Hacker News: natnatenathan

New comment by natnatenathan in "AI Doesn't Reduce Work–It Intensifies It"

natnatenathan — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 16:32:20 +0000

I think you're missing the point. The folks pushing 996 (and willingly working 996) feel like they are in a land rush, and that AI is going to accelerate their ability "take the most amount of land" No one is optimizing for the "9 to 5" oriented engineer.

New comment by natnatenathan in "Parental controls aren't for parents"

natnatenathan — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 17:12:30 +0000

Part of the point is that you cannot use it without it being online. This is a big difference between the Switch and Switch 2.

New comment by natnatenathan in "I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla"

natnatenathan — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 16:00:51 +0000

The reason I don't want AI integrated into my browser (or really anything else) is that the mental model for big tech moved from "providing value" to "capturing value" about 15 years ago, and I expect they will try to use this integration in an attempt to build a layer between the customer and all downstream services (stores, banks, information) so they can extract some form of tax on every transaction (ads, micro-fees), all while consolidating data about me to create new sources of revenue. I am one of those 'bright minds' who has wasted their talent improving marketing conversion by 0.001% instead of working to cure cancer. (Let's be honest, improvements are way better than 0.001%, I am good at my job).

New comment by natnatenathan in "Repetitive negative thinking associated with cognitive decline in older adults"

natnatenathan — Sun, 14 Sep 2025 23:09:39 +0000

My personal belief is that we can’t control every thought, but we can make sure we’re in a positive feedback loop instead of a negative one. For example, when I am getting negative, I’ve learned to take a step back and try to figure out why. If I can’t get myself in a better mood, I go to bed early and generally wake up happier. I also try to structure my days to make time for the things that make me happier (exercise, eating well, friends, family, hobbies) and cut out things that make me feel more negative (social media, news, sugar, etc). Not perfect, but it helps.

New comment by natnatenathan in "Nest 1st gen and 2nd gen thermostats no longer supported from Oct 25"

natnatenathan — Sat, 06 Sep 2025 02:14:23 +0000

I don’t understand the appeal of smart home devices. My Honeywell thermostat may not be as optimal as the nest but I’ve had it for thirty years and it just works without thought.

New comment by natnatenathan in "I tried every todo app and ended up with a .txt file"

natnatenathan — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 14:18:22 +0000

I have found the the secret to a Todo list is to create the habit to keep it up to date and actually use it to prioritize your time. The list tool itself is much less important.

New comment by natnatenathan in "Australia widens teen social media ban to YouTube, scraps exemption"

natnatenathan — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 00:47:07 +0000

I don’t think this is too niche of a feature. Instead, the issue is that this would decrease the engagement (and profitability) for any customer using it, so they have a disincentive to building it. Same reason that Facebook removed features that helped customers narrow their feeds down to just favorite friends and family.

New comment by natnatenathan in "Show HN: Ten years of running every day, visualized"

natnatenathan — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 01:55:03 +0000

I came to say this as well. I really like the design and all the fun statistics.

New comment by natnatenathan in "The AI lifestyle subsidy is going to end"

natnatenathan — Mon, 23 Jun 2025 16:07:09 +0000

Monetization will come with agents that take action on your behalf (reorder dinner, find and buy a gift for your niece, make dinner reservations). Bots will take a cut of every transaction, and intake ads to steer recommendations.

New comment by natnatenathan in "My website is ugly because I made it"

natnatenathan — Thu, 29 May 2025 14:08:05 +0000

I feel this exactly. However, I find more fun to create and modify the site vs actually writing articles, so my deployments are probably 5x my actual blog posts. I got into computers because I love to code. I will still be here, writing dumb things for my own fun long after AI is the primary creator of professional coders.

New comment by natnatenathan in "The Worst Programmer I Know (2023)"

natnatenathan — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 15:09:49 +0000

Tim's problem is that he has a bad manager. One of a manager's core jobs is to communicate upwards the value that each team member is providing (or not providing). His job was to ensure that Tim's contribution were reflected and visible.

New comment by natnatenathan in "Fedora 42 Beta"

natnatenathan — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 02:24:18 +0000

Don’t forget to make a donation to Asahi, maybe it will be ready in time for your next laptop.

New comment by natnatenathan in "The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available"

natnatenathan — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 14:03:24 +0000

I care a lot about privacy, I think others do as well. We don’t actually have that many choices as much of the privacy issues are difficult to avoid.

New comment by natnatenathan in "The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available"

natnatenathan — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 14:01:59 +0000

We did this, we realized we never really used them. It has made our home feels a bit more peaceful. Our inflection point was the upsells we would get every time we talked to it. “Would you also like to shop for Prime Day?”

New comment by natnatenathan in "MacBook Air M4"

natnatenathan — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 07:17:30 +0000

Try Asahi Linux

New comment by natnatenathan in "MacBook Air M4"

natnatenathan — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 07:12:59 +0000

I think you are crazy. The performance difference between MacOS and WSL is like night and day. I was just shopping for a Linux laptop and I have found that the top end models from Microsoft, Lenovo and Dell to be as or more expensive than Apple (with the exception of having user replaceable SSDs). There is nothing in the PC world that compares to Apple Silicon. If the price is too much, look at the refurb or used market where you can get really significant discounts.

New comment by natnatenathan in "MacBook Air M4"

natnatenathan — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 01:41:03 +0000

You can replace that with a 2TB SSD yourself.

New comment by natnatenathan in "400 reasons to not use Microsoft Azure"

natnatenathan — Sat, 01 Mar 2025 02:18:19 +0000

Ha, I worked on that project. That drove a lot of good requirements into Windows that set us up for web based services (eventually)

New comment by natnatenathan in "A $100 DIY muon tomographer"

natnatenathan — Thu, 27 Feb 2025 20:58:12 +0000

Tomography or tombography :)

New comment by natnatenathan in "No longer writing my own damn HTML"

natnatenathan — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 04:44:19 +0000

I have always written my own static blog generator, moving from PERL to Ruby and most recently Python. I find the other blog systems are too complicated for what I want. Plus, I think I like writing the generator more than writing actual posts.