Hacker News: caseyohara

New comment by caseyohara in "Cambodia unveils statue to honour famous landmine-sniffing rat"

caseyohara — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 18:53:29 +0000

I love that Magawa's wikipedia article is structured just like a human: Early Life, Career, Retirement and Death.

A few weeks ago when "Croatia declared free of landmines after 31 years" was posted here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47189535), I rabbit holed wikipedia about landmine-sniffing animals. It's such a fascinating topic.

New comment by caseyohara in "Audio tapes reveal mass rule-breaking in Milgram's obedience experiments"

caseyohara — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 13:32:48 +0000

The ironic part is the recent fabrication controversy with Ariely. He’s recently had to retract fraudulent papers (one of them, most ironically, on the topic of honesty) because of falsified data. It makes one question the validity of all of his work.

His relationship with Jeffrey Epstein isn’t a good look either.

New comment by caseyohara in "We should revisit literate programming in the agent era"

caseyohara — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 02:32:14 +0000

> People spoke in a particular way, say 60 years ago, that left very little room for interpretation of what they meant. The same cannot be said today.

Surely you don’t mean everyone in the 1960s spoke directly, free of metaphor or euphemism or nuance or doublespeak or dog whistle or any other kind or ambiguity? Then why are there people who dedicate their entire life to interpreting religious texts and the Constitution?

New comment by caseyohara in "I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services"

caseyohara — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 17:28:25 +0000

> third-parties who can make all sorts of decisions based on a made up story about who I am, my preferences, my values and whatnot

You're going to be presented with ads and preyed on by marketing no matter what. The "made up story about who you are" is just even more imaginary the less they know about you. You'll simply be presented with less-targeted ads.

New comment by caseyohara in "We automated everything except knowing what's going on"

caseyohara — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 14:38:38 +0000

Then, respectfully, what is the point? Does the trillions-of-dollars AI industry exist to support a few hobbyists building niche products to scratch their own itch? I thought the promise here is increased productivity, presumably in the economic sense.

There seems to be a lot of hype, and has been for years, but I’m not seeing it materialize as actual economic output. Surely by now there should be lots of businesses springing up to capture all of this value created by vibecoded software.

New comment by caseyohara in "We automated everything except knowing what's going on"

caseyohara — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 13:54:22 +0000

Where are these small businesses and startups? The software economy should be booming, right? I’m not seeing it.

New comment by caseyohara in "How to talk to anyone and why you should"

caseyohara — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 17:03:32 +0000

Fellow New England -> Colorado transplant. It was pleasantly shocking for me too how much chattier and friendlier people are in Colorado. But now I've lived in Colorado long enough that when I go back to visit New England, it's shocking how cold and taciturn people are there. Conversations with strangers rarely get past "How ya doin?" "Fine and you? "Fine, thanks."

I do appreciate how direct people in the northeast tend to be, and sometimes miss that aspect of the culture.

New comment by caseyohara in "Cash issuing terminals"

caseyohara — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 17:31:06 +0000

There are still contemporary watches that use radioactive isotopes like tritium for illumination. I’ve always wanted a watch with always-on lume.

Here is a good example, the Marathon GSAR. You can see the radioactive symbol on the dial.

https://www.marathonwatch.com/products/arctic-edition-large-...

New comment by caseyohara in "Tiny QR code achieved using electron microscope technology"

caseyohara — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 17:26:06 +0000

I imagine capacity/density and reliability/durability are more important factors than read speed when it comes to archival.

New comment by caseyohara in "Minions: Stripe’s one-shot, end-to-end coding agents"

caseyohara — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 14:18:37 +0000

I reckon the developers most excited about AI & agents never got the same thrill or satisfaction that you do. Those developers are plainly motivated by different things, and that’s okay.

New comment by caseyohara in "Acme Weather"

caseyohara — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 14:45:06 +0000

I doubt people would complain this much if they came across a weather app that is only supported in the EU or China or India. No one would say

Yet another China-only app with China-only weather, I guess, like countless others…

"Obsessing" over your icons and user interface won't make your app useful to people you explicitly do not provide your app to.

Build your own EU weather app if you care so much. No one is obligated to support their software in the part of the world you happen to live.

New comment by caseyohara in "What is happening to writing? Cognitive debt, Claude Code, the space around AI"

caseyohara — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 02:31:53 +0000

> If it does that, it doesn't matter where it came from.

Personally, it matters to me quite a lot where art comes from, especially music. I have a hard time "separating the art from the artist". If I find out a musician is a creep/abuser/rapist, I can't enjoy their music anymore.

This belief obviously isn't widespread given artists like Michael Jackson, Chris Brown, R. Kelly, and Jimmy Page are still wildly popular. But I assume I'm not alone in this.

As for AI music, it's hard for me to imagine an "AI Musician" ever becoming very popular because I reckon most humans want some human-ness in their music. And I think if an existing artist ever put out AI music as their own, they'd lose some fans pretty quickly.

New comment by caseyohara in "What is happening to writing? Cognitive debt, Claude Code, the space around AI"

caseyohara — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 21:54:42 +0000

My spidey-sense: the "it isn't X, it's Y" construct and the dreaded em dash.

New comment by caseyohara in "What your Bluetooth devices reveal"

caseyohara — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 12:46:19 +0000

Are there cameras that can actually read VINs on moving vehicles?

New comment by caseyohara in "Show HN: GitHub "Lines Viewed" extension to keep you sane reviewing long AI PRs"

caseyohara — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 12:42:07 +0000

I don’t understand. Are they AI PRs (as in the title), or did you write them yourself?

New comment by caseyohara in "Use protocols, not services"

caseyohara — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 22:15:45 +0000

I can't tell if you are replying to the comment or the post because the topic of TFA is literally comparing protocols and services. Discord and IRC are both mentioned in the post.

New comment by caseyohara in "Exposure Simulator"

caseyohara — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:46:54 +0000

ahh that makes a lot more sense!

New comment by caseyohara in "Exposure Simulator"

caseyohara — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 20:18:28 +0000

I guess it depends on what "large file" and "regular size SD card" mean to you.

The best selling SD card on B&H is 128 GB. Let's consider that "regular size".

Fujifilm's GFX100 II is a popular medium-format mirrorless camera. Its sensor is 102MP. So each 14-bit RAW image is about 170 MB.

102M pixels x 14 bits = 1.428B bits = ~178M bytes = ~170 MB

So a 128 GB SD card can hold ~771 images that are 170 MB. That's a lot more images than a standard roll of film.

New comment by caseyohara in "Exposure Simulator"

caseyohara — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 20:08:26 +0000

> Same goes for the limited number of shots on a roll of film.

You can approximate the same limitation on digital cameras by simply using a very small SD card.

New comment by caseyohara in "Railway (PaaS) global outage"

caseyohara — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 18:01:55 +0000

Shell was originally very literal though. They sold seashells.

> The "Shell" Transport and Trading Company (the quotation marks were part of the legal name) was a British company, founded in 1897 by Marcus Samuel, 1st Viscount Bearsted, and his brother Samuel Samuel. Their father had owned an antique company in Houndsditch, London, which expanded in 1833 to import and sell seashells, after which the company "Shell" took its name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_plc