<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: gavinmckenzie</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=gavinmckenzie</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:04:56 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=gavinmckenzie" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gavinmckenzie in "Ember, a native iOS Hacker News reader I built around accessibility"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Well done. As a colour blind person (and iOS developer) I am thrilled anytime an app doesn’t rely on colour cues alone. I’ve used Hack and Octal but I am going to give your app a try.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 20 Jun 2026 17:30:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48611113</link><dc:creator>gavinmckenzie</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48611113</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48611113</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gavinmckenzie in "How wolves became dogs"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Putting aside the greater variety of physical traits that you describe, dogs generally are more adaptable than cats. They are estimated to have twice the number of neurons and are much more malleable whereas cats feel more hardwired into a set of cat behaviours.<p>I’ve assumed that this greater learning capacity and malleability is both the best part of a dog and a vulnerability that can lead them to become highly anxious and dependent animals.<p>I’ve had both cats and dogs, and loved them both, but my goodness they are so wildly completely different animals.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 09 Jan 2026 19:26:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46558043</link><dc:creator>gavinmckenzie</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46558043</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46558043</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gavinmckenzie in "Physicists drive antihydrogen breakthrough at CERN"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I admit to invoking the phrase “Where we’re going, we won’t need eyes to see” at least once a year when something feels like it’s going horribly wrong.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 28 Nov 2025 01:09:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46074667</link><dc:creator>gavinmckenzie</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46074667</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46074667</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gavinmckenzie in "Roc Camera"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>There are many motivations for shooting jpeg with film sims, from just not wanting to expend the effort editing photos to my motivation as a colour-blind person who simply cannot see colour well enough to manually adjust photos. For me, it’s incredible being able to choose a film simulation and be happy with the result even if I know that the colours I’m seeing aren’t quite the same that others will see. It’s the entire reason I bought into the FujiFilm system.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 24 Oct 2025 16:36:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45696306</link><dc:creator>gavinmckenzie</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45696306</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45696306</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gavinmckenzie in "Scientists discover a new hormone that can build strong bones in mice"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>What my doctor has told me, after attending a urology + prostate cancer conference, is to think of the prostate as a sponge that absorbs testosterone. And once the sponge overflows, prostate cancer can be triggered.<p>But once cancer has occurred, adding more testosterone doesn't matter because the sponge is already super-saturated.<p>In fact, doctors who have this perspective will permit men with prostate cancer to continue testosterone therapy.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 23 Jul 2024 10:47:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41044634</link><dc:creator>gavinmckenzie</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41044634</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41044634</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gavinmckenzie in "Plants can detect sound"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I thought the accepted explanation of Annihilation was a metaphor for cancer. The slow seemingly unstoppable spread. Mutations creating new things that mimic the familiar but in often grotesque ways, mechanistically expanding to destructively consume everything in its path into a new form of life.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 18 Sep 2023 10:51:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37554540</link><dc:creator>gavinmckenzie</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37554540</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37554540</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gavinmckenzie in "An Architectural Overview of QNX (1992) [pdf]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Wow, that's a throwback. I remember when my Ontario high-school in '84 or '85 got a whole room full of ICON computers. It was a total miserable nightmare for the teaching staff as each computer class had at least a couple of students with the skills to elevate themselves to root privileges and cause constant mischief.<p>The ICONs were way more fun from the aging Commodore Pets that had populated Ontario high-schools, and the big trackballs felt futuristic.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 04 Jul 2023 13:10:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36586182</link><dc:creator>gavinmckenzie</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36586182</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36586182</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gavinmckenzie in "SwiftData"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I agree that truthfully we're not talking about excluding those users, but only preventing those users from upgrading to the latest version of the app. But for lots of businesses those two things are viewed as effectively the same, because they believe they are adding value to the new version of the app that will result in greater user stickiness and direct or indirect revenue opportunities.<p>Honestly I'm thrilled anytime I'm working for a client that has a iOS(-2) rule versus an iOS(-4) rule.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 07 Jun 2023 15:38:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36228250</link><dc:creator>gavinmckenzie</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36228250</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36228250</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gavinmckenzie in "SwiftData"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>If you're a business with a consumer facing app, you don't want to exclude 5% or 10% of your users. Most of the client projects I've worked on had a requirement to support iOS(-4) which is super painful from a development standpoint and usually the number of users on a device with iOS four versions old are in the range of 2%. But I get that it's tough for a financial institution or a streaming media company or a telco to exclude potentially 2% of users.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 07 Jun 2023 15:34:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36228184</link><dc:creator>gavinmckenzie</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36228184</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36228184</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gavinmckenzie in "Apple Vision"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Very true. And I’m an iOS/macOS/tvOS developer who has all the toys, yet even I had trouble coming to grips with paying a premium for AirPods over a good pair of wired buds.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 06 Jun 2023 20:32:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36218712</link><dc:creator>gavinmckenzie</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36218712</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36218712</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gavinmckenzie in "Apple Vision"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Hopefully the troubles with Siri are understood enough in Apple that they won’t make that mistake, because Siri is truly awful on my HomePods for thinking I’m talking to Siri when I’m not.<p>Thankfully many of the people in the demo videos were people of colour, so I’m fairly confident Apple has gotten that bit right and hopefully their gesture detecting cameras have IR or dot-pattern emitters to work in the dark as well.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 06 Jun 2023 15:24:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36214268</link><dc:creator>gavinmckenzie</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36214268</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36214268</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gavinmckenzie in "Apple Vision"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>100%. I thought the same thing with my Apple Watch and I resisted spending what I considered to be an unreasonable amount on earbuds as I didn’t care (or so I thought) about having wireless earbuds. But eventually so many colleagues had them and talked to me about how great they were that I caved and bought a pair. Wow was I wrong about how wireless earbuds was something I didn’t need. Then I started evangelizing to people about them, and the cycle continued.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 06 Jun 2023 15:15:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36214109</link><dc:creator>gavinmckenzie</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36214109</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36214109</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gavinmckenzie in "Apple Vision"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Thankfully it does pair with a Bluetooth keyboard and trackpad for the scenarios where you want to use it to do “work”.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 06 Jun 2023 15:08:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36213986</link><dc:creator>gavinmckenzie</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36213986</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36213986</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gavinmckenzie in "The role of cat eye narrowing movements in cat–human communication (2020)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is interesting. I've had both cats and dogs, and with the theory "they don't have fingers" I wonder why do dogs understand human pointing? Dogs of course communicate with a direct gaze (looks at empty food bowl, looks at human, looks back at empty food bowl) and can understand us communicating back with a directed gaze, but at the same time my dog definitely understands me pointing at something.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 31 May 2023 14:34:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36138879</link><dc:creator>gavinmckenzie</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36138879</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36138879</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gavinmckenzie in "Ex-Apple VP Mike Abbott Joins General Motors as Exec Vice President, Software"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I love using the knob to navigate CarPlay, but I admit the Music app is nearly unusable with the knob and IMHO only marginally better with touch. The music app in CarPlay just generally sucks and appears to intentionally limit how deeply you can browse your library.<p>That said, in my experience Siri works well for music selection. I just hit the voice button on my steering wheel and ask for the playlist, album, or artist I want to hear.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 09 May 2023 18:33:12 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35878542</link><dc:creator>gavinmckenzie</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35878542</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35878542</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gavinmckenzie in "Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yes exactly. The children at that age in a “Casa” classroom cycle through self-chosen activities every day and may not choose the same activities consistently. If a child is observed to be avoiding a particular learning activity over a period of time, it’s the role of the teacher (director/directress) to nudge the child back to that activity and understand why they might be avoiding it.<p>Plus given there are three years worth of children in the same class, seeing the “senior” children operate at the higher levels of activities helps with incentive for the younger children who want to emulate them.<p>That said, anyone can open a “Montessori school” and not adhere to any particular Montessori pedagogy. I’d argue the schools with the purest interpretations of Maria Montessori’s teachings are often just as problematic as those who are Montessori in name only. There are two tribes in Montessori: AMS (purists)and AMI (more flexible).<p>Thankfully the school my daughter attended was AMI and I watched the school adapt their methods to children who needed more structure than classical Montessori advises. Ultimately, it’s not for everyone.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 17 Apr 2023 17:37:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35603924</link><dc:creator>gavinmckenzie</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35603924</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35603924</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gavinmckenzie in "Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>My daughter went through a Montessori education from 18 months old through grade 8. As part of her Montessori experience, starting at age three, she began to learn to write. They trace "sandpaper" letters with their fingers; moving their fingers along the strokes of letters pre-printed on cardboard in a rough texture. From there they learn to write the letters and words, speaking the words aloud. Thus the focus is on learning to write before reading, with an implication that this process will help with word recognition.<p>I have no idea whether this method is better, but as a parent it certainly seemed like a very novel approach. Seeing my three-year-old daughter learning to write was (like many Montessori things) surprising.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 17 Apr 2023 13:00:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35599987</link><dc:creator>gavinmckenzie</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35599987</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35599987</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gavinmckenzie in "A Response to Jacob Kaplan-Moss’s “Incompetent but Nice”"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yes, my understanding is that some people present with anxiety (and/or depression), and that anxiety will become the focus of treatment by their doctor or psychologist, when in fact the anxiety stems from the undiagnosed ADHD. For these people, treating the anxiety alone isn't very effective, compared to getting an ADHD diagnosis and treatment plan that also has a positive impact on the anxiety symptoms.<p>Anecdotally I've seen this scenario play out in my own family.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 30 Mar 2023 17:31:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35376288</link><dc:creator>gavinmckenzie</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35376288</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35376288</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gavinmckenzie in "A Response to Jacob Kaplan-Moss’s “Incompetent but Nice”"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>A need to multi-task is 100% ADHD. Our (inattentive) ADHD brains are like a car engine that will stall if it's allowed to idle, and so we have to keep the revs up in order for it to keep running. For us inattentive ADHD people, the meds have the effect of raising our engine's idle speed so we don't have to keep our foot on the pedal through multi-tasking just to stay engaged.<p>It's easy to rationalize this behaviour, and it can feel amazing when you're on top of everything, but it can take a toll and end up in burn-out or disaster when all those (to mix metaphors) plates you've kept spinning eventually fall.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 30 Mar 2023 15:14:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35373922</link><dc:creator>gavinmckenzie</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35373922</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35373922</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by gavinmckenzie in "A Response to Jacob Kaplan-Moss’s “Incompetent but Nice”"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I was diagnosed ADD (or what would now be called inattentive ADHD) in my 30s. But the testing results were not clear, in part because I'd developed a lifetime of coping mechanisms and skills that allow me to behave in non-ADHD ways through force of will. If I look back at my primary school report cards, they are a mixture of both gifted and below-average performance with teacher comments like "Does amazing work when he applies himself".<p>That sudden lack of motivation or drop in performance on tasks that we previously excelled at is also classic ADHD.<p>Anxiety is often a comorbidity, stemming from a feeling of inconsistent failure and lack of control. Though my understanding is that anxiety may be more present in women sufferers of ADHD where the disease manifests differently than in men.<p>All of this to say that you may feel like a DSM definition of ADHD doesn't map onto your experience, but that may be because you're an adult who has a lifetime of adaptation.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 30 Mar 2023 15:05:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35373752</link><dc:creator>gavinmckenzie</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35373752</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35373752</guid></item></channel></rss>