Hacker News: jccalhoun

New comment by jccalhoun in "Prolific Wikipedia editors are threatening to go on strike"

jccalhoun — Fri, 29 May 2026 13:23:53 +0000

It has been a few times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content_forks_of_Wikip...

New comment by jccalhoun in "Prolific Wikipedia editors are threatening to go on strike"

jccalhoun — Fri, 29 May 2026 13:22:46 +0000

Maybe I'm misunderstanding but I thought the Wiki Workers United were made up of employees not volunteer editors? Their website says, "We are Wiki Workers United, a global union for the staff of the Wikimedia Foundation. We are the people who do the work to provide a platform, services, and funds to support the Wikimedia movement." https://www.wikiworkersunited.org/

New comment by jccalhoun in "Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection"

jccalhoun — Fri, 29 May 2026 12:50:10 +0000

a lawyer

New comment by jccalhoun in "Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection"

jccalhoun — Thu, 28 May 2026 21:53:12 +0000

It seems like the guy who put them on consignment is getting screwed but it doesn't seem like this Reckless Ben is helping things by doing weird stunts https://kotaku.com/youtuber-starts-a-cult-and-is-raided-by-p...

New comment by jccalhoun in "Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection"

jccalhoun — Thu, 28 May 2026 21:45:05 +0000

I have heard my friends here in the USA say it about someone locally who is known to cause trouble with businesses. I had never heard it said that way until they said it that way.

New comment by jccalhoun in "A new book on Steve Jobs at NeXT"

jccalhoun — Fri, 15 May 2026 21:16:46 +0000

Maybe my memory is wrong. I haven't read it in years but I don't remember it being a hit piece. I remember liking it quite a bit and thinking it was a really interesting look at NeXT. It is an interesting artifact because it came out in 1993 and the author couldn't have predicted what would happen to NeXT or Jobs.

New comment by jccalhoun in "Instructure pays ransom to Canvas hackers"

jccalhoun — Tue, 12 May 2026 22:56:28 +0000

I think Instructure has made themselves a target. I'm a professor at a college that uses Canvas and I'm going to be making sure I download the gradebook for my classes more often from now on.

New comment by jccalhoun in "I want to live like Costco people"

jccalhoun — Thu, 07 May 2026 20:47:31 +0000

I've never been to Costco but there is a Sam's Club here. People talk about Costco hot dogs but Sam's Club hot dogs are pretty awesome.

New comment by jccalhoun in "iNaturalist"

jccalhoun — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 14:23:15 +0000

I didn't know they had a map feature. I zoomed in on my neighborhood and... all the pins are mine :-P

New comment by jccalhoun in "How to talk to anyone and why you should"

jccalhoun — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 16:47:03 +0000

I'm kind of a misnthrope. I don't know my neighbors and I don't want to. I bought my current house in part because it has a fence around it. I wear earbuds in the store so random people don't try to talk to me (I'm also tall so I get people asking me to get things down for them somewhat often). I teach college so I guess I get enough interaction with strangers from having new students every semester.

New comment by jccalhoun in "DOGE Track"

jccalhoun — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 17:26:09 +0000

Just today I ran into one of the very minor legacies of doge. When talking about conflict styles I used to have students take a survey on the US Institute of Peace's website. Doge shut it down. I guess that survey was taking up too much money to run... Now the only thing there is a press release stroking Trump's ego.

New comment by jccalhoun in "Fix the iOS keyboard before the timer hits zero or I'm switching back to Android"

jccalhoun — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 19:07:56 +0000

I am an android and windows user but i have an ipad and i listen to an apple-centric podcast and I'm amazed at the things that don't work. I've been using swiftkey on android since before MS bought it so I kept using it on ipad. The ipad reverts to the apple keyboard all the time.

On macos there was a post a day or two ago about window arrangement which seems very inferior to windows. I was in the mac lab at school and was surprised that there's no multi item clipboard built in. The answer seems to be use a 3rd party app for these but it seems odd that such basic things aren't built in.

New comment by jccalhoun in "30 Years of ReactOS"

jccalhoun — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:42:27 +0000

what about him is supremely loathable? that he doesn't code?

New comment by jccalhoun in "Douglas Adams on the English–American cultural divide over "heroes""

jccalhoun — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:35:16 +0000

I don't think many people care about Mickey as a character. They like the image but that's about it.

New comment by jccalhoun in "Douglas Adams on the English–American cultural divide over "heroes""

jccalhoun — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:32:40 +0000

A more recent show to compare would be the UK vs the USA version of Ghosts. I like both shows but it is interesting how in the USA version all the main Ghosts are basically good people while the UK Ghosts have more serious flaws. And in the UK version, money is a constant problem while in the USA version it isn't nearly as big of a problem.

New comment by jccalhoun in "Scott Adams has died"

jccalhoun — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 17:23:08 +0000

Whenever I heard of Adams, I always remember that time in 2011 when he made a sockpuppet account on metafilter to pseudonymously praise himself. https://mefiwiki.com/wiki/Scott_Adams,_plannedchaos

New comment by jccalhoun in "Travel Is Not Education"

jccalhoun — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 13:22:00 +0000

I'm born and raised in the midwest of the USA. I've watched UK shows since the 80s when PBS would run Doctor Who, Keeping Up Appearances, and other UK shows. I've never read a history devoted to London or the UK but I know the basics. This summer I visited London for the first time and there were so many things I either had no idea about or knew in the abstract but experiencing it first hand was very different.

New comment by jccalhoun in "iOS allows alternative browser engines in Japan"

jccalhoun — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 03:04:52 +0000

Apple didn't donate to Trump's inauguration, give him a gold and glass paperweight, and donate to his demolishing of the East Wing so that they would have to open up the app store in the USA

New comment by jccalhoun in "Claude in Chrome"

jccalhoun — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 14:27:57 +0000

I'm not sure I see the appeal of AI in the browser. I've tried a couple and don't really get what I would use it for.

The AI integration I think would be useful would be in the OS. I have tons of files that are poorly organized, some duplicates, some songs in various bit rates, duplicate images of various file sizes, some before and some after editing. AI, organize these for me.

I know there are deduplicators and I've spend hours doing that in the past but it would be really nice to just say "organize these" and let it work on them.

Of course that's ignoring all the downsides that could come from this!

New comment by jccalhoun in "The immortality of Microsoft Word"

jccalhoun — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 20:27:54 +0000

Yes. Wordperfect was the favorite of lawyers for a long time.