Hacker News: albrewer

New comment by albrewer in "Python developers are embracing type hints"

albrewer — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 15:39:45 +0000

Define a protocol[0] that declares it implements `__getitem__` and type annotate with that protocol. Whatever properties are needed inside the function can be described in other protocols.

These are similar to interfaces in C# or traits in Rust - you describe what the parameter _does_ instead of what it _is_.

[0]: https://typing.python.org/en/latest/spec/protocol.html

New comment by albrewer in "AWS CEO says using AI to replace junior staff is 'Dumbest thing I've ever heard'"

albrewer — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 18:49:21 +0000

My AI experience has varied wildly depending on the problem I'm working on. For web apps in Python, they're fantastic. For hacking on old engineering calculation code written in C/C++, it's an unmitigated disaster and an active hindrance.

New comment by albrewer in "Code review can be better"

albrewer — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 18:30:36 +0000

> Because in the software engineering world there is very little engineering involved.

I can count on one hand the number of times I've been given the time to do a planning period for something less than a "major" feature in the past few years. Oddly, the only time I was able to push good QA, testing, and development practices was at an engineering firm.

New comment by albrewer in "My bank keeps on undermining anti-phishing education"

albrewer — Fri, 18 Jul 2025 16:11:59 +0000

Don't be ridiculous. It's a set of solenoids typing into a punch card machine.

New comment by albrewer in "I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)"

albrewer — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 14:54:01 +0000

I've housed two sibling that were labeled as "mentally unstable"(raised by mentally abusive narcissists) and "lazy"(has narcolepsy), respectively. Both situations were pretty bad before they landed in our home, but everyone in their lives called us "angels" for taking them in.

Each of them lived with my family for two years. All my wife and I did was let them exist in their own space with no pressure to do anything (other than coexist in our house, but that's purely logistics).

Both of them have gone on to go to college and pursue their respective dreams. The elder of the two lives independently, and the younger just shipped off to college.

The broader point being that most people just need a support network and a stable place to live to start to thrive.

Granted, that's just anecdata on my part, but it seems to line up with moth metal health studies I've read when it comes to homelessness.

New comment by albrewer in "PWM flicker: Invisible light that's harming our health?"

albrewer — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 14:30:44 +0000

> This made them useful for astronomers because their light was easily filtered

The wavelength is so specific that it can have all kinds of cool applications:

https://youtu.be/UQuIVsNzqDk?si=R4VUDCfC6zcHd4XC

New comment by albrewer in "What methylene blue can (and can’t) do for the brain"

albrewer — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 14:28:24 +0000

> but norepinephrine is actually the common thread among all ADHD medications

Anecdata, but my ADHD (and depression!) didn't significantly improve until I was on both lisdexamfetamine and buproprion. Both drugs lift production of both neurotransmitters, but they "specialize" in dopamine and norepinephrine, respectively.

New comment by albrewer in "The Rise of the Japanese Toilet"

albrewer — Mon, 02 Jun 2025 15:01:08 +0000

> People who have been doing this their whole lives can probably aim with a precision of a Marine Corp Sniper but to us

I bought these sprayers for my house when people lost their minds hoarding toilet paper during the initial COVID lockdowns in the US. It only took a few days to start getting it right the first time, every time.

New comment by albrewer in "Human coders are still better than LLMs"

albrewer — Fri, 30 May 2025 15:48:20 +0000

> LLMs can reliably solve the problem of a blank-page.

This has been the biggest boost for me. The number of choices available when facing a blank page is staggering. Even a bad/wrong implementation helps collapse those possibilities into a countable few that take far less time to think about.

New comment by albrewer in "A thought on JavaScript "proof of work" anti-scraper systems"

albrewer — Wed, 28 May 2025 15:04:12 +0000

There a company awhile back that did almost exactly this called CoinHive

New comment by albrewer in "Trump administration halts Harvard's ability to enroll international students"

albrewer — Fri, 23 May 2025 15:48:55 +0000

I worked for a foundry that had been at the same location for 120 years. GE ran it into the ground and closed it 2 years after acquiring it.

New comment by albrewer in "Baby is healed with first personalized gene-editing treatment"

albrewer — Fri, 16 May 2025 14:59:23 +0000

Even if it did, wouldn't the development of the wrong genitials for their preferred sex make an edit like this meaningless? The existence of XX AMAB and XY AFAB people goes to show that it's more about what happens in utero than what genes you have after birth.

New comment by albrewer in "Malicious compliance by booking an available meeting room"

albrewer — Fri, 16 May 2025 14:38:10 +0000

I had a similar experience but had an opposite takeaway. I learned that my car, in dry, daylight conditions, could comfortably go 20±5 mph faster around curves than those signs suggest.

New comment by albrewer in "The term "vegetative electron microscopy" keeps showing up in scientific papers"

albrewer — Thu, 01 May 2025 19:26:28 +0000

I was thinking more like "Ear" and "Car" or "till" and "tilt"

New comment by albrewer in "Wasting Inferences with Aider"

albrewer — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 14:59:54 +0000

> often

Often being about 30% of the time in my experience

New comment by albrewer in "FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado"

albrewer — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 14:36:54 +0000

> It’s deporting illegal aliens.

There are multiple news stories of them deporting US citizens and legal residents. Here's one[0].

If citizens don't have due process, then nobody does. All it takes is the government to declare you a non-citizen; there will be no due process for you to prove otherwise.

[0]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/deported-family-us-citiz...

New comment by albrewer in "Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update"

albrewer — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 19:04:07 +0000

Google learning this the hard way with the recent chromecast outage[0]

[0]: https://www.googlenestcommunity.com/t5/Streaming/Regarding-a...

New comment by albrewer in "New Zealand's $16B health dept managed finances with single Excel spreadsheet"

albrewer — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 15:24:56 +0000

For the same reason Python is so popular. It's not the best at anything (besides being really easy to use), but it's top 5 at all the things that matter. When your use case outgrows Excel, then yeah, invest in a specialized system... when budget allows (which is never).

New comment by albrewer in "Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof"

albrewer — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 18:59:57 +0000

> creat[e] a graph where each permutation is a vertex and every permutation is connected by an edge. Each edge has a weight associated with it; the weight is calculated by seeing how many characters can be added to the end of one permutation (dropping the same number of characters from the start) to result in the other permutation. [...] Any Hamiltonian path through the created graph is a superpermutation, and the problem of finding the path with the smallest weight becomes a form of the traveling salesman problem.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superpermutation

New comment by albrewer in "Ladder: Self-improving LLMs through recursive problem decomposition"

albrewer — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 15:44:32 +0000

Given their respective histories, I'd say we're still in the "Volt pile" era of LLMs and AI.