Hacker News: brownkonas

New comment by brownkonas in "Creepy Crawlies"

brownkonas — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 21:58:30 +0000

The reverse turing test :(

New comment by brownkonas in "Show HN: Interactive California Budget (By Claude Code)"

brownkonas — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 18:06:40 +0000

I am curious how money received by CA from federal grants are accounted for in this analysis.

New comment by brownkonas in "How the US defense secretary circumvents official DoD communications equipment"

brownkonas — Fri, 02 May 2025 22:34:53 +0000

Also: her email was at no time intended for classified materials and would have had all the safeguards that are now being circumvented in place.

Every single sender and recipient (excluding bcc) was aware or could have been aware that she was not using a .gov email address and is somewhat complicit or tacitly ok with her using that server.

Occasionally previously unclassified materials can later be deemed classified, or there can be a data spill where a sender transmits classified information and recipients need to participate in deletion, investigations, etc.

I agree that her using an external server was bad but it was also in plain sight the whole time.

New comment by brownkonas in "Demolishing the Fry's Electronics in Burbank"

brownkonas — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 17:25:09 +0000

A classic bit of satire and HTML form humor that reflected Fry's focus on products and ambiance but not necessarily employee helpfulness: https://web.archive.org/web/20200130175501/http://homepage.s...

New comment by brownkonas in "Show HN: Anime AI – Instantly Transform Photos and Text into Anime Art"

brownkonas — Sat, 27 Jul 2024 01:37:50 +0000

Feels like phishing / mass data collection effort — associate an email address with the faces of whoever is in your uploaded photo.

New comment by brownkonas in "The New Sonos App: A Dumpster Fire That Shows How Not to Relaunch an App"

brownkonas — Fri, 31 May 2024 12:26:51 +0000

I can tolerate a new UX based in feedback and reasonable design principles even if annoying to rebuild muscle memory, however now things like controlling volume are slow and glitchy and even worse, the music cuts out sporadically leading to a poor listening experience.

New comment by brownkonas in "Tesla Cybertruck Pricing and Specs"

brownkonas — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 21:50:37 +0000

The tri-motor 500 mile range was probably the aspect that I found most exciting, seeing that removed hurts as well.

New comment by brownkonas in "REI is Laying Off 275 Employees"

brownkonas — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 00:33:00 +0000

Will the member rebate be given this year? I would gladly forgo mine.

New comment by brownkonas in "$2.70 supermarket wine wins gold medal at international wine contest"

brownkonas — Wed, 13 Sep 2023 03:17:09 +0000

Why is it so bad in OH, USA then? Absolute rubbish, they can’t or won’t come close to good. It’s cheap wine that can’t be paired with anything. Objectively , what are the steps they need to take to blindly pass for good?

New comment by brownkonas in "Europe pushing for lunar time zone"

brownkonas — Thu, 02 Mar 2023 14:39:47 +0000

We wanted a moon base, but all we got was a lunar time zone.

New comment by brownkonas in "Hands-On with PostgreSQL Authorization – Part 2 – Row-Level Security"

brownkonas — Wed, 16 Mar 2022 17:54:10 +0000

Good article on what's possible and how to do it, but is row level security scalable in any way for a production application? Not so much on the performance impact of any one query but maintaining the definition of what a role can or can't do (if a db user = an application role). It also seems like it would complicate managing db connections as well, separate pools for each db user? If you have 10 roles, you have to open up at least 10 connections to avoid connection opening latency.

Leveraging most RDBMS security features seem to be geared for an ever shrinking set of use cases where a mostly static set of users are given direct access to a SQL prompt, or a simple record to GUI application interface.

New comment by brownkonas in "Analysis of Magic Leap 2 at SPIE AR/VR/Mr 2022"

brownkonas — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 01:44:34 +0000

Funded by SV, vision alignment with SV which is probably more important than where it’s made. However it is certainly impressive that they’re making a lot of progress in a tropical latitude, a feat that hasn’t been replicated by many successful tech companies.

New comment by brownkonas in "Mailable Live Animals"

brownkonas — Wed, 18 Aug 2021 02:05:53 +0000

Unfortunately a lot of mailed chicks die along the way, ignoring other aspects of factory farming, it’s a pretty cruel way to transport animals.

New comment by brownkonas in "Reddit Welcomes Michael Seibel to Board of Directors"

brownkonas — Thu, 11 Jun 2020 00:33:30 +0000

Maybe in the minority , but I think the UX of the mobile app is fantastic: * attractive card view * good actions from the list * good actions from the comments view * great performance

New comment by brownkonas in "Costco will not allow returns on high-demand items like toilet paper, water"

brownkonas — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 02:22:19 +0000

They need a week long grace period to get as much back as possible , this is more helpful than pure punishment.

New comment by brownkonas in "Zuckerberg doubles down on Facebook political ads policy after Twitter ban"

brownkonas — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 16:08:08 +0000

More broadly, Congress has failed to act with respect to campaign finance reform. Twitter's response gives me (some) hope that there could be a grass roots, free market reform of sorts.

Fundraising becomes slightly less important if you can't spend the money online. Not sure of the overall effect, as TV providers are unlikely to turn away the lucrative ad spend.

New comment by brownkonas in "My company sold for $100M and I got zilch – how can that be?"

brownkonas — Fri, 25 Oct 2019 22:00:37 +0000

It's fine to want preferred stock, but it's pretty rare for employees to ever receive it (unless they put up cash) -- it's reserved for investors to avoid a sandbagging + abscond with the money raised scenario.

New comment by brownkonas in "Where Is the Sun Located in the Milky Way?"

brownkonas — Wed, 02 Oct 2019 22:04:42 +0000

Is there any working directory of stars of the Milky Way with [x,y,z, t] coordinates ? a galaxy class coordinate system ?

New comment by brownkonas in "How Firebase Interviewed Software Engineers"

brownkonas — Thu, 26 Sep 2019 19:18:47 +0000

In a tight labor tech market , unnecessary friction in hiring will be detrimental until you build a brand (your company is hockey sticking or the day to day work has wide appeal to devs) or find the “true believers”. In a downturn , go crazy , set up your gauntlet , and you will find the best that your network or advertising can produce.

New comment by brownkonas in "Fossil fuel divestment has ‘zero’ climate impact, says Bill Gates"

brownkonas — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 04:15:34 +0000

I can't help but remember: past results do not indicate nor guarantee future returns.

Unless someone can un-convince me of general macro-economics, not investing in fossil fuel companies will lead to depression of the fossil fuel market and incentivize more relatively lucrative opportunities. The companies of the past only had the means of production of the past, the companies of the future have access to non-fossil fuel dependent energy.