Hacker News: medstrom

New comment by medstrom in "The Wayback Machine and the Quest for Deleted Fics"

medstrom — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 18:08:18 +0000

Appreciated this storytelling, it exposes some real procedural knowledge about using the Internet Archive.

The Wayback Machine and the Quest for Deleted Fics

medstrom — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 18:08:18 +0000

Article URL: https://duckprintspress.com/2021/12/13/the-wayback-machine-and-the-quest-for-deleted-fics/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47755808

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by medstrom in "If AI writes code, should the session be part of the commit?"

medstrom — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 08:12:30 +0000

The prompt is the code :) The code is like a compiled binary. How long until we put the prompts in `src/` and the code in `bin/`, I wonder...

New comment by medstrom in "Write-only code"

medstrom — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 11:23:40 +0000

Consider your biases about the word "hobby". It's easy to average way more than 40 hours per week on a hobby, and to spend those hours with as much deadly seriousness as the hours at work. Especially if you don't work full-time or don't work at all.

New comment by medstrom in "Write-only code"

medstrom — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 22:18:20 +0000

But you can be a software dev even if you do not work in software dev. Plenty of those individuals in open source, for example.

New comment by medstrom in "Write-only code"

medstrom — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 22:11:26 +0000

I, too, appreciate the clarification in the term "write-only code".

New comment by medstrom in "I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard"

medstrom — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 21:50:44 +0000

Still, isn't the forecast for one hour from now more useful than literally now? You can see that through the window (and feel it on your face by opening the window).

New comment by medstrom in "I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard"

medstrom — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 21:47:31 +0000

I don't see that TFA claimed any cost savings. That is not the reason people go for e-paper.

New comment by medstrom in "Show HN: Micropolis/SimCity Clone in Emacs Lisp"

medstrom — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 08:37:33 +0000

TIL a built-in

   (zone &optional PGM)

   Inferred type: (function (&optional t) t)

   Zone out, completely.

New comment by medstrom in "Booting from a vinyl record (2020)"

medstrom — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 10:23:53 +0000

That's not so dissimilar to my experience in 2025 with whatever USB drives I can scrounge up around the house!

New comment by medstrom in "The tech monoculture is finally breaking"

medstrom — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 09:57:21 +0000

The issue isn't really Android, it's the touchscreen and the way the UX is a regression from many analog single-purpose devices.

If you gonna have a single-purpose device - make it analog (or close to analog)!

Don't give it a perceptible boot-time and all the other flaws that come with general-purpose computing. Don't make the user have to "wake up the device", let alone have to visually confirm that it is woken-up, before they can switch to the next song.

New comment by medstrom in "The tech monoculture is finally breaking"

medstrom — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 09:51:05 +0000

I loved the buttons on the Galaxy Spica https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_i5700_galaxy_spica-pictures...

Now that I think about it, going no-buttons might have been a driver towards larger screens. Having at least a few buttons seemed to make it much less necessary.

New comment by medstrom in "Cardiovascular disease is a solved problem"

medstrom — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 17:19:29 +0000

There is plenty more for a cardiologist to do even if they solve the most pressing current problems. Hard to run out of puzzles in biology.

New comment by medstrom in "Cardiovascular disease is a solved problem"

medstrom — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 17:14:39 +0000

> High LDL is correlated with the development of heart disease, but it does not cause heart disease.

You realize this sentence is an oxymoron?

Unless you meant to say "it does not cause the development of heart disease". I agree correlation is not causation.

New comment by medstrom in "I canceled my book deal"

medstrom — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 03:55:55 +0000

> tell the AI to write in the style of a HN commenter, or whatever.

This might turn out to be one of those tricks like Ctrl+C Ctrl+V that surprisingly few people discover.

New comment by medstrom in "Ÿnsect, a French insect farming startup, has been been placed into liquidation"

medstrom — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 03:40:45 +0000

...ChatGPT? Such an odd take, to point at weather being variable.

This is a coastal city at a fairly run-of-the-mill latitude, people build functional bike networks in much worse.

New comment by medstrom in "One year of keeping a tada list"

medstrom — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 07:53:35 +0000

A discussion is held between people who don't (initially) believe each other. Nothing odd about it.

New comment by medstrom in "One year of keeping a tada list"

medstrom — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 19:09:30 +0000

Not clear in your example if you have a to-dont list, or just decide "don't" in the moment.

New comment by medstrom in "One year of keeping a tada list"

medstrom — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 19:04:25 +0000

You mean... an aha list?

New comment by medstrom in "Indoor tanning makes youthful skin much older on a genetic level"

medstrom — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 09:33:23 +0000

There are tan-thru clothes, if you want to be serious about it.