Hacker News: garbageman

New comment by garbageman in "Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing"

garbageman — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 16:46:25 +0000

Interesting to hear a different perspective on the touchbar. I have yet to meet someone who liked it. Removes touch typing, requires you to refocus attention, etc. Changing the volume is easy, button same place always - but with touch bar I have to look down and do the slidey thing. If they implemented real keys with that display built in...now we're talking!

New comment by garbageman in "MacBook Neo"

garbageman — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 18:02:23 +0000

100%

All the touch screen does is make it top heavy and the hinge less effective at damping the movement.

New comment by garbageman in "MacBook Neo"

garbageman — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 18:00:36 +0000

I agree generally that on Mac you can 'get by' with 8gb and for the target audience on this, and how they'll likely use it - it's totally acceptable.

But if it's for serious work, this is not the device. 'Managing' the software to 'use the machine well' to get serious work done is unacceptable in 2026. It needs to just work and disappear into the background. I have enough to think about and micro managing the software running is out of the question.

New comment by garbageman in "MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max"

garbageman — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 05:32:39 +0000

I'm curious, what does the 'determine intent' mean in this case?

New comment by garbageman in "eBay explicitly bans AI "buy for me" agents in user agreement update"

garbageman — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:17:21 +0000

It doesn't hurt to add it....but it doesn't help as it's happened to me.

New comment by garbageman in "How the cochlea computes (2024)"

garbageman — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 17:40:50 +0000

It's an absolutely brilliant bit of maths that breaks a complex waveform into the individual components. Kind of like taking an orchestral song and then working out each individual instrument's contribution. Learning about this left me honestly aghast and in shock that it's not only possible but that someone (Joseph Fourier) figured it out and then shared it with the world.

This video does a great job explaining what it is and how it works to the layman. 3blue1brown - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spUNpyF58BY

New comment by garbageman in "Gemma 3 270M: Compact model for hyper-efficient AI"

garbageman — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 20:54:27 +0000

Then use ChatGPT/Gemini/Claude on your phone.

They are giving it away for free - if you NEED a local LLM, the least you can do is spend the 2 minutes to download LMSTudio and pick a model.

New comment by garbageman in "NIST selects HQC as fifth algorithm for post-quantum encryption"

garbageman — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 17:09:52 +0000

I trusted them to at least pick an encryption that only they could break...rather than one that other nation states may be able to crack as well.

New comment by garbageman in "Ancient switch to soft food gave us overbite–the ability to pronounce 'f's,'v'"

garbageman — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 16:45:00 +0000

Some hobbies also happen to be exercise and can be done nearly daily. Just do more of them and now there's a much lower 'cost' to exercise. Whether or not you find these types of hobbies enjoyable is another story.

New comment by garbageman in "Nvidia announces next-gen RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 GPUs"

garbageman — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 16:24:18 +0000

Intel ARC B580 is $249 MSRP and right up your alley in that case.

New comment by garbageman in "Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined"

garbageman — Tue, 10 Sep 2024 05:11:04 +0000

Your use of "historically" in the context of diamonds only means the past 100 years. Prior to the marketing of diamonds, sapphire was most common.

New comment by garbageman in "Synthetic diamonds are now purer, more beautiful, and cheaper than mined"

garbageman — Tue, 10 Sep 2024 05:03:30 +0000

Keep it if you have sentimental feelings towards it. Sell it if the primary value is the price of the materials.

New comment by garbageman in "Immunotherapy Is Changing Cancer Treatment Forever"

garbageman — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 20:05:56 +0000

They might but if I recall MRNA stuff is pretty new - and getting the clinical trials through the entire process and approval takes quite a long time.

New comment by garbageman in "Wind farms can offset their emissions within two years, new study shows"

garbageman — Thu, 16 May 2024 21:57:58 +0000

Maybe 20 years ago. On-shore wind and solar are currently the cheapest practical way to make electricity based on LCOE.

https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/electricity_generation/pdf/...

New comment by garbageman in "Lithium-free sodium batteries exit the lab and enter US production"

garbageman — Fri, 03 May 2024 16:34:14 +0000

While it would be neat to build batteries that handle manufacturing defects akin to a CPU with 4 cores but 3 useable, I suspect the additional complexity, wiring, and circuitry is limiting. Batteries today are almost (or actually?) a commodity. Detecting and simply replacing the entire battery is probably cheaper and easier at grid scale.

New comment by garbageman in "The U.S. government may finally mandate safer table saws"

garbageman — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 20:41:46 +0000

When you make decisions that favor an industry while also take money from them, it's safe to assume they're 'siding' with that industry.

New comment by garbageman in "Beeper acquired by Automattic"

garbageman — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 17:38:00 +0000

Not a user but I imagine it's like the blackberry model where texts, messenger, whatsapp, and whatever else all go to the same inbox rather than having to check 40 different apps. I really wish that idea would come back.

New comment by garbageman in "Vision Pro teardown part 2: What’s the display resolution?"

garbageman — Wed, 07 Feb 2024 19:35:38 +0000

This is an interesting perspective. Genuine question: would it not be the other way - seeming lower than actual resolution when slightly moving? Why?

Could this be used to simulate a higher pixel density? Maybe doing something crazy vibrating the display in some kind of circular motion or something silly?

New comment by garbageman in "Latest ChatGPT 4 System prompt (1,700 tokens)"

garbageman — Wed, 07 Feb 2024 19:31:23 +0000

Prompt is what the model is told in addition to whatever you ask it. Tokens are how the model puts together words. More words = more tokens.

New comment by garbageman in "Apple Vision Pro Weighs Almost as Much as a 12.9-Inch iPad Pro"

garbageman — Fri, 19 Jan 2024 16:30:09 +0000

Is '12.9" iPad Pro' a standard measurement now?