Hacker News: potta_coffee

New comment by potta_coffee in "Ask HN: What do you care about? What is your joy and purpose?"

potta_coffee — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:09:18 +0000

I'm hanging on because I love my kids. I look forward to a day when my suffering ends.

New comment by potta_coffee in "Ask HN: Developer laptop that doesn't suck in 2024 and it's not Apple silicone"

potta_coffee — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 18:48:02 +0000

I have a Lenovo Legion 5 laptop and I love it. I use it for all kinds of dev work running Windows 11 and WSL. It's technically a gaming machine but the appearance is understated. It has a very nice keyboard and the nicest touchpad I've ever used. Also I was looking at Lenovo business laptops to run Linux. In comparison with those, you get so much more for your money with the gaming machine. It's very powerful and expandable, with extra hard-drive and memory slots. Also the display is top notch.

New comment by potta_coffee in "How long til we're all on Ozempic?"

potta_coffee — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 18:41:48 +0000

It's just human nature. This is the health equivalent of trying to turn lead into gold. It's my unproven opinion that the negative effects of these treatments are understated and this will be a passing fad.

New comment by potta_coffee in "How long til we're all on Ozempic?"

potta_coffee — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 18:37:17 +0000

It would work if people would actually do it. It 100% works. Human nature is such that people would rather take a drug than change their lifestyle. I've done it myself but it requires a complete realignment of lifestyle to make lasting change.

New comment by potta_coffee in "Ask HN: Which movies did you watch multiple times?"

potta_coffee — Sun, 25 Aug 2024 00:41:54 +0000

The Thing and Alien are my two favorite movies. Silence of the Lambs is up there too.

Not movies but I've rewatched X-Files and Twin Peaks repeatedly as well.

New comment by potta_coffee in "Ask HN: Widespread Apathy?"

potta_coffee — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 19:45:17 +0000

It's 100% real in my experience. I delivered twice the goal my manager set and got a 1% raise. Since then I've scaled my effort way back. Work is a necessity, not a priority.

New comment by potta_coffee in "What's the most radical book you've read?"

potta_coffee — Wed, 22 May 2024 15:17:39 +0000

That's true but let me ask you, why then was Christ crucified? The Bible says to obey all authorities except in spiritual matters over which it (the Bible) claims they have no authority.

New comment by potta_coffee in "What's the most radical book you've read?"

potta_coffee — Wed, 22 May 2024 15:15:43 +0000

History is full of examples, IE the Protestant Reformation, when the Catholic church was insisting that the only way to know God was through a priest, and reformers, who insisted that one could know God without a human authority intervening.

New comment by potta_coffee in "Ask HN: Have your search results gotten worse recently?"

potta_coffee — Wed, 15 May 2024 21:39:29 +0000

Google is essentially useless. If I really want to find something, I'll try Yandex nowadays. For the most part, I don't even search anymore. I just suffer with sites I've had bookmarked for years. Most of my potential searches are for programming language documentation / APIs etc.

New comment by potta_coffee in "Bossware is a big legal risk"

potta_coffee — Wed, 15 May 2024 21:35:44 +0000

Ironically, I'm involved with a startup developing fart monitors as we speak. I'm certain it's going to be a huge market. /s

New comment by potta_coffee in "Rifle-Armed Robot Dogs Now Being Tested by Marine Special Operators"

potta_coffee — Wed, 08 May 2024 19:35:14 +0000

Your ideological position on should win a war is irrelevant. We're discussing the ethics of using automation to kill humans.

New comment by potta_coffee in "Rifle-Armed Robot Dogs Now Being Tested by Marine Special Operators"

potta_coffee — Wed, 08 May 2024 17:11:13 +0000

Who do you think the robots are killing? There are countless videos of drones blowing up Ukranian and Russian soldiers. Drones are being used to kill humans.

New comment by potta_coffee in "Ask HN: Is the Job Market Still Tough for You?"

potta_coffee — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 16:51:04 +0000

In 2017 I put in 200 applications to get a single job in the span of about 2 months.

New comment by potta_coffee in "Ask HN: Has anyone else stopped playing video games as an adult?"

potta_coffee — Thu, 25 Apr 2024 16:39:01 +0000

My tastes have changed a lot but I still do gaming. Now I'm playing Minecraft with my kids and I have a server where a bunch of their friends can join in and build stuff. I'm not interested in Minecraft for it's own sake but as a social club it's great fun. I also tinker with maps and mods for Quake and Doom. Doom was the first PC game I played - on a demo machine at Radio Shack at 7 years old. I don't play the same way but using the engines as a sandbox to create something still holds my interest.

New comment by potta_coffee in "Ask HN: How does your company do performance reviews?"

potta_coffee — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 20:29:01 +0000

There's a fake ass "goals" system. I was supposed to save my company $500k off of our massive cloud budget. I ended up cutting $1,000,000 by optimizing services and deleting old junk, also wrote some automation that saved us ~$250k. Still ended up receiving a "meets expectations". We aren't supposed to know but managers are told that nobody is allowed an "exceeds expectations" review otherwise it would disrupt the bonus / incentive situation which is tilting toward rock-bottom.

New comment by potta_coffee in "An Exploration of SBCL Internals (2020)"

potta_coffee — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 16:39:59 +0000

I'm in the same boat. I just don't care about EMACS, don't like it, and there's little incentive when I'm just playing around. It's a shame because Lisp is really fun and interesting. I just don't want to spend so much time dicking around with an editor just so I can write some code.

New comment by potta_coffee in "Ask HN: At what age did you become interested in coding?"

potta_coffee — Mon, 22 Apr 2024 15:06:44 +0000

I started coding around 10 years old in 1994. I'm starting to feel old.

New comment by potta_coffee in "Canva has acquired Affinity in an effort to compete with Adobe"

potta_coffee — Tue, 26 Mar 2024 15:59:11 +0000

I love Affinity and I don't love Canva. I'm hopeful nothing much changes but I'm not holding my breath. I'll pay a subscription over my dead body.

New comment by potta_coffee in "'Gen X has had to learn or die': Mid-career workers facing ageism in job market"

potta_coffee — Thu, 21 Mar 2024 17:04:23 +0000

I'm 40. I've been programming for 30 years. I get turned down for jobs all the time but it's almost always during the coding interview where I get asked to solve some brain teaser that has nothing to do with real work. The most ironic questions are the ones the interviewer doesn't even know how to solve (this has happened 3 times now).

New comment by potta_coffee in "Ask HN: Who programs outdoors and how do you do?"

potta_coffee — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 17:35:30 +0000

I sit on the deck with my macbook. I have to sit in the shady part of the deck to see well enough.