Hacker News: xenocratus

New comment by xenocratus in "Becoming a father shrinks your cerebrum"

xenocratus — Sat, 02 May 2026 13:55:14 +0000

I mostly stopped daydreaming at some point in my 20s too, after a fairly intense daydreaming life until then. Oh, and no kids yet :) so it could just be "life"

New comment by xenocratus in "The Social Edge of Intelligence: Individual Gain, Collective Loss"

xenocratus — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 13:41:46 +0000

An ambiguous metric that's been (ab)used quite a lot by human fundamentalists to try to draw a line between what we can do and what machines can do, in order to feel better about themselves.

Or were you looking for a different definition?

New comment by xenocratus in "4TB of voice samples just stolen from 40k AI contractors at Mercor"

xenocratus — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 14:58:27 +0000

I took the "because of course" to be about having a word for everything - a stereotypical idea about the German language.

New comment by xenocratus in "If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive"

xenocratus — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 19:57:20 +0000

Let me rephrase that for you: red is for people who live in this world and accept it, blue is for people with white knight syndrome.

OR. Red is for people who understand statistics, blue is for people who like to gamble.

New comment by xenocratus in "Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero"

xenocratus — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 23:22:31 +0000

Yes, I'm sure milk is all people steal. And I'm sure it's better for it to be stolen than given to food banks and charities.

F off

New comment by xenocratus in "Edit store price tags using Flipper Zero"

xenocratus — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 17:55:06 +0000

> plus, if you see somebody stealing food, no, you didn't

Don't tell me, in your view the cost of shoplifting is begrudgingly covered by those evil rich people who own everything, right? It's not passed down to customers, and therefore affects those who obey rules, and especially those who are in a precarious financial situation to begin with, right?

New comment by xenocratus in "Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times"

xenocratus — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 21:14:47 +0000

> I just don't find these arguments convincing after watching my friend spend cumulative hours upon hours jumping between pirate streaming services trying to find a stable feed for every game.

Then you haven't been through enough cycles of subscribing to a service, using it for a while, then wanting to cancel and realising that the only way to do so is through some baroque direct interaction with someone whose job it is to stop you from doing so, instead of it just being a single "cancel" button. I still pay for things, but I 100% understand why some are unwilling to have to both pay, and then put in the same amount of effort they'd put otherwise, just to stop paying.

Not to mention the bundling. For example, if I only want to watch climbing competitions in the UK, the only legal way is through a £34 per month subscription to a service that offers every sport under the sun. Even though climbing-wise you might have 4 events that month (sometimes fewer). So yeah, f whoever devised the model :)

New comment by xenocratus in "Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times"

xenocratus — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 21:12:25 +0000

> Now that you can just pay 10-20 euro for a streaming service

Now that you can just pay 10-20 euros for each of 124293507239841524352 services, one of which _might_ show what you want...

Fixed it for you.

New comment by xenocratus in "Folk are getting dangerously attached to AI that always tells them they're right"

xenocratus — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 16:40:00 +0000

> It's just a box of numbers, really cool numbers, with really cool math, that can do really cool things, but still just numbers.

https://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/TheyMade.s...

Musketeer d'Artagnan's remains believed found under Dutch church

xenocratus — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 15:46:44 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2rew2dgzzo

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47518965

Points: 119

# Comments: 49

New comment by xenocratus in "Essex police pause facial recognition camera use after study finds racial bias"

xenocratus — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 11:03:16 +0000

Neither, they're worried about bad rep.

New comment by xenocratus in "Denmark was reportedly preparing for full-scale war with the US over Greenland"

xenocratus — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 12:54:58 +0000

> The fact is Europe hasn't offered America much of anything other than a vacation spot over the last 100 years. And there's the cookie banners too.

https://youtu.be/QEJ9HrZq7Ro?si=XCJWAtcZ0t633oLE

New comment by xenocratus in "What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)"

xenocratus — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 18:44:15 +0000

I mean, his name is Les Earnest, they should expect it.

New comment by xenocratus in "Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn"

xenocratus — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 13:45:42 +0000

Well in this case this is what you would've needed. Either you ignored that when you replied, or you didn't care.

New comment by xenocratus in "Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn"

xenocratus — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 13:44:55 +0000

We took that train, realised when we got to the other end of the line that we hadn't gotten where we expected, then turned back to the place where it separates. Waited for the next advertised train to airport (it's signalled on the electronic board as two separate entries; yes, it says "board whatever carriages for airport, and the rest for ...", or at least I assume it did, as it was in German of course; but again, it literally shows up as two different trains). Train arrives, stays there for a while (it's a big train, so the part in front of us didn't move so we didn't realise it had already separated), then after like 5-6 minutes it leaves. Only as it starts moving I notice that a small electronic board on the side of the carriage said "airport". The notice board then changes and obviously "both" trains disappear.

We were so lucky that we'd decided to go to the airport much earlier than we needed.

And don't get me started on the ticketing machines not accepting Visa, Mastercard, or Amex at the central station in Munchen. Or the web ticketing interface which was at least as annoying as the train to use.

New comment by xenocratus in "Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn"

xenocratus — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 13:35:27 +0000

Not only unpopular, but pretty daft too. If you think the basics of a language should include "this train will separate into two at station X, please sit in the front Y carriages to get to Z" then enjoy doing a cross-Europe trip.

New comment by xenocratus in "Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn"

xenocratus — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 13:33:08 +0000

Nu sunt englez, așa cã n-o sã-ți rãspund în englezã.

New comment by xenocratus in "This is not the future"

xenocratus — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 15:28:43 +0000

"Show me the incentive, and I'll show you the outcome"

New comment by xenocratus in "Interactive World History Atlas Since 3000 BC"

xenocratus — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 10:52:02 +0000

Not very "technically accurate", since it does not represent (at least some?) vassal states differently from their suzerain. For example, compare this [1] map of the Ottoman Empire with the one in this atlas.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/OttomanE...

New comment by xenocratus in "How the brain's activity, energy use and blood flow change as people fall asleep"

xenocratus — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 09:49:51 +0000

I do something similar. If I'm not anxious but awake, I try to just visualise random stuff, random worlds. Somehow my brain is decent at that and I slowly drift off, though I sometimes get a jolt from reality. Recently I found that when I'm anxious it's better to try and imagine doing a hobby. I just imagine myself trail running. Reduces anxiety, pushes me towards sleep.