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brianmcc commented on Are you willing to pay $100k a year per developer on AI?   theregister.com/2025/08/1... · Posted by u/rntn
austin-cheney · 10 days ago
I hear this a lot and it is mathematically incorrect.

Frameworks solve two business problems:

1. Candidate selection

2. Clearer division of labor

That’s it. Everything else is an imaginary quality from the developer. In most cases the well reasoned arguments from developers in favor of large frameworks can be performed faster without the frameworks, both in human writing speed and software execution speed. Typically these imaginary qualities taken a defensive tone from developers who have never learned to execute without the frameworks, which becomes an argument from ignorance because you know what you are arguing for but not what you are arguing against.

At any rate the result is the same that the article makes about AI: output of brittle toolchains.

brianmcc · 10 days ago
I mean maybe if you hear it a lot, there's a reason for that?

Frameworks may not bring magical perfection but they bring a lot of objective benefit to the table.

brianmcc commented on iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras   candid9.com/phone-camera/... · Posted by u/sergiotapia
poulpy123 · a month ago
> and I'll never be able to teach passers-by when they take a group picture for us

Well, you don't need to teach photography to passerby, just to tell them to look there and push this button. It's not more complicated than on a phone, maybe even less. But it may look more intimidating to old a camera, it's true

brianmcc · a month ago
Then they half press the shutter button and achieve only a brief moment of auto focus :-D
brianmcc commented on iPhone 16 cameras vs. traditional digital cameras   candid9.com/phone-camera/... · Posted by u/sergiotapia
FredPret · a month ago
My entry-level mirrorless camera with its kit lens can take photos that blow my recent-model iPhone out of the water.

Add a nice lens and there's no comparison.

However:

- The iPhone is always in my pocket (until I crack and buy a flip-phone)

- The iPhone picture always turns out, but the Canon takes a modicum of skill, which my wife is not interested in, and I'll never be able to teach passers-by when they take a group picture for us

- The iPhone picture quality, though worse, is still fine

Looking back at travel and family pictures, it has been very much worth it for me to have a dedicated camera.

brianmcc · a month ago
>> The iPhone picture always turns out, but the Canon takes a modicum of skill, which my wife is not interested in, and I'll never be able to teach passers-by when they take a group picture for us

This is why my Canon 80D sits and gathers dust. Too many family moments fluffed, vs my Android's basically 100% hit rate. Yes this is largely a skill issue on my part, which is sad, but modern phone photos are more than adequate these days.

brianmcc commented on The first non-opoid painkiller   worksinprogress.news/p/th... · Posted by u/ortegaygasset
brianmcc · 2 months ago
You can buy two packs of 16 each, enough for 4 days usage at 2 per dose, 4 times per day, after which point if you still need them you maybe have a bigger problem. Or can just restock. What's "fantastically stupid" about it?
brianmcc · 2 months ago
Wife: good day at the office dear?

Me: yep argued with some strangers on HN about how daft/wise UK's paracetamol laws are, highly fulfilling!

:-)

brianmcc commented on The first non-opoid painkiller   worksinprogress.news/p/th... · Posted by u/ortegaygasset
theoreticalmal · 2 months ago
My wife and I got colds while vacationing in Edinburgh and had a heck of a time before realizing to ask for paracetamol rather than acetaminophen. Also, the rules the UK has for limiting paracetamol purchases to small amount per day are so fantastically stupid.
brianmcc · 2 months ago
You can buy two packs of 16 each, enough for 4 days usage at 2 per dose, 4 times per day, after which point if you still need them you maybe have a bigger problem. Or can just restock. What's "fantastically stupid" about it?
brianmcc commented on Salesforce CEO Claims Half of the Company's Work Is Now Done by AI   gizmodo.com/salesforce-ce... · Posted by u/01-_-
brianmcc · 2 months ago
Ah that distinct phase of the Gartner Hype Cycle where CEOs claim massive amounts of use of Technology X regardless of whatever the underlying reality is
brianmcc commented on Younger generations less likely to have dementia, study suggests   theguardian.com/society/2... · Posted by u/robaato
chatmasta · 3 months ago
That could easily go the other direction. We’re overloading our brains so much that eventually they’ll just shutdown.
brianmcc · 3 months ago
It could but you need a body of evidence for it, plus credible pathways to explain it. So far the greater weight seems to be behind "use it or lose it".
brianmcc commented on I decided to pay off a school’s lunch debt   huffpost.com/entry/utah-s... · Posted by u/dredmorbius
mlyle · 4 months ago
I don't know what the correct answer is.

The tricky thing is, if you let anyone just choose not to pay, there will be plenty of people who are capable of paying who don't bother. In your case, it sounds like your dad was maybe capable of paying but wanted to freeload.

So as long as you're going to charge for lunches, you need to have some kind of enforcement mechanism. Embarrassing the kid ideally would not be part of it.

California pays for it all, but California is a pretty rich state. And if you're a poorer state, you have the choice between eliminating this problem, or addressing many other types of educational need.

brianmcc · 4 months ago
Treat it as the common good and societal investment it actually is, and fund it from central taxation like plenty of other countries do. Problem solved!
brianmcc commented on To 'Reclaim Future-Making', Amazon Workers Published Collection of SciFi Stories   afteramazon.world/... · Posted by u/m463
worldsayshi · 4 months ago
I fear that so much of our story telling is driven by our worst fears. We end up not being able to hold a vision in our head of a good future because of all those fears.

Having fears in the front of your mind makes sense for an animal that can primarily shape their future by avoiding danger. But humans are very much in power of our own destiny. So if all we can imagine is dystopia that's what we get.

That's why we need not only fiction that shows effective resistance to dystopian tendencies, which is important, but (realistic) fiction that depicts stories where we are clearly on our way from something bad towards something much better. Such stories are important because they give us hope and we dearly need hope in those dark hours, to encourage us to act. And to make it more clear to everyone involved what 'act' should mean. I find those types of stories kind of rare. Suggestions are appreciated. C Doctorow and U Le Guin comes to mind.

brianmcc · 4 months ago
This is a really good point.

It rather reminds me of a recent Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad) interview where he lamented what seems to be an emerging excess focus on villains, not "good guys" - and making them way too glamorous:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/vince-gilligan-...

If our fiction is only ever showing us dystopias and villains - it's not hard to see how that could be problematic for the wider collective psyche...

brianmcc commented on Foreign visits into the U.S. fell off a cliff in March   axios.com/2025/04/04/fore... · Posted by u/timvdalen
throwawaymaths · 5 months ago
So, less greenhouse gases?
brianmcc · 5 months ago
Or more, if Canadians travel to Europe instead of the US

u/brianmcc

KarmaCake day1416March 6, 2013
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Scottish freelance software engineer, UK based.
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