Hacker News: JKCalhoun

New comment by JKCalhoun in "Stolen Renoir paintings found hidden, and damaged, behind cinder block wall"

JKCalhoun — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 12:34:05 +0000

For bragging rights? Somehow I imagine that when the uber wealthy entertain other uber wealthy, they eventually show their rarest collections to a few select guests.

New comment by JKCalhoun in "Stolen Renoir paintings found hidden, and damaged, behind cinder block wall"

JKCalhoun — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 12:32:09 +0000

Maybe I've seen too many movies—but you can now sell fakes of those paintings to all dozen of your customers (so long as the customers keep their purchase secret from the other purchasers).

New comment by JKCalhoun in "New 'super ice' 10 times stronger, bringing it close to the strength of concrete"

JKCalhoun — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 12:28:26 +0000

You need the surface of the ice rink to melt though in order to "skate".

New comment by JKCalhoun in "Butlerian Jihad"

JKCalhoun — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 12:09:57 +0000

"Erewhon" oddly close to "nowhere" spelled backwards.

New comment by JKCalhoun in "We Still Use Paper"

JKCalhoun — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 11:59:58 +0000

Except for sketching out ideas and designs for woodworking. Or jotting down any kind of quick idea I have when I am on the road (frequently). Or sketching an idea for a screen print or art design. Or making notes about what groceries to pick up the next time the wife and I head to the grocery store.

Actually, I use paper every day. I might even be going more "all in" on paper since I invested in fountain pens lately and have built a desk just for writing (with said fountain pens). But I'm probably an outlier.

(I do scan in my Field Notes notebooks to digital once I fill one up.)

New comment by JKCalhoun in "eBay Restricts Listings of Radio Equipment, but Exempts Ham-Band-Only Gear"

JKCalhoun — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 11:56:50 +0000

I was using eBay back when you could buy/sell blackpowder rifles. A lawyer must have told them to shut that down even though it was (still is) 100% legal.

(Blackpowder rifles, etc. are not considered firearms believe it or not.)

New comment by JKCalhoun in "Apple ML Research: Muse Spark Open with MLX on Mac Studio"

JKCalhoun — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 11:48:35 +0000

And the Mac Studio can continue to be used as a regular computer. (Hilariously over-qualified, I suppose. But, no, I got a maxed out, 128 GB Mac Mini earlier in the year—when you still could—and I find it a snappy daily driver in my 'man cave' downstairs.)

New comment by JKCalhoun in "Apple routed a graphite pipe through the iPhone Duo's hinge to dissipate heat"

JKCalhoun — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 10:08:42 +0000

They could go a long way if they 1) slowed down the major OS releases (I mean, like stop them altogether, actually?) and 2) give priority to all bugs and not keep kicking bugs down the road because: we-already-shipped-with-those-bugs-so-they-must-not-be-that-big-of-a-deal.

I'd add 3), more pair-programming between senior engineers and junior engineers—to hopefully make junior engineers better engineers.

I have to say though, when I knew I was heading out of the company (Apple) within a year, I tried to be a "mentor" to the junior engineers at Apple. And they wouldn't have me. I suppose I was too old… To be sure, they knew Swift better than I did, ha ha.

(Oh well, I tried. I did push back very publicly against management during some of the team meetings—I was told by a few of the junior engineers as I was retiring that they appreciated that example.)

New comment by JKCalhoun in "BeBox is a Haiku application that emulates Be Inc.'s BeBox"

JKCalhoun — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 09:59:42 +0000

I've been told that, circa 1996 or so, there were a lot of holes in the OS. It demoed well, but…

Related: I've been enjoying, the Designed in California podcast [1]. Link below is "Part 3" wherein Apple is circling the drain in the mid 1990's (when I started at Apple, BTW) and is desperately looking outside Apple for the operating system they hope will save the company. Be (and Jean-Louis Gassée) look like they will win:

[1] https://youtu.be/5IFxwnXASyQ

New comment by JKCalhoun in "Market selloff, rising rates test AI data centre deal boom"

JKCalhoun — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 21:10:52 +0000

Obviously diluted though by the 499 other stocks in the portfolio (using VFIAX/VOO as an example).

New comment by JKCalhoun in "Grace Hopper Celebration Cancelled"

JKCalhoun — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 17:15:07 +0000

I wasn't specifically addressing the person I was replying to—speaking instead to the general victimhood I see on display when this topic comes up.

I've lost friends to the "man-o-sphere" that think women and minorities have it easy, it's the white male that is being persecuted.

Pathetic.

New comment by JKCalhoun in "Container ship sinks in Strait of Hormuz as Iran steps up attacks"

JKCalhoun — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 23:33:21 +0000

To be sure.

(I find much better comments here though.)

New comment by JKCalhoun in "Suicide rates highest ever among middle-aged men"

JKCalhoun — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 23:31:18 +0000

Life is strange. And circumstance even stranger.

I guess a die is rolled somewhere in the universe and we are born—who knew where, who knew when.

And there are many who are even less fortunate than ourselves.

New comment by JKCalhoun in "Grace Hopper Celebration Cancelled"

JKCalhoun — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 20:41:36 +0000

Centuries of discrimination against whole populations (women, non-whites) and I'm supposed to get bent out of shape that a university is preferring to admit people of those discriminated groups?

Given all the other advantages my male whiteness has benefited me, I think I can look past that.

(Not willfully blind, just keeping everything in perspective.)

New comment by JKCalhoun in "Show HN: Guitoro, a virtual guitar you strum with your keyboard"

JKCalhoun — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 20:32:34 +0000

Well, without going into music theory (which, ha ha, I am ignorant of), these chords "go together"—they're in the same "key" [1].

(And there are perhaps hundreds of songs that use the same chords [2].)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%E2%80%93V%E2%80%93vi%E2%80%9...

[2] https://youtu.be/dFpryVMgni0

New comment by JKCalhoun in "Show HN: Guitoro, a virtual guitar you strum with your keyboard"

JKCalhoun — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 13:30:36 +0000

I like it because it shows how easy it is to compose a song though (if, of course, you first learn to finger a few chords—and everyone knows you only need to learn three chords).

New comment by JKCalhoun in "Amazon pushes up prices across the Internet"

JKCalhoun — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 13:24:46 +0000

Yep, I've always been a traveller of the long tail.

New comment by JKCalhoun in "Starlink limit hits Ukraine's drones"

JKCalhoun — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 13:22:06 +0000

For the beggar in the street, the rich man making a dash from his limo to his bank has always been their best hope.

New comment by JKCalhoun in "Grace Hopper Celebration Cancelled"

JKCalhoun — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 13:03:53 +0000

It's hard for me to understand the sense of victimhood I sometimes see from other White men.

New comment by JKCalhoun in "Grace Hopper Celebration Cancelled"

JKCalhoun — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 13:00:40 +0000

"Having a specific conference for women in computing is definitely a DEI concern;"

The phrasing is ambiguous.

A specific conference celebrating women in a field they have been historically underrepresented in is exactly what DEI is about.

So for whom is this a concern? I am guessing for people who are anti-DEI?

Again, the phrasing does not make it very clear.