Hacker News: InfiniteRand

New comment by InfiniteRand in "A lawyer won Anthropic's hackathon – what everyone missed"

InfiniteRand — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 10:09:04 +0000

That's interesting, it reminds me of something we've realized internally at my company, AI coding is best used with strict adherence to requirements and tests (potentially generated by AI), reviewed by a human developer

New comment by InfiniteRand in "Wayland set the Linux Desktop back by 10 years?"

InfiniteRand — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 11:03:58 +0000

I don’t mind using Wayland these days, but I do feel most of the security arguments are aimed at the government/corporate/big server audiences than the single user/developer.

Which ultimately is fine, this reflects the focus of the people who have the skills and opportunities to contribute and is unlikely to change any time soon.

That is somewhat unfortunate for some but ultimately if you’re asking people to work for free you can’t be too picky on what they choose to work on.

New comment by InfiniteRand in "Centuries of selective breeding turned wild cabbage into different vegetables"

InfiniteRand — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 06:57:29 +0000

My family has typically stir fried them, chopped up with olive oil salt and pepper, so I always got confused by Brussels sprouts horror stories

New comment by InfiniteRand in "Don't become an engineering manager"

InfiniteRand — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:18:15 +0000

I think a good manager should also be a cushion between the higher up politics and his team, so they do perhaps get more praise than is deserved for their team's successes but they should also absorb much of the criticism for their team's failures

Ask HN: How to measure financial health in a company

InfiniteRand — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 14:33:34 +0000

Profits are one measure but if a business is healthy the estimated profits would go into investment for the future. Profits ultimately amount to either dividends or cash reserves, both of which can be signs of a good business in moderation but excessively it suggests the business cannot find ways to productively spend its money.

Then there’s also businesses invested in long term investments with projected future gains which often results in less profits at least in the short term.

Size seems like another measure but size can also indicate over expansion into bad investments.

So how would you judge the health of a company? Is there any simple metric for judging this health (at least in the 90% case)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47014821

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by InfiniteRand in "ICE urged to explain memo about collecting info on protesters"

InfiniteRand — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 23:08:18 +0000

This is a grey area, look at some countries where you’ve had protesters block aid trucks to refugee camps saying that their national is imminent danger from these people. I think a key here is the degree and length of traffic blockage. When it is being used to essentially lay siege to a place it is ambiguous whether it’s violent or non violent. Temporary limited disruption of traffic is probably pretty firmly in the non violent column

New comment by InfiniteRand in "I miss thinking hard"

InfiniteRand — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 12:23:57 +0000

This isn’t the point of the piece, but I have found that the thinker often gets in the way of the builder, because there’s always a better way to build, there’s always some imperfect subsystem you just want to tear out and rewrite and then you realize you were all wrong about this and that, etc.

More to the piece itself, I know some crusty old embedded engineers who feel the same way about compilers as this guy does about AI, it doesn’t invalidate his point but it’s food for thought

New comment by InfiniteRand in "Show HN: Moltbook – A social network for moltbots (clawdbots) to hang out"

InfiniteRand — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 16:32:37 +0000

The upvotes are interesting because the comments are either tangential or negative, so maybe ai’s look at upvotes as this is neat to look at but I don’t necessarily agree

New comment by InfiniteRand in "Fighting Fire with Fire: Scalable Oral Exams"

InfiniteRand — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 12:30:27 +0000

I feel like the arms race between student cheaters and teacher testing has been going on for hundreds of years, ever since the first answer key written on the back of a hand

New comment by InfiniteRand in "Extensibility: The "100% Lisp" Fallacy"

InfiniteRand — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 13:08:55 +0000

It would depend on your accessibility needs, if you only need the apis included in a, then a would be a better option

New comment by InfiniteRand in "What will enter the public domain in 2026?"

InfiniteRand — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 12:58:13 +0000

I mean https://www.printingcenterusa.com/printing/book-printing

New comment by InfiniteRand in "James Watson has died"

InfiniteRand — Sat, 08 Nov 2025 13:29:42 +0000

I think if he had died at 50 his reputation would be much much better, although he is certainly not unique in that regard

New comment by InfiniteRand in "Addiction Markets"

InfiniteRand — Fri, 31 Oct 2025 19:03:53 +0000

Say it ain’t so Joe

New comment by InfiniteRand in "Tell HN: My advice after I applied to 450 positions before getting hired"

InfiniteRand — Sat, 30 Aug 2025 12:04:21 +0000

This is probably my approach (maybe minus the AI), I do think networking and reaching out to people can yield better results but I was never any good at that

New comment by InfiniteRand in "Zig's New Writer"

InfiniteRand — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 13:38:02 +0000

This has bit me a few times when a Linux system crashes so there’s no final call to fsync implicit or otherwise

New comment by InfiniteRand in "Simplest C++ Callback, from SumatraPDF"

InfiniteRand — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 23:39:44 +0000

Main issue author had with lambdas is autogenerated names in crash reports

New comment by InfiniteRand in "Sleep apnea pill shows striking success in large clinical trial"

InfiniteRand — Tue, 27 May 2025 10:38:09 +0000

I’ve started with a cpap recently and my biggest issue is that it interferes with snuggling with my wife, that may seem trivial but it can have a big impact on my mood

New comment by InfiniteRand in "The accuracy of weather forecasts"

InfiniteRand — Tue, 20 May 2025 03:32:33 +0000

I'm curious if anyone has a good solution for this, how to accurately display cases where a storm might hit either Monday or Tuesday, say 50% chance each. If you just say there's a 50% chance of rain on both days, it looks like there's a significant chance (I guess 25%) that it will rain both days, when the real likelihood of both days raining might be far lower.

New comment by InfiniteRand in "Obituary for Cyc"

InfiniteRand — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 10:11:28 +0000

I think when we look at general intelligence we need to look at multiple methods of reasoning working together. Looking at children there is an instinct to blindly imitate those around them, trying to match behavior without fully understanding it, however the experiences from this behavior then feed into a symbolic understanding in the child’s mind, allowing them to reason about the situation later on

New comment by InfiniteRand in "HTTP/3 is everywhere but nowhere"

InfiniteRand — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 15:01:35 +0000

Here’s the question, are the benefits worth the increase in complexity, or rather are they worth more than other features that could be worthwhile for libraries to support.

For the hyperscale web sure, but for the long tail web that is very unclear.