"

watt — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 19:40:47 +0000

That issue now is closed, probably as "not planned".

New comment by watt in "US appeals court declares 158-year-old home distilling ban unconstitutional"

watt — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 09:05:37 +0000

> The Feds added methanol to bootlegged hooch

how did that work? did the Feds pose as some false flag bootleggers? do you have some sources I could read up on?

thing is, russia has a large tradition of home distillation (samogonka), and they too have tropes of people going blind. there have been a lot of cases of people dying because of bad alcohol, here's somewhat recent case: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/contaminated-cider-deaths-russi...

New comment by watt in "We found an undocumented bug in the Apollo 11 guidance computer code"

watt — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 20:12:51 +0000

Oh, it's Mandala effect now? I could swear it was Mandela before.

New comment by watt in "Thinking Fast, Slow, and Artificial: How AI Is Reshaping Human Reasoning"

watt — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 12:24:43 +0000

Says who? Trillionaire capitalist overlords?

New comment by watt in "Hide macOS Tahoe's Menu Icons"

watt — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 22:15:20 +0000

Read Tonsky for that. https://tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icons/ a disgrace. https://tonsky.me/blog/tahoe-icons/writing_direction@2x.webp...

New comment by watt in "The engine of Germany's wealth is blocking its future"

watt — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 20:49:56 +0000

In 2010 I was paying 10 cents per kWh. In 2025 I am paying 36 cents per kWh. What ever happened in these 15 years, it is an absolute death spiral.

New comment by watt in "The JavaScript Oxidation Compiler"

watt — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 06:58:38 +0000

until the day you accidentally run it in your home directory without any arguments.

New comment by watt in "The JavaScript Oxidation Compiler"

watt — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 06:56:17 +0000

would you enjoy it if running "rm" in any folder recursively deleted all files in it?

New comment by watt in "When etcd crashes, check your disks first"

watt — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 18:17:08 +0000

Sounds to me that etcd has data handoff consistency issues, and is just flying by seat of its pants: in other words, the moment IO subsystem hiccups, it just shits the bed?

New comment by watt in "AI has fixed my productivity"

watt — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 15:14:07 +0000

I ship 0 projects and now with AI I can ship thousand times more in the same time frame!