Hacker News: brown

New comment by brown in "Any application that can be written in a system language, eventually will be"

brown — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 04:02:40 +0000

If LLMs live up to their potential, then they should be able to rewrite language runtimes to eventually be as fast or faster than systems languages. "Sufficiently intelligent compiler" and whatnot

New comment by brown in "EHRs: The hidden distraction in your doctor's office"

brown — Sun, 03 Aug 2025 19:02:54 +0000

It’s true that many providers need a custom solution for their unique workflows, and the one-size-fits-all EHR is often a myth. The problem is that many EHRs try to solve this with customizations, which can be expensive and still feel like a compromise.

On the other hand, when a team tries to build their own tools, they quickly realize they have to build a ton of compliance and interop code they never wanted to touch in the first place. That’s why open source platforms that handle the core infrastructure, like Medplum, HAPI, or OpenEMR, can be such a good starting point. They get the team 90% of the way there, so they can focus on what really matters: building a great UI/UX for their users.

I don’t think providers truly want to go back to pen and paper, but they are looking for a better way. They can see the promise of what the solution could be, but they just haven't experienced it yet.

Disclaimer: I work for Medplum.

New comment by brown in "OpenAI is a systemic risk to the tech industry"

brown — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 17:39:43 +0000

> given AI seems like a winner takes all type market

Unfortunately for OpenAI and Softbank, it seems like AI will not be "winner take all", and may actually be quite commoditized. It's as easy as choosing a different model in a dropdown in Cursor or whatever your tool of choice.

New comment by brown in "Launching RDAP; sunsetting WHOIS"

brown — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 01:11:52 +0000

RDAP replaces WHOIS, offering a more technologically advanced way to discover the domain is protected by privacy services.

New comment by brown in "FFmpeg School of Assembly Language"

brown — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 19:34:18 +0000

Learning assembly was profound for me, not because I've used it (I haven't in 30 years of coding), but because it completed the picture - from transistors to logic gates to CPU architecture to high-level programming. That moment when you understand how it all fits together is worth the effort, even if you never write assembly professionally.

New comment by brown in "Show HN: Performing a zero downtime major version upgrade on RDS Aurora Postgres"

brown — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 19:26:57 +0000

Love Postgres, but major version upgrades remain the one genuine pain point. One misstep and you're in backup-restoration hell. Solid guide.

New comment by brown in "When Projects Stop"

brown — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 16:44:14 +0000

There are two interesting "safety nets" at play here: the classic "Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM" principle (where ubiquity creates an implicit guarantee of continuity), and a less visible but equally powerful one where certain open source tools become such fundamental infrastructure that they're essentially "too critical to fail." Think curl, gpg, or apt - most users never directly interact with these, but they're so deeply embedded in the internet's fabric that the ecosystem ensures their maintenance. One heuristic I've found helpful is looking at major corporate adoption patterns - it can be a decent signal for identifying which tools fall into these categories.

New comment by brown in "Ask HN: What's the most creative 'useless' program you've ever written?"

brown — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 23:17:33 +0000

I highly recommend js13k (https://js13kgames.com), an annual game jam where your entire game must fit in 13 kilobytes. The tight size limit forces you to get creative with optimization - think procedural generation, custom minimal engines, and code golf techniques that actually matter. While the games might be "useless" in a practical sense, you'll learn more about low-level JavaScript optimization than from most serious projects, all while being part of an incredibly supportive community that loves sharing tricks and tips.

New comment by brown in "Js13k 2024 Begins"

brown — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 01:13:08 +0000

js13k is a game jam competition. Make a game that fits in a 13 kilobyte zip.

"The thirteenth, anniversary edition of the online js13kGames competition starts… NOW! Build a Web game on a given theme within the next month and fit it into a 13 kilobyte zip package to win lots of cool prizes, eternal fame, and respect!"

Js13k 2024 Begins

brown — Thu, 15 Aug 2024 01:13:08 +0000

Article URL: https://medium.com/js13kgames/js13kgames-2024-start-and-theme-announcement-5d734f77da68

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41252285

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by brown in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2024)"

brown — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 16:48:09 +0000

Medplum (https://www.medplum.com/) | Founding Developer Experience Engineer | SF | Full time

Medplum (YC S22) is an open source, API first, healthcare developer platform. "Headless EHR", we take care of the security, compliance, and regulatory burdens of healthcare software development. Well funded and growing fast.

We're hiring an amazing Dev-Ex / Dev-Rel engineer to delight customers, build sample apps, and promote the Medplum platform.

Tech stack: TypeScript, React, Node.js, AWS

Learn more: https://www.medplum.com/careers/devex-engineer

New comment by brown in "Show HN: Pong Wars"

brown — Sat, 27 Jan 2024 22:38:19 +0000

4 players: https://codyebberson.github.io/pong-wars/

New comment by brown in "Nvidia’s AI supremacy is only temporary"

brown — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 15:53:31 +0000

“Training costs scale with the number of researchers, inference costs scale with the number of users”.

This is interesting, but I think I disagree? I'm most excited about a future where personalized models are continuously training on my own private data.

New comment by brown in "Government URLs that don't end in .gov"

brown — Sun, 23 Jul 2023 19:03:16 +0000

My favorite URL oddity has to be "id.me" for U.S. Citizen identity services.

Seems a bit odd to use a Montenegro domain, doesn't it?

New comment by brown in "Chinese Tech Terms Explained in English"

brown — Sun, 02 Jul 2023 20:58:26 +0000

The domain name made me curious: http://10x.engineer/

"404 Not Found: 10x Engineers aren't real"

Well played.

New comment by brown in "GitHub Copilot emits GPL code"

brown — Fri, 21 Apr 2023 18:38:37 +0000

For anyone who wants to slow the development of AI, copyright is the soft underbelly to go after.

New comment by brown in "I had ChatGPT write a Decemberists song and recorded it"

brown — Sat, 11 Feb 2023 22:47:19 +0000

Thanks! We're a healthcare SaaS provider, mostly engineers who are neither musicians nor marketers.

New comment by brown in "I had ChatGPT write a Decemberists song and recorded it"

brown — Sat, 11 Feb 2023 19:03:15 +0000

As a quirky marketing exercise, we used ChatGPT to write parody lyrics for a song about ONC g.10 compliance to the tune of "Like a G6" by Far East Movement.

We then paid $50 on Fiverr to record it: https://soundcloud.com/medplum/medplum-g-10

The whole thing took about an hour of effort. It was easy to be fun and lighthearted about it because "AI wrote it" and we didn't experience the normal fear of publishing.

This is extremely niche marketing, but our core audience loved it. Great bang for buck.

New comment by brown in "Summer Afternoon – A WebGL Experiment"

brown — Sat, 21 Jan 2023 19:36:14 +0000

I think that's more about asset sizes and loading times than rendering capabilities.

New comment by brown in "Dwarf Fortress – randomly generated, persistent fantasy world"

brown — Tue, 22 Nov 2022 21:08:56 +0000

Not sure why Dwarf Fortress is on the front page, but I will always upvote.

If you're intimidated by ASCII visuals, consider wishlisting the graphics release, scheduled for Dec 6, 2022: https://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/