Hacker News: ryanmcbride

New comment by ryanmcbride in "Just Noting That Your Candy Corn Is Made of Bug Secretions"

ryanmcbride — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 15:25:00 +0000

I never had the kind that was a pretzel stick coated in sugar, I'd probably like that better than the candy cigarettes I've had (and which can still be bought) which is just like, a rolled up piece of hard sugar, basically a rolled version of the stick from dipstiks

New comment by ryanmcbride in "Do dentists know what they're doing?"

ryanmcbride — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 15:41:36 +0000

Went to the same dentist for the first 30 years of my life. He retired 2 years ago and sold his practice to someone who was just starting her career. She was instantly like "oh we need to redo your fillings", I let her do 2, one of them became so painful I couldn't believe it but she wouldn't do anything about it, went to a different, more established dentist and he took an x-ray and was like "yeah she blew out this one and it's cutting into your gums". He redid her redo for me free of charge, x-rayed the rest of my teeth and said my remaining fillings were fine. I've been going to him for the last few years and he's great. I'm not implying that my other dentist was malicious or incompetent, but I never considered before that dentists might be out there messing peoples mouths up with no recourse.

New comment by ryanmcbride in "America.gov"

ryanmcbride — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 21:24:37 +0000

I asked it the following:

how many felonies has the president of the united states been charged with?

>I can't answer questions about criminal charges or other news about the President. That's outside America's scope

has biden ever been convicted of a crime?

>I did not find official records of a criminal conviction for Joseph R. Biden Jr.

>Official sources in this search discuss other matters (for example, a pardon for Robert Hunter Biden), not a conviction of Joseph R. Biden Jr. I cannot independently confirm a complete nationwide criminal-history search from these pages

>[Link to Department of Justice Pardon warrant (Hunter Biden)]

has any other president ever been convicted of a crime?

>Yes. A Congressional Research Service brief reports that on May 30, 2024, former President Donald J. Trump was convicted in New York state court of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree

Funny that it would only talk about trump's convictions after bringing up hunter biden.

New comment by ryanmcbride in "Has Violence Against Teachers Become Accepted by Society?"

ryanmcbride — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 14:40:57 +0000

Yes and nothing will be done with it because intentional or not, teachers being treated like shit from both ends furthers the goal of the people in charge, which is to dismantle the public school system completely, let rich kids go to private schools, and pipe poor kids straight into the serf class.

New comment by ryanmcbride in "Has Violence Against Teachers Become Accepted by Society?"

ryanmcbride — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 14:37:34 +0000

Ah yes, the two equally immoral sides of "stop killing unarmed black men" and "no we like doing it". I simply don't know who to side with!

New comment by ryanmcbride in "ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage"

ryanmcbride — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 13:07:31 +0000

What business did you own and what happened to it?

New comment by ryanmcbride in "ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage"

ryanmcbride — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 12:11:51 +0000

depends on where the public communication is happening. On their own publicly accessible site? then no that wouldn't be advertising it would be information. In links on random unrelated websites, before videos, in the sky, on the side of the road, in bright lights on the side of a mountain, a person standing in the street with a megaphone being paid by the company? Yes, that would be advertising.

New comment by ryanmcbride in "ChatGPT ad targeting is garbage"

ryanmcbride — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 17:56:08 +0000

Everything with ads is garbage. All the time. It poses no benefit to humanity even a little bit.

New comment by ryanmcbride in "Rakuten Kobo returns to U.S. retail as sales double"

ryanmcbride — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 15:38:21 +0000

My wife and I both had kindles since they were first a thing and we both switched to Kobo a few years ago. So nice not getting ads.

New comment by ryanmcbride in "“It works better in the app”"

ryanmcbride — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 14:04:02 +0000

The solution is for companies to stop half-assing multiple things, and instead whole ass one thing.

It's impossible though. There actually isn't a single company alive that's capable of doing something like that, because it would require a decision maker to say "instead of these two things I want just one thing" and the second that happens it will be the end of the world.

New comment by ryanmcbride in "DOGE overstated savings, government watchdog says"

ryanmcbride — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 13:45:37 +0000

WOW YOU DONT FUCKING SAY?????????

New comment by ryanmcbride in "Learn how chips are made with this Rollercoaster Tycoon-inspired animation"

ryanmcbride — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 13:26:43 +0000

Who's "we" I have an R-Zone and a typewriter 3 feet away from me right now.

New comment by ryanmcbride in "FFmpeg 9.0"

ryanmcbride — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 15:42:39 +0000

Would probably be great for like, text adventures, visual novels, turn based strategy games, etc.

But lcd screens are so cheap I don't even know what the advantage of an e-ink screen would be for this. I was just misremembering what the niche part of the playdate screen was.

Edit: And just to continue the nerdier part of the conversation, the dmg-01's refresh rate was indeed ~60, but it's pixel response time was so bad it really made it feel way slower. I remember when the GBC came out how amazed I was at how clear the games looked. dmg-01 felt like a tiger handheld a lot of the time.

New comment by ryanmcbride in "Why Large Language Models Fail at Tabular Prediction"

ryanmcbride — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 15:40:32 +0000

My guess would be custom browser styling

New comment by ryanmcbride in "Oil companies report sky-high profits thanks to wartime crude prices"

ryanmcbride — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 15:39:19 +0000

Anyone who's willing to vote for someone who is so blatantly a fascist, is themselves a fascist, and you're furthering their agenda by pretending they're just bumpkins who got tricked.

New comment by ryanmcbride in "FFmpeg 9.0"

ryanmcbride — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 14:48:17 +0000

You're right. I literally have one sitting on my bookshelf I just haven't touched it like, since about a week after it came out.

New comment by ryanmcbride in "FFmpeg 9.0"

ryanmcbride — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 14:27:40 +0000

> Playdate video encoder and muxer

Playdate as in the e-ink handheld? That's awesome!

New comment by ryanmcbride in "Oil companies report sky-high profits thanks to wartime crude prices"

ryanmcbride — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 22:27:47 +0000

everyone on the planet who heard that knew it was a lie, including every person who voted for him. They voted for him because they KNEW he was lying not because they thought he was telling the truth.

New comment by ryanmcbride in "Oil companies report sky-high profits thanks to wartime crude prices"

ryanmcbride — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 20:01:09 +0000

They didn't fall for it, this is what they want. They don't want low prices, they don't want cheap gas, they want war. They don't care how much they have to pay to get it. They want death and blood.

Engaging with their false narrative doesn't do anything but reinforce it.

New comment by ryanmcbride in "A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands"

ryanmcbride — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 15:27:32 +0000

There is frequently wood in buildings yes