Hacker News: brianpan

New comment by brianpan in "Asking authors about their own papers"

brianpan — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 17:00:10 +0000

Evidence-based assertions are a good thing, but some things are so obvious that a "comparison" or "research" is not needed. This is already an obvious problem in so many places from high schoolers turning in assignments they don't understand, coders submitting code changes they don't understand, blog posts, and certainly to scientific papers.

New comment by brianpan in "How to Write with an LLM"

brianpan — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 21:56:38 +0000

100% disagree. The more you don't know an area, the more LLMs will lead you astray.

Explaining difficult topics or summarizing to you is fine. But that's a world of difference from having an LLM write for you. You THINK the LLM is helping you write above your level, but that's because you are not in a position to tell it's bad.

New comment by brianpan in "A Million Falcons Went Missing. Here’s How They Were Found"

brianpan — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 19:04:46 +0000

Is this actually clickbait? The title is in the form of many clickbait title, but I'd argue it delivers; the article is more interesting than the title.

I suggest readers spend the click and the five minutes.

New comment by brianpan in "Show HN: Laser Graffiti"

brianpan — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 21:27:07 +0000

Defacement is not the point of graffiti. It's fundamentally visual, not fundamentally destructive.

New comment by brianpan in "Ask HN: Why is this my favicon for HN?"

brianpan — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 05:54:38 +0000

Video:

https://imgur.com/a/UDDDgFz

New comment by brianpan in "I Became a Pediatrician Because I Wanted to Be a Good Adult"

brianpan — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 22:19:57 +0000

Sorry for meta comments, but are we writing blogs like tweets now? I got 2/3 of the way through before getting overwhelmed by the lack of paragraph groupings to help me follow the stream of consciousness.

Interesting post though.

Ask HN: Why is this my favicon for HN?

brianpan — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 19:36:52 +0000

https://imgur.com/ikYjXd3

How did this happen? It's been like this for months- maybe more than a year. Kind of amusing since it's the favicon for a "banned" site.

MacOS 15.7.5 / Safari 26.4

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49351430

Points: 2

# Comments: 2

New comment by brianpan in "The “mechanical miracle” that ruined Mark Twain’s life"

brianpan — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 07:10:57 +0000

And the dishwasher, the laundry washer/dryer...

There's also plenty of examples where technology creates something very different than the thing that humans were doing: photograph vs painting, car vs horse/bike. It would be silly to say that we have all this horse infrastructure and saddle UX that we don't want to break compatibility with.

Maybe the lesson is that humans are adaptable but machines/manufacturing is not? It's easier to make a great new thing that humans will use than it is to make a cost-effective production thing that exactly replaces what humans did.

New comment by brianpan in "Iceberg Collapses and Flips over in Ilulissat, Greenland (July 25, 2026) [video]"

brianpan — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 18:20:56 +0000

There are different ways to create an iceberg. You are probably thinking of a hard chunk of ice breaking off into the ocean, but probably a more common way is glaciers running into the ocean. A glacier is basically a "river" of snow and ice slowly flowing down a mountain. It would generally not be very compacted.

Fun fact: smaller chunks (less than 15m) are called "bergy bits".

New comment by brianpan in ""Clean" Code, Horrible Performance (2023)"

brianpan — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 21:15:12 +0000

Yes! Clean code (which is more readable and maintainable) should be a stop on the way to higher performance code. Otherwise, you are optimizing too early.

New comment by brianpan in "Developers are attached to tools because tools encode trust"

brianpan — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 02:52:17 +0000

A food processor is a kitchen tool even though it does many things.

A computer is also a tool that does many things and the OS is arguably the important part of how a user wields that tool.

New comment by brianpan in "Composite Video on the NES: Why's it so wobbly?"

brianpan — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 23:59:21 +0000

Growing up I definitely noticed the wobble.

But I'm also so used to it that I didn't realize a lot of examples were videos.

Really interesting investigation!

New comment by brianpan in "Starring the Computer"

brianpan — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 23:49:13 +0000

Jurassic Park had a Thinking Machines CM-5.

https://www.starringthecomputer.com/computer.html?c=15

"The lights flash just like they do normally, although it's hard to understand why a theme park needs a supercomputer."

New comment by brianpan in "The quiet resurgence of RF engineering"

brianpan — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 02:45:07 +0000

3/4/5G/LTE networks and 802.1x predate their 8 years in aerospace. I worked on some of those 25 years ago. If you're not an EE, maybe you also didn't consider the lead time of working on HW to its adoption.

New comment by brianpan in "I quit drinking for a year"

brianpan — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 02:32:55 +0000

You should not be touting magical health benefits on a sample size of one either way.

There are already plenty of studies available to be found.

New comment by brianpan in "Filing the corners off my MacBooks"

brianpan — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 17:02:19 +0000

Like a person playing the piano.

If your arms are resting, then your fingers and wrists are doing the maximum amount of reaching as you type. If you use a wrist rest you are encouraging your fingers/wrist to reach up (bend in your wrist) instead of neutral or reaching down (more natural position).

New comment by brianpan in "“Your frustration is the product”"

brianpan — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 04:49:41 +0000

Optimal line length is a thing.

New comment by brianpan in "Attention Media ≠ Social Networks"

brianpan — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 19:54:43 +0000

This is a way to tell if something is social media or attention media.

"Surfacing the best comments" is only a problem at scale. And attention media demands scale whereas your social circles break down at scale. Commerce sites (like Yelp or Amazon) also demand scale, so they also have a "surfacing the best" mechanism.

New comment by brianpan in "Did a celebrated researcher obscure a baby's poisoning?"

brianpan — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 03:49:34 +0000

It's a cost-benefit analysis like many other things. There are limited resources, they should be spent on investigating cases that have a chance of getting closed.

Cold cases might get reopened because of advances in technology or other changes over time.

New comment by brianpan in "Porsche sold more electrified cars in Europe in 2025 than pure gas-powered cars"

brianpan — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 06:33:54 +0000

Late reply, but did your colleague go from ICE BMWs to an EV Model 3? For me, zero maintenance and no more stopping at gas stations (you need a charger at home) were HUGE advantages to switching to an EV. So I also really liked switching from ICE to Tesla EV.

But I also much prefer my EV BMW to my previous Teslas. Nicer to drive, nicer features (better sound, HUD, sunroof), hardware controls, door handles that you can open with either hand, better in weather (no rain in the trunk).

My family complains the i4 has a smaller cabin, but the driver's seat feels just fine to me. :D