Hacker News: watt

New comment by watt in "Canceling "Hey""

watt — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 18:22:04 +0000

I think the author is taking umbrage with DHH using the word "gypsies" where it might have been "junkies" or just "homeless".

I see it in Berlin, rise of agressive, smelly begging in U-Bahn (I witnessed a beggar actually attacking passengers, hitting a woman). People walking around having fully shit their pants. This, I presume, is tolerated in the name of individualism, that the individual is free to choose how they present themselves in the public, and walking around with pants fully shat must be some inalienable right.

Area around Kottbusser Tor reeks of urine, and there's junkies fully out of it constantly screaming and fighting. Is somehow pointing this out is shameful and racist?

New comment by watt in "Alan Kay on the meaning of "object-oriented programming" (2003)"

watt — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 06:41:06 +0000

don't say "apparat" when you can say "device".

side note, when first transistor-based portable radios showed up (as opposed to large lamp-based stationary devices), they were called "transistor". you would take not your portable radio with you, it was your transistor.

New comment by watt in "Tokenmaxxing is dead, long live tokenmaxxing"

watt — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 12:36:22 +0000

I have no doubt those studies are run by some smart fellers.

New comment by watt in "We found a bug in the hyper HTTP library"

watt — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 10:50:04 +0000

What I am saying, is make another version of the function, which is explicitly not allowed to fail, if you want to use it in the loop.

New comment by watt in "We found a bug in the hyper HTTP library"

watt — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 08:39:28 +0000

If they're not going to handle the return values, they should change the function signature to reflect this aspirational contract, that that function "never fails".

I see in the article they did change the poll_flush to run just-in-time at poll_shutdown. So they definitely can make a "best effort" poll_flush version that just does not return any errors for use in that loop.

But all in all? Amateur hour.

New comment by watt in "Project Valhalla, Explained: How a Decade of Work Arrives in JDK 28"

watt — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 12:13:25 +0000

You lost me at "I have a function that has a value `x`". How does function "have" a value?

New comment by watt in "Local Qwen isn't a worse Opus, it's a different tool"

watt — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 09:21:45 +0000

I find it strange that software people will accept this level of flakiness from the hardware. Normally you would just send the card back, and request a replacement.

> One of the cards would only show up if I crossed my fingers when turning it on. Even reboots wouldn't cure it - I had to A/C power off and remove the power cable each time for 30 seconds.

This is ridiculous. Of course we are living through supply crunch, but that card is clearly defective hardware.

New comment by watt in "Ask HN: Does it make sense to buy Mac Studio and run local models?"

watt — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 15:54:07 +0000

Yes. I kick myself that I did not get the 500gb model when getting was good. It was a massive price tag, but the hardware is NICE. And that MLX architecture really works. I run the gpt-oss 100gb model and it's right quick.

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...