Hacker News: a_vanderbilt

New comment by a_vanderbilt in "Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold"

a_vanderbilt — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 00:35:59 +0000

In theory, the market should be pricing in based on future potential. As it has become increasingly clear this past decade, the market is not rational.

New comment by a_vanderbilt in "Supreme Court Sides with Cox in Copyright Fight over Pirated Music"

a_vanderbilt — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 19:37:31 +0000

Sonarr et al.

New comment by a_vanderbilt in "MAUI Is Coming to Linux"

a_vanderbilt — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 03:56:19 +0000

My experience was the same while helping to adapt a Steam Deck game for wider Linux support. The issue wasn't Waylandisms, most of those have already by figured out. It was GNOME. Their preferred resolution to issues seems to be dropping support rather than bug fixes, and they go out of their way to adopt implementations that are against the momentum of the wider community. I can get why they make some of their decisions, but things like killing the tray indicator or server side decorations are insane. To be an outlier in name of a greater or grander goal is one thing, then there is whatever GNOME is doing.

New comment by a_vanderbilt in "Tesla profit plunges as sales fall and AI expenses pile up"

a_vanderbilt — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 01:25:31 +0000

It might be wordsmithing to skirt around "robot" as a fully autonomous entity. Much like their FSD, I expect they aren't going to deliver full autonomy anytime soon.

New comment by a_vanderbilt in "Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux"

a_vanderbilt — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 17:12:17 +0000

So much of it is a problem of execution. If people could use Linux without ever having to know what a terminal is (much like the average Windows user doesn't know what PowerShell is), then it would actually be quite successful. It has gotten better over the past decade, but it still suffers from endless paper cuts and the odd issue that requires a shell session to fix. I will say that Valve's SteamOS has come the closest to avoiding this trap. You can use a deck without ever having to touch a CLI.

New comment by a_vanderbilt in "Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux"

a_vanderbilt — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 17:09:00 +0000

It's been an unfortunate re-occurring issue for me as well. Recent hardware is much better about this, and I too have seen the performance bumps at the cost of software compatibility. I feel like if Adobe brought their CC suite to Linux I'd have no reason to ever use Windows outside the random game that _needs_ it.

New comment by a_vanderbilt in "Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux"

a_vanderbilt — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 17:06:31 +0000

At least on the latest Sequoia, there has been no hard requirement for an online account. They nudge you towards it, but you can decline and continue. As far as I can remember, macOS has never required an online account to set up a Mac.

New comment by a_vanderbilt in "Fulton surface-to-air recovery system"

a_vanderbilt — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:28:28 +0000

Hello back pain my old friend. Can you imagine the spinal G forces of getting yoinked by an airplane even at slow speeds?

New comment by a_vanderbilt in "Developers can now submit apps to ChatGPT"

a_vanderbilt — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 23:46:05 +0000

Atlas being created is kinda the shot across the bow. You can integrate with us willingly, or we'll hook into your web apps anyways. One retains at least some control. Same outcome as Disney's deal with Sora.

New comment by a_vanderbilt in "Mozilla Names New CEO, Firefox to Evolve into a "Modern AI Browser""

a_vanderbilt — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 17:52:31 +0000

LadyBird cannot come fast enough. I'm not being dramatic when I claim that this will be looked back upon as the nail in FF's coffin.

New comment by a_vanderbilt in "Shai-Hulud compromised a dev machine and raided GitHub org access: a post-mortem"

a_vanderbilt — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 17:29:48 +0000

To me it would mean that a git repo should not have scripts, runners, etc. configured that we don't have the means to easily and readily replace. It should all be documented and understood well enough that we could kill the repo and init another at will.

New comment by a_vanderbilt in "Shai-Hulud compromised a dev machine and raided GitHub org access: a post-mortem"

a_vanderbilt — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 15:48:23 +0000

A core SRE principle is that "machines/servers are cattle, not pets". They shouldn't be special or bespoke in a way that makes replacement painful or difficult.

New comment by a_vanderbilt in "IBM Delivers New Quantum Package"

a_vanderbilt — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 17:58:35 +0000

Essentially correct. With a quantum computer you do multiple runs and average the result.

New comment by a_vanderbilt in "FFmpeg to Google: Fund us or stop sending bugs"

a_vanderbilt — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 03:37:42 +0000

And Blink. I used to contract with them a few years back, they all rely heavily on open source.

New comment by a_vanderbilt in "Amazon Demands Perplexity Stop AI Agent from Making Purchases"

a_vanderbilt — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 00:22:06 +0000

This approach is either a means to delay and allow them to hedge, or it's a shortsighted attempt to stop the inevitable. When Google ships their competitor to Atlas, the outcome will already be decided.

New comment by a_vanderbilt in "Western executives who visit China are coming back terrified"

a_vanderbilt — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 03:41:41 +0000

The US congress is partially to blame. They saw Japan's rising influence in the digital/industrial space and threatened them with sanctions. See https://news.cgtn.com/news/2019-07-11/Lessons-from-U-S-Japan... for Chinese state media's interpretation.

New comment by a_vanderbilt in "They Don't Have the Money: OpenAI Edition"

a_vanderbilt — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 01:07:49 +0000

The definition of AGI is diffuse enough to make it an argued point - until we can mostly agree it's already happened. For now, the stats are improving well enough across the industry to maintain investor attention. Will it all come crashing down a-la the .com bubble? It's seeming more likely by the quarter.

Like the digital economy post .com burst, I think AI will survive and grow far beyond its current market of chat bots and agents. The weakest will die, but the market will be better off for it in the long run.

The next big problem for AI is time horizons. Frontier AI has roughly doctorate level knowledge across many domains, but it needs to be able to stay on task well/long enough to apply it without a human hand holding it. People are going to have to get used to feeding the AI detailed and accurate plans just like humans, unless we can leverage an expanded form of leading questions like GPT-5 does before executing "deep research". Anthropic feels best positioned to do this on a technical level, but I feel OpenAI will beat them on the product level. I am confident that enough data can be amassed to push time horizons at least in coding, which itself will unlock more capability outside that domain.

I feel it's very different from Tesla, because while Tesla barely ever got closer to their promises the AI industry is at least making visible progress.

New comment by a_vanderbilt in "America's Soybean Farmers Are Panicking over the Loss of Chinese Buyers"

a_vanderbilt — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 02:20:48 +0000

Unfortunately, loss of buyers often results in them just leaving the crop to rot, as moving it costs more than what they'd make selling it. Not that they should be surprised though. From soybeans to AI silicon, China has shown it is willing to take the hit and source alternatives to US products.

New comment by a_vanderbilt in "There Goes the American Muscle Car"

a_vanderbilt — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 02:03:09 +0000

Given the advancements of EVs, the death of the muscle car was inevitable. They are almost universally faster, more performant, more efficient, and more "cool" in their designs. Do gear heads dislike them? Sure, but they aren't going to be the market forever. As energy costs rise, natural market forces will shift the demands of the buyer.

New comment by a_vanderbilt in "Japan: Apple Must Lift Browser Engine Ban by December"

a_vanderbilt — Wed, 06 Aug 2025 13:16:30 +0000

Culturally, the Japanese aren't likely to care. Take a look at Linux usage in Japan to get what I mean. You will have a small but very dedicated group of users who won't change for anything, and then the masses who just use what is convenient. They don't like tweaking.