Hacker News: bherms

New comment by bherms in "Show HN: Brutalist Concrete Laptop Stand (2024)"

bherms — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:16:31 +0000

For a larger piece, I used a massage gun and walked around the mold hitting the sides with it. Worked out

New comment by bherms in "Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?"

bherms — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 23:14:37 +0000

So then I guess it seems like you're rejecting the premise then that there's a loneliness epidemic?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loneliness_epidemic

I get what you're saying -- I leave my house more than most. But I think it's pretty clear we're trending away from that being the default.

New comment by bherms in "Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?"

bherms — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 22:51:03 +0000

You're completely missing the point. The problem is people aren't collectively incentivized to do so. Individually someone can decide "oh wow, I'm lonely, I should get out more", but collectively there's nothing incentivizing everyone to do it, or even notice it's an issue. If there were, we wouldn't be in this situation.

---

"How do we solve the obesity problem?" "Well people should just work out."

Obviously, that would solve it, but they're distinctly not doing that, which is why we're talking about a broader solution to actually get people to work out.

New comment by bherms in "Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?"

bherms — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 22:49:15 +0000

Yeah I'm very willing to socialize and actually do far more than pretty much anyone I know, even those without kids (but maybe not as much as a 25 year old just getting started in the world and living in SF like I once was). I'm lucky in that regard I guess.

New comment by bherms in "Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?"

bherms — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 22:47:40 +0000

Oh absolutely... I just look at the office as a "forced" version of what you said. Totally agree it's way more than just the office

New comment by bherms in "Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?"

bherms — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 22:46:46 +0000

YMMV I guess. I've got tons of friends I've made walking around the office and just dropping in and asking people what they're working on and introducing myself, or sitting at a table with people I didn't. Some are no more than acquaintances, but some are close friends now.

New comment by bherms in "Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?"

bherms — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 19:21:30 +0000

This as well. You need to learn to talk to people, socialize, handle adversity, etc. Sitting at home and your only real connection to the outside world being an echo chamber like facebook or whatever cannot be good for us

New comment by bherms in "Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?"

bherms — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 19:15:54 +0000

Yep, I met my wife at an office party - she didn't work for the company, just stopped by with someone who did

And not just the office friends that come from it -- I spent an hour a day on the bus, grabbed lunch around town, was downtown when work wrapped up and ended up at a nearby bar/restaurant, went to shows because I was downtown, etc.

Just being forced out of the house led to SO MUCH MORE.

Now I work from home and while we do travel a lot, we barely ever leave the house when we're home. We didn't make a single new friend for like 5 years (and we are a VERY social couple, generally the center of most of our friend groups). We've only just now started making new friends again now that our daughter is a toddler and getting us out of the house -- and it is incredibly refreshing

New comment by bherms in "Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?"

bherms — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 19:11:35 +0000

All of the replies so far are suggesting ideas for an individual but seem to be missing the real crux of the matter...

Yes, you'll be less lonely if you join a group, get out of your house, etc... But how do we actively incentivize that? Social media and whatnot have hundreds of thousands of people working around the clock to find ways to suck you in and monopolize your time.

While "everyone should recognize the problem and then take steps to solve it for themselves" is the obvious solution, it's also not practical to just have everyone collectively decide they need to get out more without SOME sort of fundamental change in our society/incentives/etc

New comment by bherms in "Ask HN: How can we solve the loneliness epidemic?"

bherms — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 19:08:32 +0000

this is one reason, while i personally work from home, i actually lament that many 20-somethings will never be in an office

i'm nearing 40, have a wife and kid, house in the mountains, etc... but, damn, those office days were foundational to the person I am today

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

bherms — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 05:06:24 +0000

Yeah I'm impressed with its ability to do stuff, but not quite with its results. We have been working on more AI assistance adoption so I asked it to do some decently complex things with json/yml schema definitions and validations (outside the typical json schema we wanted things like conditional validation, etc)... It wrote a LOT of code and took a long time, and kept telling me it would work, and it didn't. I finally stepped in and eliminated roughly 75% of the code in about 10 minutes and got it working. It's great at tedious stuff, but outside of that, I'm skeptical.

New comment by bherms in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (February 2025)"

bherms — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 23:09:31 +0000

My wife is looking for a job for a while:

  Location:  South Lake Tahoe, CA
  Remote:  Remote preferred, but could be convinced to move back towards SF
  Willing to relocate:  Only to Northern California
  Technologies:  Financial analyst stuff
  Résumé/CV:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/alyona-timkina-8740b2107/
  Email:  aatimkina@gmail.com

She works for Disney / Hulu right now for several years and is an Associate Business Manager & Sr Financial Analyst. She manages a budget of over $250m and is universally loved. They're moving to in office and we have no desire to move to LA, especially to work in a cubicle. She wants to move more towards a startup, because she misses the fast-paced, team oriented, can-do attitude of Hulu, and is being drained by the culture of Disney. If you want a genuinely good person who will work her ass off, reach out!

New comment by bherms in "Firebase bill is usually $50, but I was surprised to see a $70k bill in one day"

bherms — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 08:57:29 +0000

I’m not positive… I would imagine you’d need to transfer ownership. Like if I have an iOS app under my personal dev account then start an LLC and someone sues me for whatever reason, I think it would be hard to argue the LLC actually owns the app, but IANAL. You can generally sign up for most of these services as a team or business but I’m not familiar with firebase. It being Google though I’d assume they support business accounts

New comment by bherms in "Firebase bill is usually $50, but I was surprised to see a $70k bill in one day"

bherms — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 01:36:20 +0000

I've only ever used Stripe Atlas, but there's other alternatives. Atlas gives you a bunch of free credits with their partners and is pretty quick to get through, but you might be paying a hundred or two premium over doing it all ad hoc.

New comment by bherms in "Firebase bill is usually $50, but I was surprised to see a $70k bill in one day"

bherms — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 01:35:32 +0000

It's not technically fraudulent to use your personal bank account, per se. You need to keep great records though. But from what I understand that could be enough to consider the veil pierced. Also need to make sure you don't personally ensure any debts.

New comment by bherms in "Firebase bill is usually $50, but I was surprised to see a $70k bill in one day"

bherms — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 01:33:55 +0000

Yep, while it's a few extra hundred bucks, Stripe Atlas is just super easy and you get tons of credits and stuff through the partner perks. Plus I've always enjoyed using Stripe for payments.

New comment by bherms in "Firebase bill is usually $50, but I was surprised to see a $70k bill in one day"

bherms — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 01:13:52 +0000

hopefully dev has insurance?

but anyway, this is partially why I spin up an LLC for every app i make... just declare bankruptcy and kill it

New comment by bherms in "For Brilliant Color: Packaging the First LSD Blotter"

bherms — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 20:03:43 +0000

Same... I was wondering if I was the only one. And DMT if you really want to question reality.

New comment by bherms in "Pimping my Casio with Oddly Specific Objects' alternate motherboard and firmware"

bherms — Sun, 16 Oct 2022 17:56:37 +0000

Yeah that is a good point I guess. I see this spawned a talk on the word "retarded" as well. Words probably should be allowed to grow and change over time (we see it all the time).

New comment by bherms in "Pimping my Casio with Oddly Specific Objects' alternate motherboard and firmware"

bherms — Sat, 15 Oct 2022 17:45:11 +0000

I love stuff like this... I'd also like to get away from using the term "pimp" to mean to make something cooler. Pimps take advantage of and often force people into sexual slavery. Nothing about that should be glorified and turned into a colloquial term to mean something positive.