<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: MarkLowenstein</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=MarkLowenstein</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Fri, 24 Apr 2026 08:23:31 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=MarkLowenstein" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MarkLowenstein in "Laws of Software Engineering"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>YES! "Deletability"</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 21 Apr 2026 18:12:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47852344</link><dc:creator>MarkLowenstein</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47852344</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47852344</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MarkLowenstein in "Emissary, a fast open-source Java messaging library"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is the only site I go to without fear of having to wait for page load.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 26 Jan 2026 12:51:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46765025</link><dc:creator>MarkLowenstein</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46765025</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46765025</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MarkLowenstein in "I'm addicted to being useful"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The real trouble is knowing what being heard, <i>means</i>. For me, as long as no one's intending to make this situation better, I'd like to go do other things. How long do I have to stay there pretending to lament that her life is so hard--especially when part of that is because she hates having her problems solved?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 20 Jan 2026 22:42:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46698683</link><dc:creator>MarkLowenstein</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46698683</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46698683</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MarkLowenstein in "Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I've got a "smart" TV that I didn't want, but that's the only thing they offer in my price range anymore. Maybe 5 years old. Stopped connecting to Wi-Fi, an actual hardware problem. Bricked. Opened the TV, cleaned the contacts and uncreased some wire strip. Has been working ever since. Most people would have thrown it out and bought another. But I'm the bad guy for using incandescent light bulbs.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 30 Dec 2025 17:40:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46435812</link><dc:creator>MarkLowenstein</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46435812</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46435812</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MarkLowenstein in "Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's unbelievable that we try so hard to solve this problem even after CRTs are extinct. Every LCD-type screen is easily made to refresh at any rate below its max. If we can't show a 24fps movie at 24fps on our TVs (or smoothly smoothed at 48fps)...what are we doing as a society? It's not like people think TV is an unimportant corner of their lives.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 30 Dec 2025 16:06:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46434695</link><dc:creator>MarkLowenstein</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46434695</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46434695</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MarkLowenstein in "A Proclamation Regarding the Restoration of the Dash"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Something about people successful with computers makes them quick to claim something is easy based on the number of steps needed, without regard to the ease of <i>remembering</i> all the arbitrary or sometimes contra-pattern steps required.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 26 Dec 2025 21:58:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46396762</link><dc:creator>MarkLowenstein</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46396762</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46396762</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MarkLowenstein in "Coursera to combine with Udemy"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The dream never dies, possibly because people remember when class time was supplanted by a movie. Anyone remember "I Am Joe's Heart"? Those movies showed that you could just sit and watch passively like TV, and you'd learn quite a bit, with professional diagrams and animations to help.<p>Yet your comment is true. Perhaps the difference is that science is inherently interesting because nature is confined to things that are consistent and make sense, while the latest security model for version 3.0 of this-or-that web service protocol, vs. version 2.0, is basically arbitrary and resists effective visual diagramming. Learning software (not computer science) is an exercise in memorizing things that aren't inherently interesting.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 18 Dec 2025 01:00:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46307743</link><dc:creator>MarkLowenstein</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46307743</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46307743</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MarkLowenstein in "Everyone in Seattle hates AI"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>According to demos, AI coding tools are allowing neophytes to instantly create working apps and websites with mere descriptions of what they want. According to devs, they're 10x as productive because certain time-consuming tasks are condensed like unit test writing, code reviews, and code refactors and clean-up. So we're to assume that in the age when the typical App Store offers a million apps we'll never be interested in, soon that number will be a billion.<p>In comes Wanderfugl. A tool for traveling that I will never need, where just trying to figure out what it does used more time than I wanted to spend on it. Now with AI, there will be several shiny new travel apps like Wanderfugl for you to learn and choose from literally every time you go on another vacation.<p>Wanderfugl may be wonderful, and an achievement. But the reaction of this Seattleite is "What's the point anymore?" This is why I am uninterested in the AI coding trend. It's just a part of a lot of new stuff I don't need.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 04 Dec 2025 05:22:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46144070</link><dc:creator>MarkLowenstein</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46144070</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46144070</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MarkLowenstein in "Investors expect AI use to soar. That's not happening"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Example: new Yahoo! Mail AI summaries helpfully added to the top of each mail. Thanks, now I get to read each email twice! With the original text now placed in a variable location on the screen.<p>Unfortunately it's the coders who are most excited to put themselves out of business with incredible code-generation facilities. The techies that remain employed will be the feature vibers with 6-figure salaries supplied by the efforts of the now-unemployed programmers. The cycle will thus continue.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 26 Nov 2025 19:13:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46061245</link><dc:creator>MarkLowenstein</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46061245</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46061245</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MarkLowenstein in "The Useful Personal Computer"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Spot on. The home computer never became accessible from the kitchen, and the storage system most anyone uses for recipes, if not paper, is the web or some other internet-accessible source. (Don't know for sure but I'd bet photos of recipes found online, viewed on a phone, is the most common.)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 14 Nov 2025 23:11:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45933268</link><dc:creator>MarkLowenstein</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45933268</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45933268</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MarkLowenstein in "The Useful Personal Computer"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The spirit of GWBasic lives! How do you view them when you're cooking? Do you print them from your home computer or do you use a mobile screen?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 14 Nov 2025 23:08:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45933238</link><dc:creator>MarkLowenstein</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45933238</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45933238</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MarkLowenstein in "The Useful Personal Computer"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Reliving the days when the possibilities were endless and we weren't already captured by an entrenched computing path is important. 50 years ago, every marketer intuited that a home computer would be used for storing recipes. It never happened. Why not? (Reasons aren't hard to come up with, but the process of doing so draws our imagination toward what computer interfaces could have been and should still be.)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 13 Nov 2025 18:36:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45918667</link><dc:creator>MarkLowenstein</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45918667</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45918667</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MarkLowenstein in "The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It was always just an estimate but today I verified it with a chatbot before I made any claim about the time. Caught it in a mistake too, which I untangled by reminding it that food calories are actually kilocalories.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 13 Nov 2025 08:01:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45912088</link><dc:creator>MarkLowenstein</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45912088</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45912088</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MarkLowenstein in "The last-ever penny will be minted today in Philadelphia"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I always pick them up. Every penny buys enough pasta to keep you alive for another 15 minutes. So in case I ever go broke, I've staved off my eventual starvation by 15 minutes.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 12 Nov 2025 23:36:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45908470</link><dc:creator>MarkLowenstein</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45908470</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45908470</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MarkLowenstein in "Why aren't smart people happier?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Enlightened take. For similar reasons I often say that going meta and fussing about your own happiness--literally basing your happiness on whether you are happy--is a doom spiral. If you're asking yourself "Am I happy?" I can give you the answer: No.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 05 Nov 2025 23:13:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45829341</link><dc:creator>MarkLowenstein</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45829341</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45829341</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MarkLowenstein in "Igalia, Servo, and the Sovereign Tech Fund"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>These words aren't apparent in the post.<p>The post asked a hypothetical question about human motivation. "Why would I..." It came as a question but presumed that the answer was so obvious that the point would be clear without an explicit answer: with such a policy, people won't bother creating the products that lead to unicorns.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 10 Oct 2025 20:30:03 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45543437</link><dc:creator>MarkLowenstein</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45543437</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45543437</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MarkLowenstein in "Why We Spiral"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I figured it was going to be about WeWork circling the drain. Thankfully it wasn't.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 14 Sep 2025 17:33:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45241626</link><dc:creator>MarkLowenstein</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45241626</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45241626</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MarkLowenstein in "Objects should shut up"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>My peeve: electric cars that make noise to make sure that blind people around them can hear them like they hear gas-powered cars--except they make it <i>10x as loud</i> as any gas-powered car.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 05 Aug 2025 03:27:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44794027</link><dc:creator>MarkLowenstein</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44794027</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44794027</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MarkLowenstein in "Show HN: An MCP server that gives LLMs temporal awareness and time calculation"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I love the basic point. Timing based association is fundamental to thinking, across species. How does the bunny knows that you're stalking it? Because your eyes move when it moves. I had no idea that LLMs missed all this. Plus the political reference is priceless.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 16 Jul 2025 18:08:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44585214</link><dc:creator>MarkLowenstein</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44585214</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44585214</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by MarkLowenstein in "Hidden interface controls that affect usability"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is the mistake allowing this phenomenon to continue. It is not a "Boomer" or old-person thing. It is a thing for people who enjoy other things in life than electronics. We've already wasted years of our lives learning how to use a bunch of weak features and apps that weren't worth the time. Now those are all gone and we have to learn more? Forget it. Your app is not worth it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 06 Jul 2025 04:42:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44477897</link><dc:creator>MarkLowenstein</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44477897</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44477897</guid></item></channel></rss>