Hacker News: bobthepanda

New comment by bobthepanda in "The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: New Jobs"

bobthepanda — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 15:49:42 +0000

Right, but usually that also involves verifying that the electrician actually followed the professional rules, and if not, they have liability

New comment by bobthepanda in "The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: New Jobs"

bobthepanda — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 15:48:11 +0000

While this is true, this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that few sectors are truly monopolized and large corporations also sue each other.

New comment by bobthepanda in "The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: New Jobs"

bobthepanda — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:56:33 +0000

Accountability is really a way to address liability. So long as people can sue and companies can pay out, or individuals can go to jail, there is always going to be a question of liability; and historically the courts have not looked kindly at those who throw their hands up in the air and say “I was just following orders from a human/entity”

New comment by bobthepanda in "South Korea introduces universal basic mobile data access"

bobthepanda — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 16:27:25 +0000

Even in the US which is well behind SK in the digital curve, I’ve heard anecdotally that a huge problem with reintegrating some populations like the homeless, poor or elderly is that job applications are virtually all online now.

New comment by bobthepanda in "Tech job relocation market is recovering. The competition is growing faster"

bobthepanda — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 15:41:15 +0000

If anything, the average American is feeling a lot of schadenfreude after being lectures to “learn to code” for the last two decades.

New comment by bobthepanda in "Show HN: Tired of logic in useEffect, I built a class-based React state manager"

bobthepanda — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 03:07:18 +0000

I will say that I used to really not like hooks and that’s because I think the migration documentation and messaging was handled pretty poorly.

That being said, if you’ve worked with state management like Redux, I would argue that hooks are pretty similar to how you hook up that kind of data store.

New comment by bobthepanda in "Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?"

bobthepanda — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 02:10:08 +0000

I like making transit maps in my spare time.

I got into tech by liking data visualization, information design, and aesthetics in frontend. It turns out transit maps and wayfinding is one of the earliest modern attempts at information design that is standardized and legible. And it’s fun to revisit because there’s no objective truth about what kind of map is best.

New comment by bobthepanda in "Show HN: Tired of logic in useEffect, I built a class-based React state manager"

bobthepanda — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 01:25:52 +0000

You can do this pretty simply with hooks and reducers, where the reducer/dispatch are the model/controller.

Class components have their own pitfalls when you start messing around with componentDidUpdate, which was part of the motivation behind functional components IIRC.

New comment by bobthepanda in "USD Purchasing Power in Real Time Since 2000"

bobthepanda — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 23:57:43 +0000

The Big Mac Index has the fatal flaw in that it assumes the value of Big Mac is consistent over time; McDonald’s has been at the forefront of fast food attempting to break into a more high income market segment.

New comment by bobthepanda in "USD Purchasing Power in Real Time Since 2000"

bobthepanda — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 23:42:49 +0000

Accurately aiming inflation as a central bank is like trying to keep a deflating balloon the same size using a harmonica. 2.6% isn’t bad, I don’t know that many if any central banks have managed a tighter band.

New comment by bobthepanda in "AI singer now occupies eleven spots on iTunes singles chart"

bobthepanda — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:14:18 +0000

NYT bestsellers is also not a sales volume chart, there is an editorial lens to it as well

New comment by bobthepanda in "I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok"

bobthepanda — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 19:44:24 +0000

There are actual user studies to show that wider text is harder to read. https://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability

The major difference is that in the era of print, it was pretty logical where a multicolumn wide layout could go like on a newspaper, but in an desktop experience the browser markup is theoretically endless.

New comment by bobthepanda in "AI singer now occupies eleven spots on iTunes singles chart"

bobthepanda — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 18:24:24 +0000

ah, the standard trite, reductive anti-pop cudgel.

no, these days, pop albums are more frequently meant to be consumed in their entirety, often with full length visuals for each song that blend into each other in order.

* the death of radio has really meant that singles are declining in utility, especially in our social media era where the songs that pop off an album are not necessarily the record-designated singles

* the more parasocial development of pop encourages fans to invest more in merch and the concept of the album

* like everything else in the economy trending towards more expensive but meaningful experiences, tours are becoming larger productions to experience an album intensely

* in the AI era, we are now seeing artists pivot towards doubling down on experiences that AI cannot curate and provide meaning for

Rosalia this year is touring with a full orchestra and RAYE with a full big band, because these are intentional choices that the pop music industry has been trending towards for a while. There's always going to be trite drugstore music as long as there are drugstores, but what is charting is not really that at the moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htQBS2Ikz6c&list=RDhtQBS2Ikz...

New comment by bobthepanda in "AI singer now occupies eleven spots on iTunes singles chart"

bobthepanda — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 16:22:37 +0000

Artists have actually been moving back to the full album with goodies, even in mainstream pop with Beyoncé, Rosalia, RAYE, Charli XCX to name a few.

New comment by bobthepanda in "AI singer now occupies eleven spots on iTunes singles chart"

bobthepanda — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 16:10:33 +0000

The iTunes chart primarily focuses on sales velocity, not streams, and so I wonder how useful that is in 2026 and how easy it is to game.

New comment by bobthepanda in "Claude Code Unpacked : A visual guide"

bobthepanda — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 18:35:41 +0000

Depending on your standards and what company is making it you could even have “cruelty free.”

New comment by bobthepanda in "I quit. The clankers won"

bobthepanda — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 18:22:12 +0000

New comment by bobthepanda in "The OpenAI Graveyard: All the Deals and Products That Haven't Happened"

bobthepanda — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 18:20:54 +0000

The problem is that AGI fantasy aside, CTOs at companies are expected to deliver results today and tomorrow. Better to let somebody else hold the bag and train models, then once it finally works as advertised you can ease on the brakes.

New comment by bobthepanda in "I quit. The clankers won"

bobthepanda — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 16:16:30 +0000

Humans are still in the loop as the final signoff responsible for liability, and to do an audit you’ll need someone who knows what they’re looking at.

New comment by bobthepanda in "Oracle slashes 30k jobs"

bobthepanda — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 16:04:57 +0000

Right, I just feel like this is a bit over the top

> The only developers I know who write Java full time work in systems that take pictures of things from far away.