<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: xiphmont</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=xiphmont</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Mon, 04 May 2026 17:42:13 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=xiphmont" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by xiphmont in "GameStop Preparing Offer for eBay"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Oh no.  Please, please don't let eBay get Boeing'd.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 02 May 2026 14:07:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47986527</link><dc:creator>xiphmont</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47986527</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47986527</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by xiphmont in "Good sleep, good learning, good life (2012)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Hm, no, non-24 is not just a severe version of DSPS. Or rather he seems to be saying DSPS is really just a less severe version of non-24.<p>I have it.  What I've learned from my doc (a researcher in the field):<p>It's primarily a specific genetic mutation that affects many of they body's cyclic timers, but relevant here is that the circadian feedback loop is no longer able to lock to a 24 hour day/night cycle at all.  The timer technically works.  You're perfectly sensitive to light/dark, but you're hitting a PLL with inputs faster than its ability to make meaningful adjustments.  That's not the case with DSPS.<p>Sleep apnea diagnosis is relevant here, it also breaks the breathing reflex timer. Imagine finding out at age 40 that you've not, in fact, slept more than a few minutes at a time your entire life, because you wake up just enough to take a breath every 3 minutes or so when a secondary suffocation reflex goes off.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 15 Apr 2026 20:22:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47784726</link><dc:creator>xiphmont</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47784726</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47784726</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by xiphmont in "Firm boosts H.264 streaming license fees from $100k up to staggering $4.5M"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's more another example of 'you can sue for anything on a whim'.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 05 Apr 2026 02:45:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47645684</link><dc:creator>xiphmont</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47645684</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47645684</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by xiphmont in "Tell HN: Ralph Giles has died (Xiph.org| Rust@Mozilla | Ghostscript)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'm still mostly without words; I just hear Ralph's voice in my head when I think about his passing.  He was a force of warm, kind, friendly enthusiasm.  We miss you, rillian.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 13 Feb 2026 13:10:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47002314</link><dc:creator>xiphmont</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47002314</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47002314</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by xiphmont in "Lena by qntm (2021)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>"It's not a guidebook"...<p>This might be the scariest point.  To me at least, it only felt obvious after stating it directly.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 13 Feb 2026 13:07:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47002293</link><dc:creator>xiphmont</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47002293</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47002293</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by xiphmont in "Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Q, more than any other glyph, is the letter that never fails to look weird in every typeface when I spend too much time looking at it/re-re-re-re-designing it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 30 Dec 2025 15:52:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46434532</link><dc:creator>xiphmont</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46434532</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46434532</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by xiphmont in "Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>He can, he did, and we're all here arguing about it, which somehow delights me.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 30 Dec 2025 15:50:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46434515</link><dc:creator>xiphmont</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46434515</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46434515</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by xiphmont in "When a video codec wins an Emmy"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Amazing what you can do when you throw 10 billion transistors at a problem instead of only a few million.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 11 Dec 2025 13:41:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46231238</link><dc:creator>xiphmont</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46231238</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46231238</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by xiphmont in "Doomsday scoreboard"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>sort of like The Order of St. Liebowitz the Engineer from _A Canticle for Liebowitz_</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 22 Oct 2025 02:30:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45664285</link><dc:creator>xiphmont</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45664285</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45664285</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by xiphmont in "Immunotherapy drug clinical trial results: half of tumors shrink or disappear"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Waiting for the Derek Lowe post, but... if this is legit, it's a 'holy flipping s**' moment.  That kind of success in Phase I human trials is incredibly rare.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 09 Sep 2025 21:48:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45189713</link><dc:creator>xiphmont</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45189713</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45189713</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by xiphmont in "Cognitive load is what matters"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is actually some wonderful work that succinctly explains a lot of my experience. Much of how I was formally taught to program is counterproductive to the big picture the second someone else has to understand the code.  It's part of the reason that I hate dealing with Rust and C++, and breathe a sigh of relief when the codebase I need to suck into my head is good old C.  C offers fewer ways to hide all the working code in six layers of templates.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 30 Aug 2025 23:32:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45078950</link><dc:creator>xiphmont</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45078950</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45078950</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by xiphmont in "Tom Lehrer has died"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Rest in Peace, Bittersweet Prince.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 28 Jul 2025 00:04:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44705866</link><dc:creator>xiphmont</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44705866</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44705866</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by xiphmont in "YouTube audio quality – How good does it get? (2022)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Short answer is 'bugs', possibly even in the reviewer's own software.  Opus (and I would fully expect AAC-LC) preserves time alignment.  Something unknown, somewhere unknown, in an unknown part of the unknown software chain caused an unknown shift, and it's not necessarily by an integer number of samples.  You can't use this 'enh, whatever, good enough' approach and expect to do meaningful null analysis, even if you're using it inappropriately.<p>In all seriousness, every aspect of this comparison is somewhere between deeply flawed and invalid.  No point dwelling on just one part.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 02 Feb 2025 00:15:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42904040</link><dc:creator>xiphmont</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42904040</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42904040</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by xiphmont in "YouTube audio quality – How good does it get? (2022)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Oh, look a new analysis of YouTube quality that, surely, has learned something from all the past discussions...<p>[reads]<p>...Jesus H. F. Christ....<p>Every generation thinks they discover sex and audio analysis for the first time.<p>[And don't call me Shirley]</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 01 Feb 2025 23:52:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42903861</link><dc:creator>xiphmont</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42903861</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42903861</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by xiphmont in "Scale Model of Boeing 777-300ER, Made from Manila Folders"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>My God, that model is utterly beautiful.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 28 Dec 2024 14:44:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42531346</link><dc:creator>xiphmont</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42531346</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42531346</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by xiphmont in "How I got my laser eye injury"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>He didn't claim it cut through steel, JGCs have polymer wheel wells and brake lines like most modern cars.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 01 Aug 2024 15:50:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41130454</link><dc:creator>xiphmont</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41130454</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41130454</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by xiphmont in "5-min breathing workout lowers blood pressure as much as exercise, drugs (2021)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>While it's clear exercise is good for everyone, this statement is not well informed.<p>For example, oxygen saturation monitoring revealed my at-rest breathing reflex is completely broken due to a known genetic flaw.  You know the memes about 'your breathing is now under conscious control'?  Mine actually is.<p>That led to a sleep study-- and, yup, I don't breathe when I'm asleep.  I wake every two or three minutes, all night, take a few breaths, and go back to sleep.  And have all my life.  The mystery of why I'm 'such a light sleeper' also revealed.<p>Doc I saw about it remarked the mutation is probably more widespread then we know because 'no one is looking for it'.  It also completely freaked out a few anesthesiologists.<p>[There are other reflexes around breathing, and no, I can't just hold me breath as long as I want.  The physiological reminders to breathe are pretty strong!  But I routinely see my SP02 at rest drop below 70.]</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 15 Apr 2022 14:25:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31040614</link><dc:creator>xiphmont</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31040614</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31040614</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by xiphmont in "Tell HN: Gnome on Wayland Is Amazing"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In fact, the 'does what I want, does it well, and does little else" is very much the reason I like it.  Whatever you think of it under the hood (and I have opinions, both positive and negative here), I do like using it.<p>It's the first 'desktop' I wanted to use, and have used for more than a few weeks, approximately 10 years now.  I've generally liked the changes and improvements over time.  It finally budged me off of (wait for it) vtwm.gamma.<p>To each his cup of tea.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 21 Mar 2022 16:56:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30756533</link><dc:creator>xiphmont</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30756533</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30756533</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by xiphmont in "Feynman on group decision-making at Los Alamos (1985)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is a great recommendation (thanks!) and worth watching.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 11 Feb 2022 13:20:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30301114</link><dc:creator>xiphmont</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30301114</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30301114</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by xiphmont in "Sir Clive Sinclair has died"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Many people did, and the drives were not expensive at all really, not if you ever popped over to a swapfest (I had one, and money was very tight in our family at the time, but Dad was adamant that we have a computer to play with--- forward thinking, plus he wanted to play with it too).<p>But you're right-- it was too late to save the QL by then.<p>Of course, that wasn't the only problem with the machine, not by a longshot.  I did my very first commercial hardware hacking in high school building/selling plug-in 'spiderboards' to protect the oh-so-fragile ZX8301 chips, and got my first oscilloscope in college to chase down all the ground bounce that was still occasionally killing the NMOS ROMs...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 17 Sep 2021 12:00:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28564418</link><dc:creator>xiphmont</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28564418</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28564418</guid></item></channel></rss>