Hacker News Reader

marbartolomeon Wikipedia says traffic is falling due to AI search summaries and social video

Yeah, I was very surprised by that. Article says:

> “younger generations are seeking information on social video platforms rather than the open web.”

YouTube I'll buy it, but the search function in Instagram and tiktok is beyond useless!

marbartolomeon I built physical album cards with NFC tags to teach my son music discovery

Like many others, I also built my own version: a raspberry pi with an NFC tag reader would map the ID to a spotify url to play the album on my google voice assistant.

The fun part about mine is that I slapped the tags to mini vynil coasters, and made a casing that looked like a mini vynil player, so it looks pretty cute. And you can browse your minivynils physically like you would with real records, which was the experience I was after.

See on github: https://github.com/coconauts/minilos

A similar project project I made is a floppy disk drive that loads retro games from floppy disks: https://coconauts.net/blog/2025/07/25/nfc-floppy-disks/

marbartolomeon Ask HN: Has anyone else been unemployed for over two years?

Been unemployed since 2018.

It started with a maternity leave. Then after a year, I tried going back to my old job and it was a disaster, so I decided to delay it for a bit longer. Then COVID hit. Then I had another child. Then one day you realize, "has it really been 5 years since I stopped working?"

Coming back at that point felt impossible: I wanted a part time job, my skills were outdated and rusty - I didn't even bother applying anywhere, I wouldn't stand a chance. I started searching for alternatives: small freelance gigs, bounties, personal projects... None were a success.

This year I mustered the courage to start applying to jobs again, only to realize that my most pessimistic fears were totally falling short.

I haven't burned all my rope yet, but It's not looking great.

If you're wondering: the way I'm surviving financially is because my spouse does have a full-time job, so we adapted to live with that.

marbartolomeon Why language models hallucinate

Anyone else getting an annoying auto-translation of the article? Browsing from Spain and it seems impossible to toggle to the original English writeup. Hating this trend.

marbartolomeon Kazeta: An operating system that brings the console gaming experience of 90s

I did something like this a while ago. What I did is upon reading the NFC tag with a raspberry pi, I'd call the spotify API to play an album in my google home.

Here's the repo: https://github.com/coconauts/minilos

marbartolomeon Margin debt surges to record high

What's it called?

marbartolomeon Apple's requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon

Not gonna defend Apple here, but I think it's also kinda sucky that Pateon is simply pushing the problem downward to the end users. They should have made a decision to either take the hit themselves or leave the apple store altogether. But of course this is too much to ask from a company who also has a dominant position in the market of creator revenue, so more enshitificacion for everyone.

marbartolomeon Two nights of broken sleep can make people feel years older, finds study

Recent take of science is that co-sleeping is actually safer (reduces SIDS) if taking a couple of precautions.

Parent under drugs/medications (including smoking) is mainly what drove the death statistics in cosleeping.

Don't have links to studies but is what is teached in official parental education courses in spain atm.

marbartolomeon A steep rise of Hacker News in Google rankings

> 4chan will probably be around long after the death of every other social media website

4chan: the roaches of the Internet :)

marbartolomeon Oceans May Have Already Seen 1.7°C of Warming

> I like Bill Gate's book on the topic.

So what's the book?

marbartolomeon I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

I live in the south of spain, and AC is already a necessity in the summer. Days with 40° and nights with 30° are becoming increasingly common.

Also the water comes out of the tap at like 35-38°, unheated. I've had plants die when watering them with this. At this rate I'm going to have to install some sort of water cooler too.

marbartolomeon How a four-day workweek works, from the companies pulling it off

This!!! Kids (where i live) go to school 9-2, and it is a true nightmare to extend those hours to fit with parents longer work schedule. Let's just make both the same!

Also free afternoons every day, better than a longer weekend.

marbartolomeon Organic Maps

One thing I find missing from most alternative map apps is satellite view - I find it very useful for orienting myself and for "exploration".

OSM supports microsoft satellite maps as a layer - any way to add it to organic maps too? I do like the simpler interface.

marbartolomeon Threads: The BBC drama which affected a generation of viewers

If you want to experience the horrors of war from a videogame try "this war of mine".

marbartolomeon Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?

https://coconauts.net/blog

Where me and my partner write up our pet projects and experiments. Mostly arduino and gamedev but there's a bit of everything. One of them made it to the HN front page once: https://coconauts.net/blog/2016/08/01/retrophies/

However, it's been pretty much on hiatus since we've had kids and all of our free time is now consumed by them :)

marbartolomeon The EV Transition Is Harder Than Anyone Thinks

I'm surprised nobody else echoes this argument, is the US really that car dependant?

I think micromobilty and improvements in transportation on demand would really reduce the need for car ownership.

Already in big cities with good public transport cars don't make much sense anymore, but I believe suburbs will follow.

marbartolomeon Girls perform better academically in almost all countries (2015)

Or perhaps we are stricter when raising girls, so they become more compliant.

"don't be so loud, that's not lady-like" "don't play in the dirt, you'll ruin your dress" "it's uncomfortable, I know, but you have to look pretty" "girls don't like sports, here, sit down and play with your dolls"

It's subtle things, but a million of them may make a difference. There's a lot more rules for girls than boys, they are used to spend their time in quieter activities, etc.

marbartolomeon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (December 2018)

SEEKING WORK - Remote freelance

My name is Javier Rengel, I'm a backend developer with 10 years of experience, currently offering my services as a remote contractor.

I have a range of experience with a variety of architectures and environments - from microservices, to massive data processing pipelines, to just plain old REST API backends, with languages ranging from Scala to Python to NodeJS. I'm also familiar with the AWS platform and have experience as a devops on docker+kubernetes environments.

I can offer my help as a code contributor, delivering features fast and efficiently, but also helping you architect or optimize your systems.

I'm a very efficient remote worker, offering full transparency and very lean communication (been doing remote development for the last two years). I'm based in Europe, but I'm willing to adapt to odd hours if necessary to have some overlap with teams in the other side of the globe.

Find more about me at...

- personal page http://rengel.me

- CV https://rephus.github.io/CV/public/cv.pdf

- linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/javier-rengel/en

- github https://github.com/rephus

- blog http://coconauts.net

If you're interested, reach me at javier - a.t. - rengel.me. I'm available inmediately (for full or part time) and my rates are very friendly :)

marbartolomeon Retrophies: achievements system for emulators

Merged! ;D

marbartolomeon Retrophies: achievements system for emulators

I agree with you, achievements, when well designed, should trigger for things that are hard enough to provide, well, a sense of achievement!

However, for the mario demo, what I wanted was to showcase the achievements feature to people who likely are not gonna play further than the first level. This is why I abused silly achievements at the start.

marbartolomeon Retrophies: achievements system for emulators

Author speaking. I had no idea that thing existed =) But yes, retrophies seems to be exactly the same idea, implemented the same way as well. Plus with a mature community already!

Takes a bit the motivation off continuing the work on retrophies, although it was an interesting and fun experiment nevertheless.

marbartolomeon Retrophies: achievements system for emulators

To me achievements make more sense when you count the community aspect. They can be humorous or motivating while playing standalone, but usually games have their own ways of providing a sense of progression and achievement (or they will be boring!). Achievements become really interesting when you compare them against the community, and you can find extra motivation in "oh, only 10% of the players have managed to do this, lets go for it!".

Further development ideas for retrophies inclued building on this community aspect. Although now that I've discovered retroachievements.org I'm not sure it's worth the duplicated effort :P

marbartolomeon Retrophies: achievements system for emulators

Hello, author here! Check this blogpost for an explanation =) http://coconauts.net/blog/2016/08/01/retrophies/