Hacker News: err4nt

New comment by err4nt in "Vegetative Patients May Be More Aware Than We Knew"

err4nt — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 03:29:46 +0000

I've always been told by my parents that people can still hear and understand even if they appear unconscious or non-responsive, and so I have a personal policy of speaking respectfully toward them just the same as if they were alert and responding and part of the conversation, but it has shocked and amazed me (and saddened me) by what some people say in the presence of a living person who can very possibly hear and understand but may not be able to respond. Be careful not to be cruel to people in that situation!

New comment by err4nt in "Men are ditching TV for YouTube as AI usage and social media fatigue grow"

err4nt — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 05:17:43 +0000

Seen everything on Youtube, I've ditched Youtube for Spotify/listening to music now (and I don't use AI for much besides food recipe questions)

New comment by err4nt in "We rewrote JSONata with AI in a day, saved $500k/year"

err4nt — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 05:25:38 +0000

The moment the amount of savings surpassed the annual salary of a good programmer you know you made the wrong investment.

New comment by err4nt in "Claude is a space to think"

err4nt — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 03:31:03 +0000

They'll shout this message right until the day they change course. Then who will hold them to account?

New comment by err4nt in "Are arrays functions?"

err4nt — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 05:23:48 +0000

When it says "arrays, which may be thought of as functions whose domains are isomorphic to contiguous subsets of the integers", is it saying that this:

    const list = ['a', 'b', 'c']

is syntactic sugar for expressing something like this:

    function list(index) {
      switch (index) {
        case 0: return 'a'
        case 1: return 'b'
        case 2: return 'c'
      }
    }

New comment by err4nt in "Scott Adams has died"

err4nt — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 21:49:25 +0000

Goodbye to our thought-provoking jester. There will never be another quite like him.

New comment by err4nt in "Tell HN: Merry Christmas"

err4nt — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 20:28:59 +0000

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays to all from Toronto!

New comment by err4nt in "Here is the 15 sec coding test I used to instantly filter out most applicants"

err4nt — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 14:51:52 +0000

I copy/pasted it into my editor to see it larger. I still used my brain. This 'test' is not a true test but a trick, and the trick doesn't have to do with programming ability.

New comment by err4nt in "The tiniest yet real telescope I've built"

err4nt — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 16:03:56 +0000

So cool! Thanks for sharing. It reminds me of one of those very old cameras with the bellows or accordion. I wish I could look through it myself to see what you see with it!

New comment by err4nt in "Daniel Kahneman opted for assisted suicide in Switzerland"

err4nt — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 03:26:04 +0000

This leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I see that the man was Israeli in the original story and I don't want to presume a religious perspective, but I can share some thoughts from my own based on his story and yours. I've read the New Testament within a Jewish framework and one of the things it says, Rabbi Shaul says in 1 Corinthians 12:23 that those people in the community who are most embarrassing or cause us to blush, like the parts of our own body who are honoured or dignified by being clothed with underwear, likewise in the community are owed a special covering and to be afforded dignity by the other parts of the same body/community. Just something to think about in light of this story!

New comment by err4nt in "Helium Browser"

err4nt — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 15:07:53 +0000

Back about 20 years ago there was a lightweight Gecko-based web browser called 'Camino' that was a delight compared to Firefox or other 'full' browsers. It was fast, simplified, and still rendered pages well. I didn't always use it, but it was a joy to use.

I downloaded Helium and gave it a spin and my first impression was "Ah, it's like Camino all over again". I can't use this for my job where I need to use stock {Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge} because our customers do - but for personal browsing I'm currently using Arc which is very comfortable but heavy, I might try to use Helium for quick simple things when I want less overhead! Thanks for sharing!

New comment by err4nt in "Toronto’s network of pedestrian tunnels"

err4nt — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 14:25:47 +0000

The PATH network is great, especially in Toronto's freezing cold and windy winters! The beautiful 'underpass' pictured in this article, with the white marble, is on my commute to work, and it really is breathtaking when you turn the corner.

In the Financial District, the various bank towers can be told apart by the colour of the marble and other stones they build with. For an underground walkway, some parts of it are really beautiful, other parts are just what you'd expect for an underground passage in a big city (especially those parts connected to the subway transit system).

New comment by err4nt in "9 Years of "Learning to Code" and I Still Couldn't Build a To-Do App"

err4nt — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 15:32:29 +0000

    “A webpage that counts down to a movie release.”
    Not an app. Not a startup. Just a janky react/tailwind page.

Maybe part of the problem is trying to bite off more than you can chew, spinning up React and Tailwind for what could be a single HTML element, a CSS style rule or two, and a few lines of plain JavaScript code is a symptom here. This is like taking a cruise ship on a canoe trip and then complaining that it's too time consuming and difficult. Start simple, start small!

New comment by err4nt in "Dotfiles feel too personal to share"

err4nt — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 15:37:24 +0000

I think the key is that dotfiles are a different genre of (code) writing than production code, with different investment, different motivations, different pain points and histories, and a sensitivity to the author that's not required when analyzing production code. You're looking into someone's daily writings, not their polished releases.

I think the fear is scrutiny, rejection, mockery for something that clearly works for you and you don't ever expect anyone else to use. But also partly that it's exposure without much reward in return. All these feelings are normal and it's fine to share or not share them. Just please honour the authors of the dotfiles you read even if you wouldn't ever think to use code in the way they do!

New comment by err4nt in "Don't Use External CSS"

err4nt — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 15:23:02 +0000

Counterpoint: External CSS stylesheets can be cached, saving future requests, but inlined CSS must be re-downloaded each time and you lose all the benefit of caching the styles independently from the document. Depending on the size of the CSS, there's a tradeoff.

New comment by err4nt in "Why Grok Fell in Love with Hitler"

err4nt — Fri, 11 Jul 2025 13:29:03 +0000

Anybody remember Microsoft's Tay AI from 9 years ago? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_(chatbot)

If history repeats itself, maybe with software we can automate that whole process…

New comment by err4nt in "XBOW, an autonomous penetration tester, has reached the top spot on HackerOne"

err4nt — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 18:27:11 +0000

How does it know the difference?

New comment by err4nt in "Sleep apnea pill shows striking success in large clinical trial"

err4nt — Mon, 26 May 2025 18:25:03 +0000

Thanks for sharing, I'll try some of these out!

New comment by err4nt in "Banned Books List 2025"

err4nt — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 04:59:18 +0000

You can find their criteria for what they mean by ban on the FAQ page: https://pen.org/book-bans-frequently-asked-questions/

It's probably too long to quote here, but it's a very unique definition that seems worth taking into consideration when you read their other material.

New comment by err4nt in "Ask HN: How do people around you use AI?"

err4nt — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 14:31:21 +0000

Instead of asking me, a senior developer, how to solve a problem so I could quickly and easily explain the best approach, instead they go to ChatGPT, ask it, and then come to me to ask me to audit and prove whether ChatGPT's response was valuable or not. Often it's not, but every time it's a big time waster since the right thing to do was easily communicated without needing to vet a long generated message with probably lots of flaws or places where the details simply don't make sense.