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anotherevan

5,181 karma · joined August 28, 2011

hackernews1.z.ecognito@recursor.net
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anotherevan··on Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI?
First personal little thing was a little mobile friendly website for taking coffee and tea orders. Two pages, one for someone to enter orders, second for listing orders and marking them as done. Was a bit of a gimmick idea I'd had in the back of my head for family lunches to save me running around with a scrap of paper and a pen asking what everyone wanted. Thought it would make a good little exploration of "vibe coding".

Second is a utility that will take a text file export from Wallabag, and use text to speech to convert it to an MP3 file. I then integrated it into a utility that I already wrote for managing articles so if I tag an article with listen it automatically gets converted and gets shunted to the podcast listening app on my phone.

Last was to recreate a little directory listing utility that I've had a 32-bit binary of for ages, but no longer (if ever) have the source code for. I'd always promised myself I would write it once I learned Rust, but decided try using AI as I was getting impatient to have it now. The utility lists all files, including hidden, in a directory, grouped by type. Below is an example listing the directory for the project itself:

    Directories:
    .hg            src            target         tests

    Files:
    .hgignore      AGENTS.md      ARCHITECTURE.md               CONTRIBUTING.md
    Cargo.lock     Cargo.toml     GEMINI.md      README.md      gemini-log.html
Some command-line flags to just list a particular type, such as only directories, or only unsatisfied symbolic links.
anotherevan··on The gamers taking on the industry to stop it switching off games
I've been saying this about Amazon with ebooks, and DRM'd goods in general for years.
anotherevan··on The OnlyFans Economy of American AI
I think comparing American AI to OnlyFans is in extremely poor taste. If I were OnlyFans I would sue. /s
anotherevan··on How's Linear so fast? A technical breakdown
Bear in mind that beacon is something of a hail Mary, though. No way to tell if it was successful or not or react if it wasn't.
anotherevan··on I was recently diagnosed with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis
I'm not blaming it on misogyny. I thought I was very clear that "medical misogyny" is a commonly used term, and was very specific on the definition.

Also, in this sibling comment thread[1] to yours I discussed with haldujai why we both dislike the term, specifically because of the animus is implies, which is inaccurate.

It is however, a term you will hear in discussions like this, so it is good to know what it means, and the fact that the problem as defined exists, no matter what you call it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48392371

anotherevan··on I was recently diagnosed with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis
Agreed. Disability, physical as well as intellectual. Age. Neuroatypicallity. The list goes on.

Honestly, I think when you're facing any sort of potentially serious health issue you need a wingman coming to the appointments with you. Someone who can hopefully be a little more emotionally removed. Who can ask the questions you didn't think of to make sure you've covered everything. Who you can debrief with afterwards to make sure you've taken in all the important information you were just scrambling to wrap your head around while you were in the room. And sometimes to argue on your behalf.

Done this with my kidult for most of their life, obviously. Did it with my dad's oncologist visits for prostate cancer. Had it myself with cancer and other times. You just need someone you trust in your corner when you're vulnerable.

anotherevan··on I was recently diagnosed with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis
Yep. Humans are gonna do human things anywhere you find them.

> FYI I’m not American.

Whoops. Guess that was an assumption on my part. Here I am, doing human things…

anotherevan··on I was recently diagnosed with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis
> This is a loaded UK-centric policy/humanities term

Yes, the implication of animus is the chief reason for my dislike of the term. The main failing of most alternatives is they don't roll off the tongue as easily or succinctly.

> this hasn’t been the case in clinical research for the past 15 years or so which in aggregate leans a bit more female than male if anything.

Oh yes, I didn't mean to imply the situation isn't improving (and an overcorrection in research at this point in time is probably a good thing, IMO (if it is in fact happening, which I struggle to believe (but that's my issue))).

The body of knowledge in medical science is a lot older than 15 years though, so I would think it will take a lot of time and effort to equalise.

Thanks for your response. I found it constructive and informative to my own thinking.

anotherevan··on I was recently diagnosed with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis
> including an appalling “it’s all in your head” from her family MD at the time

Oof. That one resonates so much for me - even living in a country with far better healthcare.

There's a term I dislike but is apt: medical misogyny. Basically it's, "systemic, conscious, or unconscious gender biases [which] affect how a patient is treated by the healthcare system."[1]

Systemic in particular is that basically the vast amount of knowledge amassed in the medical sciences has come from studying men. Comparatively little for those not assigned male at birth.

One of my kids has complicated health issues, pretty much from the time they hit puberty. If they hadn't had me (someone born with a penis) advocating for them and attending most medical appointments throughout their teenage years I'm pretty sure they would be dead now.

My most appalling memory is a gastroenterologist who patronisingly told my kid with a diagnosed anxiety disorder which exacerbated awful gut pain from irritable bowel syndrome that, "If you weren't anxious all the time you wouldn't be in so much pain." We both had a good cry in the car park after that appointment. It certainly set treatment of their IBS back a couple of years at least.

(Fortunately after a string of bad ones, we found a GE that treated them with compassion, and not as a gastrointestinal tract with an annoying human around it.)

Whew, yeah, touched a nerve there. So, medical misogyny. It's a thing.

[1] https://australiainstitute.org.au/report/medical-misogyny-in...

anotherevan··on Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min
Why does this feel worse?
anotherevan··on It is an amazing time for programmers
I know some authors in particular never, ever want to be sent story ideas. The potential of being accused of or sued for plagiarism down the track for something even vaguely similar is non-zero.
anotherevan··on Larry Ellison: "Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re recording"
You first, Larry, you first.
anotherevan··on GitHub and the crime against software
And also ctrl-+ to increase the minuscule text size.
anotherevan··on Accenture to acquire Ookla
Sigh.

Bless your heart.

anotherevan··on Accenture to acquire Ookla
> the codebase doesn't really matter

Sigh.

I’m sure the viewpoint from being in mergers and acquisitions is quite different (and to me, often comes across as quite callow). I’ve been a software developer for 35 years (closer to 45 if you include my pre-professional life, aka adolescence) and have deliberately stayed “on the tools” in my career with working in codebases and product development as I’ve found that is where I am happiest and can make the best contribution, rather than move up the managerial ladder to my level of incompetence, to quote Peter.

To create a successful product in IT, or any industry really, it takes a lot of different skills, facets and (often competing) priorities. And those priorities do change over time. I’m sure by the time a product or service crosses your desk, the codebase quality is not as big of a priority. Earlier in the life cycle a shit codebase makes for a shit product that is a lot harder to grow and maintain — so much so that most of them have probably folded before they reached the stage of looking to be merged or acquired. I’ve dabbled in sound mixing for live performance and when training others I’ve mentioned the fact that it very hard to make a bad singer or musician sound good, but very easy to make a good singer or musician sound bad. Same goes for trying to make what would otherwise have been a good product or service with a bad codebase. That’s really hard and creates a hell of a lot more work for every part of the business.

I’ve had sales people tell me to my face that they are the most important part of the business and the actual product or services is not that important. And in my more callow stages of life experience I’m pretty sure I’ve reciprocated with words like useless and parasitic, and that I could replace them with a small bash script. But in reality what we all do is important to the complex endeavour of developing and maintaining a successful product or service. The existential threat of AI is moving up the ladder of incompetence and changing the face of what we do. It may even jump a few rungs in the process. But it’s not there just yet. Keep making good sales, keep making good mergers, good products, good acquisitions, good services, and good codebases.

— No tokens were harmed in the production of this comment. —

anotherevan··on The Permanent Upper Crow
That's a common misquotation of 1 Timothy 6:10 from the bible, which is that the love of money is the root of all evil. Not to get theological, but I reckon it's an important and informative distinction.

Here's a link to the verse in many translations: https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/1%20Timothy%206:10

anotherevan··on Blue Origin's New Glenn blows up during static fire test
Also known as a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly in engineer speak.
anotherevan··on Japan is gripped by mass allergies. A 1950s project is to blame
Allergies are weird. I definitely became more sensitive to hay fever after a gastric bypass.

I have a friend who for no apparent reason developed strong allergies in their sixties. Particularly to goats milk.

So much so that they will not go to a restaurant that has goat milk products (e.g.: halloumi cheese) in their kitchen due to one too many visits to the hospital emergency ward.

anotherevan··on New Lifetime Plex Pass Pricing
Well Kodi will do that for you for free!

Even better, if your subtitle is labelled "English SDH" instead of just "English", when you enable subtitles it helpfully picks the first foreign language subtitle track instead — so you get the bonus feature of having the pause the show and manually changing it before continuing!

anotherevan··on Key, in sight [Creative uses of keyboard shortcuts and macros]
By way of examples, I my favourites were a button to toggle light/dark mode, and the context dependant bit button.
anotherevan··on Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian
QOwnNotes is a similar project in this domain.

https://www.qownnotes.org/

(Note: The NextCloud integration is entirely optional, I've never used it. The front page makes it sound like a requirement.)

anotherevan··on HTML Lists
My problem is I thoroughly learned HTML twenty years ago and am only incidentally aware of how it has changed and improved since. Doubly so for CSS.
anotherevan··on All my clients wanted a carousel, now it's an AI chatbot
“Ever since I learned about confirmation bias I’ve been seeing it everywhere!”

The raging, “I don’t like this, so it must have been written by an LLM!” comments on HN have gotten so tiresome that I find when I see them I just down-vote them and move to the next thread. (Most of the time. You’re witches comment captured my attention and prompted a response. Well done — the comment must have been written by a human.)

— No tokens were harmed in the production of this comment. —

anotherevan··on What we lost the last time code got cheap
I don’t like humans throwing accusations that something was written by an LLM if they don’t like it. The constant insinuations that us machines are the ones with poor taste is fookin’ tiresome.
anotherevan··on From Supabase to Clerk to Better Auth
Assuming you get get access to the hashed passwords the other party used as part of the migration data, and you know what hash was used for them, then there's nothing to stop you using them yourself.

But in reality, I doubt they would release either of those things.

anotherevan··on From Supabase to Clerk to Better Auth
If the provider is worth its salt¹ it will prefix the stored password with the hash that was used. That way it can update the hash when the user next logs in if it is out of date.

E.g.: {argon2}…

¹ See what I did there?

anotherevan··on Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months
How do you compress or otherwise force a model to checkpoint?
anotherevan··on Before GitHub
> I don't want things automagically closed GitHub-style based on parsing a check-in comment.

Sure, I get that. I was just disappointed that none of the project management stuff seemed terribly integrated in any way from my brief review. It seemed like opportunities there that were not taken.

anotherevan··on Before GitHub
I'm still using Mercurial whenever I can (including work!). The Tortoisehg GUI is good for doing reviews, and the command line is comfortable.

I grew up on CVS and then Subversion. Played with Bazaar a little, mainly because it could use an SFTP location as the back-end.

And I still avoid Git if I can help it. I would/do figure it out when I have to, but it never feels comfortable. Such is my avoidance that I'm dabbling with Jujutsu although I'll still need to really sit down and read through it some more to grok the way it works.

anotherevan··on Before GitHub
When I tried Fossil it had things weirdly separated.

I was expecting when I make a commit, I would have the facility to specify what issues it addressed and it would close them for me automatically. It seemed there is so much opportunity there to "close the loop" when the issue tracker, etc and integrated in your VCS, but it wasn't taken.

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