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robbyking

1,893 karma · joined January 4, 2011

From Portland, Ore.
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robbyking··on NASA had to train Apollo 11's astronauts to not use profanity (2019)
It's funny as a parent, because I'm expected to tell my son that he shouldn't curse even though his mom and I do. And all of our friends. And coworkers. And my boss. And his boss. And our CEO. And the fucking president.

It's ridiculous.

robbyking··on Apple Intelligence for iPhone, iPad, and Mac
> What is the threshold for running something in the cloud?

To be fair, this was just the keynote -- details will be revealed in the sessions.

robbyking··on Microsoft was blindsided by OpenAI's ouster of CEO Sam Altman
I think a lot of people don't understand how anonymous sourcing works in jounalism.
robbyking··on The Tech Gold Rush Is Over. Where's the Next One?
The US economy has proven this pretty decisively. There's a reason we don't have single payer healthcare, or mandatory living wage, Super PAC contribution limits, or an ability to close tax loopholes for the rich.
robbyking··on The Tech Gold Rush Is Over. Where's the Next One?
I agree 100%!

A couple years ago I would have guessed that it would take us decades to get where we are now. The new Copilot integration into Office 365 (I can't believe I'm saying this!) looks fantastic, and even though a lot of my coworkers are skeptical, I really like using AI to help me with dev work. It doesn't do tasks for me, but it definitely helps speeds things along.

I think there's going to be a huge demand for engineers who can help integrate AI into software, regardless of the field its used in.

robbyking··on The negative impact of mobile-first web design on desktop
I'm sorry, if Wix and SquareSpace can figure it out for their templates, a site with dedicated UX designers should be able to figure it out, too. The smartphone is 15 years old, designers know what to expect.
robbyking··on Halfsies
What's interesting is I found that the less time I spent on an estimate the more accurate I was. (5 perfect cuts, 97% accuracy total.)
robbyking··on My uBlock Origin filters to remove distractions
There really are two different version of the internet, and which one you use depends on how how well your ad blockers are configured.

I was using my mom's laptop over the holidays, and it took me a minute to realize why every site I visited looked so _different_. What I quickly realised is almost every site I visited was wallpapered in ads: banners between every paragraph, sidebars full of ads, and background images selling things. A lot of sites were unrecognizable from what I was used to.

robbyking··on iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus
I'm in the same boat. I was planning on upgrading my iPhone 13, but TBH it's pretty much in perfect shape so it feels wasteful.
robbyking··on Google was founded 25 years ago today
It was closer to 15, but still...
robbyking··on Weight-based motor vehicle tax
That's been my frustration as well. I live in city and only drive on weekends, so I'd absolutely love a little 4 door AWD electric hatchback, but the US car market pushes people like me into hybrid crossovers like RAV4 and the CRV.
robbyking··on Weight-based motor vehicle tax
What's interesting to me is that in my experience most car enthusiasts feel the same way.

Even though I don't have a lot of interest in car culture, I'm a big fan of the Smoking Tire Podcast, and the host -- who has his own Porches, Lamborghinis, etc. -- has said multiple times that he thinks most people who drive trucks would be better off in a station wagon, and most people who drive SUVs would be better off in a sedan (edit: he actually said minivan, not sedan). (His daily driver around LA is a scooter.)

Obviously there are exceptions, but it makes sense to commute in a commuter car.

robbyking··on Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share
What is your primary language? I’ve worked at some pretty well known tech companies over the last couple of decades, and it’s been nothing but Macs for at least the last 15 or so years.
robbyking··on Linux has achieved a 3% desktop market share
It’s the year of the Linux desktop!
robbyking··on Firefox address bar
This plugin: https://apps.apple.com/app/keyword-search/id1558453954
robbyking··on Firefox address bar
And IIRC, Chrome copied this from Opera. It's a shame Opera never found its audience (or more specifically, a revenue stream), they pioneered a lot of browser features that we consider to be standard these days, like tabs and support for extensions.
robbyking··on Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans
Absolutely! I feel like VR is still in its Napster phase.
robbyking··on Apple forced to make major cuts to Vision Pro headset production plans
I agree about VR, but I'm really excited for advancements in AR!

I'm a really avid mountain biker, road cyclist and snowboarder, and I'd love some basic telemetry displayed in the goggles or glasses I'm already wearing. Nothing kills a ride faster than having to stop to pull out your phone to see if you missed a turn or to figure out which unmarked trail you're supposed to take. (Not to mention all of the information we current have to look down at our cycling computers to see: HR, watts, cadence, etc.)

robbyking··on How my children (n=2) acquired absolute pitch
Why did you feel it necessary to include the family's race?
robbyking··on Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit
I haven't really had any luck yet. I was a Farker back in the day, but went to Reddit while a lot of other people were going to Digg. Back then I loved Reddit as a social news site, but now I really dislike it because it's mostly a meme and image aggregator. (IMO it was the memes, image macros (Advice Animals) and meta references that killed that site.)

That said, I like PinkBike.com for MTB stuff and Hacker News for tech stuff. Those are really the only two forums where I actually leave comments these days.

robbyking··on Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit
That community ate away at my soul. We had a good group of core users, but by my estimate about a third of all submissions were from karma farmers and new users shitposting memes and image macros. (Or people complaining that I wasn't allowing shitposting memes and image macros.)

The Digg migration was the first step towards Reddit's Eternal September, but Covid lockdown was the final nail in the coffin.

robbyking··on Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit
I was a long time reddit user (I created my first account in 2007), and I eventually left for this reason.

I moderated a cycling community (r/mtb) that grew to about a quarter million subscribers and I had a really difficult time keeping the low effort content at bay.

When communities grow to a certain size they lose their niche audience, and lowest common denominator posts bubble to the top and drown out quality content.

robbyking··on Why the Dvorak keyboard didn't take over the world (2014) [video]
Do people really make the assumption that the QWERTY keyboard's layout is random? I'm GenX and I was taught the reason given in the video.
robbyking··on Apple Vision Pro: Apple’s first spatial computer
> Does someone really sit on their couch, put on a massive headset, and scroll through their vacation photos?

There was a time that people said the same thing about digital photos -- people swore nothing would ever replace physical photo albums, and thought the idea of having to look at a screen to view your vacation photos was insane.

Now just imagine a few generations from now when Apple Vision is the size of a pair of regular eye glasses.

robbyking··on Ask HN: Where have you found community outside of work?
I'm going to add another vote for volunteering. A lot of people only think of food kitchens and political campaigns when it comes to volunteering, but as a cyclist I've made a lot (if not a majority) of my friends while volunteering at events like trail building days, or by helping to set up or tear down for races or other cycling events.
robbyking··on Ask HN: Where have you found community outside of work?
> Do what kids in the 80's did, and many still do: go to the local playground, and ask if you could also play with them.

I was a stay at home dad for a couple years, and I made a lot of long term friends this way. In one case I saw a guy riding his bike with a 2yo on the back so we chased them down and asked if they wanted to hang out and do bike nerd stuff together. That was almost 6 years ago and we're still friends

robbyking··on Ask HN: Where have you found community outside of work?
When my mom moved to a new city I recommended she look for a hiking Meetup as a way to make some friends, and she ended up meeting her future husband there!
robbyking··on Ask HN: Where have you found community outside of work?
> I notice a lot of posters seek out tech communities. While I get why a nerd would want to do that, I have a different tendency.

Absolutely! I genuinely enjoy writing code at work, but I literally never do it in my spare time. I already spend a greater number of waking hours in front of my computer than I do with my friends and family (or playing music, or mountain biking, or...).

robbyking··on Almost 200k Job Cuts in Tech Pushes New Grads to Wall Street
That's really funny, my story is almost exactly the same. I was working an hourly job out of high school and my roommate was a web developer who not only made about 4x what I did (this was 1998), but he also got to wear jeans and death metal shirts to work and play Half Life at lunch. I bought an HTML for Dummies book, built a small portfolio of skateboarding websites and was hired at his company a few months later.

25 years later I'm a still working in software (though not on the web), and my motivation for doing so has changed very little.

robbyking··on Same Stop: Life after 26 years as a programmer for Apple
I genuinely enjoy writing code at work (the same way I enjoy doing crossword puzzles), but I literally never do it in my spare time. I already spend a greater number of waking hours in front of my computer than I do with my family (or playing music or mountain biking or…), so even though writing code at home isn’t on my list of priorities it doesn’t mean I lack of enthusiasm, it just means that itch is already being scratched.
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