Hacker News: closetkantian

New comment by closetkantian in "Ask HN: Where else do you spend time on the internet other than HN?"

closetkantian — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 13:21:15 +0000

Aldaily.com, metafilter.com, economist.com, some subreddits, nytimes.com, lrb.co.uk, and my own websites

New comment by closetkantian in "Launch HN: Bloomy (YC S26) – AI-powered mastery learning for K-12"

closetkantian — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 11:16:46 +0000

Both. I do classroom teaching as well as SAT / ACT verbal tutoring.

New comment by closetkantian in "Launch HN: Bloomy (YC S26) – AI-powered mastery learning for K-12"

closetkantian — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 10:18:57 +0000

Okay, thanks for the extended response. I suppose I would have to look at more questions, but I'm really surprised by what you chose to include on the front page, where you'd presumably want to highlight your best work. That passage strikes me as very obviously AI generated.

New comment by closetkantian in "Launch HN: Bloomy (YC S26) – AI-powered mastery learning for K-12"

closetkantian — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 06:40:39 +0000

So, professional educator here, with fifteen years of high school teaching experience. If the sample passages and questions on the front page accurately reflect what's inside this, I would not let my kids go anywhere near it.

You've chosen to use the most generic AI-generated prose, when you could have licensed or hired writers to craft thoughtful, rich passages. I doubt you've consulted any serious standardized test item writers in the construction of what is essentially a standardized test item-based curriculum. This is the pedagogical equivalent of a Lunchable--mass produced, wrapped in plastic, and basically nutrition-free.

New comment by closetkantian in "Show HN: Turn native language audio into flashcards and shadowing practice"

closetkantian — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 06:21:45 +0000

Interesting. Building something similar myself. Very interesting to see what people are cooking up for language learning using the latest tools.

New comment by closetkantian in "Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame"

closetkantian — Wed, 20 May 2026 08:46:22 +0000

I first read about this in The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence by Gavin McCormick. Really good read.

New comment by closetkantian in "Show HN: I Built Paul Graham's Intellectual Captcha Idea"

closetkantian — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 20:14:46 +0000

Frankly, I think if you're going to do something like this you're going to need to use well constructed critical reasoning items from graduate level exams like the GRE and LSAT.

New comment by closetkantian in "Tell HN: Chrome says "suspicious download" when trying to download yt-dlp"

closetkantian — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 11:31:23 +0000

I find the "unverified download" thing in Chrome so annoying, too. Remember when computers used to treat us like adults? I miss those days.

New comment by closetkantian in "Show HN: Remotely use my guitar tuner"

closetkantian — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 02:23:20 +0000

I love it

New comment by closetkantian in "Ask HN: How to approach new people in 2026?"

closetkantian — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 10:25:41 +0000

Source? I've seen studies that suggest the opposite.

New comment by closetkantian in "OpenCiv3: Open-source, cross-platform reimagining of Civilization III"

closetkantian — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 06:41:17 +0000

Really wish someone would do this for Alpha Centauri, my favorite game of all time

New comment by closetkantian in "Show HN: Search complex flight itineraries with natural language"

closetkantian — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 19:27:43 +0000

I like the concept, but it doesn't work for me. I just see a red circle with a line through it when I hover over the text boxes.

New comment by closetkantian in "Show HN: Wikipedia as a doomscrollable social media feed"

closetkantian — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 03:37:59 +0000

I like the concept, but I'm not going to be reading Simple English Wikipedia.

New comment by closetkantian in "Scott Adams has died"

closetkantian — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 01:41:14 +0000

It seems that you're not very familiar with what actually happened. The phrase "It's okay to be white" had become associated with white supremacists, And black people's responses to the pole had nothing to do with their opinions of white people as a whole. You, as well as Scott Adams, decided to misinterpret it. Scott Adams took things a step further and decided that he wanted nothing to do with black people on the simple basis of this poll, which is absolutely wild.

New comment by closetkantian in "Show HN: Learning a Language Using Only Words You Know"

closetkantian — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 01:47:36 +0000

This is genius! I love it.

New comment by closetkantian in "Egyptian Hieroglyphs: Lesson 1"

closetkantian — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 08:51:50 +0000

If you're studying Chinese, maybe you realized that Chinese writing works in a very similar way.

New comment by closetkantian in "Ask HN: What are young technically minded people reading?"

closetkantian — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 18:53:15 +0000

I'd recommend Careless People, if you haven't read it.

New comment by closetkantian in "SanDisk launches dongle-like Extreme Fit USB-C flash drive with up to 1 TB"

closetkantian — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 09:18:50 +0000

I had one of these break within a few days of purchase. It's a no for me.

New comment by closetkantian in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)"

closetkantian — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 08:06:44 +0000

I just released my SAT Writing textbook: https://www.amazon.com/Matthews-Guide-Digital-SAT-Writing/dp...

It took me two and a half years to finish. Now I've got to market it.

Ask HN: What is best LLM-powered OCR?

closetkantian — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 06:03:01 +0000

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45665377

Points: 3

# Comments: 0