Hacker News: wlonkly

New comment by wlonkly in "Government orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat: Jack Dorsey"

wlonkly — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 16:14:51 +0000

It's been a while since I visited Japan, but one thing I remember is that people tend to not "walk and eat" there. So you buy your konbini sandwich and sit on the benches in front of the konbini to eat it and throw the packaging out there, or bring it home with you.

New comment by wlonkly in "Microsoft Comic Chat is now open source"

wlonkly — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 23:36:45 +0000

Guessing the X was to disable it without disabling it.

New comment by wlonkly in "Japanese symbols that speak without words"

wlonkly — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:54:47 +0000

I'm not sure what bullying a car entails, but does that mean you're allowed to bully cars without those symbols?

New comment by wlonkly in "Japanese symbols that speak without words"

wlonkly — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:52:31 +0000

And the American symbols symbolize what they signify, too. A stylized wheelchair to indicate physical mobility. An ear with a line through it to indicate deafness. Less poetic, maybe, but the point is to communicate.

New comment by wlonkly in "Where to Find the Colors Your Screen Can't Show You"

wlonkly — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:10:04 +0000

Only 17? This one's 783 better!

New comment by wlonkly in "The AirPods Effect"

wlonkly — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:36:35 +0000

The reason they don't (and won't) have an NRR rating is that they're only useful for constant noise, and not for impulse sounds. There's no question that Airpods are not industrial PPE, for instance.

But I also ride with foamies most of the time (laser lites) and airpods occasionally, and I'd guess that the bike and wind are maybe 10-15% louder with airpods. The foamies win out for actually staying in my ears when I put my helmet on, but if I can get it on then the airpods stay in place fine.

Surprisingly, when I was looking for a rough equivalent to NRR for Airpods, I discovered that Apple does advertise their ANC as hearing protection[1], which I'll assume the FDA has now permitted, because Apple didn't used to make that claim because the FDA wouldn't permit it. They don't offer an NRR and they do warn against impulse sounds, but that KB article suggests a 20dB drop, which is nothing compared to foamies but is in the same range as musicians' earplugs or hardhat earmuffs, and probably better than Loops.

[1] https://support.apple.com/en-ca/120850

New comment by wlonkly in "The AirPods Effect"

wlonkly — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:27:25 +0000

They don't block out loud things or ambulances approaching you. They block out constant loud background noise. This is why they're good for airplanes, lawn mowers, motorcycles and being out in public, and not good for shooting or as industrial hearing protection.

As I mentioned in another comment, on an airplane, my airpods in ANC mode make it easier for me to hear announcements.

New comment by wlonkly in "The AirPods Effect"

wlonkly — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:25:26 +0000

+1, but add a motorcycle to that list too. Not Miami, but a large city, and now a smaller city.

All the assertions I'm seeing in this thread are bizarre to me. One can easily hear a siren over noise cancellation and over wind noise, and it's even easier to hear if you have noise cancellation for that wind noise.

As a related example, when I'm on an airplane and I have noise-cancelling headphones on, the pilot announcements are easier to hear than without them.

New comment by wlonkly in "Where to Find the Colors Your Screen Can't Show You"

wlonkly — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 23:51:30 +0000

"C-800 Spectromaster" is exactly how specialized devices like that should be named.

New comment by wlonkly in "What job interviews taught me about Kubernetes"

wlonkly — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 23:58:35 +0000

Kubernetes zeitgest aside, the naming confusion between the old and new things called Docker Swarm doomed the new one.

New comment by wlonkly in "What job interviews taught me about Kubernetes"

wlonkly — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 23:56:09 +0000

This reminds me of the joke about the economists who spot a $100 bill on the sidewalk.

New comment by wlonkly in "Claude Fable 5"

wlonkly — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 02:27:44 +0000

But "slop" has meant low-quality stuff for a very long time. See also "swill", both analogies to pig feed.

The earliest OED2 citation of "slop" for the sense "figurative. Nonsense, rubbish; insolence" is 1952. Slop was slop long before "AI slop" was coined, and AI slop is slop from an AI.

New comment by wlonkly in "Claude Fable 5"

wlonkly — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 22:17:01 +0000

On one hand, "clanker" has good steampunk vibes.

On the other hand: "Stop trying to make 'clanker' happen! It's not going to happen!"

"AI slop" caught on but "clanker" did not.

New comment by wlonkly in "Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?"

wlonkly — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 00:13:33 +0000

I read an article not long ago which I cannot find for the life of me now, but the thing in it that stuck with me was the idea that people (in the context, career software developers) were not either AI-pilled or anti-AI, but rather that people are both excited and afraid at the same time.

New comment by wlonkly in "Did Claude increase bugs in rsync?"

wlonkly — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 22:57:15 +0000

It's not uncommon to have small amounts of data come out of experiments. These are appropriate tests for the size of the data. These tests failed to disprove the null hypothesis.

New comment by wlonkly in "EV Stupidity Checklist"

wlonkly — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 23:20:00 +0000

-vex

New comment by wlonkly in "Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia"

wlonkly — Thu, 28 May 2026 20:19:42 +0000

I was also curious. It looks like it's probably Kristy Noem[1], and the citations are to The Week and the NYT:

> Noem has since become one of the most prominent examples of so-called "Mar-a-Lago face", a cosmetic surgery trend among conservative women,[370][371] also known as "Republican makeup".[372]

Is [370] pushing it for a biography of a living person? Yeah, probably, especially with the "one of the most prominent" and "so-called" in there. But since "Mar-a-Lago face" has its own, cited Wikipedia entry... maybe not? It's not like Wikipedians made up the term, they're citing that _others_ use that term for her.

I'm not sure how I'd phrase it to say that she is a prominent example of the plastic surgery common to the Republican inner circle, and reference the "Mar-a-Lago Face" article, without attributing the phrase to her plastic surgery.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristi_Noem#Religion_and_publi...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mar-a-Lago_face

[370] https://theweek.com/health/mar-a-lago-face-the-hottest-maga-...

[371] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/20/style/kristi-noem-teeth-t...

[372] https://www.thelist.com/1796655/politicians-reporters-republ...

New comment by wlonkly in "Ask HN: Is anyone working at least 4 hours daily on an Apple Vision Pro?"

wlonkly — Wed, 27 May 2026 23:02:39 +0000

If the Vision Pro was balanced on top of the head, it would definitely be easier to sustain for a longer period of time, but the weight is attached to the front. That means you're holding it up with your neck muscles instead of straight down your spine.

New comment by wlonkly in "Nobody cracks open a programming book anymore"

wlonkly — Tue, 26 May 2026 22:37:04 +0000

This reminded me of the Diataxis documentation model.[1] A lot of what's out there now is the "application" side of the model, leaving the "acquisition" side unfulfilled.

[1] https://diataxis.fr/

New comment by wlonkly in "Why is this site named Antipope?"

wlonkly — Mon, 18 May 2026 01:04:29 +0000

You mean a mandala effect. A lot of people thought it was Mandela Effect, but it's been the mandala effect all along.