Hacker News: johncoltrane

New comment by johncoltrane in "Canceling Emily"

johncoltrane — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 06:55:34 +0000

Well, engaging in subversive activities comes with some level of risk, Emily, you should have known that.

New comment by johncoltrane in "Where to Draw the Line Which decisions should not be handed over to LLMs?"

johncoltrane — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 07:19:58 +0000

Easy: do not hand _any_ decision to LLMs.

New comment by johncoltrane in "Show HN: My PM kept asking "is this shipped yet?" so I automated release notes"

johncoltrane — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 07:52:50 +0000

Everywhere I worked, PMs were ultimately in charge of deciding what gets shipped and when so "is this feature shipped yet?" is the last question I would expect from them.

It's probably a good thing that you build this but there definitely are deeper issues at play, here.

New comment by johncoltrane in "France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls"

johncoltrane — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 11:43:39 +0000

Yes, "just". Because the Morocco bit of the article is mostly inconsequential. Those unsolicited telemarketing calls are extremely annoying no matter who is calling and from where. That's what this is all about.

> Or is it deliberately done because it is cheaper?

Well, of course it is.

> Why not have these in France proper giving jobs to French people?

Because you would have to pay them French wages, which would make no economical sense. If anything, the fact that most of that industry is abroad probably makes it easier to pass such a law.

New comment by johncoltrane in "France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls"

johncoltrane — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 09:42:33 +0000

Morocco is just where lots of french-speaking call centers are located. The industry generates a non-negligible part of Morocco's GDP and most of the clientele is from France. So yeah, Morocco may be right to be concerned by an eventual shrinking of the market.

The call centers themselves are in Morocco but the calls never come from +212.

New comment by johncoltrane in "Ask HN: After 20 years of coding it is not a fun hobby anymore. How about you?"

johncoltrane — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 07:57:57 +0000

Coding _as a job_ stopped being fun a long time ago and I think it has a strong effect on my hobby choices. After a day of dealing with issue trackers, AI-generated accessibility reports and all that crap I find it harder and harder to switch to my side projects.

I've been logged out of my personal GitHub account for months, actually… and that's probably a good thing: more outdoors, more photography, more drawing, more reading, etc.

New comment by johncoltrane in "The title cards in Blade Runner are amazing"

johncoltrane — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 11:39:09 +0000

Everything in Blade Runner is amazing.

New comment by johncoltrane in "If another civilisation lived on Earth before us, would we know?"

johncoltrane — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 08:59:15 +0000

There have been lots of civilisations before. Some that we know of and maybe some that we don't know of yet.

New comment by johncoltrane in "Why Sony can't bring back its classic Walkman models"

johncoltrane — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 07:36:22 +0000

There are lots of portable cassette players on the market, starting at 20€ or less.

New comment by johncoltrane in "A free, browser-based interactive Vim trainer"

johncoltrane — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 12:56:54 +0000

Or you can learn to use Vim directly in Vim with :help user-manual.

New comment by johncoltrane in "What Everyone Should Know About How Capital Works"

johncoltrane — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 07:49:20 +0000

Parent said "impartial", which rules out both The Economist ("pro") and Jacobin ("anti").

New comment by johncoltrane in "Show HN: Yamanote.fun – A complete soundscape for Tokyo's Yamanote line"

johncoltrane — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 07:36:17 +0000

Group policy sadly doesn't like newly registered domains so I can't check this one out right now but it immediately reminded me of this one, that I favorited 4 years ago:

https://yamanote.style/

New comment by johncoltrane in "Ask HN: Why do programmers watch medical shows given that it is debugging?"

johncoltrane — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 13:55:09 +0000

Well, debugging is the only intellectually stimulating part left in my job so I enjoy it, a lot, while it lasts.

To each their own, I guess.

New comment by johncoltrane in "Learn Vim motions with an ice-cream van"

johncoltrane — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 14:18:35 +0000

hjkl AND the cursor keys equally suck for moving the cursor because they only move by one line or by one character.

jjjllllljjh is just as bad as . There are much better ways to move around and touch-typists and non-touch-typists would be better off learning them instead of obsessing over hjkl: :help motion.txt.

New comment by johncoltrane in "Learn Vim motions with an ice-cream van"

johncoltrane — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 12:33:10 +0000

jkl; are (on QWERTY keyboards). hjkl are not.

New comment by johncoltrane in "Learn Vim motions with an ice-cream van"

johncoltrane — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 06:42:46 +0000

hjkl are more of a cult/status thing anyway because they are not _that_ touch-typing-friendly to begin with, and they suck just as much as the cursor keys for moving the cursor around.

Insisting so much on hjkl is silly. No one is using an ADM-3A in 2026, so the official documentation should let users use the more intuitive cursor keys and downgrade hjkl to what they have always been since vi: __ham-fisted alternatives to the cursor keys__.

New comment by johncoltrane in "Ask HN: What would you say to Elon Musk on his 55th birthday TODAY?"

johncoltrane — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 07:28:23 +0000

Happy birthday!

New comment by johncoltrane in "Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way"

johncoltrane — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 12:18:54 +0000

Capitals are good. Use capitals.

New comment by johncoltrane in "TIL: You can make HTTP requests without curl using Bash /dev/TCP"

johncoltrane — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 07:09:08 +0000

The entirety of 1999 and 2000 was a nightmare. "No, buddy, we won't change millenium next january." "Nope. We are still in the 20th century." And so on...

I think that's more or less when I lost faith in humanity.

New comment by johncoltrane in "The oldest surviving animated feature film at 100"

johncoltrane — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 12:06:00 +0000

What's the problem, here?