Hacker News: tomcam

New comment by tomcam in "Couple pay >$800k for a gene-editing therapy for their daughter. She died."

tomcam — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:35:12 +0000

> Keep in mind that nobody on the care team had previously discussed any risk or indeed any tradeoffs whatsoever. This was at one of the best-regarded children's hospitals in the USA.

I bet you live in the Seattle area. Similar experience with my daughter.

New comment by tomcam in "Costco is the anti-Amazon"

tomcam — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 21:52:31 +0000

What sizes of SUV, trolleys, fridges, and storage basements would meet with your approval?

New comment by tomcam in "The US Army Issued Ocarinas to Soldiers in World War II"

tomcam — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 14:11:26 +0000

Same. I was just able to order an original kit on eBay for $40, so demand isn’t high.

New comment by tomcam in "An entire Herculaneum scroll has been read for the first time"

tomcam — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 18:35:03 +0000

Absolutely incredible work. This is one of the most amazing news articles I’ve encountered in decades. Congratulations team!

The US Army Issued Ocarinas to Soldiers in World War II

tomcam — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 07:26:06 +0000

Article URL: https://www.flutetunes.com/articles/my-flute-goes-to-war/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48670103

Points: 176

# Comments: 80

New comment by tomcam in "Will It Mythos?"

tomcam — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 19:34:31 +0000

I feel like this could achieve techempower-level legend status

New comment by tomcam in "Why do commercial spaces sit vacant? (2025)"

tomcam — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 22:18:14 +0000

I have been wondering this for 25 years. Now I understand why New York City has so damn many empty buildings.

New comment by tomcam in "Firewood Splitting Simulator"

tomcam — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:43:05 +0000

Wow! Great link. I’m better than average but… yeah, I’d upgrade her to goddess. She’ll just carve a new axe handle when she feels like it. Truly humbling.

New comment by tomcam in "FreeOberon – Open-Source, Cross-Platform, Free Pascal/Turbo Pascal-Like Language"

tomcam — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 01:04:10 +0000

Can't wait to try this on Mac (English manual install intstructions at https://github.com/kekcleader/FreeOberon/commit/489c5a929bf9...). I feel like Oberon is very much worth a look for people interested in small, powerful languages.

New comment by tomcam in "Amazon Says Its Data Centers Use 2.5B Gallons of Water"

tomcam — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 15:29:25 +0000

Because of this I always fix a piercing gaze on any pistachio that crosses my path

New comment by tomcam in "What I've learned about the trombone"

tomcam — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 22:19:11 +0000

No one has yet mentioned that getting good tone quality on a trombone is perhaps its biggest challenge.

The same as true with violin and viola. The older and more primitive and instrument is, the more work you have to do.

Contrast this with the trombone’s cousins, the baritone and euphonium, which have infinitely better tone quality with little to no effort at all.

I will get downvoted for this, but modern players like Trombone Shorty have nowhere near the tone of players like Tommy Dorsey. this is clearly a matter of preference because he could nail that smooth smooth sound if you wanted to. I just don’t like the blatty sound.

New comment by tomcam in "What I've learned about the trombone"

tomcam — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 22:16:51 +0000

I have a bunch of them, but I prefer to play marching baritones because I’m less likely to bang them into a music stand.

New comment by tomcam in "What I've learned about the trombone"

tomcam — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 22:16:06 +0000

No. It has a trombone look but more important, it is not as conical as a baritone so it doesn’t sound as rich.

New comment by tomcam in "ESP32-S31"

tomcam — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 21:26:41 +0000

I didn’t know that. Thanks for letting me… meet the FOCers

I’ll see myself out of the Internet now.

New comment by tomcam in "Building durable workflows on Postgres"

tomcam — Sun, 31 May 2026 22:01:43 +0000

I suppose you're right. What I liked about it was this very specific graf, which gave me a lot to think about as a (potential) future implementor. It tells me this person has thought deeply about these issues and I feel like I have a much better grasp of the concept of a durable workflow than I did after reading TFA. Thank kindly for spending so much time on my comment.

> Once you need retries, backoff, timeouts, cancellation, versioning, visibility, task routing, rate limits, leases, heartbeats, stuck-worker detection, replay/debugging semantics, workflow migration, fanout/fanin, long timers, audit trails, and operator tooling, the “just use a database” story becomes “build a poor copy of a workflow engine plus a bunch of workers.” pretty quick.

New comment by tomcam in "Markdown Tables Generator – Tablesgenerator.com"

tomcam — Sun, 31 May 2026 20:54:42 +0000

As a stout proponent of Markdown I have to say getting tables right is hit or miss for me. Love this site.

New comment by tomcam in "1-Bit Bonsai Image 4B Image Generation for Local Devices"

tomcam — Sun, 31 May 2026 20:48:47 +0000

Stop it, you tease. I'm getting a little tingly

New comment by tomcam in "Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?"

tomcam — Sat, 30 May 2026 10:48:36 +0000

I’m retired and still working on a new business

New comment by tomcam in "Perry Compiles TypeScript directly to executables using SWC and LLVM"

tomcam — Sat, 30 May 2026 10:42:20 +0000

This looks exciting.

New comment by tomcam in "Ask HN: What was the best decision you made in your career?"

tomcam — Sat, 30 May 2026 02:18:23 +0000

Always preparing for the next job at night