neweroldguy's comments

On: Ask HN: Is it just me?

[neweroldguy]

It’s tough because at scale you can always find some poor schmuck that’s a perfectly decent sort and has run into pricks over and over. “Maybe it’s me?” the poor fucker opines. And well-meaning folks like you or me will suggest the “asshole rule” — if everyone’s an asshole, you’re the asshole — and we’ll be right in general but not in this one unfortunate case.

But you just can’t tell which is which from where we’re sitting.

So, OP… probably you’re the asshole, but maybe not.

[strawdude → neweroldguy]

i've worked in the office and in the non-office environment. i have problem working with the office people - i can't trust them when they say - "it works" or "i will do it".

i'm in a cycle. i quit software eng job hating everything, everbody, and software engineering (which i very like). i go to work away from computers. my happines goes up, my optimism goes up, making software makes me happy. then i say to myself: i am good working with people. if i can do it here then i can do it in an IT company. The IT company turnouts as an unorganized mess with dumb people pretending to be experts.

On: Show HN: Speed up your site by running JavaScript when the browser is idle

[neweroldguy]

This is just a generic “old man shouting at clouds” complaint at this point. You’re not engaging with the material at all.

On: Extremely Linear Git History

[neweroldguy]

This is what I do unless I’m working with a large number of people on the feature branch (which is rare, usually that would be multiple branches).

You get the equivalent of “mergeless” history (just restrict your git log to merge commits) but can dig into the individual feature histories easily.

On: Why Meta’s latest large language model survived only three days online

[neweroldguy]

> How would anyone think releasing this was a good idea?

Why would it not be? A model built on any consistent large data set could be interesting I’d expect.

But just because the data set has some semantic property, that doesn’t mean that a model built from it will necessarily generate text that had the same property (in this case, “being scientifically correct”). The real question is why would anyone think that?

[p0pcult → neweroldguy]

Good points on both sides. I think the answer to your second question is, "first mover advantage, even if the product is bad"

On: Styling form states without JavaScript

[neweroldguy]

Many people are significantly less technically savvy than you might expect. Every form really needs all of these conventions if you want to make your software as widely usable as possible (which is all consumer software at least, or should be).

So in fact I think it is the rule, not the exception.

Unfortunately you have to do a dumb JS dance to get these reasonable affordances. Hard to blame people for not reimplementing all this shit even if it’s critically useful for many folks.

[som → neweroldguy]

I'll have to respectfully disagree. Not with your first sentence, that's true enough, but everything else.

On: The Navy SEAL–ification of Nerf

[neweroldguy]

Long stick, big dick!

But also, plenty of means, good genes. You are right, it’s real deep in there.

It’s frustrating when you catch it in your own thought processes! I honestly recall when dating seeing a physically attractive potential partner and thinking “they seem nice”…

On: Story: “It would be career limiting..."

[neweroldguy]

If the only thing between business failure and business success was contact with users, there’d be a lot fewer failed businesses.

Sometimes you just don’t see it, and that’s ok. Not everything is “I would have succeeded if only…”

On: Show HN: Word Tower – A simple daily word puzzle

[neweroldguy]

I found the letters shifting around as you used them to be frustrating and confusing. I also wasn’t sure whether unused letters remain or are replaced between rounds.

Nevertheless I enjoyed it well enough… the one time I got to play it

On: Twitter Blue for $8/Month

[neweroldguy]

Thanks for clarifying, this is an insightful interpretation.

On: Was Jack Welch the greatest CEO of his day, or the worst?

[neweroldguy]

This is literally what they sell though. It’s like going to a restaurant and complaining that they ask you to pay for your meal.

[jasonlotito → neweroldguy]

I know when I got to a restaurant what I'm getting myself into.

I guess I just need to equate substack URLs with deceit, hostile reading patterns, and substandard content. Though, someone sharing out substack links that apparently they wrote should be seen as advertising and treated as such.

[bumby → jasonlotito]

Or, alternatively, we need to stop constantly expecting content for free. (I'm saying as a society, not you personally)