Hacker News: patchorang

New comment by patchorang in "March heat in American west has left snowpack at record-low levels"

patchorang — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 18:53:17 +0000

In the filter you can change the SNOTEL site. You probably need to pull up a snotel site map and find one in the region you’re interested in.

New comment by patchorang in "March heat in American west has left snowpack at record-low levels"

patchorang — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 17:39:55 +0000

There are quite a few comments here talking about how comparing images from feb/march isn’t useful. Here’s data on what’s going on. This snowtel location is within the Utah picture in the article.

https://www.cbrfc.noaa.gov/dbdata/station/swegraph/swegraph_...

New comment by patchorang in "So where are all the AI apps?"

patchorang — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 15:43:43 +0000

I haven’t written or looked at a single line of code. I do use plan though, and have a technical background but haven’t meaningfully coded in 15 years

New comment by patchorang in "So where are all the AI apps?"

patchorang — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 14:59:06 +0000

I've been vibe-coding a Plex music player app for MacOS and iOS. (I don't like PlexAmp) I've got to the point where they are the apps I use for listening to music. But they are really just in an alpha/beta state and I'm having a pretty hard time getting past that. The last few weeks have felt like I'm playing wack-a-mole with bugs and issues. It's definitely not at the point others will be willing to use it as their daily app. I'm having to decide now if I keep wanting to put time into it. The vibe-coding isn't as fun when you're just fixing bugs.

New comment by patchorang in "Building for an audience of one: starting and finishing side projects with AI"

patchorang — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 14:33:25 +0000

This has been exactly my experience too. I switched from Spotify to Plex, but discovered there really isn't a music focused desktop player. So I vibe coded one, exactly how I want my music player to work (albums not playlists/tracks as the central item). I was so happy with my desktop app, I built a mobile version to use instead of PlexAmp. There are some bugs I'm ironing out, but they are both I've stopped using PlexAmp and Spotify entirely.

New comment by patchorang in "Jellyfin LLM/"AI" Development Policy"

patchorang — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 23:04:46 +0000

I very much like the no LLM output in communication. Nothing is worse than getting huge body of text the sender clearly hasn't even read. Then you either have to ignore it or spend 15 minutes explaining why their text isn't even relevant to the conversation.

Sort of related, Plex doesn't have a desktop music app, and the PlexAmp iOS app is good but meh. So I spent the weekend vibe coding my own Plex music apps (macOS and iOs), and I have been absolutely blown away at what I was able to make. I'm sure code quality is terrible, and I'm not sure if a human would be able to jump in there and do anything, but they are already the apps I'm using day-to-day for music.

New comment by patchorang in "Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?"

patchorang — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 12:28:17 +0000

Making hardware synthesizers, I have a CS degree and took a could EE classes in school. But I have no idea where to begin

New comment by patchorang in "The Gentle Singularity"

patchorang — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 12:26:13 +0000

Yesterday, I gave ChatGPT links to three recipes and told it to make me a grocery list.

It left off ingredients. The very gentle singularity…

New comment by patchorang in "Walmart is preparing to welcome its next customer: the AI shopping agent"

patchorang — Thu, 15 May 2025 17:28:31 +0000

"As consumers begin to use AI agents to do their shopping..." are people actually doing this? Has anyone here done this?

New comment by patchorang in "12 Days of OpenAI: Day 5 [video]"

patchorang — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 18:35:27 +0000

Maybe a naive question but I don't really understand the why of this? Why do I need ChatGPT in Apple Intelligence? Shouldn't Apple Intelligence just do what it's asked? Is that Apple saying it's Apple Intelligence isn't that good? Is this some business dealings I don't understand?

It sort of parallels setting a default browser on your phone. Do you want to use Safari or Chrome? Do you want to use Apple Intelligence or OpenAI? But that's really not what it is, because everything is still funneled through Apple, then to OpenAI.

I don't get it.

New comment by patchorang in "Apple iMac M4 review: who is this for, exactly?"

patchorang — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 16:30:58 +0000

I love that they have affilate links in the article for a product that "wasn’t built for this world".

New comment by patchorang in "Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs"

patchorang — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 15:46:32 +0000

I think this problem is even worse than just ghost jobs.

My partner is currently looking for a new job. Two or three times now, they’ve completed the whole interview process, gotten great feedback. Then they are ghosted for 2-3 weeks and the company comes back and says “sorry we decided not to hire for this role”. It’s utterly exhausting.

I do think when the interviews started, they had intentions to hire. (My partner knew people at the company and was recommended). But then for whatever reason during the hiring process, the job goes away.

New comment by patchorang in "Fear of US recession rattles global markets as tech shares fall"

patchorang — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 18:48:56 +0000

The constant stress of potentially being laid-off at any time over the past three years has been exhausting.

New comment by patchorang in "OpenAI Announces SearchGPT"

patchorang — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 18:54:22 +0000

Not saying the SearchGPT will or will not be accurate, but this demo was certainly made in After Effects. Who knows where the copy came from.

New comment by patchorang in "Will Figma become an awkward middle ground?"

patchorang — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 13:13:57 +0000

I've been working as a product designer for the last 10 years, but for a few years before that I was a software engineer. I've been interested in moving back towards the technical side of things. It seems that role, and what is described in this article, would often be called a "design engineer".

However, I don't quite understand what the role of a design engineer is. If a PM is the "what", design is the "how", and eng is the implementation. Where would a design engineer fall? I'm sure it is very much a spectrum, but I'd be interested in hearing from some folks who have filled this role.

Are you focused on the "how", but using code to achieve that? Are you focus on the "how" and it simply turns into the implementation? Are you focused on the implementation, but with the background and skills of a designer?

New comment by patchorang in "Modern Luddites: On Being a Digital Minimalist Family in a Tech-Saturated World"

patchorang — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 14:27:52 +0000

There are many chrome extensions that remove shorts.

New comment by patchorang in "Figma Slides"

patchorang — Wed, 26 Jun 2024 19:36:47 +0000

Designers are pretty good at siloing themselves. I worry this may further silo them as the rest of the business will continue to use PPT.

Designers frequently express frustration about "not having a seat at the table." It's going to be tough to influence the business when using a different tool than everyone else.

Edit: PPT or Google Slides* My point was more about using the tool that the rest of the business is using.

New comment by patchorang in "Ask HN: What alternatives to Adobe products are you switching to?"

patchorang — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 17:43:40 +0000

If anyone can comment on good alternatives for After Effect, I'd be interested to know.

New comment by patchorang in "The American West is figuring out how to keep cool"

patchorang — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 16:19:41 +0000

I went to college in Austin, and I feel like they do this decently well.

New comment by patchorang in "Launch HN: Overwatch (YC S22): OSINT platform for cyber and fraud risk"

patchorang — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 15:46:52 +0000

Sort of off topic question. But how would you get into the type of work that uses this tool? I've always thought this type of work would be interesting, but I have no ideas where to start. What are the job titles? Fraud Analyst? Thanks!