Hacker News: morley

New comment by morley in "AI uses less water than the public thinks"

morley — Fri, 01 May 2026 21:25:39 +0000

For a more informed deep dive into data center water usage (albeit many months old): https://www.construction-physics.com/p/i-was-wrong-about-dat...

New comment by morley in "Schizophrenia study finds new biomarker, drug candidate in mice"

morley — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 14:39:51 +0000

"Leave them alone" is easy to type into a comment textbox but is much more difficult when it's a neighbor, or a family member, or someone else you have to interact with at a regular interval.

I highly recommend the book Hidden Valley Road for anyone curious about how difficult schizophrenia is for families and the researchers trying to find treatments.

New comment by morley in "US Job Market Visualizer"

morley — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 16:47:37 +0000

Out of curiosity, what colors (or text treatments) do you personally prefer to confer "gain" and "loss"?

New comment by morley in "How to talk to anyone and why you should"

morley — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 16:37:48 +0000

In some cultures, you signal respecting someone's time by not bothering them.

In other cultures, you signal respecting someone's time by making small-talk with them.

Advice about making small talk vs. not making small talk is not really useful unless it acknowledges this cultural divide and the percentage chance a stranger falls into one culture or another.

New comment by morley in "Claude Code's new hidden feature: Swarms"

morley — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 20:57:24 +0000

I personally don't want to trawl through Twitter to find the current state-of-the-art, so I read Zvi Mowshowitz's newsletter:

https://thezvi.substack.com/

His newsletter put me onto using Opus 4.5 exclusively on Dec 1, a little over a week after it was released. That's pretty good for a few minutes of reading a week.

New comment by morley in "Douglas Adams on the English–American cultural divide over "heroes""

morley — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 15:45:53 +0000

I think this is a distinction between comedy and non-comedy genres.

There are many examples of protags in American comedies who never get their way -- Party Down, Seinfeld, Always Sunny. Part of this is the need for American sitcoms to maintain the status quo over dozens of episodes / several seasons.

You rarely see Hollywood action heroes who are beset with unrelenting disappointment -- they usually go through hell, but by the end of the third act, achieve some sort of triumph.

A notable counterexample is Sicario, but I wouldn't call it a "Hollywood action movie."

New comment by morley in "Ask HN: What did you find out or explore today?"

morley — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 15:51:50 +0000

I really miss gallo pinto. I went to Costa Rica in 2009, and since then, nothing has been the same (in NYC).

It's mind-boggling that such a simple recipe can be so good in CR but so bad over here! I hear there are some Costa Rican restaurants in Paterson, NJ, but I haven't had the chance to check yet.

New comment by morley in "The Jeff Dean Facts"

morley — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 16:04:59 +0000

Ah, I knew I recognized the friendship between Jeff and Sanjay -- they were the subject of a New Yorker article in 2018:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/12/10/the-friendship...

EDIT: And HN at the time:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18588697

New comment by morley in "Vitamin D reduces incidence and duration of colds in those with low levels"

morley — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 15:41:56 +0000

One number is not going to work for everyone. The only way to be sure is to get a blood test for Vitamin D levels. I get tested with my yearly physical, but if someone really cares they can get more frequent blood tests.

New comment by morley in "Better Auth, by a self-taught Ethiopian dev, raises $5M from Peak XV, YC"

morley — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 16:48:07 +0000

Privy just got purchased by Stripe: https://privy.io/blog/announcing-our-acquisition-by-stripe

New comment by morley in "Finding Shawn Mendes (2019)"

morley — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 21:05:04 +0000

By the way, if you liked this post, this taking-silly-things-way-to-seriously is the comedic wheelhouse of Nathan Fielder.

New comment by morley in "Wikipedia's Most Translated Articles"

morley — Mon, 19 May 2025 18:12:37 +0000

But the point still stands: if it's so straightforward, why give this person this treatment, instead of millions of other people?

New comment by morley in "Piranesi's Perspective Trick (2019)"

morley — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 15:09:05 +0000

I wonder how hard it is to change a game engine to render images like this, and if the effect would be preserved while panning.

New comment by morley in "WB offers replacements, but no refunds, for DVDs rotting prematurely"

morley — Fri, 07 Mar 2025 20:31:21 +0000

I don't know why you've been downvoted so much. I'd expect a company to issue replacements, not refunds, when they're not the end retailer.

New comment by morley in "Ending our third party fact-checking program and moving to Community Notes model"

morley — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 19:43:14 +0000

I was under the impression that Community Notes were designed to be resistant to sybil attacks, but I could be wrong. Community Notes have been used at Twitter for a long time. Are there examples of state-influenced notes getting through the process?

New comment by morley in "What Lasts and (Mostly) Doesn't Last"

morley — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 21:36:22 +0000

Some comedy works have endured, like Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome (though it is helped by its huge influence on To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis).

New comment by morley in "US drug control agency will move to reclassify marijuana"

morley — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 18:03:13 +0000

It's moving to schedule III, though the new company it's in really highlights how it should be descheduled instead:

> It moves pot to Schedule III, alongside ketamine and some anabolic steroids

Hopefully the first step but not the last.

New comment by morley in "Feathers are one of evolution's cleverest inventions"

morley — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 14:14:05 +0000

I don't read "it exists because it has to exist" in the parent's statement. They're saying that there's an advantage one way and a disadvantage another, and evolution favors advantages. I wouldn't characterize a statement like that as a tautology, and I don't think the author deserves your dig for it.

New comment by morley in "Show HN: I made a game to improve my typing speed"

morley — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 15:44:57 +0000

I've played Textorcist! It's a solid game, and it's fun insofar as it's challenging and makes you want to play it more.

(It's been a couple years since I've played it, hence the vagueness.)

IIRC there's a bit of a difficulty spike when you have to transition from typing English to typing Latin...

New comment by morley in "Mtn Dew Raid Q&A [pdf]"

morley — Tue, 05 Dec 2023 18:21:15 +0000

My first job out of college was at an ad agency. The level 1 playbook of all agencies is to find the "hot new things" in the zeitgeist and figure out how to turn it into advertising.