Hacker News: xormapmap

New comment by xormapmap in "Dell admits it made a mistake when it abandoned XPS"

xormapmap — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:42:59 +0000

I used to manage a small fleet of about 6 XPS laptops at my old job. 3 of them needed motherboard replacements under warranty within a year. People would put them on standby and put them in their bag, then get home and find the laptop had decided to start up of its own volition and overheat to the point it would be searing hot to the touch. The charging would randomly fail or the laptop would go into a boot loop. Not to mention problems with Windows deciding to update 2 minutes before an important meeting (and then naturally the progress bar would get stuck).

New comment by xormapmap in "If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C?"

xormapmap — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 22:42:07 +0000

> Wouldn’t a language designed for vibe coding naturally dispense with much of what is convenient and ergonomic for humans in favor of what is convenient and ergonomic for machines? Why not have it just write C? Or hell, why not x86 assembly?

Or why not just produce a binary directly? It seems we've just invented a compiler.

New comment by xormapmap in "An opinionated critique of Duolingo"

xormapmap — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 21:37:36 +0000

I became interested in the language after a brief relationship with a Ukrainian.

New comment by xormapmap in "An opinionated critique of Duolingo"

xormapmap — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 23:08:33 +0000

The idea that child brains are better at learning languages is a myth. Adults struggle with languages because traditional language education is not fit for purpose. If you took a child and isolated them in such a way that they never got comprehensible input, and instead only gave them traditional language lessons (think textbooks, grammar drills) - they too would struggle. The good news is that if you take an adult and give them comprehensible input like you would a child, they will learn at least as effectively as a child.

New comment by xormapmap in "An opinionated critique of Duolingo"

xormapmap — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 23:02:06 +0000

Comprehensible input does seem to be the most effective way. i.e. get a lot of input that is only slightly beyond your current level (i+1).

I'm learning Ukrainian and there is a podcast "Ukrainian Lessons Podcast". Seasons 4-6 are not so much lessons but more just discussions about life, history, culture in 100% slow comprehensible Ukrainian. In one of the episodes Anna talks about how she spent most of her life getting English lessons at school and university, but still couldn't use the language freely. Finally, she watched Friends and by the time she'd finished every season, she felt she at last had a good command of English.

Sitcoms are good because they depict a lot of everyday situations, are rich in dialogue (i.e. real language people use daily), and there is a lot of slang and cultural references. Of course, you first need to develop enough of a base in the language to understand what's going on.

New comment by xormapmap in "Everything that's wrong with Google Search in one image"

xormapmap — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 00:24:21 +0000

Exactly this. I remember when it was just a couple small links in a yellow banner you could scroll past. Same with YouTube, the ads used to just be a banner under or beside the video but didn't interfere with the main content. Once the ads got invasive, I installed ublock and haven't looked back. I don't feel the slightest bit guilty about that.

New comment by xormapmap in "Google is intentionally throttling YouTube, slowing down users with ad blockers"

xormapmap — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 23:02:59 +0000

I had no problem with ads when they were just a banner next to the video. Now youtube is borderline unusable without an ad blocker. That said they are free to try and stop me, and I am free to continue using ublock.

New comment by xormapmap in "Show HN: The C3 programming language (C alternative language)"

xormapmap — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 20:49:50 +0000

So many of the so-called "C alternatives" end up doing way too much. I don't need algebraic data types or classes or an integrated build system or a package manager.

What I would like to see is a language that is essentially just C with the major design flaws fixed. Remove the implicit casting and obscure integer promotions. Make spiral rule hold everywhere instead of being able to put const at the beginning of the declaration. Make `sizeof()` return a signed type. Don't allow mixed signed/unsigned arithmetic. Make variables/functions private by default i.e. add `public` to make public instead of `static` to make private.

Keep the preprocessor and for the love of god make it easy to invoke the compiler/linker directly so I can write my own Makefile.

New comment by xormapmap in "Tracing Military Command Chains Through Time and Location"

xormapmap — Sun, 19 Jan 2025 20:36:15 +0000

He isn't? The patch of green on the finger is his middle knuckle. His finger is well outside the trigger guard.

New comment by xormapmap in "Prostate cancer includes two different evotypes"

xormapmap — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 23:30:00 +0000

> If you weld 2 sticks of metal together end to end, then bash them on the ground, they're likely to break at the weld

This doesn't sound even remotely true to me, except in the case of an absolute beginner doing the welding

New comment by xormapmap in "Rust for Embedded Systems: Current state, challenges and open problems"

xormapmap — Mon, 04 Mar 2024 20:52:19 +0000

> Is there a library for that?

What? Are there really people out there relying on libraries for every peripheral? I've never seen anyone use a third party library for peripherals like that, short of some prototyping on an Arduino or the like. It's always just drivers implemented from scratch.

New comment by xormapmap in "In Switzerland, most people rent for life"

xormapmap — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 20:43:37 +0000

> I just don't see any of the upsides that so many people seem to.

The way I see it I'm going to be paying a mortgage either way. I'd rather it be my own than my landlord's.

New comment by xormapmap in "In Switzerland, most people rent for life"

xormapmap — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 20:41:15 +0000

> It’s not uncommon for borrowers to extend their loans until their deaths

How is this possible? I can't imagine any bank giving me a loan knowing there's a good chance I won't be alive to pay it back.

New comment by xormapmap in "MISRA C"

xormapmap — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 20:31:09 +0000

The MISRA guidelines are awful.

New comment by xormapmap in "The negative impact of mobile-first web design on desktop"

xormapmap — Thu, 26 Oct 2023 20:57:33 +0000

I know we all generally just do what the boss tells us but:

> being able to write complex UIs that can work on any browser, any device, with all assistive technologies, and all languages, is extremely hard

Why do we keep doing this? If you get rid of the animations, popups, and invasive ads, then with what's left you can probably do away with all of this crap.

New comment by xormapmap in "How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie"

xormapmap — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 20:18:51 +0000

Many countries do this for immigration. In New Zealand they say your test result doesn't affect your application. Whether that's true I don't know.

New comment by xormapmap in "Schools for children of military achieve results rarely seen in public education"

xormapmap — Thu, 12 Oct 2023 21:44:06 +0000

> It is much easier to set a kid straight than try to fix an adult

Is this true? Adults have free will & personal responsibility, kids are sort of at the whim of their parents and have no real legal rights when it comes to escaping a bad situation

New comment by xormapmap in "Automakers invented the crime of jaywalking (2015)"

xormapmap — Thu, 12 Oct 2023 21:26:32 +0000

In terms of the physics involved, a head-on collision with a similar vehicle traveling at the same speed as you is equivalent to hitting a concrete wall.

New comment by xormapmap in "What’s New in C in 2023?"

xormapmap — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 20:15:35 +0000

I find C89 to be much nicer to be honest.

New comment by xormapmap in "I applied to 250 jobs and timed how long each one took"

xormapmap — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 20:07:18 +0000

The actual application step might take that long, assuming you have all your supporting documents ready. The trouble is you often need to adapt your CV to the job & write a cover letter at a minimum. Depending how much you care about the job, this might include studying the job description carefully, reading the company website, and maybe even contacting the company to request more information. Then proof-reading and editing everything. It probably takes me at least an hour for most jobs, even if the actual submission of files only took 1 minute in the end.