Hacker News: chrisbrandow

New comment by chrisbrandow in "Why do we tell ourselves scary stories about AI?"

chrisbrandow — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:59:32 +0000

I don’t think the fact that the robot was instructed to lie to a human and was able to do so successfully makes the story much less scary for most people.

New comment by chrisbrandow in "Thoughts on LLMs – Psychological Complications"

chrisbrandow — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 23:20:31 +0000

Framing & launching LLMs as a "chat" interface is the source of many ills. I don't have a simple solution, but leaning away from conversational interfaces would lead to less anthropomorphizing.

New comment by chrisbrandow in "A simulation where life unfolds in real time"

chrisbrandow — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 18:12:26 +0000

Looks very cool, so congrats, but I'm not that interested without a description of the genomes, etc.

New comment by chrisbrandow in "Adoption of EVs tied to real-world reductions in air pollution: study"

chrisbrandow — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 05:41:52 +0000

I used to work for the Air Resources Board of California, and while there is a warm-up period, modern ice cars are so profoundly cleaner than cars even from the early 2000s. It’s pretty stunning.

Regardless, there’s nothing cleaner than no combustion, and I can’t wait until EV‘s have replaced them all

New comment by chrisbrandow in "Donut Lab’s all-solid-state battery delivers 400 Wh/kg of energy density"

chrisbrandow — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 06:01:39 +0000

Hopefully this shakes out better than eestor… iykyk

New comment by chrisbrandow in "Influential study on glyphosate safety retracted 25 years after publication"

chrisbrandow — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 21:11:34 +0000

If so, presumably because it kills the weeds that feed the bugs.

New comment by chrisbrandow in "Influential study on glyphosate safety retracted 25 years after publication"

chrisbrandow — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 21:09:09 +0000

Herbicides kill plants, pesticides kill bugs, right?

New comment by chrisbrandow in "Influential study on glyphosate safety retracted 25 years after publication"

chrisbrandow — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 21:02:20 +0000

I’m not actually familiar with current state of scientific research. Are there any quality studies that contradict the ghost-written report?

I understand the valid reasons for pulling the study, but that does nothing to specifically address its claims or evidence.

New comment by chrisbrandow in "Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service"

chrisbrandow — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 21:36:23 +0000

Try changing tabs when reviewing a PR. 5-10 seconds on basic PRs often

New comment by chrisbrandow in "The decline of deviance"

chrisbrandow — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 12:04:32 +0000

Two things kicked in around mid 90’s:

1. Dropping levels of elemental lead in folks born 20 years earlier, so lower impulsivity. 2. “The internet”, leading to higher levels of homogenization of culture

New comment by chrisbrandow in "Apple Vision Pro upgraded with M5 chip"

chrisbrandow — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 15:08:54 +0000

In app purchases from (crappy) games is top revenue source in App Store. Anecdotally, I’d be shocked if the majority of that wasn’t from kids using their parents’ phones.

New comment by chrisbrandow in "A story about bypassing air Canada's in-flight network restrictions"

chrisbrandow — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 19:38:50 +0000

I wouldn’t expect that either given the little that I know about the rigorous software requirements for aviation.

But I assume that neither of us has anywhere near enough expertise to “refuse” to believe that any computer/software system could be used in dangerously absurd ways even accidentally.

New comment by chrisbrandow in "Memorizing phone numbers"

chrisbrandow — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 05:31:51 +0000

This was poignant. Thanks.

New comment by chrisbrandow in "Show HN: The Little Book of C"

chrisbrandow — Sun, 05 Oct 2025 06:35:07 +0000

This reads like one of the clearest intros to C that I have seen in a long time. Feels approachable the whole way through.

New comment by chrisbrandow in "macOS becomes iOS: Safari video controls"

chrisbrandow — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 22:52:23 +0000

the liquid glass video controls on iOS absolutely does obscure more of the content than the pre-26 players did and it's not even close. it's just UI chrome for its own sake

New comment by chrisbrandow in "macOS becomes iOS: Safari video controls"

chrisbrandow — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 22:50:17 +0000

it's not a change in webkit. the webpage just displays the current OS video player. i read the page in Sequoia and it shows the old version

New comment by chrisbrandow in "The GitHub website is slow on Safari"

chrisbrandow — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 14:32:21 +0000

It reminds me also of the original head of development of the Safari browser talking about at least the early days of building the browser. They had a rule that no commit of code could cause the browser benchmarks to get slower. And apparently he was maniacal about the rule.

I don’t know if that’s a good or realistic rule for most projects, but I imagine for performant types of applications, that’s exactly what it takes to prevent eventual slowdown.

New comment by chrisbrandow in "Starship's Tenth Flight Test"

chrisbrandow — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 04:04:55 +0000

Having seen the shuttle in person in LA museum, I was struck by how much it looked like a plane sitting on a flat heat shield surface

New comment by chrisbrandow in "Mac history echoes in current Mac operating systems"

chrisbrandow — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 05:12:10 +0000

Someone posted about a little Easter egg wherein the Next icon was buried somewhere in iPadOs but I’ve never been able to track it down since.

New comment by chrisbrandow in "Why is GitHub UI getting slower?"

chrisbrandow — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 17:49:44 +0000

I'm so glad someone documented this. it's been driving me crazy. I was just in a serious crunch mode for a couple of week, so all kinds of minor speed bumps in my workflow have become really evident to me. The UI transition between PR "tabs" has been one of the worst.