Hacker News: oddsockmachine

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

oddsockmachine — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 14:57:29 +0000

That's a wonderful video, thanks for sharing

New comment by oddsockmachine in "AI may be making us think and write more alike"

oddsockmachine — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 16:29:22 +0000

I'm dealing with the same nonsense. I get LLM-generated reviews of my work, documents, and plans which are not grounded in reality or nuance. Regularly have to explain why the AI is wrong. I was told I should run my docs through the LLM to make them read better. But they're not even being read by humans at this point.

New comment by oddsockmachine in "AI is making junior devs useless"

oddsockmachine — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 15:55:59 +0000

Observations so far:

- "micro" level code is adequate. A new feature typically works as expected, and code is well documented. But macro level everything's wacky: no architectural consideration, lots of duplication, dead end paths, dead code. Nobody ever took the time to understand the context surrounding a change and figure out the most appropriate way to integrate it.

- there's no consideration for infrastructure, or how the code is run (my world). Last week we ddos'd ourselves after someone implemented a 1/s poll that runs on every open browser tab, worsened when the frontend's reconnection logic fired 1/s with no exponential backoff.

- zero critical thinking... First thing everyone did during that incident was to ask their LLM of choice why the platform was down. Investigating by hand (and my findings thereof) was dismissed, because surely Claude knows best.

I'm too old for this stuff.

New comment by oddsockmachine in "AI is making junior devs useless"

oddsockmachine — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 16:20:06 +0000

I'm already seeing this in the company I recently joined: 80-90% of code is generated/prompted. Big PRs, very little review or oversight. Absolutely nobody considering long-term architecture (and IMO nobody capable of such). In general, there's very little critical thinking involved at any stage, just throw error messages back into the LLM, rinse and repeat. I'm hoping there's a world where people with skills are useful in getting these projects back on track, but perhaps as a society we're learning to accept this reduction in quality.

New comment by oddsockmachine in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2025)"

oddsockmachine — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 00:31:31 +0000

Hi, it appears that the email address you listed on the careers page (hello@) is undeliverable. Is there another way to get in touch?

New comment by oddsockmachine in "You can't refuse to be scanned by ICE's facial recognition app, DHS document say"

oddsockmachine — Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:07:18 +0000

Your point about orphaned records resonates with me, but for a much simpler (or stupider) "use case". I took a domestic flight earlier this year and foolishly showed my British passport as ID. I had returned to the country the day before, it just happened to be in my pocket. My green card was clipped to the front of it. After checking the identification page, the TSA agent flipped through the pages of entry stamps, visas, etc. There, they found all my old US work visas, which have long since expired. The agent was convinced that, since I have expired visas, I must be here illegally and would have to "come with [her]". I pointed out that I have a valid green card, so I'm here legally, and that of course every visa in the book has expired because - well that's what they do. It took 30 minutes, multiple staff being called over, supervisors, etc before I was allowed to continue. At every step, the presence of the expired visas was a mark against me. Never got an apology or recognition that they were wrong, just eventually told I could be on my way. I truly fear that overzealous thugs will use any "evidence" to prove their presuppositions, like your orphaned records. (I've naturalized since then, and carry my passport card around religiously, for all the good it may do...)

New comment by oddsockmachine in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (October 2025)"

oddsockmachine — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 00:05:46 +0000

I tried launching something similar 15 years ago, admittedly as a noob to both tech and business. Here's hoping you succeed, it's sorely needed!

New comment by oddsockmachine in "Ambient Garden"

oddsockmachine — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 18:15:41 +0000

This is wonderful! I'm working on a large spatial audio art installation for Burning Man this year (https://oddsockmachine.github.io/ and https://www.instagram.com/oddsockmachine/). In mine, most of the audio moves around the space, but I'd love to borrow concepts from this and have the listener move through the audio field. (That'll have to go on the biiig backlog for version 2!)

New comment by oddsockmachine in "A Few of the Birds I Love"

oddsockmachine — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 19:00:47 +0000

Your writing is very reminiscent of Aldo Leopold's in 'A Sand County Almanac' (which is an equal delight to read)

New comment by oddsockmachine in "Why do War Thunder players leak classified information? [video]"

oddsockmachine — Sun, 02 Feb 2025 23:29:59 +0000

I think you mean Cunningham's Law...

New comment by oddsockmachine in "That Time America Outlawed Pinball (2016)"

oddsockmachine — Sat, 24 Feb 2024 02:40:15 +0000

Also the museum in Alameda CA, which does a good job of walking you through the history of the ban.

New comment by oddsockmachine in "Tell HN: Giving away my homebrew windmill"

oddsockmachine — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 04:04:30 +0000

I'd love to hear more about your boat!

New comment by oddsockmachine in "What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture"

oddsockmachine — Wed, 24 Jun 2020 18:11:08 +0000

Might not count as the great plains, but Mark Sheppard's New Forest Farm in Wisconsin is a good demonstration of a similar approach in a different context.

https://newforestfarm.us/about/

New comment by oddsockmachine in "Shelter in place for Bay Area counties"

oddsockmachine — Mon, 16 Mar 2020 23:59:58 +0000

SF Bicycle Coalition is suggesting that it's fine: https://twitter.com/sfbike/status/1239658920718643200

New comment by oddsockmachine in "“Unprecedented” locust invasion threatens crops in East Africa"

oddsockmachine — Sat, 01 Feb 2020 07:10:24 +0000

If you implement "middle out" grasshopper rubbing, you can triple production

New comment by oddsockmachine in "Ask HN: What interesting problems are you working on?"

oddsockmachine — Wed, 29 Jan 2020 18:00:12 +0000

> "enjoy acting sustainably long-term, so they spread that joy and sustainability to others"

This sounds great, can't wait to check it out. After taking a Permaculture Design Course, I fell in love with the ideal of living a better, more "luxurious" life that has not only a lower impact on the planet, but a positive impact. I'm on my way down that path, but still figuring out how to make it replicable.

New comment by oddsockmachine in "Proteins That May Restore Damaged Sound-Detecting Cells in the Ear"

oddsockmachine — Wed, 14 Aug 2019 17:25:07 +0000

Thanks, I'll see if I can try some in person

New comment by oddsockmachine in "Proteins That May Restore Damaged Sound-Detecting Cells in the Ear"

oddsockmachine — Tue, 13 Aug 2019 18:42:32 +0000

Do you have a source for any good bone conduction headphones? I have a damaged eardrum that stops me hearing low frequencies.

Recently tried a demonstration at SF's Exploratorium which involved biting a metal bar, and the result was incredible!

Most bone conduction headphones I find when searching (eg AfterShokz) appear to rest against the bones around the ear, so I'm not sure if they're as effective.

New comment by oddsockmachine in "Ask HN: What do you do with your Raspberry Pi?"

oddsockmachine — Mon, 24 Jun 2019 20:19:21 +0000

Thanks for sharing this, it's great to see your process.

I'm working on something vaguely related, a grid-based synth-controller/sequencer with a bunch of i2c shift registers and laser cut hardware. I've been thinking about building a pressure-sensitive hex-layout keyboard next, you've given me a bunch of ideas and inspiration.

New comment by oddsockmachine in "Complex life may only exist because of millions of years of groundwork by fungi"

oddsockmachine — Wed, 29 May 2019 17:21:56 +0000

Without giving away too many spoilers, you might enjoy "The Expanse" books/series