Hacker News: el_benhameen

New comment by el_benhameen in "Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations"

el_benhameen — Thu, 21 May 2026 23:47:55 +0000

I developed this habit when I worked in software support. It made me substantially more effective. Sometimes people are reading for the joy of the prose. Sometimes they’re reading because they want to get to the answer. In the latter case, writing that is easily visually parsable is quite valuable.

New comment by el_benhameen in "Judge Bars Kars4Kids from Broadcasting 'Misleading' Ads in California"

el_benhameen — Fri, 15 May 2026 21:57:39 +0000

Still plays on the radio. I can recognize it within the first two bars and have nearly punched a hole in my dashboard trying to turn it off.

New comment by el_benhameen in "OpenAI is connecting ChatGPT to bank accounts via Plaid"

el_benhameen — Fri, 15 May 2026 17:50:49 +0000

Really? Both times I got a loan they wanted bank statements from all of my main accounts and verifiable income history, but they didn’t care that I was paying from an account that I had just opened for the specific purpose of paying the loan.

New comment by el_benhameen in "Scorched Earth 2000 – Web"

el_benhameen — Thu, 14 May 2026 04:39:11 +0000

Mine was very simple, just finding and playing with values in config.ini for Red Alert 2 so that I could have infinite Tanyas and such.

Next step was trying to get the boot screen to display a MS-branded Borg cube but instead bricking the machine. Parents were not thrilled about that.

New comment by el_benhameen in "Reimagining the mouse pointer for the AI era"

el_benhameen — Wed, 13 May 2026 04:27:19 +0000

I also feel this way, but more importantly, I feel like my sentences are more coherent when typed because typing allows for corrections and modifications of ideas. Do whispr people just … get coherent, finalized ideas out in a single shot without any misspoken words?

New comment by el_benhameen in "AWS North Virginia data center outage – recovery to take hours"

el_benhameen — Sat, 09 May 2026 04:09:17 +0000

Good listen on similar topics here: https://signalsandthreads.com/the-thermodynamics-of-trading/

New comment by el_benhameen in "Sierra Raises $950M at $15B Valuation"

el_benhameen — Mon, 04 May 2026 17:56:37 +0000

I respectfully disagree with the initial routing point. I very strongly prefer a traditional tree to “I’m your voice assistant! In a few words, tell me how I can help!”.

The tree is structured and gives me an immediate sense of how to map my task to the support offering. If I’m calling, I probably have an issue that I can’t self-serve resolve via the customer portal or whatever, so walking the tree lets me get an idea of who can help.

The “voice assistant” gives me no sense of what the system is capable of or how to take advantage of those capabilities. So I’m left guessing at phrases or functions based off of the assumption that there’s still some kind of tree-like structure that’s been abstracted away. Same outcome, more cognitive overhead, plus I usually have to shout in my best William … Shatner … impression to get it to understand me.

New comment by el_benhameen in "Recovering files from beyond the grave using PhotoRec"

el_benhameen — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 21:02:17 +0000

My folks gave me a big box of hard drives from various family computers over the years. Learning to use ddrescue and photorec to get data off of them was a ton of fun. Really cool tools, and not wildly unfriendly to someone who’d never used them before. I even managed to recover the drive that crashed a few days before the start of my junior year of high school, leaving me to re-write all of my summer homework in a panic. A little late on that one.

New comment by el_benhameen in "AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it"

el_benhameen — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 19:21:39 +0000

Out of curiosity, where did those who couldn’t or didn’t want to retire go?

New comment by el_benhameen in "Used La Marzocco machines are coveted by cafe owners and collectors"

el_benhameen — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 03:20:48 +0000

My espresso routine is a strong Americano made with two doubles and a little bit of water (I think I may get some hate for the Americano?). I like it, but it does take a little while to measure, grind, pull, clean, etc. If I don’t feel like going through the whole routine, then a strong V60 pour over is a great substitute. 25-30 grams of the same beans, fairly finely ground, at a 1:13-1:15 ratio works well. Not quite as rich or as pleasant a mouthfeel as the Americano, but good.

New comment by el_benhameen in "Used La Marzocco machines are coveted by cafe owners and collectors"

el_benhameen — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 02:53:37 +0000

I don’t have the plus, but the non plus still produces better espresso than I can get from the spots near me. As the proud owner of a 2008 Corolla, I approve.

New comment by el_benhameen in "An update on recent Claude Code quality reports"

el_benhameen — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 21:51:54 +0000

I frequently see it reference points that it made and then added to its memory as if they were my own assertions. This creates a sort of self-reinforcing loop where it asserts something, “remembers” it, sees the memory, builds on that assertion, etc., even if I’ve explicitly told it to stop.

New comment by el_benhameen in "YouTube users get option to set their Shorts time limit to zero minutes"

el_benhameen — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 02:08:59 +0000

I have no affiliation with Shorts Blocker, but I installed it a long time ago and immediately forgot that shorts existed. Worth whatever I paid for it.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/shorts-blocker-for-youtube/id6...

New comment by el_benhameen in "Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)"

el_benhameen — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 15:45:07 +0000

No no, I find that having to click back through almost 40 years’ worth of months to get to my birthday allows for a nice pause to consider the fleeting and ever-accelerating nature of life.

New comment by el_benhameen in "Native Instant Space Switching on macOS"

el_benhameen — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 21:17:33 +0000

Just wait until you notice that it’s inexplicably slower on 120hz monitors and that your input devices remain focused on the previous space until the animation fully completes!

New comment by el_benhameen in "The Impact of AI on Game Dev Jobs. Open to Work Crisis"

el_benhameen — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 01:45:35 +0000

I think the point is that the banner is more likely to extend your search by sending a negative signal than it is to speed up your search. Fair or not, potential employers often have a negative bias toward people who are unemployed, so indicating that you’re likely unemployed is unhelpful.

New comment by el_benhameen in "Have a fucking website"

el_benhameen — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 16:14:58 +0000

I recently stood up a personal and a business site using Claude + Astro + GitHub + Cloudflare Pages, and apart from the Claude subscription, it’s all free.

Definitely not skills that are going to be in the typical restaurant owner’s wheelhouse (not hard to learn, just not likely to care) so you’d need to figure out how to host per-business to avoid hosting everything under one account and running over the free tier. But there’s very little management or payment necessary until you get quite a bit of traffic, which is probably not likely for your average suburban sandwich shop.

New comment by el_benhameen in "Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar"

el_benhameen — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 18:35:06 +0000

I have used em dashes and semicolons for decades. The LLM appropriation of my writing style has been almost as devastating as their impending vaporization of my career path.

New comment by el_benhameen in "Meta acquires Moltbook"

el_benhameen — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 16:10:50 +0000

Facebook’s feed is mostly AI slop and Moltbook’s feed is mostly humans posing as AI, so there’s some good synergy here.

Good Vibes, Bad Vendors

el_benhameen — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 18:44:11 +0000

Article URL: https://werd.io/good-vibes-bad-vendors/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47299847

Points: 3

# Comments: 0