Hacker News: incidentnormal

New comment by incidentnormal in "Show HN: I built a social media management tool in 3 weeks with Claude and Codex"

incidentnormal — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 11:07:41 +0000

What did your harness look like for this?

New comment by incidentnormal in "“Nothing” is the secret to structuring your work"

incidentnormal — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 19:13:36 +0000

This is great meta advice, definitely take heed.

I would add - going for a walk and having a shower are both excellent circuit breakers.

In Defense of Ruthless Managers

incidentnormal — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 16:58:29 +0000

Article URL: https://www.seangoedecke.com/ruthless-managers/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45530283

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by incidentnormal in "GPT-4 details leaked?"

incidentnormal — Wed, 12 Jul 2023 17:24:21 +0000

@Exuma, this comment is ridiculously resonant with me, the part about 'learning transaction isolation for the 50th time' is very on point too.

Everything you said I pretty much feel the same way. I've accepted it as part of how I work, and the advantages are many (and valued by many) - but yes, interacting with deep experts usually ends with feeling a bit like a fraud. I feel like I maybe was an expert at whatever the thing is at some point in time, momentarily, but then I just shed the information as soon as the next thing needs to be done, and it just ends up as part of the background inference pattern matcher.

Certain things where I'm really forced to learn something deeply do stick, but I find my ways of thinking about that domain to be very different to most 'true' experts, and rely heavily on visual models and analogies with other concepts.

New comment by incidentnormal in "MiniGPT-4"

incidentnormal — Mon, 17 Apr 2023 18:16:02 +0000

I like how you've expressed this insight, and it is so true.

Becoming great at a particular technology stack means modelling it in great detail in your head, so you can move through it without external assistance. But that leaves an arena without discovery, where you just reinforce the same synapses, leading to rigidity and an absence of awe.

Remind me again why Large Language Models can't think

incidentnormal — Tue, 11 Apr 2023 07:52:04 +0000

Article URL: https://microprediction.medium.com/remind-me-again-why-large-language-models-cant-think-acab12da63de

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35522133

Points: 1

# Comments: 2

Exploring the cause of low wages and unaffordable housing

incidentnormal — Sat, 05 Nov 2022 14:14:01 +0000

Article URL: http://www.wealtheconomics.org/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33481656

Points: 3

# Comments: 2

'Rare condition gives me TV static in my vision'

incidentnormal — Wed, 20 Apr 2022 05:49:38 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-60696867

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31093321

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

Alzheimer’s researchers are studying the brain’s plumbing

incidentnormal — Sat, 02 Apr 2022 20:00:04 +0000

Article URL: https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/alzheimers-researchers-are-studying-the-brains-plumbing/21808465

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30891206

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by incidentnormal in "Developers spend most of their time figuring the system out"

incidentnormal — Thu, 31 Mar 2022 13:41:59 +0000

ADHD is quite badly named imo. It's not so much a deficit of attention but a disregulation. If you are interested in something then you can invoke an almost obsessive fixation on the task (hyperfocus I believe some people call it) which lends itself well to coding in certain conditions.

New comment by incidentnormal in "Namecheap: Russia Service Termination"

incidentnormal — Tue, 01 Mar 2022 06:27:05 +0000

I may be being overly paranoid here, but consider that being made an exception of by Namecheap might draw the wrong kind of attention from the regime.

New comment by incidentnormal in "Fungus at Chernobyl absorbs nuclear radiation via radiosynthesis"

incidentnormal — Sat, 15 Aug 2020 10:36:02 +0000

Our ability to leverage those patterns underlies the success of our species, so I would say they are probably quite real.

New comment by incidentnormal in "Hackers take over prominent Twitter accounts in simultaneous attack"

incidentnormal — Thu, 16 Jul 2020 07:34:07 +0000

> If you could look for something like multiple accounts tweeting the same thing within 1 minute, in the past couple weeks, you could turn up some candidates for test accounts

I think this would turn up alot more results than you bargained for.

New comment by incidentnormal in "Mercedes-Benz pre-safe sound"

incidentnormal — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 05:58:50 +0000

Well, ibuprofen is certainly not a steroid - it is an NSAID (non-steroidal anti inflammatory drug)

New comment by incidentnormal in "Vital Wikipedia Articles"

incidentnormal — Thu, 25 Jul 2019 17:51:47 +0000

So few A-class articles in the list.

New comment by incidentnormal in "Authentication and the Have I Been Pwned API"

incidentnormal — Fri, 19 Jul 2019 18:41:10 +0000

Even though he explained why (it is likely a forthcoming feature), I did enjoy this comment.

New comment by incidentnormal in "A Year-Long Undercover Plot to Blow Up Eve Online's Most Notorious Space Station"

incidentnormal — Fri, 11 Jan 2019 18:42:41 +0000

Please do - what kind of services are we talking about and how much data is involved? Bear in mind I have no experience with the game itself.

New comment by incidentnormal in "Antidepressant withdrawal: reviewing the paper behind the headlines"

incidentnormal — Mon, 19 Nov 2018 21:23:39 +0000

Yeah correct, alcohol is technically a positive allosteric modulator of the GABA-A receptors, which means it potentiates the effects of GABA in those receptors. Over time, the receptors downregulate to compensate for being over-stimulated. Upon withdrawal from alcohol, the GABA-A receptors are unable to respond strongly enough to the GABA which exists, so in effect you're undersupplied and that contributes to the DTs. Alcohol is actually a very messy drug that acts on a huge range of receptors but the effect on the GABAergic system is probably the most significant.

New comment by incidentnormal in "Microsoft intercepting Firefox, Chrome installation on Windows 10 Insider build"

incidentnormal — Wed, 12 Sep 2018 21:56:45 +0000

To be fair, if there's a recipe on the sugar packet for a cake, it is very likely to say 'use $sugar_company flour for best results'.

New comment by incidentnormal in "Three facts from “Our World in Data” that everyone should know"

incidentnormal — Thu, 28 Jun 2018 18:53:55 +0000

The book which Bill Gates recently gave a copy of to all 2018 college graduates - Factfulness, is a very well written and comprehensive treatment of this and more by Hans Rosling (Gapminder). Highly recommended, it's not long either - you could read it in a couple of evenings or a weekend easily.