Hacker News: Cockbrand

New comment by Cockbrand in "Hello, me. It's been a while"

Cockbrand — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 06:04:33 +0000

> It’s sort of the opposite of an activity, and the brain hates it.

While this is true, I'd word it differently:

It's sort of the opposite of an activity, and we've conditioned our brains to hate it.

Boredom used to be absolutely normal in our society for pretty much ever, and the urge to do something about it when it occurred was a lot weaker than it is now.

New comment by Cockbrand in "I requested a copy of my data from McDonald’s loyalty program"

Cockbrand — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 16:13:48 +0000

TIL there's burgerschachteln.de, because of course there is a person collecting burger packaging on the Internet.

New comment by Cockbrand in "Tim King, AmigaDOS developer, has died"

Cockbrand — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 14:28:55 +0000

I had never heard this name until now, but I owe Dr. Tim King a significant part of my career. Never having been a DOS user, AmigaDOS was my gateway drug to the command line interface, and to me learning the Linux CLI a few years later.

Thank you, Dr. King!

New comment by Cockbrand in "Recycle – Floppydisks"

Cockbrand — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 13:55:41 +0000

For a brief period of time, CD ROMs were already a thing, and people still had 5.25" diskettes lying around. So someone came up with the idea to put a self-burned CD into the plastic shell of a floppy disk, and I actually found that quite cool.

Also: wow, this shop still has 8" floppy disks!

New comment by Cockbrand in "England set to be one of the first countries to eliminate hepatitis C"

Cockbrand — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 13:50:16 +0000

So will it be replaced by Hepatitis Rust for memory safety? (I'm sorry, and I'll see myself out, thanks)

New comment by Cockbrand in "Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs"

Cockbrand — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 09:06:15 +0000

This refers to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paper....

Here's a popular game based on it: https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html

New comment by Cockbrand in "How Old Is Ann?"

Cockbrand — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 13:44:51 +0000

Sounds about right.

How I understand it:

Mary is 24, Ann is a few (n) years younger

  M = 24
  A = M-n

Mary is twice as old as Ann was when Mary was as old as Ann is now. So we have to deduct the age difference twice from Mary's current age to find out how old Ann was when Mary was as old as Ann is now, which is half Mary's current age:

  M-2n = M/2 = 12

  M-2n = 12 --> n=6

So the age difference is 6, and Ann is 18.

New comment by Cockbrand in "Ghost Cut – or why Cut and Paste is broken everywhere"

Cockbrand — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 18:50:55 +0000

The Finder has an interesting take on this: copy a file with ⌘C, then move it somewhere with ⌥⌘V. This is much nicer than the Windows Explorer's CTRL+X and CTRL+V, where the user is unsure what happens when they never paste the file.

New comment by Cockbrand in "Ghost Cut – or why Cut and Paste is broken everywhere"

Cockbrand — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 18:46:09 +0000

The Mac now has a clipboard history as well, it's just a bit awkward. You can open Spotlight with ⌘Space, and within Spotlight open the clipboard manager with ⌘4.

New comment by Cockbrand in "Interrail: 6,379Km and 13 Countries over 7 weeks"

Cockbrand — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 09:46:05 +0000

I remember that there had been a discussion about providing free Interrail tickets to all EU citizens at some age (18 or 19 maybe?), which I found a brilliant idea. I don't know whether this actually ever materialized, though.

New comment by Cockbrand in "Backtrack-Free Cursive"

Cockbrand — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 09:43:21 +0000

This is how I learned cursive in school, and it never occurred to me that this may interrupt my writing flow. I agree that doing the backtracks after writing the entire word would add to my mental load, but that's probably because I'm not used to that.

So generally, I'd say that the mental load is basically a matter of how one learned cursive in the first place. Though I agree that the mostly backtrack-free Cyrillic cursive looks more elegant.

Would be interesting to learn about the perspective of people who learned Chinese or Japanese as their first script.

New comment by Cockbrand in "If you're a button, you have one job"

Cockbrand — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 08:00:16 +0000

Similarly, why don't photos get auto-straightened, maybe with an option to revert to original? I spend too much time aligning the horizon properly on snapshots that I took while cycling. The phone even has the data from the rotation sensor, so this should be fairly easy to implement.

New comment by Cockbrand in "If you're a button, you have one job"

Cockbrand — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 07:54:45 +0000

A different UX issue I have with these buttons is that the designers seen to have chosen the wrong rotation direction.

I almost always need to rotate photos 90⁰ to the right, so I have to tap that button three times. Apart from that, if I have only one way to rotate my photo, clockwise seems more intuitive to me anyway.

New comment by Cockbrand in "CERN bids farewell to the LHC and enters Long Shutdown 3"

Cockbrand — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 08:26:17 +0000

I was too, and I was going to ask whether this is a good use of taxpayer money, as the ICANN fee for registering a TLD is $227,000. But given the fact that the Web was invented at CERN, I could imagine that they got a special deal.

Happy to learn about details if someone knows more!

New comment by Cockbrand in "Free the Icons"

Cockbrand — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 07:17:35 +0000

As an aside, Rogue Amoeba are one of an ecosystem of great and greatly passionate indie software houses for the Mac.

All of them create excellent software with polished UIs, provide excellent support and never forget to have fun. This seems to be unique to the Mac, at least at this scale.

New comment by Cockbrand in "Venetian Bridge Brawls in 17th and 18th Century Art"

Cockbrand — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 19:24:11 +0000

Let me correct myself:

Too bad that these images predate the wide availability of popcorn in the old world and its common usage as a snack eaten during entertainment.

New comment by Cockbrand in "Venetian Bridge Brawls in 17th and 18th Century Art"

Cockbrand — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 16:17:15 +0000

Gotta love how some of the spectators on the larger Joseph Heintz the Younger painting enjoy the entertainment. Too bad that these images predate the invention of popcorn!

New comment by Cockbrand in "Is Sunscreen the New Margarine? (2021)"

Cockbrand — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 11:09:22 +0000

A bit unclear - it says

> Weller’s largest study yet is due to be published later in 2019

But in the header, it also says

> Updated May 31, 2024

I'd still love to know whether there has been further research in the meantime.

New comment by Cockbrand in "Big Banana Car"

Cockbrand — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 19:55:40 +0000

Let me be the first to say that this is a lovely website in a lovely, slightly modernized turn-of-the-millennium style.

New comment by Cockbrand in "If your product is Great, it doesn't need to be Good (2010)"

Cockbrand — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 11:33:40 +0000

Probably hundreds of millions, maybe even billions of people still suffer from this truth each and every day.