<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: DevDesmond</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=DevDesmond</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:31:28 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=DevDesmond" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DevDesmond in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I got addicted to scrolling content on my phone, so I built a digital pet whose growth and well-being depends on you staying off your phone! This way, if I spend all night scrolling the browser, my pet will get depression.<p>Unlike similar apps such as Focus Friend or Forest, which use active timers to police screen time, my app is an inversion that works like an idle game; All screen time is tracked all day, (with double the punishments at night), and upon check-in, you get feedback on your device usage.<p><a href="https://automatisolutions.com/products/phreepet/" rel="nofollow">https://automatisolutions.com/products/phreepet/</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 12 Apr 2026 21:58:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47745000</link><dc:creator>DevDesmond</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47745000</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47745000</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DevDesmond in "Halt and Catch Fire: TV’s best drama you’ve probably never heard of (2021)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Project: Hail Mary, a fantasy world where geopolitics are trivially simple and every state in the world collectively agrees how great it would be to cede power and work together. (And therefore enable a genuinely fun and amazing science story which was the actual focus of the book to begin with, 10/10).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 18 Feb 2026 15:09:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47061787</link><dc:creator>DevDesmond</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47061787</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47061787</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DevDesmond in "I love the work of the ArchWiki maintainers"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Arguing with an LLM is silly because you’re dealing with two adversarial effects at once:<p>- As the context window grows the LLM will become less intelligent [1]
- Once your conversation takes a bad turn, you have effectively “poisoned” the context window, and are asking an algorithm to predict the likely continuation of text that is itself incorrect [2]. (It emulating the “belligerent side of OSS maintenance” is probably quite true!)<p>If you detect or suspect misunderstanding from an LLM, it is almost always best to remove the inaccuracies and try again. (You could, for example, ask your question again in a new chat, but include your terminal output + clarifications to get ahead of the misunderstanding, similar to how you might ask a fresh Stack Overflow question).<p>(It’s also a lot less fun to argue with an LLM, because there’s no audience like there is in the comments section with which to validate your rhetorical superiority!)<p>1 - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44564248">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44564248</a>
2 - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43991256">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43991256</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 15 Feb 2026 19:50:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47026858</link><dc:creator>DevDesmond</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47026858</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47026858</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DevDesmond in "Is it a bubble?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Text is an LLMs input and output, but, under the hood, the transformer network is capable of far more than mere re-assembly and remix of text. Transformers can approximate turing completeness as their size scales, and they can encode entire algorithms in their weights. Therefore, I'd argue they can do far more than reassemble and remix. These aren't just Markov models anymore.<p>(I'd also argue that "understanding" and "functional brain" are unfalsifiable comparisons. What exactly distinguishes a functional brain from a turing machine? Chess once required a functional brain to play, but has now been surpassed by computation. Saying "jobs that require a human brain" is tautological without any further distinction).<p>Of course, LLMs are definitely missing plenty of brain skills like working in continuous time, with persistent state, with agency, in physical space, etc. But to say that an LLM "never will" is either semantic, (you might call it something other than an LLM when next generation capabilities are integrated), tautological (once it can do a human job, it's no longer a job that requires a human), or anthropocentric hubris.<p>That said, who knows what the time scale looks like for realizing such improvements – (decades, centuries, millennia).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 11 Dec 2025 00:51:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46226239</link><dc:creator>DevDesmond</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46226239</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46226239</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DevDesmond in "Is it a bubble?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Perhaps consider that I still think coding by prompting is just another layer of abstraction on top of coding.<p>I'm my mind, writing the prompt that generates the code is somewhat analogous to writing the code that generates the assembly. (Albeit, more stochastically, the way psychology research might be analogous to biochemistry research).<p>Different experts are still required at different layers of abstraction, though. I don't find it depressing when people show preference for working at different levels of complexity / tooling, nor excitement about the emergence of new tools that can enable your creativity to build, automate, and research. I think scorn in any direction is vapid.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 11 Dec 2025 00:11:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46225949</link><dc:creator>DevDesmond</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46225949</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46225949</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DevDesmond in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (November 2025)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Location: Boston / Somerville MA<p>Remote: Yes, or Hybrid/In Person<p>Willing to relocate: No<p>Technologies: My current favorite stack for building products is with TypeScript, React, (or React Native), PostgreSQL, Vite, Linux (Arch, Debian, or Ubuntu), Bash, and Nginx<p>Résumé/CV: <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fjHlGavAHEn1CK2-mDI-FPkuLISK1hU_/view?usp=drive_link" rel="nofollow">https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fjHlGavAHEn1CK2-mDI-FPkuLIS...</a><p>Email: jdesmond@automatisolutions.com<p>LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdesmond/" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshdesmond/</a><p>Hello! I'm a fullstack app developer. I can build a product or own features from start to finish. I would love to join your team or help out, whether as a contractor or full time hire!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 04 Nov 2025 01:56:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45806706</link><dc:creator>DevDesmond</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45806706</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45806706</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DevDesmond in "Learn to play Go"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I know that UI!<p><a href="https://lichess.org/learn" rel="nofollow">https://lichess.org/learn</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 28 Sep 2025 03:27:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45401514</link><dc:creator>DevDesmond</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45401514</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45401514</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DevDesmond in "Vibe coding cleanup as a service"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I like to keep a personal recipe book of prompt modifiers. For bash scripting I often write my prompt and then copy-paste the following to prompt:<p>```
When making edits to the script, ensure the script remains<p>- Idempotent
- Functional after a fresh install of a virtual machine<p>Additionally, keep things stupid simple and avoid:<p>- Unnecessary error checks
 - Defining colors and custom logging functions
 - Bells and wistles
 - Backups
 - Branching Paths
 - Script Arguments
```<p>I find it helps cull back the LLM 's overenthusiasm for abstractions.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 21 Sep 2025 14:13:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45322926</link><dc:creator>DevDesmond</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45322926</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45322926</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DevDesmond in "Pitfalls of premature closure with LLM assisted coding"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>CSS or Tailwind has always been a tough one for me. I have banks of flashcards to help me remember stuff, (align-items, justify-content, grid-template-columns, etc.). Even with all that effort and many projects of practice, though, I've never had things click.<p>LLM assisted programming, however? – instant flow state. Instead of thinking in code I can think in product, and I can go straight from a pencil sketch to describing it as a set of constraints, and then say, "make sure it's ARIA compliant and responsive", and 95% of the work is done.<p>I feel similarly about configuration heavy files like Nginx or something. I really don't care to spend my time reading documentation, I'd rather copy paste the entire docs into the context window and then describe what I want in English.<p>Also good for SQL. And library code for a one off tool or API. And Bash scripting.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 17 Jun 2025 20:00:03 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44303285</link><dc:creator>DevDesmond</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44303285</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44303285</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DevDesmond in "Human coders are still better than LLMs"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>From my experience, (and to borrow terminology from a HN thread not long ago), I've found that once a chat goes bad, your context is "poisoned"; It's auto completing from previous text that is nonsense, so, further text generation from there exist in the world of nonexistent nonsense as well. It's much better to edit your message and try again.<p>I also think that language matters - An Emacs function is much more esoteric than say, JavaScript, Python, or Java. If I ever find myself looking for help with something that's not in the standard library, I like provide extra context, such as examples from the documentation.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 30 May 2025 05:09:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44133075</link><dc:creator>DevDesmond</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44133075</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44133075</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DevDesmond in "Nick Cave's thoughts on a ChatGPT poem (2023)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think the magic is often in how you prompt. The best written art I've gotten from Claude was after a very extended dialogue; eventually, in the same context window, I prompted for an essay, framed by a short poem. The results were, to me, beautiful, and extraordinarily relevant in a cathartic way. Elements of my own personal "meaning and substance" ended up getting synthesized into what I would certainly consider poetry.<p>If you ask an LLM to "Write me a poem", expect the equivalent of what others are calling analogous to hotel art: generic and inoffensive. However, if you inject your personalized soul and suffering into the context window, there's no reason not to expect the transformation of that soul into indistinguishably human-like prose.<p>I won't share the full content, because it was personalized to me and my moment.<p>I am quite curious though, how art without an author will grow into society.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 29 Mar 2025 18:16:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43517404</link><dc:creator>DevDesmond</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43517404</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43517404</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DevDesmond in "Edgar Allan Poe's life was a mess. But his work was in his command"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>There is a Sci-Fi Noir TV show "Altered Carbon" (based on a book) featuring an AI using Edgar Allan Poe as their persona.<p>That Edgar Allan Poe is seminal in both genres makes me appreciate an already amazing character that much more! I would 10/10 recommend anyone watch season one of the series.<p>This thread now has me tempted to finally get into reading Poe himself, (among Lovecraft and the Altered Carbon books for more Poe influenced writing).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 17 Mar 2025 08:00:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43386139</link><dc:creator>DevDesmond</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43386139</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43386139</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DevDesmond in "1D Pac-Man"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>High score: 50060<p>The biggest part of my strategy is to do a lot of stutter steps/dash dancing to try and collect the power up as close to the ghost as possible. Doing so is more likely to lead to a sort of "combo" state where your pacman can spawn kill the ghosts without any additional input. Fast reflexes can keep your combo state going if you know when to stutter step and when to turn back around and start comboing again in the opposite direction Getting your game state into such a combo state is even stronger in the late game as your pacman moves so fast it can almost always set up for a lot of safe kills quickly. And additionally, as you pointed out, by getting a ghost kill for every power up you get, you hasten the speed at which you grow your multiplier</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 03 Jan 2024 16:31:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38856014</link><dc:creator>DevDesmond</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38856014</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38856014</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by DevDesmond in "Ask HN: How do you deal with information and internet addiction?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>For technical solutions, I would recommend the plugin DF YouTube to remove suggested videos on YouTube. You can search for videos but won't have a home page of fun stuff to watch. On my phone I have the Google newsfeed disabled. I also have YouTube and Chrome disabled and two apps that further block me from simply re-activating it, (ActionDash & FocusMe, as well as Google's built in time-limit on the app). If I do have to use Chrome I try to keep it under ten minutes a day for important things.<p>I've found that substantial efforts to get off of platforms that distract me can work, but it's very difficult and should very much be thought of as a hybrid problem of both your personal self, and your technological environment around you. If you're surrounded by distractions, you will find yourself distracted; however, if you simply crave distraction, blocking things will only lead to you getting distracted by the next best source of entertainment.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 08 Feb 2023 17:51:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34711844</link><dc:creator>DevDesmond</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34711844</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34711844</guid></item></channel></rss>