Hacker News: chrisbrandow

New comment by chrisbrandow in "TIL: You can make HTTP requests without curl using Bash /dev/TCP"

chrisbrandow — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 22:07:10 +0000

Presumably the years including 1999 and earlier

New comment by chrisbrandow in "A greyscale iPhone setup that works in everyday life"

chrisbrandow — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 03:23:16 +0000

Clever!

New comment by chrisbrandow in "Home alone: Remote work, isolation, and mental health"

chrisbrandow — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 05:20:44 +0000

This is so obviously true. Most people that had sudden wfh transitions after or during COVID that I know even with well established networks and families, have really grieved the loss of daily contact with coworkers.

New comment by chrisbrandow in "Home alone: Remote work, isolation, and mental health"

chrisbrandow — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 05:19:10 +0000

Working alone at home is far more novel and unusual than any arrangement of work and socialization that has existed in the last 500 years

New comment by chrisbrandow in "Hormuz crisis side effect: a sharp rise in container shipping rates"

chrisbrandow — Sat, 30 May 2026 22:00:10 +0000

I’d hardly consider this a side effect. Decreasing traffic in one path within a network of exchange has the direct effect of increasing traffic/demand on alternate paths. Increased demand == increased prices.

New comment by chrisbrandow in "AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale"

chrisbrandow — Thu, 21 May 2026 16:30:44 +0000

I think what gets conflated are two aspects.

1. LLM/transformer technology is legitimately amazing and revolutionary. 2. In the end, they function as an enormous, effective database for most human knowledge.

Point 1 obscures the fact that if someone just created an SQL database with every digital artifact in existence and provided it for free upon request, there would be no ambiguity whether that was legal or not.

But distillation, etc obscures this relationship and it looks like something other than straight lookup, at least in part because it is obviously more than that.

New comment by chrisbrandow in "Scientists “bottle the sun” with a liquid battery that stores solar energy"

chrisbrandow — Sun, 17 May 2026 22:51:00 +0000

They experimental details in the paper itself. Tl;dr you lower the pH.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec6413

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.