Hacker News: MikeNotThePope

New comment by MikeNotThePope in "US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search"

MikeNotThePope — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 01:11:55 +0000

There needs to be a simple feature to wipe your phone and then restore to a point and time. That’d be really convenient.

New comment by MikeNotThePope in "AI Companies Are Trying to Hide a Staggering Amount of Debt"

MikeNotThePope — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 16:23:29 +0000

I don’t think concentration risk is itself overly concerning. The nature of a market cap weighted index means it will always be heavy on whatever is currently trending. You’ll certainly be hurting if your plan is to retire at the top of the market with just enough, as the inevitable downturn will hammer your portfolio down into not enough. So invest until you have enough to handle volatility or a lost decade with a dip and slow recovery.

New comment by MikeNotThePope in "My midlife crisis Corolla is fast, furious, and modded"

MikeNotThePope — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 11:48:32 +0000

I never appreciated a proper muffler until I didn't have one. I was driving a 27-year-old Honda Civic, and the rusty muffler fell off one day. On the way to go get it fixed, the typically quiet Honda made a ridiculous amount of noise. I had no idea my car could be that loud.

New comment by MikeNotThePope in "Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media"

MikeNotThePope — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 05:13:58 +0000

What are people using in Canada? SMS?

New comment by MikeNotThePope in "Ryanair passenger sucked toward broken window after midair engine failure"

MikeNotThePope — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 16:00:56 +0000

Fun fact: Ryanair owns its fleet outright, and (currently) buys all of its new planes from cash flow. Pretty unusual for a major airline.

New comment by MikeNotThePope in "Apple sells me a MacBook to deliver $1700; cancels 5 days later quoting $2000?"

MikeNotThePope — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 04:04:56 +0000

Unless the quote was good for a certain amount of time, I don’t see a problem. Prices change. When you see a good price, buy it.

New comment by MikeNotThePope in "CERN bids farewell to the LHC and enters Long Shutdown 3"

MikeNotThePope — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 06:04:05 +0000

I felt a similar way when I visited the Gran Telescopio Canarias, a 10.4m telescope in La Palma in the Canary Islands. It’s hard to take pictures of the entire telescope because it’s so damn big. I love experiencing the feeling of being in awe.

New comment by MikeNotThePope in "WhatsApp to let people chat without swapping phone numbers"

MikeNotThePope — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 12:01:25 +0000

My phone number is the ultimate vendor lock in. A username/handle would be an improvement.

New comment by MikeNotThePope in "Rocketlab acquires Iridium"

MikeNotThePope — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 04:51:18 +0000

Rocket Lab wants the radio spectrum, which gives them a global license in every country to talk directly to cell phones.

Why the Satellite Race is No Longer About Satellites - https://youtube.com/shorts/hRxv4RggxLE

New comment by MikeNotThePope in "Ask HN: How much coding should beginners learn in the AI era?"

MikeNotThePope — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 18:14:50 +0000

You don’t need to learn how to code if you’re not working on anything important & interesting. But you’ll be limited to what AI can do for you. If you need to solve problems where AI is weak, you’ll need the skills to do the work yourself.

A less obvious problem with not learning to code is that you’ll be less competitive because you don’t really have any specialized skills. Everyone can fire up Claude Code and knock out something. But if Claude Code gets stuck, or simply can’t solve your problem, then what will you do?

New comment by MikeNotThePope in "The early hiring funnel is now breaking on both ends"

MikeNotThePope — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 15:02:48 +0000

What if you don’t filter at all? What if you just interviewed 10 random people? They’re probably all smart enough on some level.

New comment by MikeNotThePope in "Temporary Cloudflare accounts for AI agents"

MikeNotThePope — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 06:04:22 +0000

How about implementing a prepaid system where you set your budget, and if you exceed it, everything just pauses until you pay more?

New comment by MikeNotThePope in "Hey, n00b, we didn't hire you to complete tasks"

MikeNotThePope — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 05:25:52 +0000

This is my own personal experience as a senior engineer.

I hired my first ever intern for myself this past week for a personal. Rather than expecting someone who is experienced to knock out tasks or whatever & try to justify the expense, Intern and I just check in once a day about whatever feels like most important, and each do our thing. We chat as needed. I told Intern we’ll work on whatever, just making sure that they will have something tangible and targeted to show at the end of the summer. No ticket tracking or Slack or anything. Just texting, video chats, and the occasional email. I pay someone to listen to me rant long enough to get to the point, giving me focus that’s hard to find on my own, intern works on targeted things for a day at a time, and we’re just plodding along. It’s great and I find the process to be extremely refreshing.

When I’m trying to brainstorm with Claude Code or pick-an-AI-tool, I find the process frustrating and draining. The results I get from trying to do everything myself with a robo-junior are mediocre and uninspiring.

I didn’t even interview intern. I just reached out directly on LinkedIn and offered a summer internship. I figured anyone with a half decent profile will be smart enough to follow along and offer ideas of their own. Basically my thought was if I offer ever and expect nothing, I’ll take all the pressure off, and just let them work. Ask me again in a months if this was a good idea or not.

I think working with newbs is fantastic, and I plan to do a lot more of it.

New comment by MikeNotThePope in "The Korean telecom giant at the center of Anthropic's Mythos controversy"

MikeNotThePope — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:40:16 +0000

Open source models are not immune to a different form of restriction either. I recently learned that China is restricting travel for AI engineers living in China.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/china-restricts-o...

It's going to be interesting to see how the AI arms races unfolds over time.

New comment by MikeNotThePope in "Show HN: Homebrew 6.0.0"

MikeNotThePope — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 07:38:45 +0000

This is somewhat impressive, but can you reverse a binary tree?!

https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejectin...

New comment by MikeNotThePope in "Why SpaceX 2040 Revenue FCST $4.3T in highly unlikely"

MikeNotThePope — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 20:17:37 +0000

4.3T could be the cost of a dozen of eggs by 2040.

New comment by MikeNotThePope in "7.8 magnitude earthquake shakes part of southern Philippines. Tsunami possible"

MikeNotThePope — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 10:20:49 +0000

I visited the Philippines in December and January and it was great. The highlight of my trip was learning to scuba dive in Mindoro. Highly recommend a visit.

New comment by MikeNotThePope in "I design with Claude more than Figma now"

MikeNotThePope — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 09:08:03 +0000

My experience has been there’s more “what did it make and does it work?” overhead. It’s like a junior developer throwing stuff over the wall and I’m responsible for seeing if it sticks.

New comment by MikeNotThePope in "S&P 500 rejects SpaceX, also blocking entry for OpenAI and Anthropic"

MikeNotThePope — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 09:27:55 +0000

It’s a list of the 500 largest profitable companies. Gotta make some bottom line $$$ to be included. At least that’s how it’s worked in the past.

New comment by MikeNotThePope in "MacBook Neo is so popular that Apple doubled production"

MikeNotThePope — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 18:54:40 +0000

I’m guessing the Neo attracts a lot of new Apple customers, many of which will become subscribers of higher margin Apple services & apps in the App Store.