Hacker News: amacbride

New comment by amacbride in "Why Japan has such good railways"

amacbride — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 16:06:08 +0000

> This liberal zoning system is reinforced by private access to city planning powers. Thirty percent of Japan’s urban land has been subject to land readjustment, where agreement among two thirds of residents and landowners in an area is enough to allow its replanning, including compulsorily taking and demolishing land for amenities and infrastructure.

I think this is the key paragraph because (like it or not) a lot of Americans would be philosophically opposed to this sort of process (the Kelo decision on eminent domain notwithstanding.)

New comment by amacbride in "Show HN: I made an esoteric programming language that's read like a spellbook"

amacbride — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 18:26:28 +0000

“From the depths of the WEB in Castle Evans, I summon thee, oh car, oh cdr; may thine parentheses ever match!”

New comment by amacbride in "NanoMi: Source-available transmission electron microscope"

amacbride — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 17:39:20 +0000

“At this point, private individuals will not be able to obtain licences to the NanoMi platform.”

Does “open source” have a different meaning in Canadian?

New comment by amacbride in "TiVo exiting legacy DVR business"

amacbride — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 05:14:06 +0000

Cory Doctorow said it best: "Enshittification" https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-04-04...

New comment by amacbride in "AMD signs AI chip-supply deal with OpenAI, gives it option to take a 10% stake"

amacbride — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 16:17:53 +0000

I do hope that this leads to improvement in the HIP/ROCm software ecosystem.

It’s definitely lacking in stability and polish compared to what NVIDIA has built. (Ask me why I’m on my third rebuild of LAMMPS this morning…)

New comment by amacbride in "NFS at 40 – Remembering the Sun Microsystems Network File System"

amacbride — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 01:56:35 +0000

My introduction to NFS was first at Berkeley, and then at Sun. It more or less just worked. (Some of the early file servers at Berkeley were drastically overcapacity with all the diskless Sun-3/50s connected, but still.)

And of course I still use it every day with Amazon EFS; Happy Birthday, indeed!

New comment by amacbride in "Show HN: Pyscn – Python code quality analyzer for vibe coders"

amacbride — Sun, 05 Oct 2025 20:55:09 +0000

I was using the definition of “let the LLM take the lead in writing the code, but review it afterwards“ so I don’t think our opinions are in conflict.

I think of coding agents as “talented junior engineers with no fatigue, but sometimes questionable judgment.”

New comment by amacbride in "Show HN: Pyscn – Python code quality analyzer for vibe coders"

amacbride — Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:26:42 +0000

I don't think we're at odds: I think "vibe coding" is strictly for fun and for prototypes. However, people will misuse any tool, so having utilities to mitigate the risk isn't a bad thing.

New comment by amacbride in "Show HN: Pyscn – Python code quality analyzer for vibe coders"

amacbride — Sun, 05 Oct 2025 18:09:20 +0000

I'm going to push back hard on the folks dunking on "vibe coders" -- I have been programming longer than most of you have been alive, and there are times when I absolutely do vibe coding:

1) unfamiliar framework 2) just need to build a throwaway utility to help with a main task (and I don't want to split my attention) 3) for fun: I think of it as "code sculpting" rather than writing

So this is absolutely a utility I would use. (Kudos to the OP.)

Remember the second-best advice for internet interactions (after Wheaton's Law): "Ssssshh. Let people enjoy things."

Why Painters Are Obsessed with the Duck Stamp Art Contest

amacbride — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 05:13:23 +0000

Article URL: https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/federal-duck-stamp-art-contest-2025/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45393321

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by amacbride in "President Trump Signs Technology Prosperity Deal with United Kingdom"

amacbride — Sun, 21 Sep 2025 17:40:25 +0000

Just the headline itself makes me think of the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” and we all know how that turned out.

New comment by amacbride in "Ultrasonic Chef's Knife"

amacbride — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 18:15:46 +0000

Subsidized by Big Hook, no doubt.

The Synology End Game

amacbride — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 06:37:21 +0000

Article URL: https://lowendbox.com/blog/they-used-to-be-good-but-now-theyve-turned-to-evil-the-synology-end-game/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45060920

Points: 457

# Comments: 355

New comment by amacbride in "New treatment eliminates bladder cancer in 82% of patients"

amacbride — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 20:03:15 +0000

Bladder cancer has a notoriously high recurrence rate, unfortunately. (I worked for years in NMIBC molecular diagnostics.)

New comment by amacbride in "Telo MT1"

amacbride — Sat, 02 Aug 2025 21:21:48 +0000

Part of the problem, of course, is that the Tacoma is no longer even remotely small.

I really want a modern version of a mid-90s Tacoma.

New comment by amacbride in "The cultural decline of literary fiction"

amacbride — Sun, 22 Jun 2025 18:25:20 +0000

A well-known observation!

“Sturgeon's law (or Sturgeon's revelation) is an adage stating ‘ninety percent of everything is crap’.”

New comment by amacbride in "The Tech Job Meltdown"

amacbride — Sat, 14 Jun 2025 03:43:46 +0000

Yes, lots of layoffs in biotech recently (Recursion is a big recent one, although some of that is post-merger restructuring after the Ex Scientia acquisition.)

New comment by amacbride in "Near-infrared spatiotemporal color vision enabled by upconversion contact lenses"

amacbride — Thu, 22 May 2025 18:07:59 +0000

Infravision! (For you D&D nerds out there.)

New comment by amacbride in "FBI arrests judge accused of helping man evade immigration authorities"

amacbride — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 17:03:07 +0000

Import/Export Specialist

New comment by amacbride in "Apple needs a Snow Sequoia"

amacbride — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 12:21:01 +0000

This, 100%. Agile (properly done, for whatever value of “proper“ you choose) is fine for websites, apps, consumer facing stuff. For things that must work, in predictable fashion, for years, it’s often inappropriate.

OS work is somewhere in between, but definitely more towards the latter category.