Hacker News: bbarn

New comment by bbarn in "Intel 486 CPU announced April 10, 1989"

bbarn — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:46:53 +0000

I can't remember, could you buy a math coprocessor for it?

I know my 286 you could pair with a 287 next to it.. not sure if it really made a difference you could discern outside of hyper-specific uses though.

New comment by bbarn in "How to talk to anyone and why you should"

bbarn — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 00:05:29 +0000

If anyone doesn't know where to start - start in places you're stuck next to people. Like in line to check out at the grocery store. I have struck up dozens of conversations looking at the belt and guessing what they're making for dinner. People who like to cook love to talk about cooking.

New comment by bbarn in "Fix the iOS keyboard before the timer hits zero or I'm switching back to Android"

bbarn — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 15:05:51 +0000

I still use it on iOS, and I've tried to remove all other keyboards, but Apple still just seems to "make up" keyboards I don't know are installed. Or switch keyboards on me mid-typing a word to a weird native one I also don't show as installed. It used to be very occasionally this would happen but now it's so repeatable since 26 I can almost not use my keyboard.

One caveat, I have an Icelandic keyboard installed on there. Sometimes web controls will force an input box to a US english keyboard (or numpad), which is annoying but at least that's sort of covered by a spec. What really drives me nuts is when I'm mid typing on the swype keyboard and suddely it switches to a completely square grid keyboard with up and down quotes in the autocomplete (which is not actually autocompleting or correcting(which while technically correct has almost completely fallen out of popularity since the dawn of the internet)

New comment by bbarn in "How London became the rest of the world’s startup capital"

bbarn — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 22:15:54 +0000

Working for London startups in the past, I've found they're much more polite, but much less honest and straightforward. There's a layer of britishness you have to get past sometimes to get to what people really want instead of directness.

New comment by bbarn in "Toll roads are spreading in America"

bbarn — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 22:47:13 +0000

Except the impact of even gas prices going up has added to costs in basically anything delivered by truck. Every tax you put on that just eventually ends up in consumer hands.

New comment by bbarn in "Toll roads are spreading in America"

bbarn — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 22:45:02 +0000

It was very much on and off for many years. It was intended to cover the costs then go away. Instead they installed stream lined overhead tolls to not have to wait at the toll booth anymore and now it's just a perpetual tax.

It's also partially owned by outside investment (specifically the skyway from Indiana)

New comment by bbarn in "We invited a man into our home at Christmas and he stayed with us for 45 years"

bbarn — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:57:31 +0000

I had a similar issue living abroad. My wife had a work visa (which was the reason we we moving) and I was allowed to go being a spouse, but once there getting a permit to work for myself was impossible without a job, and a job was impossible without a work permit.

There were ways around it, but it took finding a job at a really big company to make it work - they had dealt with it and had HR people that specialized in it. Once "on paper", I was pretty free to move around. I would not be surprised if their method was just putting in all zeros in the system or something until the permit number came back.

New comment by bbarn in "We pwned X, Vercel, Cursor, and Discord through a supply-chain attack"

bbarn — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 21:42:31 +0000

I mean, as a hiring manager, a fresh grad with multiple bug bounties tells me a lot about their drive and skill, so I'd agree. It's a great differentiator.

New comment by bbarn in "How to Attend Meetings"

bbarn — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 22:19:23 +0000

I think the cultural norm of a stance like this for attendees will condition people over time to follow the opposite side of things.

New comment by bbarn in "A non-anthropomorphized view of LLMs"

bbarn — Sun, 06 Jul 2025 23:53:59 +0000

I think it's just an unfair comparison in general. The power of the LLM is the zero risk to failure, and lack of consequence when it does. Just try again, using a different prompt, retrain maybe, etc.

Humans make a bad choice, it can end said human's life. The worst choice a LLM makes just gets told "no, do it again, let me make it easier"

New comment by bbarn in "Hidden interface controls that affect usability"

bbarn — Sun, 06 Jul 2025 02:23:05 +0000

That was the point of the article. Users with knowledge of how it works can do it fine, but new users can't.

Your average dev who's never used vim or vi will start frustrated by default.

New comment by bbarn in "You are what you launch: how software became a lifestyle brand"

bbarn — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 03:52:53 +0000

I can in here to be snarky about this because it drives me nuts and screams "I'm so artsy" that it's aggravating. But you beat me to it.

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

bbarn — Thu, 29 May 2025 19:56:39 +0000

Honestly, if you're not doing it now, you're behind. The sheer amount of time savings using it smartly can give you to allow you to focus on the parts that actually matter is massive.

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

bbarn — Thu, 29 May 2025 19:55:04 +0000

The thing is, it is replacing _coders_ in a way. There are millions of people who do (or did) the work that LLMs excel at. Coders who are given a ticket that says "Write this API taking this input and giving this output" who are so far down the chain they don't even get involved in things like requirements analysis, or even interact with customers.

Software engineering, is a different thing, and I agree you're right (for now at least) about that, but don't underestimate the sheer amount of brainless coders out there.

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

bbarn — Thu, 29 May 2025 19:47:07 +0000

They will also not be offended or harbor ill will when you completely reject their "pull request" and rephrase the requirements.

New comment by bbarn in "Unauthorized experiment on r/changemyview involving AI-generated comments"

bbarn — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 23:02:38 +0000

Assuming power stayed automated, I wonder if all life on earth just vanished, how long AIs would keep talking to each other on reddit? I have to assume as long as the computers stayed up.

New comment by bbarn in "2,031-HP Hennessey Venom F5 Evolution Claims 0 to 200 MPH in 10 Seconds"

bbarn — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 15:25:42 +0000

My late father in law worked with them engineering the previous version of this car. It's about maximizing performance and engineering challenges. Many of the engineers are seasoned veterans of large car company's engineering teams, or racing teams. This is a playground for them to figure things out that you just don't justify on consumer cars.

New comment by bbarn in "2,031-HP Hennessey Venom F5 Evolution Claims 0 to 200 MPH in 10 Seconds"

bbarn — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 15:23:00 +0000

My late father in law worked with them in developing the previous generation, and he was 6'4".

New comment by bbarn in "Googler... ex-Googler"

bbarn — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 15:14:43 +0000

I think his statement could have benefited from and/or implicitly in the list of titles.

I certainly care very deeply about my people, and letting someone go is a last resort after trying to work things out. My boss cares that I care.. their boss.. we're numbers.

New comment by bbarn in "Eight or more drinks per week linked to brain lesions"

bbarn — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 02:02:53 +0000

Yeah, the fact that 40% get them regardless makes the slight increases seem.. statistically irrelevant?