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FartinMowler

159 karma · joined February 20, 2024

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FartinMowler··on OpenAI engineer arrested in bugging of executive conference room
Why do you ask? Are you planning to plan something?
FartinMowler··on Ask HN: What are you reading?
Resurrection is near the front of my reading queue. Tolstoy donated the proceeds of that book to help the Doukhobors emigrate from Russia to Canada in 1899. My dad was a Doukhobor. Thanks Leo!
FartinMowler··on Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber
Wow, that activated a long dormant neuron. IIRC 3.11 main purpose was to make the 3.1 in OS/2 incompatible.
FartinMowler··on Htmx 4.0
Or HAGS (HTMX, AlpineJS, Go, SQLite).
FartinMowler··on Canada will match US tariffs 'dollar for dollar' as trade talks break down
Canada needs to create an "Economic Reparations Fund" to help those workers and companies harmed by trump's tariffs. Its initial funding should come from selling $10B of US bonds (Canada is ~5th largest holder) and a 5% surcharge on oil exported to the US. US already extracts a 12-22% discount off world oil prices from Canada (who's taking advantage of who?) so 5% shouldn't be an issue. As needed to cover damages, more bonds could be sold and the oil surcharge could be raised.
FartinMowler··on A joke domain purchase turned in geopolitical warfare
Interesting interpretation given the the 2nd Amendment gives the right to "a well regulated militia" and not to individuals including crazed yahoos and criminals. Sadly for millions of butchered Americans, US courts have agreed with your interpretation.
FartinMowler··on The Economic Benefit of Refactoring
My namesake, er, not quite ;).
FartinMowler··on Rising seas will swallow New Orleans. People need to start relocating now
With that for the rest of the day I won't get the Tragically Hip song "New Orleans is Sinking" out of my head. https://youtu.be/LAZUsCONjIQ?si=QIvXOppHk3X1UuQ0
FartinMowler··on If AI writes your code, why use Python?
But at least JS now has a built-in leftpad function ;) (called padStart).
FartinMowler··on I want to live like Costco people
I'm reminded of the Polish proverb that it's better to be rich & healthy than sick & poor.
FartinMowler··on IBM didn't want Microsoft to use the Tab key to move between dialog fields
What?!?! I was an IBM Systems Engineer in the late 1980s / early 1990s and that was nothing like my job description.
FartinMowler··on A Letter from Dijkstra on APL (1982)
Yup, impossible to read. I was a paid APL coder in the early 80's. We called it WORN: Write Once, Read Never.
FartinMowler··on Inside Nepal's Fake Rescue Racket
Lol, on my trip up Pikes Peak I was blissfully unaware that altitude sickness could be a thing. So I can't recall if I felt any different. I do recall the carburetor on my motorcycle was acting a little strange, however.
FartinMowler··on Artemis II's toilet is a moon mission milestone
Finally, some deshitification news on HN!
FartinMowler··on Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events
Luge too :)
FartinMowler··on Ask HN: How to be alone?
Brilliant. But be prepared for failure. Some days instead of the rejection you're expecting you'll be accepted instead!
FartinMowler··on Canadians promised to boycott travel to US. They meant it
It's not really a promised or conscious boycott. It's after weighing the pros and cons, many of them intangible, the feeling is visiting the US right now could result in unpleasantness ... and if there is anything Canadians are adverse to it is unpleasantness. Anecdata: a friend of ours crossing the US border, despite being a VP at a bank, for her first time ever had to surrender her phone for examination by US border agents. Who needs that!
FartinMowler··on European troops arrive in Greenland to boost the Arctic island's security
Although the probability is closer to 0% than 100%, it is far enough away from 0% to have many Canadians concerned. As the midterm elections approach and things start looking like he's drowning, Trump will grasp for any convenient distraction, the bigger the better. Canada is uncomfortably on the short list.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/the-military-plans-for...

FartinMowler··on The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis
They could monitor the midterm elections /s
FartinMowler··on Avoid UUID Version 4 Primary Keys in Postgres
Lol, reminds me of a story: at his workplace my brother was invited to join a lottery ticket pool where each got to pick the numbers for a ticket. The numbers he picked were 1-2-3-4-5-6. Although the others, mostly fellow engineers, reluctantly agreed his numbers were as likely as the others, after a couple of weeks they neglected to invite him again.
FartinMowler··on Django 6
Especially with template partials now in the core of Django 6.
FartinMowler··on Keep these Stupid American Trucks out of Europe [video]
By the end of Trump's third term the US will be isolated from almost all global trade anyways.
FartinMowler··on OOP is shifting between domains, not disappearing
OOP is like alcohol: enjoyable in moderation but dangerous in excess.

In moderation, an object is a data structure with associated functions (methods) that acts as a kind of namespace. If your data structure and functions are separate, you might start having function name collisions.

Hopefully we won't see a prohibition against OOP.

FartinMowler··on Comparing the Latitude of Europe and America
Yup. And Toronto in Canada is closer to the equator than to the north Pole.
FartinMowler··on Mesh: I tried Htmx, then ditched it
I've been doing IT for decades. Many times I've come across something that seems stupid yet also has a non-trivial number of supporters. When this happens (and it will many times), don't just continue to think it's stupid. Question if you are stuck on some paradigm or mindset that makes the thing seem stupid to you. That might call for a good head shake, a walk in the park, or a weekend-long bender to open your mind to new ideas. You don't have to jump on their bandwagon, but at least you'll increase your understanding and strengthen your position.
FartinMowler··on Toronto’s network of pedestrian tunnels
Lot's of comments here at the "micro" level: about the comfort of an individual pedestrian. There's also the "macro" view: how best to quickly and safely move a large number of pedestrians in a short window of time. The PATH mostly connects Toronto's financial district full of office towers and 9-5 workers with a transportation hub, Union Station, at its south end. Union Station gets around 300,000[0] passengers a day, most but not all are office commuters. Without the PATH, the sidewalks would be absolutely (and dangerously) jammed between 8-9am and 4:30-6pm.

[0]https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/venues-facilities-b...

FartinMowler··on Beyond Meat headed to Chapter 11 bankruptcy
There are those like me who eat meat, like the taste of meat, but think for health reasons they should be eating less meat.
FartinMowler··on SaaS Is Dead
> ,,, we're now on the cusp ...

Would that be the same cusp self-driving cars were on 5 years ago? I think the benefits of LLMs are farther in the future but the (massive) costs are here today. Folks, invest your retirement savings carefully.

FartinMowler··on OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D
Yup, lots of Y2K work shipped offshore in the 90s while onshore worked on the web boom. After Jan 1, 2000, mgmt thought, hey, how can I use these cheap guys elsewhere.
FartinMowler··on The Rise of the Japanese Toilet
Be sure to clean the ceiling too if said guest was a bum gun noob.
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