Hacker News: j_m_b

New comment by j_m_b in "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs Video Lectures (1986)"

j_m_b — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 12:01:24 +0000

This is how I learned lisp. I then went on to learn Clojure and built a career around it.

New comment by j_m_b in "Why isn't the U.S. better at soccer?"

j_m_b — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 02:04:12 +0000

I'm late to the game but this question has been bouncing around in my head and I wanted to give my opinion as a sports fan. I also coach my son's soccer team so to be clear, I have nothing against soccer.

The real question is: Why isn't soccer more popular in the US?

Soccer is a very wide game. It's easy to understand and easy to start playing. Don't touch the ball with your hands and kick the ball into the goal. It's easy enough that six year olds with coed teams can start playing and have fun. It explains the huge youth participation in the US.

Soccer, however, lacks depth. Games likes baseball and football have deep strategy and specialization that soccer/basketball/hockey just can't match. It's checkers vs chess. You can develop widely different skill sets in these games.

Basketball is soccer/hockey on speed. The games are a progression of incremental advantage. Each goal scored is another adrenaline shot for the fans. It's a long chain of dopamine hits. It allows for momentum shifts.

It's no wonder then that the majority of athletic talent in the US is funneled into one of three sports in the US: football , baseball and basketball.

The big conundrum is: Why is hockey so much more popular than soccer in America? I think it's because it's a condensed arena, faster game play and has lots of aggressive plays. Whatever the answer may be, I think it will prove key in answering why soccer just hasn't caught on professionally in the US.

I don't hate soccer. I'm definitely going to be watching some world cup games. If I had a magic wand, I would implement the promotion/relegation system for every major league sport in the US. Let the owners take a haircut if they have bad teams! I think it's an excellent system which really make the owners have some skin in the game.

I just don't think soccer is compelling enough of a game to draw eyeballs away from the big three.

New comment by j_m_b in "Claude Opus 4.8"

j_m_b — Fri, 29 May 2026 02:10:27 +0000

We're at the top of the S-curve and you're romanticizing diminishing returns with vague hints of super human capabilities and singularities.

New comment by j_m_b in "Ti-84 Evo"

j_m_b — Sat, 02 May 2026 02:43:50 +0000

Nostalgia aside... these things aren't really that great and are overpriced for what they are. TI sustains itself on basically extorting high schools and colleges to use that.. because most of the teachers just used these.

I'm not sure such a device really improved any understanding of the underlying mathematics that I was taught. In fact, in more advanced mathematics these machines can't even keep up.

FSF Position on "Ethical" AI

j_m_b — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 17:33:18 +0000

Article URL: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/rail-are-nonfree-and-unethical

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47903072

Points: 23

# Comments: 0

New comment by j_m_b in "Universal vaccine against respiratory infections and allergens"

j_m_b — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 13:35:40 +0000

IN MICE should be added to this title

New comment by j_m_b in "“It turns out” (2010)"

j_m_b — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 16:15:33 +0000

Oh I have some other common phrases I've been collecting!

"to be honest" "...the thing..." "I mean.." "Yah yah yah" people say this rapidly. It seems rude and dismissive to me so I've stopped doing it

New comment by j_m_b in "Good Riddance, 4o"

j_m_b — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 17:31:10 +0000

Computing has made intimate sexual relationships worse.

Dating apps are skewed: men receive little attention while women have an overwhelming amount of attention.

Porn satisfies our most base sexual functions while abandoning truly intimate connections.

The ultimate goal of sexual unions has been demonized and turned into something to avoid. That being children. After school specials since the 80s have made pregnancy a horror to avoid instead of a joy to grasp.

AI is just the latest iteration of technology increasing the divide between the sexes.

When the clankers come, we're fucked.

New comment by j_m_b in "Nobody knows how the whole system works"

j_m_b — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 14:00:40 +0000

Also, no one knows how to make a Pizza! (great book for kids)

New comment by j_m_b in "How Charles M Schulz created Charlie Brown and Snoopy (2024)"

j_m_b — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 11:26:48 +0000

It might have been more like C&H or Far Side at one time, but by the time of the 80s when I first started reading the funny pages, Peanuts was just another mundane strip.

New comment by j_m_b in "The Art of Atari (2016)"

j_m_b — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 14:02:02 +0000

The spaceship beaming people up in Defender always looked like it's proportions were off. As a kid, I remember seeing the spaceship and thinking it looked like a metal glove.

New comment by j_m_b in "Irssi: IRC client in a Docker image"

j_m_b — Wed, 17 Sep 2025 03:05:01 +0000

Better would be a docker container for an IRC server. Something using a modern approach where you could have link attachments, replies for message threads etc. An IRC slack alternative.

New comment by j_m_b in "Gemini 2.5 Flash Image"

j_m_b — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 14:44:44 +0000

If this can do character consistency, that's huge. Just make it do the same for video...

New comment by j_m_b in "Why are there so many rationalist cults?"

j_m_b — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 15:22:53 +0000

> One way that thinking for yourself goes wrong is that you realize your society is wrong about something, don’t realize that you can’t outperform it, and wind up even wronger.

many such cases

New comment by j_m_b in "Valve confirms credit card companies pressured it to delist certain adult games"

j_m_b — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 16:42:02 +0000

So funny how people think this is a moral crusade. You should read articles around the tech stack for payment processing at any adult site. People try to do chargebacks all of the time on these kind of services. "Hunny what is this transaction on our account for BigBussomsCom?" .. "Oh must be some kind of fraud" "then let's call the bank and straighten it out". It's variations of this, over and over that lead to the high chargeback rates. I seem to recall that chargebacks are an order of magnitude higher for adult-oriented transactions. Unless you have a system of countering this with a team devoted to it, you will have a lot of successful chargebacks. I doubt Valve has the specialized team needed to deal with the amount of chargebacks, this the CC companies trying to avoid the headache.

New comment by j_m_b in "If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)"

j_m_b — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 14:09:58 +0000

One of my favorite visualizations of the scale of the solar system is from Stephen Hawking's Genius.

https://mass.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/hawking_genius_ep...

It's a hands-on, practical example of how far things are away that we can easily visualize. I highly recommend the rest of the series as well. It's one of the best science shows ever produced. It shows the practical path of scientific discovery. You can watch is on the PBS app, which requires a $60 a year pass. Highly worth it. (I have no affiliation with PBS)

New comment by j_m_b in "Show HN: Let’s Bend – Open-Source Harmonica Bending Trainer"

j_m_b — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 14:26:26 +0000

This is cool! I made a similar app, but for guitar. However, I couldn't quite figure out how long I should sample. I wanted to make an app where it will play an interval and then you need to play it back on the guitar. If you can get this to work on a harmonica, I should be able to get it to work with a guitar. Will likely use your source for more inspiration, thanks!

New comment by j_m_b in "Sycophancy in GPT-4o"

j_m_b — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 21:20:58 +0000

"tough love" versions of responses can clean them up some.

New comment by j_m_b in "Amazon says workers must be in the office. The UK government disagrees"

j_m_b — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 11:28:13 +0000

This is the first filter on the incoming mass layoffs.

New comment by j_m_b in "Rainfrog – a database management TUI for Postgres"

j_m_b — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 11:27:40 +0000

Nice work! Would be cool to have a plugin system that could allow for interfacing with other DBs like sqlite etc.