Hacker News: andybp85

New comment by andybp85 in "It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12"

andybp85 — Sat, 30 May 2026 12:29:17 +0000

in my day job doing enterprise web apps at a mac shop 16G became unusable for the engineers 3-5 yeas ago. i managed to weasel into them getting me a 64G M1 Pro in 2022 (now they won't buy us any higher than 32G). i'll probably still be using this thing in six years!

to be fair, given the choice between a decade-old macbook and basically any current windows box with same specs, i'd take the macbook every time. but, if i could put linux on it...

New comment by andybp85 in "Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features"

andybp85 — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 19:52:13 +0000

i probably don't understand. the main thought i have re: llm coding is, why i would want to talk to a insipid, pandering chatbot instead of having fun writing code?

but, as an engineer, i have to say if it works for you and you're getting quality output, then go for it. it's just not for me.

New comment by andybp85 in "Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features"

andybp85 — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 18:01:37 +0000

if you have to understand exactly what you're doing, why not just... do it?

New comment by andybp85 in "What you need to know about EMP weapons"

andybp85 — Fri, 06 Jun 2025 13:51:15 +0000

yup. "the survivors are the lucky ones" is fantasy.

New comment by andybp85 in "What you need to know about EMP weapons"

andybp85 — Fri, 06 Jun 2025 13:50:01 +0000

The book says that that's exactly what it's supposed to be, to inspire people to talk about it. But (also from the book) the war games the USA runs around these situations always end in a massive nuclear exchange. Sure, some specific situations, like the Devil's Scenario, I would imagine might not reflect a real war, but the case the book is making is that reality is far more likely to be closer to the worst case than to a "best case" (whatever that means here).

New comment by andybp85 in "My AI skeptic friends are all nuts"

andybp85 — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 13:03:26 +0000

that's a whole different piece of software that it doesn't come with out of the box lol.

Copilot was what i was looking for, thank you. I have it installed in Webstorm already but I haven't messed with this side of it.

New comment by andybp85 in "My AI skeptic friends are all nuts"

andybp85 — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 12:20:33 +0000

vscode comes with that out of the box?

New comment by andybp85 in "My AI skeptic friends are all nuts"

andybp85 — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 11:30:36 +0000

what are you using for this? one thing I can't wrap my head around is how anyone's idea of fun is poking at an LLM until it generates something possibly passable and then figuring what the hell it did and why, but this sounds like something i'd actually use.

New comment by andybp85 in "What makes code hard to read: Visual patterns of complexity (2023)"

andybp85 — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 14:18:13 +0000

for the codebase i work on, i made a rule that "functions do what the name says and nothing else". this way if the function does too much, hopefully you feel dumb typing it and realize you should break it up.

New comment by andybp85 in "The Ribbon Microphone"

andybp85 — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 14:36:36 +0000

I built a ribbon mic from a kit a while ago, and only broke the ribbon once putting it together! https://www.bumblebeepro.com/

Of course, as soon as i tried to record my guitarist with it, he cranked his amp and broke it again. Guitarists, man...

New comment by andybp85 in "Stimulation Clicker"

andybp85 — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 18:17:47 +0000

whelp this is making this meeting go way faster

New comment by andybp85 in "Phase behavior of Cacio and Pepe sauce"

andybp85 — Sat, 04 Jan 2025 17:37:47 +0000

did this recently and it totally works

New comment by andybp85 in "We have reached OpenBSD of Theseus"

andybp85 — Sat, 24 Aug 2024 20:43:33 +0000

wholeheartedly agree, git rebase -i is a game-changer once you get comfortable with it

New comment by andybp85 in "Alexander Abian"

andybp85 — Mon, 08 Jul 2024 12:13:16 +0000

I definitely did not see that coming lol

New comment by andybp85 in "Does a cave beneath Pembroke Castle hold key to fate of early Britons?"

andybp85 — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 10:17:19 +0000

Huh, I (from New Jersey) somehow made it through the British Museum without realizing "artefact" is spelled differently in British English.

New comment by andybp85 in "I was denied tenure – how do I cope?"

andybp85 — Fri, 07 Jun 2024 12:51:42 +0000

Isn't showing students where you can find a boatload of real-life examples of the kinds of things their studying kind of obviously a good idea?

New comment by andybp85 in "Sao Paulo: A city with no outdoor advertisements (2013)"

andybp85 — Tue, 04 Jul 2023 19:17:01 +0000

that's one thing I love about living in Jersey City, NJ. there's a thriving street art program: https://www.jcmap.org/

New comment by andybp85 in "FTX collapse, Tether operations have links to online-poker cheating scandals"

andybp85 — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 13:52:34 +0000

it's that money talks, especially to people who don't understand technology enough to spot obvious bullshit. which of course isn't a justification for anything other than why the price of bitcoin is relatively impervious to logical analysis.

New comment by andybp85 in "Firebase's Firestore Is Down"

andybp85 — Wed, 09 Nov 2022 15:16:26 +0000

and we're back

New comment by andybp85 in "Firebase's Firestore Is Down"

andybp85 — Wed, 09 Nov 2022 15:13:26 +0000

been down since 9:30AM EST and the status page isn't showing anything...