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Dunno how long this is normally supposed to go but it took me 10+ min of actually seriously considering the fonts at each choice and the final suggestion is a font that I actively dislike. I’m curious how it’s narrowing things down because I noticed that it started to give me only serif fonts which I don’t like. But the sans serif ones that it was using to try and narrow things down had distinct characteristics that I didn’t like like very narrow stems or very narrow or wide characters. But it wasn’t doing that with serif fonts. I’m guessing it began to think I preferred serifs because of that but in reality, I wasn’t picking the lesser of two evils most of the time.

It's just a tournament, the winner goes to next round. Play it fast, all the way to the end and you'll see how it works. It's some 16 or 32 rounds all the way.

Yes, at least in my experience on flights in the USA. It’s very rare but it does happen. I was lucky one time that the person doing it sat next to me and I politely asked them to use headphones and no fuss was had.

This is quite wrong? There are some features that get blocked from being implemented because Wayland refused to define a protocol for everyone to implement. Window positioning being a recent example of how progress can get blocked for many years due to Wayland.


Fi’s customer service has long since turned to shit, but the things keeping me on it are the data sims, simple international roaming, and international calling. That trifecta is pretty hard to find a match for. Especially the data sims. But if you don’t need that, I probably wouldn’t recommend Fi. My wife had endless trouble with multiple bad sim cards and the customer service experience was just as dreadful as every other carrier.


(Don’t take this as advice. Just writing my own experience with this.)

This is the reason why I take the time to summarize all “why” decisions and implementation tradeoffs being made in my (too lengthy) PR descriptions with links, etc. I’ve gotten into the habit of using <detail/> to collapse everything because I’ve gotten feedback multiple times that no one reads my walls of text. However, I still write it (with short <summary/>s now) because I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve been able to search my PRs and quickly answer mine or someone’s “why” question. I do it mostly for me because I find it invaluable as I prefer writing shit down instead of relying on my flaky memory. People are forgetful and people come and go. What doesn’t disappear is documentation tied to code commits (well… unless you nuke your repo).


IMO, the spirit of the idea is to put higher information density fields first, and let that smooth out the UX for the remaining fields as you go downwards. Yes, there will be exceptions but that only matters if you’re trying to absolve the user of all work for 100% of situations. Trying to do that is a fools errand. Invert the order and use the information gathered to make inputting the rest simpler for 80% of the users. Then make it easy for the other 20% to course correct (ex: don’t disable autofilled fields, highlight all text when tabbing to the next field, etc). I think this pattern is a good one to keep in mind, but not blindly follow, when designing the UX of a UI.


While I commend Ars and the author for taking responsibility, I am a bit off put by the wording used for the retraction on the original article: https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/02/after-a-routine-code-reje...

> Following additional review, Ars has determined that the story “After a routine code rejection, an AI agent published a hit piece on someone by name,” did not meet our standards. Ars Technica has retracted this article. Originally published on Feb 13, 2026 at 2:40PM EST and removed on Feb 13, 2026 at 4:22PM EST.

Rather than say “did not meet our standards,” I’d much prefer if they stated what was false - that they published false, AI generated quotes. Anyone who previously read the article (which realistically are the only people who would return to the article) and might want to go back to it as a reference isn’t going to have their knowledge corrected of the falsehoods that they read.


Another fascinating thing that the Reddit thread discussing the original PR pointed out is that whoever owns that AI account opened another PR (same commits) and later posted this comment: https://github.com/matplotlib/matplotlib/pull/31138#issuecom...

> Original PR from #31132 but now with 100% more meat. Do you need me to upload a birth certificate to prove that I'm human?

It’s a bit wild to me that people are siding with the AI agent / whoever is commanding it. Combined with the LLM hallucinated reporting and all the discussion this has spawned, I think this is making out to be a great case study on the social impact of LLM tooling.


Something about the tone of the article just makes me want to write a retort / criticism instead of praising the advice. Maybe it’s because it feels like an incomplete list or that it’s too generalized but written like the author has learned it all. For example, no mention of learning when and what to do to avoid frozen pipes. Or how to fix things when it happens. Also, shoveling snow isn’t that hard if you have the right snow shoveling equipment and know a bit of physics (which in my experience, locals will gladly teach you).


It's not really meant to be advice. It's the author's own experience, ironically written as if it were advice.

For example:

"You did bleach ten gallons of well water for long-term storage already earlier in the year, right? Good."

This is sarcasm, because the author did not do that.


Ah I see. That didn’t translate well for me. Maybe because the title primed me into thinking that this was meant to be helpful.


That's fine, humor is subjective. I had a similar experience watching the "manchild" music video recently. I knew it wasn't serious, but I was still annoyed until I thought it through and understood the satire.


It's obviously a self-depreciation/joke style.

There is some truth in it [that doesn't translate well over to some other part of the works]. It requires rather poor infrastructure to be present.

There has been snow for over 2 months here, with relatively low lows (-29C) but no issue like lack of electricity or water.


Perhaps it's an AI generated article. A real human would have realized quite quickly that you can put snow into the tank of a toilet when the power is out.


This is about _tankless_ toilets. They only work with electricity-powered flush pumps. That's why the author wrote about having to physically dump water into the toilet to flush it.

For our new home we're making we have two toilets (always practical). One of them is tankless, but we made sure the second one is a traditional cistern toilet with no electrical requirements. Just in case.


Most well pumps are electric powered. The holding tank will give you a very small amount of water that’s in it if it’s up high but after that without electricity it won’t refill.

In the USA most residential toilets are tank type and don’t directly use electricity.


I actually enjoyed the writing. It's clearly reflection on the experience presented as an "advice list" somewhat jokingly. Since author didn't enjoy the experience, tone is somber. After spending childhood in the cold place I can relate.


I just learned first hand what to do with frozen pipes. Couldn't stop it this year as it went so far below zero. On the last day before it warmed up one of the pipes split and put about 2ft of water into the basement. Amazing to see the damage to the CPVC pipe that broke -- like it literally exploded, which it probably did.


You should have a shutoff valve on every pipe that goes through an external wall. Before bitter cold like that, turn off the valve and drain that pipe. If it is supplying an outdoor spigot, that shutoff should just be part of your winter prep.

(And yes - I, too, learned that the hard way.)


This is a common reaction to posts on the internet, including blogs and Hacker News comments.


It can rub a reader the wrong way because it is written in a sarcastic tone to self-reflect on things the author did wrong or didn't do.

Every piece of "advice" and patronizing questioning, such as "You did that, right? Right?", is a self-reflection by the author on things she should have done but didn't do, and learned that the hard way. It is not meant to be a patronizing statement to the the reader, but it is rather self-depreciation.


The entire article is half-assed assumptions mixed with common sense. The only lesson is to prepare before the snow season arrives or suffer.


Linking related post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46818467

AFAIK, removing Antheas from Bazzite opened the door to discussions for forming the OGC. Prior to that, Antheas had created such difficult situations that many of the member groups in the OGC did not collaborate with Bazzite because of his presence. Whether or not the OGC actually works (ex: getting patches upstreamed faster), only time will tell.


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