Hacker News: 98codes

New comment by 98codes in "Microsoft Comic Chat is now open source"

98codes — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 17:35:20 +0000

It's a team (part of engineering, not sales) that helps companies that bought M365 Copilot and/or Copilot Studio use it well - http://aka.ms/whoiscat

New comment by 98codes in "My favorite keyboards"

98codes — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 16:25:45 +0000

> - nearly made me cry.

> - solved my back pain.

Reminds me of the first time I got to sit in an Actually Good chair that came with a new job. My back was killing me for the first couple weeks as the decades-old knots undid themselves.

I got to relive it when I went back to crappy office chairs at my next gig.

New comment by 98codes in "Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?"

98codes — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 18:51:38 +0000

"Someone else would be willing to ruin this, so I may as well ruin it and get paid for it" is not a direction everyone wants to, or even is willing to go.

New comment by 98codes in "Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?"

98codes — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 18:50:03 +0000

I've held a short list of organizations I wouldn't ever work for, for a long while. Meta is on that list, but so are most of the big tech companies you see in the various anagrams.

It's getting to the point where selling my soul to the highest bidder is going to be absolutely required for any big tech job going forward.

New comment by 98codes in "Waymo Premier"

98codes — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 18:15:41 +0000

It's a pain if that isn't communicated in the app prior to committing to payment.

New comment by 98codes in "Workers are spending over 6 hours a week botsitting AI, fueling job frustration"

98codes — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 16:32:18 +0000

Far too many introverts in software development for that.

New comment by 98codes in "SimCity 3k in 4k (2025)"

98codes — Thu, 28 May 2026 16:26:31 +0000

Isometric sims make it easy to build something that looks good. CS & PZ can make things look incredible, but it's a PITA to get there.

New comment by 98codes in "AI is making me dumb"

98codes — Thu, 14 May 2026 22:18:14 +0000

As someone now firmly in the "used to be a developer" part of my career, AI use seems like good old atrophying of the memory muscle of coding. Whether it's because you just don't code anymore at all, or offload that thinking to AI, the effect on you is the same. You start to forget.

Don't have AI do anything you want to stay sharp on.

New comment by 98codes in "Talking to strangers at the gym"

98codes — Mon, 04 May 2026 16:22:48 +0000

Only if you think of it that way -- making every human interaction purely transactional.

Conversely, there's something I've used as a guiding principle for a while now that isn't quite the same, but in the same direction: to receive help, be helpful.

Both of these also fall under the greater umbrella of "treat others as you would like to be treated".

New comment by 98codes in "Talking to strangers at the gym"

98codes — Mon, 04 May 2026 16:19:32 +0000

Saying someone's name back to them is also a memory trick to help yourself remember their name for next time.

New comment by 98codes in "Bluesky April 2026 Outage Post-Mortem"

98codes — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 16:45:06 +0000

Ahh, the three relevant numbers in development: 0, 1, and infinity.

New comment by 98codes in "Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed"

98codes — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 23:10:03 +0000

I got reeeeally good at producing repro gifs that I could plug straight inline into email replies to "can't repro"; it's forever clear that most developers either don't know how to test the product they are building, or simply can't be bothered to try.

New comment by 98codes in "I quit editing photos"

98codes — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 15:55:45 +0000

> That emotion is nostalgia, whether real or perceived.

Absolutely. One of my prized possessions is a book I had made from digital pictures I took on a family trip when my kids were 3 & 4 years old. The pictures are of single-digit megapixel quality, but are perfect for what they needed to be: a reminder of that trip, and the memories contained within.

It seems to me that the slightly fuzzy aspect of old pictures better matches our fuzzy memories of that time.

New comment by 98codes in "MacBook Neo"

98codes — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 18:41:09 +0000

> serious damage from typical daily use

Doing what? I've used one of those laptops for years, and it still looks and acts fine, hardware-wise. Windows though...

New comment by 98codes in "I baked a pie every day for a year"

98codes — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 19:01:32 +0000

OK then... let's see, it's citrus season -- meyer lemon meringue it is, with a swiss meringue[1] of course.

[1] https://www.seriouseats.com/easy-swiss-meringue-recipe

New comment by 98codes in "Google Street View in 2026"

98codes — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 18:32:25 +0000

For my life, I don't understand the gestures for the 3D map. It would seem that I can ONLY manipulate that view by accident.

New comment by 98codes in "I baked a pie every day for a year"

98codes — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 18:29:12 +0000

I already did for October, November (twice), and December. Does that count?

New comment by 98codes in "New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes"

98codes — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 22:04:55 +0000

I'm a human who writes like that, because mobile and desktop OSs have made it easy—so easy—to include things like em-dashes and other formerly uncommon punctuation. I also come from an age where people were taught things like proper grammar and punctuation, so go figure.

New comment by 98codes in "Facebook is cooked"

98codes — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 21:09:26 +0000

I'm a dad that stopped using facebook when I got divorced, so there's a bit of anecdata for you

New comment by 98codes in "ai;dr"

98codes — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 18:22:53 +0000

> assume

There's your trouble. The real problem is that most internet users are setting their baseline for "standard issue human writing" at exactly the level they themselves write. The problem is that more and more people do not draw a line between casual/professional writing, and as such balk at very normal professional writing as potentially AI-driven.

Blame OS developers for making it easy—SO easy!—to add all manner of special characters while typing if you wish, but the use of those characters, once they were within easy reach, grew well before AI writing became a widespread thing. If it hadn't, would AI be using it so much now?