Hacker News: happytoexplain

New comment by happytoexplain in "I Won't Buy You a Coffee"

happytoexplain — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 22:48:43 +0000

I disagree - the author makes his unqualified disdain for "begging" unambiguously clear. He is unreasonable, simplistic, and frankly does not make the (exact) argument you generously ascribe to him (though maybe he meant to, and you can see through his miswording).

New comment by happytoexplain in "I Won't Buy You a Coffee"

happytoexplain — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 19:12:29 +0000

>Do note that this is a slightly negative post

Ha. It's my personal opinion that this is an insanely negative post. I hate advertising with a vibrating passion that I can only assume other people would consider unreasonable, but even I don't blink at a "Buy me a coffee" button. In fact, I smile at the quaint notion, and I have clicked it a few times.

The idea that hosting is the primary cost of writing is so far off the mark, I don't even know where to begin.

New comment by happytoexplain in "The RCE that AMD wouldn't fix"

happytoexplain — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 16:39:34 +0000

Yeah, it's annoying. But it's been captured by popular culture as meaning a blatant lie - one where the liar knows the truth is or was available/obvious. A "don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining" lie.

Or, alternatively, and especially in gender relations, any lie intended to manipulate or demean another person. As opposed to lying to protect yourself, to swindle somebody, or some other reason. This is closer to the original idea, but still not there.

New comment by happytoexplain in "Making peace with your unlived dreams (2023)"

happytoexplain — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 00:40:35 +0000

Just a gentle reminder: This point of view is sometimes applicable and valuable, but it is extremely easy to say, and statistically it is almost always an oversimplification.

New comment by happytoexplain in "Making peace with your unlived dreams (2023)"

happytoexplain — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 19:29:23 +0000

I somewhat agree, but I think a person's "passion" is more concrete than their "dream". A dream is not necessarily something being actively progressed.

New comment by happytoexplain in "DoD Officially Drops 180 Faiths from Military's Recognized Religion List"

happytoexplain — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 00:38:52 +0000

As somebody who works with data and humans, I know it's not a good idea to use the absence of information as information. Then you need confidence that the absence was on purpose, and means a specific thing. Whereas you could simply not omit the information.

It being a "list of religions" is just a semantic distraction, like saying "bald" shouldn't be on a list of hair colors.

New comment by happytoexplain in "Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?"

happytoexplain — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 00:29:05 +0000

I'm not sure what you're asking for is possible. We're humans, so if something affects us, how we feel becomes relevant to critical, objective analysis. This is a common mistake engineers make: It is not valueless or irrational to discuss practical reality or personal experiences or even emotions.

In other words: You can discuss the implementation details and pricing structures and capabilities of an LLM; and you can discuss the positive/negative effects genAI has on humans. They're both valuable topics. It's impossible to separate them completely.

New comment by happytoexplain in "Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?"

happytoexplain — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 00:09:29 +0000

I think it's probably not palatable because it reduces the friction too much on removing large amounts of content for yourself - it's too easy to "delete" a person forever based on one or two things they said, or just based on not liking their opinion, and thereby reducing your exposure to differing thoughts, which is one of the tenants of HN.

New comment by happytoexplain in "Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?"

happytoexplain — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 23:52:16 +0000

Consider that the GP said,

>Mentioning AI brings out a sharply negative side of HN that I had not seen before 2023

And the parent said,

>I would say that HN was at least as sharply negative during the cryptocurrency craze

And your response was,

>The false equivalency in this explanation is off the scale.

The parent in fact said a very straightforward, non-controversial thing, and you responded in anger, as if they said something like "AI is the same as crypto".

New comment by happytoexplain in "Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?"

happytoexplain — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 23:35:27 +0000

100%? So everybody who has any negative opinion of or experience with AI is now a "tech bro" who believes killing jobs is good? That's hideous. Why even have an HN account if you harbor this kind of black-and-white hate against people in software? You shouldn't want HN to look like the rest of the internet (flame wars, petty back-and-forth rhetoric, immaturity, etc).

New comment by happytoexplain in "The company I work for is losing all of its humanity, I don't know where to go"

happytoexplain — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 19:20:13 +0000

This is bizarre and hostile. Be clear or resist the urge to distract.

New comment by happytoexplain in "Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?"

happytoexplain — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 16:22:49 +0000

dang falsified it. Also, if you visit this URL at time of writing, three of the top five stories are pro-AI:

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=ai

New comment by happytoexplain in "Inflation is being driven up by investment in artificial intelligence"

happytoexplain — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 15:28:43 +0000

They assert that these four examples are the only things that have gone up in price? Sorry, I can't read the article.

New comment by happytoexplain in "Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?"

happytoexplain — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 15:10:46 +0000

dang posted a good one in this comment section.

I would also suggest that if you believe your two links are "detached from reality", you may be struggling with your own bias. They're both perfectly reasonable takes that you are totally reasonable to disagree with. Try to come down from that feeling and realize that disagreeing does not necessitate that the person you are disagreeing with is insane.

New comment by happytoexplain in "Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?"

happytoexplain — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 03:34:06 +0000

HN is not anti-AI. HN reflects a reasonable ratio of pro-AI and anti-AI sentiments (sometimes held by the same person! because AI covers a lot of ground).

New comment by happytoexplain in "India's surprise baby bust"

happytoexplain — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 01:15:20 +0000

>your unsupported decline assertion

Why start out pointlessly hostile in your first sentence like this? I can't engage with this. If saying anything without linking a study makes a person some kind of asshole, even smart, honest people couldn't communicate.

New comment by happytoexplain in "Let's celebrate work that is 100% human-made"

happytoexplain — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 01:05:27 +0000

In what way is this ironic?

New comment by happytoexplain in "Let's celebrate work that is 100% human-made"

happytoexplain — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 01:00:06 +0000

An immoral fallacy. People will fight for, subjectively, their values; and objectively, their livelihoods.

They'll do this no matter how bad you try to make them feel. In fact, belittling them tends to have the opposite effect.

New comment by happytoexplain in "Let's celebrate work that is 100% human-made"

happytoexplain — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 00:55:13 +0000

"You must nail down every single detail in objective terms" is a dishonest requirement we, as engineers, reach for when we don't like something subjectively. It's petty. It's not honest.

New comment by happytoexplain in "SVG of a Hamster Playing Table-Tennis"

happytoexplain — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 23:37:54 +0000

Hmm, sure. I'm still surprised - it also has to say where they are in coordinate space. It feels like the way genAI works ("what comes next") is not amenable to this use case (demonstrably I'm wrong, of course).