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synlatexcon Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (March 2026)

Re: the silent filter, I'm reminded of the McLuhan quote:

"Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world, as the bee of the plant world, enabling it to fecundate and to evolve ever new forms. The machine world reciprocates man's love by expediting his wishes and desires, namely, in providing him with wealth."

synlatexcon Famous Signatures Through History

There's also Geronimo's block-letter signature, which for some reason moves me. Sense in it his resigned adaptation to a shifting world and adoption of a new language, after years of resistance.

synlatexcon Astronomers discover 3I/ATLAS – Third interstellar object to visit Solar System

Primo Levi wrote a short story [1] about this. Our words/measurements are inadequate when tasked with describing the cosmos.

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/02/12/a-tranquil-sta...

synlatexcon Phones track everything but their role in car wrecks

Why not display a Recent Phone Use option when both side buttons of an Apple device is pressed?

* slide to power off * Medical ID * SOS Emergency Call * Recent Phone Use

Report would be high-level -- has phone been unlocked in last 30 minutes, if so, timestamps showing when it was unlocked, for how long, how many finger taps occurred, etc.

That would give law enforcement a quick indication of whether phone was in use. Of course if there are passengers it could be contested. For more detail, they'd have to subpoena as they do now.

synlatexcon The fashion for passion

Reminded of advice my former boss, who spent a decade plus leading an elite military unit, received as he set out in his career:

“Be careful how much you give this organization, because we’ll take it.”

synlatexcon My coffee maker just makes coffee

Reminded of this from an NYT article [1] about Tumblr:

The features Tumblr eliminates are as important to the way it feels as those it adopts. Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital, an early Tumblr investor who sits on its board, says that it is “normal behavior” for a founder to be excited about adding new bells and whistles, but Karp seems excited about doing the opposite: “He’ll tell us, ‘Hey, got a new version coming up — and I took four features out!’"

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/magazine/can-tumblrs-davi...

synlatexcon To be energy-efficient, brains predict their perceptions

Reminded of these lines from a poem:

We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.

synlatexcon Fugitive couple found after 9 months on the lam because of ‘Words with Friends’

Moore said investigators caught a break several months later, saying they were able to track her after she used an app on her new phone. Warfield's defense attorney, Joseph Balter, said later in the hearing that it was Warfield's "Words with Friends" app, which is a game similar to Scrabble.

From there, authorities were able to learn an alias email address Warfield was using, and used that to determine the phone she was using and its location, Moore said. They were arrested by law enforcement including federal agents from the ATF in Baltimore and Louisville, U.S. Deputy Marshals from Indiana, and officers from the Southeast Indiana Regional SWAT Team.

synlatexcon To Get More Replies, Say Less (2017)

Key point here is that most people fail to consider the reader.

synlatexcon I Got My Attention Back (2017)

I'm with you wrt Twitter.

It is an amazing source of information, but much of it is daily drama that is a form of entertainment -- a modern Jerry Springer.

These tweets and videos serve as a conversational currency of sorts. Not sure it's worth it.

synlatexcon I Got My Attention Back (2017)

Yes. This worked well for me.

synlatexcon Show HN: FounderPhone – make customer support personal with SMS

The channel is the value. It's simple and every mobile phone has SMS. No need to keep a browser window open during a chat with support, nor is there a chance you'll miss a chat alert only to discover that the agent, after having waited x minutes, has disconnected, forcing you to start all over.

synlatexcon The Seven-Year Auto Loan (2019)

First I've heard of the suggestion that the cost of a car should be 50% of annual pay. To me that's insane, but then again I view my car as an appliance[0].

[0] https://oppositelock.kinja.com/i-used-to-take-it-as-a-given-...

synlatexcon CollegeHumor shuts down

Reminded of this line from Margin Call:

"So, Mr. Sullivan, why don't you tell me what you think is going on here, and please speak as you might to a young child or a golden retriever. I didn't get here on my brains -- I can assure you of that."

synlatexcon CollegeHumor shuts down

FB's measure of views was dubious (3 seconds, even if the audio was off). So the #s looked great for them, but in reality the majority of views were just glimpses as people scrolled through their news feed.

synlatexcon Dave Clark, The Man Who Built Amazon’s Delivery Machine

There are consultancies that specialize in compensation benchmarking. One is Radford Consulting. They survey companies for pay info. Imagine they also get intel from clients.

synlatexcon Master–Slave Morality

Reminded of this quote from Cannery Row:

"It has always seemed strange to me, the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second."

synlatexcon Police blow up innocent man's home. No recompense, court rules

Exactly.

Recall an NYT article[1] on the topic.

It describes how police chiefs will make a spectacle out of their newly purchased tanks or whatever, even bringing them to schools for kids to check out.

Best quote was from a police chief who hadn't been swept up in the mania for military gear and vehicles:

“I go to schools,” he said. “But I bring ‘Green Eggs and Ham.’”

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/09/us/war-gear-flows-to-poli...

synlatexcon Perfectly Cropped

My mom had the same issue the other day. Even I didn't realize the save option was concealed below the fold. My workaround was having her long press the photo in iMessage, which reveals a prompt with an option to save.

synlatexcon Ask HN: How do you share/organize knowledge at work and life?

There are a couple sections, but for the most part it's chronological, with new entries at the bottom. Started adding dates to new notes/quotes/observations about 5 years ago.

It's a sprawling mess, so I rely on search to find what I'm after.

I reference it often -- it's like an extension of my brain.

synlatexcon The Demise of Physical Comedy

Seconded.

To me physical comedy is about physicality: the body, its gestures and movements.

Can it involve pain or the possibility of death? Sure, but that's not essential.

I was always a fan of John Ritter in Three's Company. He'd flail about in every episode, almost falling or tripping or just making crazy expressions with his face.

synlatexcon Ask HN: How do you share/organize knowledge at work and life?

Same here, though mine is one gigantic text file that dates back ~20 years.

Expect to continue updating/referencing it for decades to come, bar some calamity.

synlatexcon The most successful people are just the luckiest, a new computer model confirms

Reminded of this line from Paranoid Park: "Grownups do stuff for money. There is no other reason."

synlatexcon Young People Are Going to Save Us All from Office Life

Glad some companies are coming around to to this. People have different values and work styles, and for too long there has been just one option on the white-collar work menu: 40-60 hours, mostly at a desk.

synlatexcon Evernote Blows Up the ‘Fail Fast’ Gospel

> There were just numerous places in which you could see that man-hours were being placed in the wrong places.

I once read an interview with the founder of Genius, and something he said stuck with me: “I guarantee that 90% of you are working on the wrong things, and you think you’re working hard, but you might as well not be going to work at all."

Spot-on.

synlatexcon Consumers Are Becoming Wise to Your Nudge

Recall hearing a similar story about Kayak years ago. They found users were less likely to trust the search results if the page loaded too quickly. IIRC they found that 7 seconds suggested the right amount of "effort."

synlatexcon Life is fractal, but markets are square

"And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery" - Whitman

synlatexcon Dark Patterns at Scale: Findings from a Crawl of 11K Shopping Websites

This is called drip pricing. It's illegal in many countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drip_pricing

synlatexcon The Problem of the Aging Surgeon (2009)

Retiring at 60 would pose financial challenges for many people in the US.

Nearly 20% of 70-year-olds are working now. Source: https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/civilian-labor-force-particip....

For many, this is an economic necessity. For well-heeled surgeons, it may be more of a choice -- the desire for extra financial cushion.