Hacker News: abadar

New comment by abadar in "Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows"

abadar — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 18:18:56 +0000

I've been taking Windows only apps from github and having Claude rewrite them for Linux. It's been awesome.

New comment by abadar in "Teaching my kid to code with a modern MUD"

abadar — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 15:47:23 +0000

That was fun. Emma did a great job building Fruit Drop!

New comment by abadar in "Brain scans reveal 3 ADHD subtypes"

abadar — Mon, 04 May 2026 14:59:51 +0000

I, too, experience that. I am anxious and I overthink and I am avoidant. Vyvanse helped a ton, but it was producing health complications, so I am taking something else that's not as good.

It's not a substitue for counseling, but consider talking to your favorite LLM chatbot. It will provide generic advice, but it will probably work 80% of the time. Sometimes being told what to do is good enough of a kickstart.

Or I can give you the crappy advice that works. "Just start."

New comment by abadar in "Modern Board Games: and why you should play them (2022)"

abadar — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 17:08:44 +0000

Yes, Innovation can be very swingy and I love it. Drama is the most important aspect of board games for me.

Excitement = fun

New comment by abadar in "Modern Board Games: and why you should play them (2022)"

abadar — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 14:50:26 +0000

I super recommend Innovation. If you enjoy nuanced gameplay like in TCGs, this is for you. Everyone starts in the Stone Age and the goal is to race to 4-6 achievements, advancing through technological ages. Cards represent technologies and they have powers, like drawing cards, forcing other people to give you cards, score points, etc. It's a great game of resource management, politics, and sabotage.

New comment by abadar in "Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?"

abadar — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 14:23:03 +0000

I used to play Pokémon cards competitively. It was fun going to local tournaments and flying with friends for Regional tournaments. I stopped to focus on night school, and I want to pick it back up with the card legality change happening Friday.

Pokémon Champions just came out, so I might give up cards for the video game. We'll see.

New comment by abadar in "Kindle to end store downloads and registering for 1st-5th gen kindles in May"

abadar — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 18:40:24 +0000

Thank you for making such a great tool. KCC got me back into reading manga and there are so many that are so great.

For anyone looking for recommendations, I really enjoyed Pluto, Yokohama Shopping Log, and Young Ladies Don't Play Fighting Games.

New comment by abadar in "Taste in the age of AI and LLMs"

abadar — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 16:46:43 +0000

You make a really salient point about having a clear vision and using clear language. Patrick Zgambo says that working with AI is spellcasting; you just need to know the magic words. The more I work with AI tools, the more I agree.

Now, figuring out those words? That's the hard part.

New comment by abadar in "Ask HN: How do you handle marketing as a solo technical founder?"

abadar — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 02:00:03 +0000

I'm in sales. This is going to sound shallow and tautological, but you find the people to interview for Product Market Fit by looking for the people you THINK are the ideal customers.

If you can't find your target market, you might want to consider a different demographic that you understand better. Most successful startup founders started a business specifically to solve the problems they dealt with at their last job. They understand their product market fit because they ARE their target market.

Hacking old hardware by renaming to .zip [video]

abadar — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 11:09:21 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1kfuCkWo24

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47515783

Points: 122

# Comments: 88

New comment by abadar in "Allow me to get to know you, mistakes and all"

abadar — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 01:29:01 +0000

Your experience of being better at editing than writing makes me think of advice from Alan Moore (of Watchmen fame) on writing. He says to also read bad books, because if you read only good books, you'll never realize if you unintentionally plagiarized. But if you also read bad books, you'll think, "Jesus Christ, I could write this shit," and feel liberated to analyze their writing and examine why their writing offended you.

I analyze the writing of my LLMs and I get really annoyed and frustrated and I think it's marginally improving my communication.

New comment by abadar in "The modern formatting addiction in writing"

abadar — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 16:42:12 +0000

> First write with lots of formatting. > Then figure out how to remove it. > Then put it back, if you want.

In the fifth grade, we were required to write an outline for our research project essay. Imagine my delight when writing the paper was as easy as copying the outline and adding a couple extra words.

That value of formatting into bulleted lists reminds me of the McPhee method of writing, which was shared last year on HN. He manipulates physical note cards to write, and I was manipulating digital ones.

New comment by abadar in "I vibe coded my dream macOS presentation app"

abadar — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 19:35:49 +0000

I am not a programmer.

I love how vibecoding has opened the door for hyper-custom apps and scripts that benefit an exact audience of One.

Last week, I built a dynamic map to track local Play! Pokémon tournaments. It uses leafletjs and an api for an ICS file of events. I don't know what most of those words mean, but I have something perfect for me and my local competitive Pokémon community!

New comment by abadar in "Open source is not about you (2018)"

abadar — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 00:38:48 +0000

My latest apps are

* Cardsphere (Magic card trading website) wishlist to inventory comparer * Scryfall (Magic card database) search result CSV Downloader * Cube Tagger, an app to easily tag cards with function tags for easy categorizing in cubes (boardgamified collection of Magic cards)

The vibe coding part is wonderful because I can "make" the software I want. However, it always takes hours of runs to get to where I need it to be because I'm unpracticed at project planning. I constantly hit critical edge cases and UX problems.

New comment by abadar in "Open source is not about you (2018)"

abadar — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 16:24:14 +0000

I get that. I am a non-programmer who vibe codes personal web apps for Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon TCG. I turn them into github pages for easy access for myself.

I don't share them with my hobby communities because I don't want to hear feedback because I don't want these finished projects to become eternal projects.

New comment by abadar in "Doing the thing is doing the thing"

abadar — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 14:42:29 +0000

I totally get that. I have a super corpo buddy who tells me every project is 80% planning and he uses that philosophy for his personal projects. That makes sense for a huge company.

I resist working like that because I am mega ignorant and I know I will encounter problems that I won't recognize until I get to them.

But, I also HATE having to rework my projects because of something I overlooked.

My (attempted) solution is to slog through a chat with an AI to build a Project Requirements Document and to answer every question it asks about my blindspots. It mostly helps build stuff. And sometimes the friction prevents me from overloading myself with more unfinished projects!

New comment by abadar in "ChatGPT conversations still lack timestamps after years of requests"

abadar — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 14:02:15 +0000

I built a single page website that copies the current time to my clipboard and I paste it into my messages. It's inconvenient and I don't do it irregularly.

I'll have to look into the extension described in the link. Thank you for sharing. It's nice to know it's a shared problem.

New comment by abadar in "GPT Image 1.5"

abadar — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 19:58:40 +0000

I really enjoyed your experiments. Thank you for sharing your experiences. They've improved my prompting and have tempered my expectations.

New comment by abadar in "Job mismatch and early career success"

abadar — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 04:03:49 +0000

Thank you for sharing. This was a fascinating read.

New comment by abadar in "Ask HN: How are you making money on the side?"

abadar — Tue, 08 Jul 2025 19:42:04 +0000

I spun off geek-themed speed dating to geek themed singles mixers. They have party games, couch co-op and vs games, karaoke, and get-to-know-you games to encourage strangers to talk to each other. A drink is included with the ticket.