Hacker News: ngokevin

New comment by ngokevin in "Show HN: Chess-Inspired Roguelike"

ngokevin — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 01:45:56 +0000

You can click your own piece and see the move order to see if it's a possibility you'll be moving into a discovered attack. You can sort of predict that pieces will move if they can go from a non-threatening state to a threatening state.

New comment by ngokevin in "Travel locally, where you are"

ngokevin — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 22:43:53 +0000

Potentially geocaching too

New comment by ngokevin in "AI Didn't Break College. It Exposed What College Was"

ngokevin — Wed, 20 May 2026 00:55:15 +0000

HNers aren't just using AI for articles — they're redefining the hacking of news.

New comment by ngokevin in "Riding the D in Los Angeles: city hopes new subway stations will be game changer"

ngokevin — Tue, 12 May 2026 22:48:46 +0000

In 1985, a Ross Dress for Less exploded due to methane gas, and congressman Henry Waxman representing the westside used that to federally ban any idea of a subway for decades.

Prior to that, Henry Wilshire, who donated the land for Wilshire Blvd in 1895, made a condition that no rail lines would be built on Wilshire.

New comment by ngokevin in "Virtual violin produces realistic sounds"

ngokevin — Wed, 06 May 2026 18:37:27 +0000

Played violin, sounds nothing like a (plucked/pizzicato) violin.

New comment by ngokevin in "OpenAI’s o1 correctly diagnosed 67% of ER patients vs. 50-55% by triage doctors"

ngokevin — Sun, 03 May 2026 20:58:19 +0000

I believe in modern medicine but I lost some faith in the American institutions around it when I "diagnosed" my partner with the correct disease that the first rheumatologist dismissed and told them to just stretch. It was officially diagnosed years later, and we lost a lot of time because of it.

New comment by ngokevin in "Localsend: An open-source cross-platform alternative to AirDrop"

ngokevin — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 05:26:08 +0000

Airdrop has not felt reliable to me all the time, and completely fails on anything larger than a picture or short video. Especially if you are storing your files on iCloud and the pictures and videos don't live on your phone.

Been using Localsend to transfer bigger files between phone / laptops, never fails or has trouble finding a device, or stalling.

New comment by ngokevin in "Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?"

ngokevin — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 17:09:14 +0000

I use Blood on the Clocktower to do this, it's a social deduction game (that's just not randomly accusing each other) so it gets everyone talking easily

New comment by ngokevin in "In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants"

ngokevin — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 01:21:56 +0000

This short-term thinking makes me pessimistic about UBI. Everyone's addicted to work despite automation and AI creating less need for work. And thinking we live in a zero-sum game where if someone else is benefiting, it must be hurting them somehow so they must block it. If someone's getting a "handout", they're a lazy bum.

New comment by ngokevin in "AI Didn't Break the Senior Engineer Pipeline. It Showed That One Never Existed"

ngokevin — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 21:53:48 +0000

—

You dropped your emdash. This comment actually sounds more human than the original post!

New comment by ngokevin in "AI Didn't Break the Senior Engineer Pipeline. It Showed That One Never Existed"

ngokevin — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 20:15:53 +0000

The most AI headline I've ever read

New comment by ngokevin in "Show HN: Open-Source Animal Crossing–Style UI for Claude Code Agents"

ngokevin — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 23:21:07 +0000

I guess the AI didn't know what Animal Crossing looks like. Cool visualization though.

New comment by ngokevin in "Return of the Obra Dinn: spherical mapped dithering for a 1bpp first-person game"

ngokevin — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 18:54:09 +0000

Mostly enjoyed it but the art style gave me motion sickness during and after each session where I had to stop (playing on a TV).

New comment by ngokevin in "Show HN: Channel Surfer – Watch YouTube like it’s cable TV"

ngokevin — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 20:31:51 +0000

I'd love an Inter-dimensional Cable channel, just weird surreal stuff

New comment by ngokevin in "Digg is gone again"

ngokevin — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 20:29:42 +0000

"This is not...this is" is a tell

New comment by ngokevin in "Lessons from 14 years at Google"

ngokevin — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 23:00:44 +0000

I've repeatedly told ChatGPT to stop talking like this (it isn't X, it's Y) every other sentence

New comment by ngokevin in "Ask HN: Is building a calm, non-gamified learning app a mistake?"

ngokevin — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 19:28:38 +0000

Thanks for trying and following it. Spent the morning wondering if that's a chance for it and I'm not sure. Just requires Herculean habit building which necessitates dopamine. Anki works because it has 100% of the coverage of people who don't need dopamine.

New comment by ngokevin in "Ask HN: Is building a calm, non-gamified learning app a mistake?"

ngokevin — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 19:26:40 +0000

Thanks for the feedback, I'm trying to sort of post-mortem and I think that's always been a major point I thought I could overcome.

New comment by ngokevin in "Ask HN: Is building a calm, non-gamified learning app a mistake?"

ngokevin — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 19:37:32 +0000

As someone who spent 2+ years building one, I would turn away now if you're looking for traction or sustainability (https://couplingcafe.com). Though I don't regret it and learned enough to speak to my in-laws. My retention numbers are decent, but I just haven't done the marketing bit yet, and am currently taking a break.

Language learning apps are the ultimate sand-pit for solo developers thinking they can offer some random unique feature that Duolingo (or "Anki but better") doesn't offer. Without realizing, they don't do it for a reason. Language learning has extremely low activation and retention. And it's super easy to find one or two early adopters that like your app for some reason to keep going.

And solo developers that get into language learning often are only strong in software development and lack in UX, design, product, or marketing.

You may start with a calm, "not Duolingo gamification" style app, but every language learning app starts with pure intentions until you're many months or years in, your numbers are low, you need to make money, and you need to move the needle.

My two cents, you don't have to heed it obviously.

New comment by ngokevin in "I Test Drove a Flying Car. Get Ready, They're Here"

ngokevin — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 16:37:18 +0000

Not sure about the autopilot part (even planes autopilots follow a flight path). I'm not an expert either, but with roads, there are clear lanes and markings. And ability to generally see around you, and judge distance.

Is what sets the lanes in the air are traffic controllers and flight plans? We're already short on traffic controllers. And there are already lots of near-misses (and not near-misses) even with the heavy regulation and control. Can't imagine having it as mass personal transit driven manually. There'd need to be a mass central system that controls everything, and in that case, might as well just keep it commercial

The energy efficiency isn't great either on personal aircraft

not an expert, just shooting the crap