Hacker News: magarnicle

New comment by magarnicle in "Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?"

magarnicle — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 03:13:48 +0000

Being able to make large alterations to ffmpeg even though I'm a 2/10 C programmer.

The most impressive was speeding up the drawtext filter by at least 10x.

New comment by magarnicle in "Superintelligence: The Idea That Eats Smart People (2016)"

magarnicle — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 22:51:55 +0000

I am religious, but I think this approach is not the best. It requires that we specifically define what that one thing that separates us from the AI is. Not only is that very hard to do, there is always the chance that the AI can do it after all, and now the goalposts keep shifting.

It is better to develop a theology that can incorporate human-level or super-human level intelligence that isn't a zero-sum game.

New comment by magarnicle in "Please Do Not Vibe Fuck Up This Software"

magarnicle — Sun, 31 May 2026 03:34:44 +0000

Aww, but I have such big plans for it!

New comment by magarnicle in "New Lifetime Plex Pass Pricing"

magarnicle — Wed, 20 May 2026 04:15:42 +0000

The Apple TV app is terrible. I use Infuse instead.

New comment by magarnicle in "Magical Realism: “Northern Exposure” 25 Years Later (2015)"

magarnicle — Tue, 19 May 2026 01:49:59 +0000

He was, but his instincts didn't lead him astray. He still understood the heart of the show.

New comment by magarnicle in "Magical Realism: “Northern Exposure” 25 Years Later (2015)"

magarnicle — Tue, 19 May 2026 01:47:39 +0000

Log Lady is weird but not quirky. The back half of season two had Nadine mentally regressing to a high-schooler but with superhuman strength (played for laughs); Dick Tremayne, a pompous menswear salesman wooing Lucy (played for laughs); and Benjamin Horne reenacting the Civil War (played for laughs). It's all very cartoonish.

If you watch season three, Log Lady gets quite an emotional farewell as the actress was dying of cancer. It's Lynch's insistence on treating even the quirky characters as real human beings that makes all the difference.

New comment by magarnicle in "Magical Realism: “Northern Exposure” 25 Years Later (2015)"

magarnicle — Mon, 18 May 2026 02:27:24 +0000

I'm not so sure about that assessment of Twin Peaks. Look at the back half of season 2, where the "weird and wonderful characters" become the focus of the show. It's barely watchable.

When Lynch came back for the final episode of that season he refocused it on Laura Palmer and brought back characters that hadn't been seen for many episodes, like Laura's mum or Audrey's brother. They weren't much fun, one being wracked by grief and the other mentally disabled. But that's what Twin Peaks is really about and what gave it staying power.

Everyone (including Diane Keaton when she directed an episode) seemed to think it was this kooky place and the weirdness was the point. There's plenty of fun there, but Lynch really understood it: hence Season 3 which gives you all of half an episode of Fun Dale Cooper before pulling the rug out from under you and reminding you that a girl was murdered and we shouldn't move on from that.

New comment by magarnicle in "Points are an inconsistent unit of measurement"

magarnicle — Wed, 13 May 2026 22:49:45 +0000

I'm surprised how restrained the Frink comments were, considering what a mess Points seem to be.

New comment by magarnicle in "Film Cue – a Sushi Go-style card game about making movies"

magarnicle — Tue, 12 May 2026 22:50:05 +0000

This seems exactly like Sushi Go but with a different skin. Are there any different mechanics?

Also note that when I hover over the cards in "The Cards" section I see both the front and back of the card stacked on top of each other.

New comment by magarnicle in "Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career"

magarnicle — Mon, 11 May 2026 22:54:41 +0000

Even if a manager can just conjure the software they want instantly using AI, they are still going to prefer having a nerd to manage it for them - to know how to prompt engineer or even just organise it all.

It might not look much like software engineering, but it's still going to be nerd stuff that most people don't want to bother with.

New comment by magarnicle in "Is my blue your blue? (2024)"

magarnicle — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:11:24 +0000

It's a linguistics thing, it's about word usage more than about colour. You ask someone to get a book off the shelf, and you say "get the blue book" and the person is confused because they see a green book.

We are usually not specific in our day-to-day language, and this exposes/clarifies the issue.

New comment by magarnicle in "Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing"

magarnicle — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:01:46 +0000

As a kid I literally sent Apple an email saying "hey, my mum's phone is tiny, surely you could stick a phone in an iPod?".

New comment by magarnicle in "Car Seats as Contraception"

magarnicle — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 03:27:15 +0000

Built-in 5-point harnesses in the back seats would be safer than car seats and far easier, but there is a whole industry working against that idea.

New comment by magarnicle in "Car Seats as Contraception"

magarnicle — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 03:24:59 +0000

Really? I fit 3 seats in a Hyundai i30. Not a big or fuel-hungry car.

New comment by magarnicle in "Car Seats as Contraception"

magarnicle — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 03:23:46 +0000

Only quite small cars would have this problem - we had to upgrade from a Honda Jazz/Fit for this reason, but only to a Hyundai i30.

New comment by magarnicle in "Apple discontinues the Mac Pro"

magarnicle — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 05:40:20 +0000

They had that with the previous gen mini, but the new ones are too tall now.

New comment by magarnicle in "My Journey to a reliable and enjoyable locally hosted voice assistant (2025)"

magarnicle — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 05:09:06 +0000

Put it at foot level and kick it.

New comment by magarnicle in "LLMs can be exhausting"

magarnicle — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 06:25:25 +0000

LLMs shift you from a software engineer to a management role, with all of the overhead that entails.

New comment by magarnicle in "Tony Hoare has died"

magarnicle — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 23:56:02 +0000

"The problem isn't the concept of 'null', but rather that everything can be null, which makes it impossible to distinguish between the cases where null is an appropriate and expected value, from the cases where null is a defect."

https://blog.ploeh.dk/2015/04/13/less-is-more-language-featu...

New comment by magarnicle in "Ask HN: How are you all staying sane?"

magarnicle — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 23:20:22 +0000

Is it because "the news" has changed beyond what we are designed to handle. It used to be just local gossip, and every now and then you'd hear about the king having a son or something. Eventually things progressed to where you would get newspapers and TV telling you what's happening in your country and maybe some global news, but you would only get that once a day and space was limited. Now it feels like news sites dredge up every bad thing happening everywhere at every minute and give it a big headline, trying to convince you it is important to know.