Hacker News: brimwats

New comment by brimwats in "Green card seekers must leave U.S. to apply, Trump administration says"

brimwats — Sun, 24 May 2026 18:24:36 +0000

largely/generally this is how it's done for NAFTA visas

New comment by brimwats in "Green card seekers must leave U.S. to apply, Trump administration says"

brimwats — Sun, 24 May 2026 18:22:48 +0000

you can renew the same permit without, but you can't go from one type of permit to another (student to working prof in my case) without flagpoling; you also can't go from a visa to a permit without flagpoling

New comment by brimwats in "College students drown out AI-praising commencement speeches with boos"

brimwats — Thu, 21 May 2026 14:22:42 +0000

it's a great last line; when trying to explain something to someone it behooves someone to ask a follow-up so they can clarify anything not yet answered.

New comment by brimwats in "Sam Altman's home targeted in second attack"

brimwats — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 12:13:03 +0000

Political violence created and has sustained democracy, democracy is what happens when the violence fails and violence is what happens when the democracy fails.

New comment by brimwats in "Sam Altman's home targeted in second attack"

brimwats — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 12:09:07 +0000

This seems like fantastic fantasy or fanfic, but unless you have a citation or some actual names, I think I'll put it down to fiction

New comment by brimwats in "Microsoft is employing dark patterns to goad users into paying for storage?"

brimwats — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 13:13:49 +0000

I am an archivist; please don't use flash drives because they lose data to the air; use hard disk drives.

New comment by brimwats in "CBS didn't air Rep. James Talarico interview out of fear of FCC"

brimwats — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 11:26:30 +0000

Brazil and South Korea offer two relatively recent examples

New comment by brimwats in "Show HN: I made a tool to port tweets to Bluesky mantaining their original date"

brimwats — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 04:23:42 +0000

I mean, the CEO of bsky used skeet unironically in interviews so I'd say it's a-ok

New comment by brimwats in "US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago"

brimwats — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 17:09:09 +0000

Canada is the source of more than 80% of the US's potash, the source of fertilizer. Without that, the entire farming industry and its crops withers and dies. It is not something easily sourced and not something easily replaced, and the crops all die long before it can be sourced or replaced. Your suggestion to close the border is absurd, jingoistic, empty, and meaningless.

New comment by brimwats in "Show HN: I built an active community of trans people online"

brimwats — Fri, 24 Jan 2025 07:22:39 +0000

OP, I love your passion, but as someone who's been in these trenches for a long time as a visibily queer person, you are a Titanic heading for an iceberg of legal issues in the US, UK,and a few other places. You are putting yourself and your users at an extremely high risk of outing, doxing, and potential legal issues. The fact that you haven't addressed these issues scares me and it should scare you.

New comment by brimwats in "Show HN: I built an active community of trans people online"

brimwats — Fri, 24 Jan 2025 07:18:01 +0000

Yes, huge +1 to this OP, especially if you're American bc you are heading for a big collision with FOSTA-SESTA and other legal issues that could put you and your users at risk of harm.

New comment by brimwats in "Show HN: I built an active community of trans people online"

brimwats — Fri, 24 Jan 2025 07:13:52 +0000

No they're not; their roots are in the YMCA and the British society for the suppression of vice and earlier societies dating back to the 1700s. They originated when the church courts were shut down and are a feature of British evangelicalism that Americans turbocharged.

New comment by brimwats in "Mouseless – fast mouse control with the keyboard"

brimwats — Fri, 20 Dec 2024 04:50:35 +0000

I've found mousemaster (windows) to be excellent and the dev incredibly nice and responsive

https://github.com/petoncle/mousemaster

New comment by brimwats in "The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in Hachette vs. Internet Archive"

brimwats — Fri, 06 Sep 2024 22:15:10 +0000

> Why didn't other people, other national archives, other commercial concerns or non-profits join in this work?

I'm very confused by this statement and I don't understand if it comes from you not working in library and information science, your definition of an archives or your opinion on what an acquisition policy should be, but lots of national archives have and continue to archive the Web.

New comment by brimwats in "The semantic web is now widely adopted"

brimwats — Fri, 23 Aug 2024 14:44:17 +0000

I think pointing just to Wikipedia ignores the growing use adoption and massive impact of Wikidata. perhaps I'm biased because of my field but everything I see indicates the growing and not shrinking power of it, I would categorize it as different than Wikipedia's effects though.

New comment by brimwats in "The semantic web is now widely adopted"

brimwats — Fri, 23 Aug 2024 14:38:39 +0000

I would happily bite on that; I mostly deal with archives, libraries, museums and how they deal with people and communities. Because of that there is a ton of nuance when it comes to identities (there is a lot of gradation in meaning between "African American" and "Black" or gay and homosexual for example). Things that seem simple are often very complicated and I've spent a good deal of my PhD work working on that (the Homosaurus is the most popular example of this work); and lately I've been working on how to represent identities in a linked and changing way that can still be used by cultural heritage institutions (i.e. simple enough to be linked to SKOS and Wikidata). I feel pretty close on how to represent some aspects of this semantically, thanks to help from a brilliant ontologist friend.

New comment by brimwats in "OTranscribe: A free and open tool for transcribing audio interviews"

brimwats — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 19:27:02 +0000

it's more likely in cochlear implant territory (there are different laws and regulations for implants vs aids depending on locale)

New comment by brimwats in "Our audit of Homebrew"

brimwats — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 18:02:01 +0000

> enough publicized cases of Chinese CCP operatives gaining

Like? not doubting you, just not aware of multiple cases beyond the big near-miss earlier this year

New comment by brimwats in "Txtai: Open-source vector search and RAG for minimalists"

brimwats — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 00:16:53 +0000

Where can we follow up on this when you're done--do you have a blog or social media?

New comment by brimwats in "Eza: A modern, maintained replacement for ls"

brimwats — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 00:11:55 +0000

this one is maintained

https://github.com/johnalanwoods/maintained-modern-unix