Hacker News: anotherevan

Old tech is sometimes better – a case study based on blogpost from Now-Next

anotherevan — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 19:57:47 +0000

Article URL: https://www.depesz.com/2026/10/16/old-tech-is-sometimes-better-a-case-study-based-on-blogpost-from-now-next/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50200200

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Writing is no longer proof of work

anotherevan — Sun, 18 Oct 2026 00:38:04 +0000

Article URL: https://www.seangoedecke.com/writing-is-no-longer-proof-of-work/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50136678

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

New comment by anotherevan in "What I Self-Host"

anotherevan — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 01:29:17 +0000

As long as you can use one instance of Postgresql. There's another comment thread here[1] about each thing wanting its own Postgresql container.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50111944

New comment by anotherevan in "What I self-host"

anotherevan — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 01:26:14 +0000

I'd be interested in a list of services he uses that he could self-host but chooses not to. I think the only one he listed was email.

New comment by anotherevan in "I switched to Brave"

anotherevan — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:48:00 +0000

> I switched to Brave because Firefox no longer holds the technical or moral high ground.

Every time I see mention of "Brave" I'm reminded that Brendan left Mozilla because of his contributions to anti-gay rights causes, and then immediately founded a company called "Brave". In essence, to me, it felt like he was thumbing his nose and saying it was brave to be a homophobe.

So yeah, nah, comparing the moral high ground between Mozilla and quote Brave un-quote is not a compelling argument to me.

New comment by anotherevan in "Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables"

anotherevan — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 22:49:05 +0000

I have at least one box of old A/V cables and such sitting in my cupboard that I've been thinking I need to sort through and probably throw out.

Things like big, thick composite cables and extra long VGA cables.

Now… maybe not?

New comment by anotherevan in "Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables"

anotherevan — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 22:46:23 +0000

Yep, ziploc bags with the type of cable written in permanent marker.

Pro-tip, use a hole punch on a corner of the bag. That way, once zipped you can just squeeze it to get the air out.

New comment by anotherevan in "Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables"

anotherevan — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 22:41:27 +0000

Ha! I use CD spindles for… wait for it… CDs! Just opened the second drawer of my desk and counted four spindles of blank CDs and DVDs that I haven't used in years.

(I also hoard blank CD/DVD jewel cases. Who says technology ruins lives?)

New comment by anotherevan in "Autism mutations drive neurodevelopmental pathology"

anotherevan — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 06:17:38 +0000

“In an ideal world the scientist should find a method to prevent the most severe forms of autism but allow the milder forms to survive. After all, the really social people did not invent the first stone spear. It was probably invented by an Aspie who chipped away at rocks while the other people socialized around the campfire. Without autism traits we might still be living in caves.”

http://www.azquotes.com/quote/362838

New comment by anotherevan in "Don't paste the AI, please"

anotherevan — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 01:42:56 +0000

Except that it will get it wrong infrequently but often enough that you should really proof-read the result properly. All of which you end up taking more time than if you wrote proper if the first case.

New comment by anotherevan in "Don't paste the AI, please"

anotherevan — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 01:38:31 +0000

You just gave me strong memories of using voice messages for a couple of months some years ago. In my defence, I had dropped a circular saw blade through the tip of my finger which slowed down my typing for a while. (I did manage to get surprisingly fast as a nine-finger touch typist, sans the left index finger.)

Fortunately my colleagues were very understanding, and I reverted back to text once I could type reasonably well and with minimal pain again.

New comment by anotherevan in "Universal health coverage could save $1T and 114k lives a year: study"

anotherevan — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:00:39 +0000

"You millennials and your obsession with public healthcare. Back in my day we just died."

New comment by anotherevan in "AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)"

anotherevan — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 23:54:33 +0000

While I don't always agree with everything Drew writes, the title of his blog post[1], "Please stop externalising your costs directly into my face," really resonated with me.

At the end of the day I don't care how much of what you're presenting is your own words vs AI generated, as long as I can see evidence that you have reviewed and understood what you've passed to me. My resentment and ire is raised when the onus is pushed on me to be the first real human reviewer, having to do all the weighing of merit, practicality and in some cases plausibility that the quote un-quote author should have done before ever hitting send. It's passing the buck and an abdication of responsibility. It is lazy and makes more work for those you foist it upon when your role should be making the effort in your communications to make it easier for the recipient. Not wasting their time having to spend orders of magnitude more effort refuting bullshit you shouldn't have put out there in the first place.

It is something that has always pissed me off, however AI has made it fair easier for lazy people to think they sound smart and externalise their costs into my face.

[1] https://drewdevault.com/blog/Stop-externalizing-your-costs-o...

New comment by anotherevan in "I don't recommend Tailwind CSS"

anotherevan — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 23:54:57 +0000

My problem is I thoroughly learned HTML and CSS twenty years ago and am only incidentally aware of how they have changed and improved since. (I'm mostly a backend programmer with some frontend skills. I work with another programmer who is the other way around. I also learnt during the time when new features to the specs moved into browsers at a glacial pace, making them hardly worth keeping up with.)

For example I was spinning up a new project and added SASS so I could do nesting to make things cleaner. My frontend counterpart pointed out that CSS already has that.

Anyone know of some good resources that would bring my knowledge up to date without trying to take me through first principles?

Why AI Needs a "Genie Coefficient"

anotherevan — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 01:28:05 +0000

Article URL: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/07/why-ai-needs-a-genie-coefficient.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49105141

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

New comment by anotherevan in "Superlogical"

anotherevan — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 23:22:34 +0000

I must admit that I paused before hitting enter on that command and thought to myself, "Maybe I should download Ghostty and open it with that as a virtue signal." :-)

New comment by anotherevan in "The shingles vaccine may reduce the risk of dementia"

anotherevan — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 23:45:24 +0000

Watching my mum's descent into dementia, if (when?) I ever go down the same route, I plan to have, "You have dementia, be calm," tattooed on one arm, and pictures of my loved ones tattooed on the other.

New comment by anotherevan in "This blog is written in en-GB"

anotherevan — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 01:18:11 +0000

Yeah, I'll add the abbreviated day ("Thu 3 Jul 2026") where it makes sense to.

New comment by anotherevan in "This blog is written in en-GB"

anotherevan — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:42:33 +0000

Although my (AU) locale is dd-mm-yyyy, I'll use yyyy-mm-dd anywhere I have to write a date in all numbers to avoid any ambiguity. It also has the advantage of sorting correctly in things like file names.

For something more likely to be read by a human and not parsed by a computer (and is not locale or i18n/l10n flexible) I'll use d mmm yyyy, e.g., 3 Jul 2026. To my thinking, for English speaking this is the friendliest unambiguous format (although I'm sure opinions will differ).

New comment by anotherevan in "This blog is written in en-GB"

anotherevan — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:32:14 +0000

Australian's use mostly the same, except for the time format where AM/PM is still predominant. Also Celsius for temperature and 1,000.0 for number formatting.