Hacker News: cjohnson318

New comment by cjohnson318 in "Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)"

cjohnson318 — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 03:33:53 +0000

I went to an old engineering school for grad school, all the older buildings had this color scheme.

New comment by cjohnson318 in "Kagi Small Web"

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 13:21:07 +0000

I typed in my dentist's full business name and location, " family dentistry ", and it was still #5 in the results. I still, out of habit, tapped the first link and called that number instead. It's ludicrous. In 2010 that would have been the top hit, next to the Wikipedia page on dentistry.

New comment by cjohnson318 in "I miss thinking hard"

cjohnson318 — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 07:17:38 +0000

Yeah, and cameras changed art forever.

New comment by cjohnson318 in "The tech market is fundamentally fucked up and AI is just a scapegoat"

cjohnson318 — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 16:10:45 +0000

Can confirm.

New comment by cjohnson318 in "The tech market is fundamentally fucked up and AI is just a scapegoat"

cjohnson318 — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 15:54:28 +0000

I was consulting like this too, but my wife also had a full time corporate job. It all kind of ended with her team having layoffs around the same time that most of my clients figured out that they could use AI to do most of my work at a tiny fraction of my rate. I had built up a lot of experience working with oil and gas software, and I thought that was pretty solid, but it's hard to compete with $20 a month. Anyway, after all that, I found a stable job with good health insurance.

New comment by cjohnson318 in "The Universal Pattern Popping Up in Math, Physics and Biology (2013)"

cjohnson318 — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 17:46:54 +0000

This spacing reminds me of Turing patterns, or activator/inhibitor systems, but I'm gobsmacked that this occurs in random matrices.

New comment by cjohnson318 in "Elo – A data expression language which compiles to JavaScript, Ruby, and SQL"

cjohnson318 — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 06:37:51 +0000

What would I use this for? Everything in the examples is pretty easy to do in scripting languages like Python, JS, and Ruby.

New comment by cjohnson318 in "Tell HN: Happy New Year"

cjohnson318 — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 05:16:12 +0000

I got a stable job! I was unemployed for a few months, we paid a small fortune for health insurance, and I got ulcers from the stress, but things worked out! I enjoy my team, and I'm hopeful about 2026.

New comment by cjohnson318 in "Nook Browser"

cjohnson318 — Sat, 06 Dec 2025 04:30:59 +0000

Same.

New comment by cjohnson318 in "A graph explorer of the Epstein emails"

cjohnson318 — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 04:04:10 +0000

Bro you can't just leak operational secrets on the world wide information highway like this.

New comment by cjohnson318 in "A graph explorer of the Epstein emails"

cjohnson318 — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 21:46:19 +0000

They probably use Excel, maybe Microsoft Access.

New comment by cjohnson318 in "The 'Toy Story' You Remember"

cjohnson318 — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 04:29:46 +0000

Yeah, this is the kind of thing that makes me really enjoy the internet.

New comment by cjohnson318 in "Learning Languages with the Help of Algorithms"

cjohnson318 — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 03:37:29 +0000

The thing about language is that words have a weird distribution. The most common 100 words show up in every single sentence, but then tons of "common" words show up statistically almost never. Like, "octopus" is a common word that is only going to be useful if you're talking to a marine biologist, or a three year old that's obsessed with octopuses, otherwise you're hardly ever going to use that word. There's a lot of words like that. "Spine" of a book? It's probably not "spine" in your target language.

New comment by cjohnson318 in "Microsoft memo advises H1B employees to return immediately if currently abroad"

cjohnson318 — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 17:15:14 +0000

So much for being a safe and lucrative place for all the best minds of the world.

New comment by cjohnson318 in "ML needs a new programming language – Interview with Chris Lattner"

cjohnson318 — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 23:13:20 +0000

It would REBOLutionize everything.

New comment by cjohnson318 in "The End of Handwriting"

cjohnson318 — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 15:08:51 +0000

I disagree about the thicker paper part. It's the "sizing" of the paper that's important, that's the preparation of the paper that makes it more or less absorbent. Moleskine/Lechturn and similar notebooks have a sizing on the paper that makes it less absorbent and easier for a fountain pen to glide over. Printer paper is way more absorbent and creates more drag causing you to use more effort. Source: I use a cheapish but decent Lamy fountain pen on both kinds of paper, and I write cursive and shorthand for speed, but print for long term legibility.

New comment by cjohnson318 in "California unemployment rises to 5.5%, worst in the U.S. as tech falters"

cjohnson318 — Sat, 16 Aug 2025 21:36:23 +0000

That an interesting perspective, about working on a lot of your client's vibe coded fever dreams. Yeah, I'm don't envy 19 year olds looking for software work right now. God help them.

New comment by cjohnson318 in "California unemployment rises to 5.5%, worst in the U.S. as tech falters"

cjohnson318 — Sat, 16 Aug 2025 21:34:51 +0000

Well, I moved into a more conservative role, which I think was a good move considering the economy and the job market.

New comment by cjohnson318 in "California unemployment rises to 5.5%, worst in the U.S. as tech falters"

cjohnson318 — Sat, 16 Aug 2025 01:58:53 +0000

Racism? Lack of social awareness? Problems with impulse control? Trolling? Pick several.

New comment by cjohnson318 in "California unemployment rises to 5.5%, worst in the U.S. as tech falters"

cjohnson318 — Sat, 16 Aug 2025 01:55:48 +0000

I've lost consulting work because I'm a lot more expensive than $20 a month. I've literally had clients say, "yeah, I would have called you, but I was able to figure out that bug with ChatGPT."