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98codes

1,423 karma · joined April 16, 2018

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98codes··on Talking to strangers at the gym
Only if you think of it that way -- making every human interaction purely transactional.

Conversely, there's something I've used as a guiding principle for a while now that isn't quite the same, but in the same direction: to receive help, be helpful.

Both of these also fall under the greater umbrella of "treat others as you would like to be treated".

98codes··on Talking to strangers at the gym
Saying someone's name back to them is also a memory trick to help yourself remember their name for next time.
98codes··on Bluesky April 2026 Outage Post-Mortem
Ahh, the three relevant numbers in development: 0, 1, and infinity.
98codes··on Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed
I got reeeeally good at producing repro gifs that I could plug straight inline into email replies to "can't repro"; it's forever clear that most developers either don't know how to test the product they are building, or simply can't be bothered to try.
98codes··on I quit editing photos
> That emotion is nostalgia, whether real or perceived.

Absolutely. One of my prized possessions is a book I had made from digital pictures I took on a family trip when my kids were 3 & 4 years old. The pictures are of single-digit megapixel quality, but are perfect for what they needed to be: a reminder of that trip, and the memories contained within.

It seems to me that the slightly fuzzy aspect of old pictures better matches our fuzzy memories of that time.

98codes··on MacBook Neo
> serious damage from typical daily use

Doing what? I've used one of those laptops for years, and it still looks and acts fine, hardware-wise. Windows though...

98codes··on I baked a pie every day for a year
OK then... let's see, it's citrus season -- meyer lemon meringue it is, with a swiss meringue[1] of course.

[1] https://www.seriouseats.com/easy-swiss-meringue-recipe

98codes··on Google Street View in 2026
For my life, I don't understand the gestures for the 3D map. It would seem that I can ONLY manipulate that view by accident.
98codes··on I baked a pie every day for a year
I already did for October, November (twice), and December. Does that count?
98codes··on New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes
I'm a human who writes like that, because mobile and desktop OSs have made it easy—so easy—to include things like em-dashes and other formerly uncommon punctuation. I also come from an age where people were taught things like proper grammar and punctuation, so go figure.
98codes··on Facebook is cooked
I'm a dad that stopped using facebook when I got divorced, so there's a bit of anecdata for you
98codes··on ai;dr
> assume

There's your trouble. The real problem is that most internet users are setting their baseline for "standard issue human writing" at exactly the level they themselves write. The problem is that more and more people do not draw a line between casual/professional writing, and as such balk at very normal professional writing as potentially AI-driven.

Blame OS developers for making it easy—SO easy!—to add all manner of special characters while typing if you wish, but the use of those characters, once they were within easy reach, grew well before AI writing became a widespread thing. If it hadn't, would AI be using it so much now?

98codes··on John Giannandrea to retire from Apple
Uses for Siri:

1. Checking the current temp or weather

2. Setting an alarm, timer, or reminder

3. Skipping a music track or stopping the music altogether roughly 3 seconds after hearing the command, or 1 second after you assume it didn't work

<end of list>

98codes··on Fran Sans – font inspired by San Francisco light rail displays
New Jersey Transit trains use something similar to this, but with many more segments

https://www.flickr.com/photos/recluse26/286211358/

98codes··on The American Tradition of Trying to Address Anxiety with Parks
I first started hearing about it 20 years ago, and was able to confirm it for myself earlier this year. In order to truly de-stress, to let go, you need 3 weeks away. Doesn't have to be a 3 week vacation, just 3 weeks of not thinking about work.

If you can do it, I highly recommend it if for no other reason to clearly see just how much stress your work is adding to your life, even if everything seems "fine".

I say that fully acknowledging that very, very few people will get that opportunity, "unlimited" PTO or otherwise.

98codes··on Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy
I got one sentence in and thought to myself, "This is about discovery, isn't it?"

And lo, complaints about plaintiffs started before I even had to scroll. If this company hadn't willy-nilly done everything they could to vacuum up the world's data, wherever it may be, however it may have been protected, then maybe they wouldn't be in this predicament.

98codes··on iPhone Pocket
It's November, but I still had to make sure the date on the page wasn't April 1st.
98codes··on Trump pardons convicted Binance founder
> Why would we want to?

Because crimes should be prosecuted.

> Should we do the same to her?

Obviously yes. Why would we give a damn? See also: Epstein files & Clinton. Release them, round him & the rest of them up.

98codes··on Fallout from the AWS outage: Smart mattresses go rogue
Tech worker enthusiast: my whole house is smart, and has no connection to the internet.
98codes··on AWS outage shows internet users 'at mercy' of too few providers, experts say
Companies can architect their backends to be able to fail back to another region in case of outage, and either don't test it or don't bother to have it in place because they can just blame Amazon, and don't otherwise have an SLA for their service.

To fix it, test your failback procedures. For everything else, there's nothing to fix, it's working by design.

98codes··on Liquid Glass Is Cracked, and Usability Suffers in iOS 26
Settings -> Accessibility -> Display & Text Size -> enable Reduce Transparency

That made a world of difference for me.

98codes··on Show HN: Autism Simulator
This seems in the same direction as "doesn't everyone get sad?" for folks with depression. It's not a matter of this not being an experience for others, as much as it is how much energy it takes to get through it.

"Energy" in this case as a stand-in for willpower, for emotional regulation, for actual physical energy.

98codes··on “Reading Rainbow” was created to combat summer reading slumps
In the United States (in 2020[1]), 100% of the population lived within 5 miles (8 km) of a local public library, with 99.1% of people living within 1 mile (1.6 km). That seems good enough to me.

[1] https://www.gc.cuny.edu/center-urban-research/research-proje...

98codes··on U.S. abandons hunt for signal of cosmic inflation
Even the satire is too depressing at this point.
98codes··on Analyzing database trends through 1.8M Hacker News headlines
Interesting to see SQL Server not listed here, am curious whether it didn't have enough signal, or suffered from being a two-word product, with "SQL" being far too generic on its own.
98codes··on The death of partying in the USA
Good insights -- people now have to have their party look good for their social feeds: insta, tiktok, whatever. I'm forever thankful that I never had to even think about that, and even if people were taking pictures, nobody gave a damn about the background.
98codes··on The death of partying in the USA
I wonder how the levels of engagement compare between an extremely online GenX person, an average GenZ person, and an extremely online Gen Z person would look like.
98codes··on Why English doesn't use accents
I couldn't help to look and see if the company behind commercials that are burned into my brain from 40 years ago are still a thing, and lo, Hooked on Phonics is still going strong!

This page[1] walks through the basics of phonemic awareness that children need to learn via exposure & repetition in order to learn to apply that aural learning to reading.

It makes me wonder if a program like this, aimed at English-speaking children, might help those adults learning to speak & read English if they could put up with being addressed as if they were a child.

[1] https://www.hookedonphonics.com/reading/phonemic-awareness/

98codes··on Tuning the Prusa Core One
The Prusa XL[1] can be configured for 5 toolheads for fast, automatic switching ala factory robots.

[1] https://www.prusa3d.com/en/product/original-prusa-xl-assembl...

98codes··on I built something that changed my friend group's social fabric
It's funny -- before social media, I was more likely able to go find someone to chat with on IRC, a Usenet group, or some purpose-built forum. I knew where my friends were (ICQ, then AIM, then Skype, then GChat), and it worked.

Now, it's all fragmented into 1000 Discord servers, and who has the time to dig through it all?

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