Hacker News: brandonmenc

New comment by brandonmenc in "Taxi drivers rarely die of Alzheimer's"

brandonmenc — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 22:50:10 +0000

Hilarious, because accounting for this stuff is drilled into your head when you study the softer sciences (like psychology) even as an undergrad.

New comment by brandonmenc in "Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy"

brandonmenc — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 20:17:03 +0000

Science fiction is entertainment.

There's no way to like, "misread" it.

New comment by brandonmenc in "Show HN: Trylle – The Next-Gen Git Platform for Modern Teams"

brandonmenc — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 02:38:59 +0000

Sorry, but you need to have at least some info about the humans involved before I would even consider using this.

New comment by brandonmenc in "John C. Dvorak has died"

brandonmenc — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 21:18:10 +0000

https://youtu.be/ur296s3wIv4

ITM, RIP

New comment by brandonmenc in "A Second-Grade Teacher Revived a Beloved Video Game"

brandonmenc — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 02:09:33 +0000

The point is that I pay for the NYT - in part, because they do so many "digital" things right compared to other newspapers - and yet so often they refuse to do the absolute bare minimum of hyperlinking.

Like, yeah, no duh - I can use Google.

New comment by brandonmenc in "A Second-Grade Teacher Revived a Beloved Video Game"

brandonmenc — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 18:41:22 +0000

Not a single hyperlink in that article. Infuriating.

New comment by brandonmenc in "The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes"

brandonmenc — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 03:17:14 +0000

Call me when "infinite scroll" causes cancer.

New comment by brandonmenc in "Show HN: My 13-year-old built an ant colony tracker"

brandonmenc — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 03:12:00 +0000

How do you know they're not learning by using an LLM?

You think just because they built something with an LLM they won't ever "view source" on the output?

Very presumptuous.

New comment by brandonmenc in "Show HN: My 13-year-old built an ant colony tracker"

brandonmenc — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 03:10:35 +0000

re: "taste" - whatever that even means here - you could say the same thing about any of the thousands of Bootstrap or Tailwind or whatever CRUD apps made over the years.

New comment by brandonmenc in "Show HN: My 13-year-old built an ant colony tracker"

brandonmenc — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:58:09 +0000

They're 13.

When we were using Hypercard or BASIC to make dumb little programs, we weren't learning any of that stuff either, really.

Making apps is so complicated now that without a little bit of help from LLMs, most kids would probably just give up.

Heck, lots of professional software developers are using LLMs to get over that hump on their side projects for the very same reason.

It's hard to even get started nowadays, and LLMs lower the barrier of entry. This is a good thing.

EDIT: Also, maybe this kid doesn't dream of being a programmer? And they just want an app that solves their immediate problem? Everyone here is being unnecessarily harsh. I hope none of you have kids.

New comment by brandonmenc in "How do you keep Web MIDI from crashing a 1983 synthesizer?"

brandonmenc — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 02:38:13 +0000

Yeah, and I'm certainly not paying $20 a month - indefinitely - for it.

New comment by brandonmenc in "Om Malik has died"

brandonmenc — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 02:12:12 +0000

Too bad they had a falling out when Dvorak questioned the logic of hiring Vivek Kundra (remember him? of course not!) as the nation's first CIO.

New comment by brandonmenc in "India's surprise baby bust"

brandonmenc — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 02:13:51 +0000

Not really.

My parents married in 1972 at age 18. Rust belt. Both worked. While comfortable, we were always worried about money and layoffs.

Friends whose parents didn't do as well as mine or who were single income households fared far worse. Definitely didn't end up with saved "extra" money.

New comment by brandonmenc in "California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash"

brandonmenc — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:38:29 +0000

This level of filtering is so granular and bespoke that I'm not surprised no one offers it.

New comment by brandonmenc in "The Moth Story Map"

brandonmenc — Tue, 12 May 2026 20:37:36 +0000

Have an upvote, you old chunk of coal!

New comment by brandonmenc in "Canvas is down as ShinyHunters threatens to leak schools’ data"

brandonmenc — Fri, 08 May 2026 03:34:10 +0000

Maybe schools should be self-hosting something like Sakai instead.

New comment by brandonmenc in "America's Expanding Domestic Surveillance"

brandonmenc — Sat, 02 May 2026 21:44:04 +0000

There is a reasonable middle ground between tossing everyone in the hole and letting petty crime run rampant.

New comment by brandonmenc in "America's Expanding Domestic Surveillance"

brandonmenc — Sat, 02 May 2026 16:54:29 +0000

Then we need to make it work their time by bringing back broken windows policing.

New comment by brandonmenc in "Online age verification is the hill to die on"

brandonmenc — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 21:32:12 +0000

After reading these comments, I don't want to hear any of you suggest that kids shouldn't be allowed to have unrestricted access to smartphones or social media ever again.

How did you think this was going to be enforced?

New comment by brandonmenc in "Men Who Stare at Walls"

brandonmenc — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 13:30:50 +0000

Blanking out is afaik the exact opposite of "mindfulness".

This is almost exactly like Transcendental Meditation, even down the to the length of time of ~20 minutes.