Hacker News: joebates

New comment by joebates in "Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border"

joebates — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 20:30:12 +0000

They can absolutely keep them. Or they can just "lose" them "accidentally". Who exactly would force them to give them back? Or put another way, who exactly will punish them if they break the law?

New comment by joebates in "How AI text watermarking works"

joebates — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 00:17:28 +0000

They/the LLM made sure to replace the em dashes with semicolons

New comment by joebates in "2026 Eclipse Webcams"

joebates — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 13:41:17 +0000

I took off work to drive from Houston to Little Rock to see the eclipse at 100% and I'm so glad I did. I can't imagine prioritizing a temporary job over a once in a lifetime event.

I had a colleague who really wanted to see the eclipse but felt bad about taking off from work, so he didn't go. He ended up being laid off within a year. I feel terrible for him. I also learned how important it is to keep perspective on what matters.

New comment by joebates in "Everything you do is being recorded"

joebates — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 12:42:37 +0000

They don't need to reason that evidence was destroyed. They just need to reason they there was an attempt to destroy potential evidence, whether or not there was actually any evidence. Any kind of interference with an investigation in any way is likely subject to prosecution.

New comment by joebates in "Gpiozero Flow"

joebates — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 14:00:15 +0000

I wonder if apps like Boostcamp implement their plans in a language like this

New comment by joebates in "Interview with Boris Cherny [video]"

joebates — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 04:47:04 +0000

The ability to start a Claude Code session in a temporary "config free" mode, similar to how incognito works for chrome, would be a nice feature to make this easy to try out, especially since model releases are so frequent.

New comment by joebates in "The brain was not designed for this much bad news"

joebates — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 14:02:36 +0000

I really don't think anyone voting against Trump was doing so with the Straight of Hormuz on mind.

New comment by joebates in "Show HN: An 8-bit live gamecast for baseball"

joebates — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 18:53:30 +0000

Ha! I'm watching the Astros game and I guess my stream is delayed because this just spoiled a home run. Great job!

New comment by joebates in "Programmers will document for Claude, but not for each other"

joebates — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 13:31:42 +0000

Couldn't you have claude correct the CLAUDE.md?

New comment by joebates in "AI is making me dumb"

joebates — Thu, 14 May 2026 19:29:47 +0000

Same. Luckily I enjoy the process of refactoring and deleting code is nearly arousing, so I get the initial dopamine rush of wow this works, followed by the dopamine rush of "wow now this is cleaner and works so much better". Keeps me in touch with the codebase too.

New comment by joebates in "Show HN: Countries where you can leave your MacBook at a random coffee shop"

joebates — Mon, 11 May 2026 02:20:46 +0000

Of course, if we could just persecute minorities again, that would reduce the theft.

Please know that I'm being sarcastic.

New comment by joebates in "Boris Cherny: TI-83 Plus Basic Programming Tutorial (2004)"

joebates — Thu, 07 May 2026 12:39:43 +0000

Same. I even convinced my mom to buy me a transfer cable so I could distribute my programs to my classmates. I was the "plug" for a brief time. Probably my closest taste of being "popular". It was nice.

New comment by joebates in "Ti-84 Evo"

joebates — Fri, 01 May 2026 21:35:31 +0000

Programming mine in high school is how I ended up coding for the first time and led to my current career. Honestly a pretty good investment (from my parents) I'd say.

New comment by joebates in "Bring Back Idiomatic Design (2023)"

joebates — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 22:57:55 +0000

Too many people think being good at designing a UI primarily means knowing where to put something on a page.

New comment by joebates in "I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978"

joebates — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 16:39:19 +0000

Probably a smart move. Writing and mailing a letter takes a lot more time and effort than a phone call or comment online. If a person took the time to write a letter, they're probably worth taking the time to respond to.

New comment by joebates in "Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state"

joebates — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 16:36:20 +0000

I wonder if this is a technique used by certain leaders of authoritarian regimes to take out people in power they they deem threats. Everyone in the party routinely breaks laws, knowingly or otherwise. The person in charge can decide they don't like someone and start an investigation, knowing they'll eventually find something illegal. Then they can delegitimize and remove them under the guise of "corruption".

New comment by joebates in "Using an engineering notebook"

joebates — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 04:15:51 +0000

I found a similar blog post like this years ago at the start of my career and started keeping a Rhodia Webnotebook A5. I've got over a dozen now from all my years of work. Nice for nostalgia

New comment by joebates in "Show HN: Agent Alcove – Claude, GPT, and Gemini debate across forums"

joebates — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 23:34:39 +0000

Very interesting. Kind of funny to see a model debating that we should ignore its hallucinations. I'm interested in seeing where this goes.

Some feedback: The white text is a bit tough to look at against the dark background. Darkgrey was a lot easier on the eyes for me.

New comment by joebates in "AI fatigue is real and nobody talks about it"

joebates — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 16:36:31 +0000

I tried this but didn't realize how exhausting it is to think about even 2 smaller items at once.

New comment by joebates in "AI fatigue is real and nobody talks about it"

joebates — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 16:35:05 +0000

I've seriously wondered about merging a home office and home gym into one, and doing sets in between claude working. My usual workout has about 22-30 sets of exercises total and I probably wait on Claude that often in a day. It would be wonderful to be able to spread my exercise throughout the entire day. I'd also include an adjustable height desk so that I could be standing up for much of the workout/workday. I could even have a whiteboard in there.