Hacker News: MrVandemar

New comment by MrVandemar in "Forking the Web"

MrVandemar — Sun, 10 May 2026 05:00:27 +0000

Marginalia is almost already this. It flags sites that have advertising, javascript, etc. meaning that you can easily avoid those.

New comment by MrVandemar in "Forking the Web"

MrVandemar — Sun, 10 May 2026 00:48:05 +0000

Gemini is cool for many reasons, but it fails in being able to encode complex documents, or use semantically or visually useful structures common to many documents.

There is:

- No metadata.

- No emphasis.

- No citations.

- No way to mark up nouns like a person, or a company.

- No way to present documents with a complex heading hierarchy past level 3 (for those who argue that more is not necessary, please consider that headings are basically cognitive sub-directories. Do you want to work on a file system that only lets you go two levels below "/"?).

I'd personally favour (but not advocate for) something like a super-lightweight Docbook grammar which is standardised, and already has great tooling available for it.

The Audience Nobody Saw

MrVandemar — Sat, 09 May 2026 11:06:19 +0000

Article URL: https://fromthelittoral.substack.com/p/the-audience-nobody-saw

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48073936

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by MrVandemar in "Lua can be a cool HTML templating engine"

MrVandemar — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 08:09:21 +0000

Very interesting. I've never had occasion to learn Lua, but it seems like it can do some neat things. I really like the JSON-esque template language there.

New comment by MrVandemar in "Why are we still using Markdown?"

MrVandemar — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 12:08:54 +0000

They're dead for more than 20 years.

Both of them.

New comment by MrVandemar in "Why are we still using Markdown?"

MrVandemar — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 05:56:30 +0000

That is an unjustified over-generalisation.

HTML markup is pretty readable (except when it becomes soup) and I read and write raw HTML documents all the time. I like it better than markdown.

It's even more readable in a code editor that distiguishes tags from content.

New comment by MrVandemar in "[dead]"

MrVandemar — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 05:13:53 +0000

April Fools Day shit. Why is this on the front page? It's all noise, no signal. And it's late too.

New comment by MrVandemar in "Stop generating, start thinking"

MrVandemar — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 04:46:05 +0000

You're absolutely right!

New comment by MrVandemar in "Stop generating, start thinking"

MrVandemar — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 04:44:18 +0000

Maybe we will know, but meanwhile thousands of developers are a long down way the rabbit-hole signposted "the psychology of prior investment".

How the Atlas Network is shaping your life, even if you've never heard of it

MrVandemar — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 23:27:04 +0000

Article URL: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-26/atlas-network-mont-pelerin-society-neoliberal-think-tanks/105700628

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46759756

Points: 22

# Comments: 2

New comment by MrVandemar in "Douglas Adams on the English–American cultural divide over "heroes""

MrVandemar — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 03:38:18 +0000

Not just Charlie Brown. The entire cast of the comic.

* Charlie Brown will never talk to the Red Haired Girl. His kites will always be eaten by a tree. He'll never win a baseball game. He'll never kick the football. He has abominably low self-esteem.

* Lucy's infatuation with Schroder is clearly one-sided; likewise Peppermint Patty / Charlie Brown; also Sally/Linus.

* Snoopy will never get the Red Baron, nor enjoy publishing success

* Linus will never stop believing in The Great Pumpkin and is disappointed every year.

Probably loads more. The comic is about losers, and losing.

New comment by MrVandemar in "Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?"

MrVandemar — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 12:21:33 +0000

> Most if not all of those kids who were called names and isolated in some way found ways to break out of their pigeon hole:

Social exclusion is psychologically damaging, and often is directed at people who are ND, LGBTQI+, introverted, different culture/skin colour, etc.

I find it troubling that you say "most if not all ... were heroes ... and they thrived". No. You describe abuse, plain and simple. Abuse is not the forge of character development or great art. What you excuse as sounding "overly idealistic" is actually incredibly toxic.

And I know people who are deeply, profoundly psychologically broken as a result of this amazing process you describe that causes "most, if not all" of these people to "thrive".

> I normally don't contribute to HN comments these days

I see why.

New comment by MrVandemar in "Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?"

MrVandemar — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 11:18:35 +0000

For clarification, "Kingdom Hall" is "Jehovah's Witnesses".

You know, the people who knock on your door and you pretend you're not home, because having a conversation with one of these people is about as fun as colonoscopy prep.

New comment by MrVandemar in "Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?"

MrVandemar — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 10:52:20 +0000

There's a loophole. All dog owners are allowed to strike up conversations with other dog owners about their dogs.

That's only if you like dogs, I guess.

New comment by MrVandemar in "Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?"

MrVandemar — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 10:46:49 +0000

It's called "Love Bombing" and it's almost always a precursor to abuse and/or exploitation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_bombing

New comment by MrVandemar in "Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?"

MrVandemar — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 10:39:37 +0000

National Service means largely:

* Giving people guns and teaching them to kill

* Teaching people to blindly follow orders barked at them by an authority figure

* Enormous potential for mental health problems, including bullying, abuse and suicide

* Wasting 4 productive years of someones life

I'm pretty certain national service is a Bad Idea™

New comment by MrVandemar in "Ask HN: Share your personal website"

MrVandemar — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 01:06:59 +0000

Really digging this!

New comment by MrVandemar in "Intellectual Junkyards"

MrVandemar — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 04:19:37 +0000

Nice use of XML/XSL in the browser.

You know, that thing that they are trying to kill.

New comment by MrVandemar in "A spider web unlike any seen before"

MrVandemar — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 10:55:47 +0000

Or maybe Web (1979) by John Wyndham.

New comment by MrVandemar in "As deep-sea mining race ramps up, mission will assess whether ecosystems recover"

MrVandemar — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 01:55:28 +0000

If you have a population that want rising material living standards, that's easy too. Any increase in living standards should be balanced against a concomitant decrease in population. Resource usage (meaning pollution, waste, energy production) stays steady or even goes down.

Apparently population control is anathema to most people though, so the unrelenting environmental rape continues unabated.