Hacker News: garbageman

New comment by garbageman in "Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak"

garbageman — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 18:57:59 +0000

Sous vide are even cheaper now, $30 for a basic one, provided you've got a stock pot or something large enough to set it in.

New comment by garbageman in "Almost no skill required to cook a steak"

garbageman — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 18:56:52 +0000

Salamander broiler would be incredible to have at home. We get decent results from using a cast iron pan thats as hot as we can get it. At most we can sear 2 steaks as it tends to cool off pretty quick even under high heat. Got any better alternatives that a home cook could use?

New comment by garbageman in "Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots"

garbageman — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 16:38:47 +0000

Leasing is out, but locked-in subscriptions are in!

New comment by garbageman in "Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots"

garbageman — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 16:37:44 +0000

Automatic litter box is a great example. We've had one for ~7 years and it's still going strong. High initial cost that pays back every day over the course of what will likely be a decade+ of usage. Absolutely worth every penny if you look to the horizon. I imagine the robot mowers and robot house maids will fall under the same type of payback but with even higher upfront costs - perhaps this will turn into yet another subscription scheme.

New comment by garbageman in "AI in Linux"

garbageman — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 16:46:21 +0000

Exactly. When I change my engine oil, I just dump it into the street for the same reason - nobody is dying from my actions directly.

New comment by garbageman in "A graph that should be front-page news"

garbageman — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 17:16:02 +0000

Both of those problems you cited are far smaller and easier to fix than the ~1,500 gigatons of C02 humans have emitted in the past century. CFC's have a half life of only 50 years, C02 just persists now forever since we're dumping it faster than can be consumed. Acid rain was a mostly localized problem, not one spanning the entire Earth and affecting ocean temps, ocean currents, etc etc. The cited problems are insanely easy to solve compared to global climate change.

It's likely / probably unsolvable at this point as we're hitting tipping points for which there is no effective return such as permafrost melting and releasing more co2, causing more heating, melting more co2, etc and partial shutdowns of critical ocean currents. But yeah I know...MUH FREEDOM.

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/...