Hacker News: maxehmookau

New comment by maxehmookau in "Patreon laying off 20% of staff"

maxehmookau — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 15:35:32 +0000

We'll agree to disagree on that one. Feels more like a CEO trying to absolve himself of the human cost of a strictly business decision. Instead, he should own that business decision openly.

Being told I'm "special" and "beautiful" by my boss feels strange enough, but to have it paired with my termination? The dissonance is too much.

New comment by maxehmookau in "Patreon laying off 20% of staff"

maxehmookau — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 14:01:27 +0000

> First, the people who work at Patreon are special, beautiful humans, through and through.

If you're calling me "special" and "beautiful" and removing my ability to pay my mortgage in the same sentence through no fault of my own, you can absolutely get in the bin.

Fundamentally weird behaviour.

New comment by maxehmookau in "What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard"

maxehmookau — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 18:57:22 +0000

This is so weird. I was in the process of trying to build something almost identical! Congrats, and good luck! I'll have to buy one now.

New comment by maxehmookau in "$100 AI Music Video: Claude Fable 5 vs. GPT-5.6 Sol"

maxehmookau — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 08:30:00 +0000

A lot of the replies to this are, predicably, disappointing. For what its worth, I entirely agree.

AI is good at a lot of things, but it genuinely sucks at anything that requires real creativity. The human at the heart of a creative endeavor can't be replaced, and I hope that never changes.

New comment by maxehmookau in "Building and shipping Mac and iOS apps without opening Xcode"

maxehmookau — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 10:58:49 +0000

I don't know why XCode gets the hate it does. It's a solid IDE which I've used for years with only minimal issues. It's certainly no more or less buggy than anything JetBrains releases.

New comment by maxehmookau in "Resetting Xbox"

maxehmookau — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 11:59:18 +0000

A year-long restructure, where over 1000 people could lose their jobs is beyond disgusting. There's zero justification for it. Ever.

New comment by maxehmookau in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)"

maxehmookau — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 08:34:05 +0000

Nice, this is very cool!

New comment by maxehmookau in "Ryanair dark UX patterns summer 2026 refresher"

maxehmookau — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 13:33:37 +0000

Using the Ryanair website makes me feel icky. The whole thing feels like you have to be constantly on guard not to get tricked - and I'm relatively wise to these things.

I dread to think how much of their revenue is generated from people buying stuff they don't want or need.

I will always pay more to not use Ryanair, given the choice. Unfortunately I don't always have a choice.

New comment by maxehmookau in "What if remote working, not AI, is to blame for weak junior hiring?"

maxehmookau — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 10:25:43 +0000

Absolutely get in the bin with this ridiculous take from a newspaper with a vested interest in getting people back in to expensive office real estate.

Juniors cost more to train, take more effort, and time from seniors who are otherwise "productive" and so companies don't want to hire them and be responsible for that additional work.

It's not remote working, or AI that's to blame for weak junior hiring. It's short-termism from companies that see no reason to spend their time training up juniors.

New comment by maxehmookau in "Meta launches Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp subscriptions"

maxehmookau — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 10:00:05 +0000

Wait, I'm paying and I still get targeted ads shown to me? But I do get "super reactions"? Come on.

New comment by maxehmookau in "Programming Still Sucks"

maxehmookau — Thu, 07 May 2026 12:01:26 +0000

One of the best things I've read this year. Also one of the worst things I've read this year, actually. But also, I enjoyed reading it.

New comment by maxehmookau in "Your Website Is Not for You"

maxehmookau — Fri, 01 May 2026 13:12:24 +0000

I _think_ it's the best we have right now, right? Excellent UX research speaks for itself, there's just not much of it. As an industry, we've done a realllllly good job of devaluing high-quality UX research and those who do it for a living.

New comment by maxehmookau in "Your Website Is Not for You"

maxehmookau — Fri, 01 May 2026 12:12:31 +0000

This is a distillation of what we used to (still do?) teach junior SWEs.

"You are not the customer for the thing we're making, nor have you ever been. You don't know what they want/need."

New comment by maxehmookau in "Playdate’s handheld changed how Duke University teaches game design"

maxehmookau — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 15:11:56 +0000

My sister made rhythm game Otto's Galactic Groove so you should totally check that out: https://play.date/games/ottos-galactic-groove/

New comment by maxehmookau in "We've raised $17M to build what comes after Git"

maxehmookau — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 09:45:13 +0000

Ok, ok, if you give me $16M I'll do it faster.

New comment by maxehmookau in "OpenAI Has New Focus (on the IPO)"

maxehmookau — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 12:34:01 +0000

> "Can I tell you one more thing from your X,Y,Z results which is most doctors miss ? "

That's actually gross and would result in an immediate delete from me.

New comment by maxehmookau in "Layoffs at Block"

maxehmookau — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 13:26:37 +0000

Oh man, I'm so entirely sick of this.

Why are billionaires so allergic to using capital letters at the start of sentences? You're laying people off, it just shows how little you actually care about the detail.

"i'll own it" doesn't mean ANYTHING. You've kept your job, your money, your security. You haven't owned anything because your decision doesn't make you accountable to anyone.

Additionally, not a single person is being "asked to leave". Every single one of those people is being _told_ to leave, and given no choice about it.

Language matters, and this entire post shows how little they care.

New comment by maxehmookau in "AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it"

maxehmookau — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 13:07:47 +0000

> But I really think we need to stop treating LLMs like they're just another human

Fully agree. Seeing humans so eager to devalue human-to-human contact by conversing with an LLM as if it were human makes me sad, and a little angry.

It looks like a human, it talks like a human, but it ain't a human.

New comment by maxehmookau in "Amazon Ring's lost dog ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance"

maxehmookau — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 09:34:23 +0000

Turns out you're not buying the storage and compute required to store your video. Google can afford that regardless of whether you pay.

They're licensing your own video back to you.

New comment by maxehmookau in "TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe"

maxehmookau — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 15:43:45 +0000

So I choose an entirely chronological one, containing only that content created by my close friends and family.

Except, I'll never be given that choice.