Hacker News: jkmcf

New comment by jkmcf in "Show HN: ABC Classic 100 Rankings visualised"

jkmcf — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 02:32:58 +0000

And a bonus:

https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/classic-100-the-original...

New comment by jkmcf in "Show HN: ABC Classic 100 Rankings visualised"

jkmcf — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 02:31:27 +0000

Apple Playlists

- [Classic 100 The Music You Can't Live Without](https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/classic-100-the-music-yo...)

- [The Best Classical of All Time](https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/the-best-classical-music...)

- [Classic 100 Music in the Movies](https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/classic-100-music-in-the...)

New comment by jkmcf in "7 in 10 Americans oppose data centers being built in their communities"

jkmcf — Fri, 15 May 2026 02:36:22 +0000

Technically people do benefit from having a dump or power plant.

Very few people are affected by having a dump nearby or a nuclear power plant, whereas it seems like the power generators for these AI data centers really belong in an industrial park.

These data centers also don't employ many people, though I've read they are wonderful for city taxes, assuming they haven't gotten too many enticing tax breaks.

New comment by jkmcf in "How Many Children Learned Mathematics from Kiselev's Textbooks?"

jkmcf — Wed, 06 May 2026 20:53:16 +0000

On the website for the algebra I book:

  Grade Level US 6–8 / UK Years 7–9

"Asia 2-4" is missing.

New comment by jkmcf in "The Theory of Interstellar Trade [pdf] (1978)"

jkmcf — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 18:59:55 +0000

  It is chiefly concerned with the following question: how should interest charges on goods in transit be computed when the goods travel at close to the speed of light? This is a problem because the time taken in transit will appear less to an observer travelling with the goods than to a stationary observer.

It's actually an interesting question!

New comment by jkmcf in "Tell HN: Tired of Generic Long Form A.I Posts"

jkmcf — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 02:36:44 +0000

I'm tired of long winded posts that bury the lead, AI or otherwise. Long form can be worthwhile, but many times it's just the writer performing an unnecessary guitar solo.

New comment by jkmcf in "Most of the US economy is in a recession"

jkmcf — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:23:24 +0000

I was going to use this quote yesterday, but correlation is not causation.

I prefer the one where the national debt increases more under "fiscally responsible" republicans.

More correlation: more jobs are created and inflation is lower under democratic administrations.

GDP is also better with a Dem president, but it partially depends on the makeup of congress.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._economic_performance_by_p...

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/deficit-us-presidents-sinc...

New comment by jkmcf in "The Dilbert Afterlife"

jkmcf — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 21:31:53 +0000

The day before the night I first saw Office Space, way after becoming an underground hit, I had my first encounter with the TPS communication barrage. It made the movie funnier and my work life sadder.

Similar thing happened with Idiocracy recently...

New comment by jkmcf in "Here is the 15 sec coding test I used to instantly filter out most applicants"

jkmcf — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 02:46:02 +0000

Funny, I got it wrong because the reader view showed the equals sign, but I had to go to the website to check my answer, which does hide it.

New comment by jkmcf in "Warner Bros Begins Exclusive Deal Talks With Netflix"

jkmcf — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 15:45:01 +0000

Lots of complaints about Netflix, but for the money, combined with Prime, I only miss affordable NHL, which is split between too many providers.

I agree that I wish Netflix had less lowbrow content, but they target a wide audience, and let's be honest, most people willing watch crap.

And seriously: go for a walk, read a book, play a game, or work on a hobby? TV shouldn't be your life, and it's long been one of the big societal problems.

New comment by jkmcf in "I have been writing a niche history blog for 15 years"

jkmcf — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 15:35:22 +0000

I love to support creators, but I wish there was something common between free and significant subscription price so that I could show appreciation more readily.

Examples I would use without thinking for worthwhile-to-me content:

  - "tip" options in the App Store
  - 10/year
  - 1/month

Similarly, I'm surprised these newsletter gatekeepers haven't implemented a tip jar where you put in $/year and it gets divided based on readership.

I know this has been tried in other ways, but I think Substack and Medium could make this work.

New comment by jkmcf in "ADHD and monotropism (2023)"

jkmcf — Sun, 23 Nov 2025 19:23:40 +0000

Your first sentence is gold.

It's only in the past few hundred years where focus actually matters: knowledge workers, and some factory work where lack of attention resulted in injury.

New comment by jkmcf in "How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity"

jkmcf — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 04:19:12 +0000

They were called Sophists in Ancient Greece and were despised by Socrates because their arguments were based, not on truth or facts, but whatever rhetoric would convince the audience.

New comment by jkmcf in "Iran begins cloud seeding operations as drought bites"

jkmcf — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 16:20:35 +0000

We have similar problems in Colorado re: pipes leaking. People don't want to pay the full cost of water, which includes supporting infrastructure. Municipalities are caught between these unfunded costs and taxpayers refusing to pay 1¢ more. I believe the utilities require political approval to raise rates, so that doesn't happen either.

New comment by jkmcf in "Gov Shutdown: US Army is advising its soldiers in Germany to go to food banks"

jkmcf — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 00:40:19 +0000

We replaced e pluribus unum with in god we trust. How's that working out?

New comment by jkmcf in "After delays, Egypt set for lavish opening of grand museum"

jkmcf — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 15:58:05 +0000

I would add that these finds would, and many did, find there way to the black market, ending up in private collections, which is almost as bad as their destruction.

New comment by jkmcf in "The MacBook Air 2025 Is Now Cheaper Than a Random Mid-Range Windows Laptop"

jkmcf — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 00:51:33 +0000

Contrary to what others say, I don't think MacOS is that bad. In general, it's perfectly stable. There has been an increase in situational paper cuts -- I haven't experienced any I recall, but one cannot discount that others encounter weird problems. In the end it's significantly more stable than Windows and completely free of crapware.

Personally, the new look is annoying at worst, but it doesn't affect my day to day at all.

The biggest Apple problem is the same as its been for a decade: languishing Apple app development.

New comment by jkmcf in "Indefinite Backpack Travel"

jkmcf — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 14:41:43 +0000

I love my merino wool socks and non-base layers, but my skin is generally too sensitive for most brands.

I should try the smartwool underwear because there stuff is better than the competition, especially the small players.

New comment by jkmcf in "The RSS feed reader landscape"

jkmcf — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 14:23:03 +0000

My 2¢: Feedly's free plan is great and their web UI awesome. The features I want from the pro plan do not warrant the price.

I've switched to using Feedbin. I don't mind paying for it even though I could keep using Feedly for free, but the web UI ads annoyed me enough to look elsewhere.

The best Apple app is easily Unread, both for UI and UX. It still is t perfect for me, but the problems are minor and the author pleasant to interact with.

New comment by jkmcf in "Migrating to React Native's new architecture"

jkmcf — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 13:58:35 +0000

I think the devil is in the details. There are some recent Rails conference talks on YouTube about adding "native" support.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=VbMt_4STWIo

As the other commenter said, it may not be as "native" as you'd like.

I remember using the Hey app and being amazed at how well it worked (and this wasn't Hotwire Native at the time, I think) and I'm kind of sensitive to mobile apps not working as expected.

I don't know anything about React Native aside from my dislike for the complexity of React and how it perverts web operability, not to mention it is epically overkill for most use cases.