Hacker News: geekamongus

New comment by geekamongus in "Most people can't juggle one ball"

geekamongus — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 20:12:33 +0000

If you do use tennis balls, stand in front of your couch so they land there and don't roll away.

New comment by geekamongus in "Prism"

geekamongus — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 01:53:26 +0000

Fuck...there are already too many things called Prism.

New comment by geekamongus in "Erich von Däniken has died"

geekamongus — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 21:00:22 +0000

I have always enjoyed bringing in the "you know, the bible could be read very differently if you consider God to be an alien" to certain philosophical conversations I've had with people over the years, ever since reading von Daniken's work.

As you allude to, there are always other explanations.

New comment by geekamongus in "iCloud Photos Downloader"

geekamongus — Sun, 11 Jan 2026 20:49:57 +0000

You do not need an extra tool to download your photos. This one runs from the command line, though.

New comment by geekamongus in "Self hosting my media library with Jellyfin and Wireguard on Hetzner"

geekamongus — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 20:50:47 +0000

The only evidence I can find is with Spotify doing this.

New comment by geekamongus in "Self hosting my media library with Jellyfin and Wireguard on Hetzner"

geekamongus — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 20:46:30 +0000

Spotify pays me about $0.003 per stream. That's pretty typical for every artist on the site.

New comment by geekamongus in "Self hosting my media library with Jellyfin and Wireguard on Hetzner"

geekamongus — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 20:41:13 +0000

A couple of points missed for why Spotify is bad:

- Paying musicians cheap wages to make boring music (ghost artists) for playlists they promote: https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machin...

- Not paying musicians anything at all if they don't have enough streams: https://www.engadget.com/spotify-confirms-it-wont-offer-payo...

- Not preventing the deluge of AI-generated music flooding the platform: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/spotify-no...

New comment by geekamongus in "Google is dead. Where do we go now?"

geekamongus — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 14:28:43 +0000

I'm not a marketer (anymore), but as an end user, I feel that Google has shot themselves in the foot with the horrendous search experience they provide these days. This notion and topic of discussion is becoming more commonplace online.

"Google results are just AI and sponsored content anymore." We've all seen it.

New comment by geekamongus in "Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features"

geekamongus — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 02:50:43 +0000

Oh, this is great news!

New comment by geekamongus in "Cassette tapes are making a comeback?"

geekamongus — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 02:48:12 +0000

Yeah, I used to have a habit of buying a blank cassette with two vinyl albums each weekend after I got paid so I could listen to said albums in my car. I'd still rock the records at home though.

New comment by geekamongus in "We pwned X, Vercel, Cursor, and Discord through a supply-chain attack"

geekamongus — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 02:42:16 +0000

16 year olds rule the world.

New comment by geekamongus in "Cassette tapes are making a comeback?"

geekamongus — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 00:15:19 +0000

Vinyl resurging, I can understand. But cassette tapes were always so fragile. I can't count how many got twisted up in the player and lost forever.

Their only redeeming quality was the mix tape.

New comment by geekamongus in "Autism's confusing cousins"

geekamongus — Sat, 06 Dec 2025 16:08:33 +0000

You go to a testing center, not a therapist, to get a diagnosis. The online tests don't count. A thorough test will take a half-day or more, with tests ranging from conversations to Q&A to visual to a battery of multiple choice questions.

New comment by geekamongus in "Personal blogs are back, should niche blogs be next?"

geekamongus — Sat, 22 Nov 2025 15:04:58 +0000

I started following your blog when you were like, 14. Cool to see you here. I've kept up my blog for 25 years, and you were an inspiration along the way.

New comment by geekamongus in "Sam Altman says OpenAI will have a 'legitimate AI researcher' by 2028"

geekamongus — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 13:04:44 +0000

> OpenAI is tracking toward achieving an intern-level research assistant by September 2026 and a fully automated “legitimate AI researcher” by 2028, CEO Sam Altman said during a livestream Tuesday.

How do you measure the difference between intern-level and "legitimate" level researchers, and why aren't interns legitimate? This sounds kinda made up to me.

New comment by geekamongus in "Privacy Badger is a free browser extension made by EFF to stop spying"

geekamongus — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 02:17:13 +0000

Then you are losing out on the insurance the company is supposed to provide, usually through bonding, in case the cleaner pockets your favorite jewelry, for example. Or they knock over the Faberge egg while dusting.

New comment by geekamongus in "I ditched Spotify and set up my own music stack"

geekamongus — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 12:29:47 +0000

I make 90'S-ish indie rock. I play all the instruments (drums, guitar, bass, keys) and sing.

Having to self-promote is the main struggle, and that's the only way to "make it" anymore. Similar with the book publishing industry. My wife spent a year writing an amazing book, paying an editor, but when shopping it around to publishers, none of them would bite because she didn't already have a social media following. They expect you to have 20k followers knowing that X percent of those will buy the product.

New comment by geekamongus in "I ditched Spotify and set up my own music stack"

geekamongus — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 01:34:41 +0000

One of the big differences between the old days and today is that you have exponentially more musicians releasing music every day due to how easy it is for bedroom producers to create and release tracks with very little barrier to entry. I can create 10 songs in a weekend on my laptop in my basement and send them out to all of the major streaming services for about 20 bucks.

This floods the market with many, many independent musicians trying to get heard. And the only way to get heard today is to make it onto curated Spotify playlists, build a following, and hope that someone at a record company somewhere hears you and takes interest. Not only is Spotify a tool for consuming music by the public, it is also the main way that musicians have to promote themselves anymore.

As a musician (who gave up the dream of making this a job long ago), it really sucks. There is infinitely more competition out there now, and when you factor in all the AI crap making it on to Spotify (some of which they are responsible for), it is even worse.

New comment by geekamongus in "I Don't Have Spotify"

geekamongus — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 01:35:43 +0000

Add these up-and-comers:

https://mirlo.space - Collectively owned & managed by musicians

https://ampwall.com - Competitor to Bandcamp with better features

New comment by geekamongus in "I Don't Have Spotify"

geekamongus — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 01:31:16 +0000

"Not available on other platforms."

But it is...