Hacker News: nicbou

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

nicbou — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 17:52:13 +0000

I have made elderflower syrup, and I'm now trying it in different cocktails/mocktails.

https://nicolasbouliane.com/recipes/holunder-syrup

New comment by nicbou in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On?"

nicbou — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 12:00:47 +0000

I have made a batch of elderflower syrup from trees in my area, and now I'm trying it in different summer drinks.

Next I want to try making booze out of the berries.

New comment by nicbou in "If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort"

nicbou — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 09:10:54 +0000

I don't think it's a matter of process vs end result. I just want to feel that a human with taste judged that it was worth my attention.

If a human put some effort into it, that's a signal.

New comment by nicbou in "Ask HN: Favorite text heavy blogs that are a joy to read?"

nicbou — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 19:00:59 +0000

Anything here: https://bearblog.dev/discover/

New comment by nicbou in "Farmer donates land for a park, city sells it for $10M as data center land"

nicbou — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 23:42:11 +0000

I don’t think that addresses my question.

New comment by nicbou in "Farmer donates land for a park, city sells it for $10M as data center land"

nicbou — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 21:50:15 +0000

Is the French government more responsive than those of neighbouring countries?

New comment by nicbou in "Surprise, pay $1000"

nicbou — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 08:18:53 +0000

This would not surprise me with a German service provider, although it got much better in the last decade.

New comment by nicbou in "More Molly Guards"

nicbou — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 08:16:19 +0000

I would really like to know which museum in Germany this is from.

New comment by nicbou in "Ask HN: Why won't you be replaced by AI?"

nicbou — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 08:12:53 +0000

I am self-employed and AI is taking my job. Or at least its owners are capturing the value of my work now.

https://nicolasbouliane.com/blog/death-by-ai

New comment by nicbou in "Ask HN: Why won't you be replaced by AI?"

nicbou — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 08:11:00 +0000

I write guides for immigrants moving to Germany. I focus on the undocumented and unpredictable parts of German bureaucracy.

The stuff I document is happening offline behind closed doors. I create tools and leverage my contacts and audience to surface that information.

Then LLMs suck up that information and serves it to users without attribution or consent, and that is destroying the economics of doing my job.

But the job still needs to be done.

New comment by nicbou in "Making peace with your unlived dreams (2023)"

nicbou — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 09:12:03 +0000

I had a mild version of that, and it allowed to focus on the parts of my work that I love without constantly worrying about productivity or monetisation. I could get more involved in the community and do fun things just for the sake of it.

Travel got old quickly. Consumable experiences in general did too. Making art, coding, and working with others did not.

New comment by nicbou in "Dopamine Fracking"

nicbou — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 08:43:22 +0000

This year especially, fashion in Berlin has converged to light blue jeans and white t-shirt. It’s as if fashion got distilled into something easily seized, but ever more rapidly rotating.

New comment by nicbou in "Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min"

nicbou — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 16:36:52 +0000

Neil Stephenson is weirdly prescient in some of his novels. The people getting beamed the worst kind of slop on Fall has also been on my mind a lot recently.

New comment by nicbou in "Optimizing for Text-Mode Browsers"

nicbou — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 11:56:11 +0000

I love doing stuff like that. CSS grids make it very easy to reorder content. I use it to put the sidebar below the content on https://allaboutberlin.com.

Recently, I added descriptive placeholders for JavaScript widgets. This helps give a bit of context when the browser or agent can't load them. It also means that the PDF printouts include a permalink to the tools that are not loaded.

I frequently test the website with stylesheets turned off. It gives me a rough idea of how reader mode, screen readers and AI agents read my website.

New comment by nicbou in "Chuwi Minibook X"

nicbou — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 09:10:23 +0000

I had this laptop and I loved it, but it was underpowered even for basic web development by 2023. It struggled to play YouTube videos in the background while I worked.

I really wish they brought back this format with the modern M processors. On the other hand, my M2 Macbook Air is around 300 grams heavier, but I don't need to carry a power adapter most of the time, and the device is much better in every conceivable way.

New comment by nicbou in "The most unlikely school bag"

nicbou — Sat, 30 May 2026 08:14:26 +0000

Is this a typo? I cannot find them, but these days Google is unusable.

New comment by nicbou in "Please Use AI"

nicbou — Fri, 29 May 2026 15:09:58 +0000

You have a point, even if I hate to admit it.

On the other hand, maybe we should stop doing bullshit things instead of doing them more and faster. Maybe we ought to have fewer, shorter speeches, simpler websites and so on. Instead, we're drowning the world in noise. Speeches written by nobody, about nothing, for nobody in particular.

Sure, humans repeat patterns, but they add their own delightful uniqueness and imperfection to the mix. Tiny random mutations that eventually evolve the genre. Humans get really good at following rules, but then they develop the taste to break them. Wisdom shapes their craft in unpredictable ways.

And I guess that's what being an internet dad is. You live a long, imperfect life and you learn all sorts of lessons, many of which are subtle and never written down, then you apply those lessons to your craft. What can a machine teach us about fatherhood?

New comment by nicbou in "Please Use AI"

nicbou — Fri, 29 May 2026 14:58:03 +0000

It's harder to get them to stop.

I love when I get someone to talk about something they clearly love, and they're giddy with joy and struggling to contain themselves. It's one of the finer pleasures of talking to strangers and not machines.

New comment by nicbou in "An Obsessive Focus on UX: Pilot's Pressure-Regulating Kire-Na Highlighter"

nicbou — Fri, 29 May 2026 13:47:03 +0000

From what I've seen, the Japanese have a very different approach to design. The beauty is always so understated. It's not announced, but discovered by discerning eyes. You see it in their pottery, joinery, clothing, paper, architecture, etc. A lot of their stuff looks really bland, but when it's stuff you care about, you really feel the thought and craftsmanship that went into it.

New comment by nicbou in "Is this sustainable?"

nicbou — Fri, 29 May 2026 11:36:30 +0000

When a long article is topped by an AI-generated image, it makes me wonder if I should bother reading. Did a human write this?