Hacker News: brandonmenc

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.

New comment by brandonmenc in "Notepad++ for Mac – Independent community port"

brandonmenc — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 02:53:21 +0000

Why do anything?

New comment by brandonmenc in "US special forces soldier arrested after allegedly winning $400k on Maduro raid"

brandonmenc — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 10:47:57 +0000

Yes, the military have fewer rights than civilians. That's a feature.

New comment by brandonmenc in "Brussels launched an age checking app. Hackers took 2 minutes to break it"

brandonmenc — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 13:36:00 +0000

They scan my ID when I buy wine at the grocery store so, who knows?

New comment by brandonmenc in "Michigan 'digital age' bills pulled after privacy concerns raised"

brandonmenc — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 18:33:24 +0000

Thank you for saying this. I've been similarly baffled.

The call to ban children from social media seemed like it was coming loudest from tech people - like HN users.

How did they think this was going to work?

New comment by brandonmenc in "I'm OK being left behind, thanks"

brandonmenc — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 14:54:38 +0000

This is true in my experience.

I waited until it seemed good enough to use without having to spend most of my time keeping up with the latest magical incantations.

Now I have multiple Claude instances running and producing almost all of my commits at work.

Yes, with a lot of time spent planning and validating.

New comment by brandonmenc in "Glaze by Raycast"

brandonmenc — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:41:38 +0000

Literally hundreds.

In the DOS days, I would have whipped them up in BASIC. This was standard practice for PC users who were not "software engineers" by trade.

The complication of PCs over the past 30+ years have robbed regular users of this ability.

Tools like this close the gap, and that's awesome.

New comment by brandonmenc in "Florida public universities to pause hiring new H-1B workers"

brandonmenc — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 17:06:59 +0000

It’s an elite position.

I’ve never seen a MAGA hat arguing for more (or any) H1Bs - quite the opposite.

New comment by brandonmenc in "Block the “Upgrade to Tahoe” alerts"

brandonmenc — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 03:35:33 +0000

I held out.

Then I upgraded my work laptop to test it out. Then my phone. Now my personal laptop.

I actually like it.

Everything is snappier. The glass effects are not nearly as annoying as I expected.

ymmv

New comment by brandonmenc in "Facing a demographic catastrophe, Ukraine is paying for troops to freeze sperm"

brandonmenc — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 02:57:06 +0000

Yes, it is difficult to take out the leader of a world nuclear world power.

Especially one as shrewd as Putin. Especially when you're expecting the EU to do it. Not sure why this is a surprise.

The world is not an action film.

New comment by brandonmenc in "Code Storage by the Pierre Computer Company"

brandonmenc — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 15:44:40 +0000

It's hard for me to trust a site that looks like a cryptic design portfolio from the early 2000s.

New comment by brandonmenc in "US judge rules Luigi Mangione won't face death penalty in CEO killing case"

brandonmenc — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 01:16:49 +0000

Keep dreaming.

I'm not sure why so many people believe that what - jury nullification? - is going to happen.

New comment by brandonmenc in "Anthropic Economic Index report: economic primitives"

brandonmenc — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 01:37:38 +0000

The generous interpretation is that it's meant to incentivize "carpenters who refuse to use power tools" for their own good.