Hacker News: sirbranedamuj

New comment by sirbranedamuj in "Rumors of my death are slightly exaggerated"

sirbranedamuj — Fri, 08 May 2026 17:20:10 +0000

Glad to hear! My Klein bottle is still proudly displayed on my shelf after nearly a decade :)

New comment by sirbranedamuj in "Show HN: Clocksimulator.com – A minimalist, distraction-free analog clock"

sirbranedamuj — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 05:08:02 +0000

Wow thanks! This is great

New comment by sirbranedamuj in "Show HN: Clocksimulator.com – A minimalist, distraction-free analog clock"

sirbranedamuj — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 14:50:48 +0000

I appreciate the straightforwardness of this. If I could make one request, it would be to support more of a "tick" mode instead of the continuous second hand motion. It doesn't even have to actually make noises, I just like the visuals of the clock hand starting and stopping every second. I don't know if there's a more formal name for this in Clock World

New comment by sirbranedamuj in "Yt-dlp: Upcoming new requirements for YouTube downloads"

sirbranedamuj — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 14:22:49 +0000

This is the buried lede in this announcement for me - I had no idea they were already going to such lengths. It's really impressive!

New comment by sirbranedamuj in "Garfield Minus Garfield"

sirbranedamuj — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 12:58:27 +0000

Welp wish I had read that before clicking on it.

New comment by sirbranedamuj in "The Free Movie: Frame-by-frame, handrawn reproduction of "The Bee Movie" (2023)"

sirbranedamuj — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 20:24:15 +0000

also featuring a great reimagining of I'm A Believer by Hot Dad :)

New comment by sirbranedamuj in "Braid: Anniversary Edition "sold like dog s***", says creator Jonathan Blow"

sirbranedamuj — Wed, 31 Jul 2024 18:32:24 +0000

I literally had no idea this came out.

New comment by sirbranedamuj in "Active learning is more effective, but students don't think so (2019)"

sirbranedamuj — Tue, 14 May 2024 16:17:39 +0000

I bet for some of these students, the goal of those classes is not to learn, it's to get enough information to pass tests so the students can check a box off on a prerequisites list so they can get their piece of paper. A student can review a recording of a lecture a month later to cram for a test. I imagine an "active learning" session is more difficult to record and review down the road. I think you have to reckon with the disparity in motivation between the teacher and the student in this situation. I imagine many of the students there don't really care about physics. They want to receive their information in as passive a way as possible so they can zone out during lectures. I think the article touches on that but reaches the wrong conclusion, relating it to an incorrect perception of the efficacy of the lesson instead of relating it to the students simply not wanting to put in the effort for something they probably don't care about.

That's my take on it as a former college student, anyway.

New comment by sirbranedamuj in "Cousins are disappearing. Is this reshaping the experience of childhood?"

sirbranedamuj — Mon, 12 Feb 2024 16:12:34 +0000

Anecdata: I am 33 and have 0 kids. I make good money but, due to poor financial literacy at a young age, I am shackled with a hefty amount of student loan debt well into my 30s. My 20s were financially precarious and it would've been irresponsible to bring a child into the mix. Would've been nice, but it just wasn't going to happen.

I don't think that my specific situation applies to everyone, but I also don't expect I'm alone on this one.

New comment by sirbranedamuj in "Farscape and Henson’s Lasting Legacy (2011)"

sirbranedamuj — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 16:53:59 +0000

I didn't notice before being exposed to that information (I'm one of those "imdb in my hand at all times" kind of watchers). It's way more noticeable in the movie because I guess they lost the voice modification toolset they were using and had to try to make it up again from scratch.

but yeah he does a great job!

New comment by sirbranedamuj in "Farscape and Henson’s Lasting Legacy (2011)"

sirbranedamuj — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 14:59:44 +0000

Decided to watch Farscape on a whim after watching Ben Browder and Claudia Black in Stargate. What a great show! It starts off on an awkward foot, like most sci-fi shows do. But it eventually comes around to a really amazing show with great performances both by human actors and by puppets. Scorpius is such a great villain for John Crichton. Pilot is one of my favorite characters ever, and sometimes he feels more human than the humans do (yes, I know only John is technically human but I mean the human actors that play some of the aliens).

New comment by sirbranedamuj in "Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake"

sirbranedamuj — Tue, 24 Oct 2023 20:26:45 +0000

I loved my windows phones so much. lumia 900 and 920. I totally bought in to the microsoft ecosystem because I wanted to keep using that phone OS and those phones. but the ecosystem sucked ass. none of microsoft's google/apple equivalents were up to par. one night when xbox music said I didn't have license to play any of my music on a long car ride home was the last straw. I bought a galaxy note 3 that evening when I got home.

windows phone come back :(

New comment by sirbranedamuj in "Screen Apnea"

sirbranedamuj — Thu, 24 Aug 2023 14:52:14 +0000

Yeah I find it hard to take articles like this seriously. "Be cautious of intensely focusing on something for long, uninterrupted periods. Reduce distractions from notifications where possible. Stand up and take a walk every once in a while."

like this is just generic health advice with a catchy name and trendy, vague connotations with tech overuse.

New comment by sirbranedamuj in "Luck be a Landlord is now banned in 13 countries on the Google Play Store"

sirbranedamuj — Wed, 16 Aug 2023 20:29:16 +0000

It's a slot machine in aesthetics only. A klondike solitaire game is as much of a slot machine as this game - you shuffle the deck and hope that the order of the cards is just right that you're able to complete all of the foundations. You make occasional decisions along the way but it's ultimately just luck of the draw.

I would argue that this game has more agency and skill involved than your average klondike game, actually. Banning shit purely based on the aesthetics is really dumb, particularly when other games get away with having similar aesthetics in their games _including the one that is a direct rip-off of this one!_

New comment by sirbranedamuj in "Luck be a Landlord is now banned in 13 countries on the Google Play Store"

sirbranedamuj — Wed, 16 Aug 2023 20:22:50 +0000

As someone with several dozen hours in it, I think of it as the purest distillation of the "deck builder" game genre. In a deck builder, you often shuffle your deck and the order in which you draw the cards influences the stuff you're able to do on each of your turns. This works the same way. You slowly build up a set of symbols which can appear in some random order. The first 20 of them show up on the slot board and their adjacency to other symbols causes various effects to happen. You're trying to make the 20 symbols that appear on each spin be as profitable as possible so you can keep up with the escalating rent payments.

I adore this game and I tell everyone I can about it.

New comment by sirbranedamuj in "Super Mario 64 – Watch for Rolling Rocks – 0.5x a Presses [video]"

sirbranedamuj — Fri, 14 Jul 2023 19:15:51 +0000

Through this pursuit, he has learned and honed problem solving, computer science, mathematics, and communication skills.

I think you could argue that the "underlying goal" for most people's hobbies are pointless.

New comment by sirbranedamuj in "America Is Trying to Electrify. There Aren’t Enough Electricians"

sirbranedamuj — Wed, 01 Mar 2023 17:09:05 +0000

well the post as a whole is a US perspective: "America Is Trying to Electrify..."

New comment by sirbranedamuj in "Ericsson to lay off 8,500 employees"

sirbranedamuj — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 18:55:22 +0000

yeah I was a windows phone head. The Nokia Lumia 920 to this day is my favorite phone I've ever owned. But they just could not get any traction.

New comment by sirbranedamuj in "How true is 'Speed Enforced by Aircraft' Sign? (2016)"

sirbranedamuj — Fri, 20 Jan 2023 15:47:51 +0000

> a high standard deviation among speed of individual cars on the road

so in a world without speed limits, people can individually decide what speed a road "feels like". in a world with speed limits, people can still do that but there's a sign stating a preferred speed for the road and an (admittedly flawed) enforcement mechanism.

I really can't fathom how the former leads to less "deviation" than the latter.

New comment by sirbranedamuj in "Ask HN: What weird technical scene are you fond/part of?"

sirbranedamuj — Mon, 21 Nov 2022 20:36:34 +0000

I run a website (https://mustad.io) that keeps track of the stats for matches on Final Fantasy Tactics Battleground (https://twitch.tv/fftbattleground). We have a channel on the stream's discord dedicated to development of various other tools for viewers. I am not super active now but I have been paying to keep my website afloat for a couple years now. I don't know exactly how many users I have but people tell me if it goes down so I know it's at least a few.