<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: aaaronic</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=aaaronic</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Wed, 19 Aug 2026 18:44:05 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=aaaronic" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by aaaronic in "PostgreSQL for Everything"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That feature is definitely part of why it's still so relevant. The hstore approach wasn't nearly enough when it was all PG offered.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 19 Aug 2026 15:58:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49363285</link><dc:creator>aaaronic</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49363285</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49363285</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by aaaronic in "PostgreSQL for Everything"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Sure, best not to overcomplicate early if you don't need it.<p>PG is great and I work with it daily, but it's also not a problem to think about scale early and at least have a notional plan for what to and how to know when scale is becoming an issue in your system as you're designing it. Even PG is overkill and sqlite is more than enough for some of my projects.<p>There are a lot of specialized tools available, but you definitely don't need to put every one in your toolbox. Experience and observation help you make those edits -- and of course there's almost always room for improvement, but "good enough" definitely exists (until it doesn't anymore :D).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 19 Aug 2026 15:54:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49363231</link><dc:creator>aaaronic</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49363231</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49363231</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by aaaronic in "AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Do you think it's actively deciding to remove them or just not noticing you added them and then overwriting?<p>I ask because when I started informing it I made personal edits, it stopped doing this kind of thing so often and let me work _with_ it more.<p>My saved prompt now says never to assume a file has not been edited since the last time it was read between prompts.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 17 Aug 2026 22:12:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49338381</link><dc:creator>aaaronic</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49338381</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49338381</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by aaaronic in "AI;DR (AI; Didn't Read)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>My "favorite" Claudism is when I critique its work and ask it to remove some unnecessary part of the design -- and then the diff has more green than red because it added comments about why the code is no longer there -- the code that was never in the mainline and never asked for!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 17 Aug 2026 22:08:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49338341</link><dc:creator>aaaronic</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49338341</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49338341</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by aaaronic in "Picophysics: Single file physics for games on platforms like N64, PSX, DC"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Most of the older consoles don't have an FPU. Fixed point is king on those older systems.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 10 Aug 2026 02:50:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49238698</link><dc:creator>aaaronic</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49238698</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49238698</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by aaaronic in "Einstein's relativity rules chemical bonds in heavy elements, new research shows"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yes and no. It depends which branch of chemistry you world have chosen to go down. Physical Chemistry certainly improves a fair amount of the hand waving, but even there the underlying physics is simplified fairly often (as I understand it — I went straight Physics and dabbled in Chemistry from the other side).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 10 Jul 2026 23:21:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48866622</link><dc:creator>aaaronic</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48866622</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48866622</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by aaaronic in "Einstein's relativity rules chemical bonds in heavy elements, new research shows"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Sigma and Pi bonds are typically covered in AP Chemistry, even if the “why/how” is hand waved pretty heavily. The valence cloud shapes get wild for heavier atoms and bonds between two or more atoms add even more to the mix.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 10 Jul 2026 23:02:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48866436</link><dc:creator>aaaronic</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48866436</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48866436</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by aaaronic in "Microsoft's open source tools were hacked to steal passwords of AI developers"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's not like they're mutually exclusive. In fact, multiple candidates seem to be quite sympathetic in their feedback loops.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 09 Jun 2026 11:08:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48459466</link><dc:creator>aaaronic</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48459466</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48459466</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by aaaronic in "Microsoft wants users to be addicted to Scout, their AI personal assistant"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I thought his name was Watson (the dog assistant).<p>Edit: I was wrong. But there is "Power Pup" and apparently Will Shakespeare</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 05 Jun 2026 23:02:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48419474</link><dc:creator>aaaronic</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48419474</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48419474</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by aaaronic in "AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Ha, I have a 16 year old who yells "chat" often enough when online gaming to be familiar with that use.<p>I'm positive these students did use an LLM to get the help instead of crowdsourcing, but it is an interesting linguistic overlap.<p>And while I'm on my "old man" soapbox -- "look it up" and "search for it" somehow became "search it up" with the young people. I corrected my son for years before I started hearing college students also saying it that way...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 01 Jun 2026 22:22:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48363416</link><dc:creator>aaaronic</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48363416</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48363416</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by aaaronic in "AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I was hoping to get them access to a specific tool like GitHub Copilot via GitHub Education, but when I looked, sign-ups were paused, so I went the tool-agnostic approach. Even during installation a lot of them were telling me how "chat" told them to fix their installation issues (but some were clearly using an alternative to ChatGPT, specifically).<p>However, I see from other comments on this post that I may need to include a CLAUDE.md as a copy (and could maybe just leave the .history part out of that version?).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 01 Jun 2026 21:55:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48363188</link><dc:creator>aaaronic</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48363188</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48363188</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by aaaronic in "AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I told them up front this was new territory and we're all learning from it. If they're overusing it I assured them they won't be dealing with a student integrity issue, but I will be giving them feedback if they're clearly over-reliant and if they continue to do so, it could eventually impact the grade on later assignments.<p>I'm hoping they learn to use it as a tool instead of trying to offload all cognition to it.<p>This is a CS course targeted at non-majors, so thankfully the "fundamentals" aren't as critical as the overall themes and general skills.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 01 Jun 2026 21:51:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48363139</link><dc:creator>aaaronic</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48363139</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48363139</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by aaaronic in "AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'm trying something similar this semester with my course via AGENTS.md. I think this one is overly verbose and probably falls out of context windows pretty quickly, based on my experience (for me, a very terse but clear set of 30 lines performed better than providing examples and more nuanced explanations during my testing with a few models).<p>I have included the basic "I am a student -- help me learn, don't just do everything for me," but I also am trying out telling it to generate a .history folder with a markdown history of every prompt and a summary of the action take in response.<p>I _know_ there are some tools that offer the prompt history automatically, but I've told students they can use _whatever_ tool they want, but should let me know if the folder isn't showing up as they work.<p>The .history folder is required if they used AI and I intend to review it and try to give specific feedback to the students using it as too much of a crutch.<p>I just started this last Friday, so wish me luck!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 01 Jun 2026 18:36:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48360832</link><dc:creator>aaaronic</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48360832</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48360832</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by aaaronic in "VS Code inserting 'Co-Authored-by Copilot' into commits regardless of usage"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Brave man. RIP your inbox.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 03 May 2026 02:06:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47992620</link><dc:creator>aaaronic</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47992620</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47992620</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by aaaronic in "I built "Middle Class Museum", a tour of things that used to be affordable"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'm pretty sure I did not get to keep my shoes on through TSA in 2004. It may not have been mandatory nation-wide until ~2006, but the origin is a 2001 incident.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2026 14:46:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47935392</link><dc:creator>aaaronic</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47935392</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47935392</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by aaaronic in "Pgbackrest is no longer being maintained"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>See: "It's OK to abandon your side-project (2024)": <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47918961">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47918961</a>
(also on today's frontpage)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 27 Apr 2026 14:53:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47922444</link><dc:creator>aaaronic</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47922444</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47922444</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by aaaronic in "Taste in the age of AI and LLMs"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I've worked in too many large codebases where no one can point to any _single file or class_ and label it "correct," ("the right way") yet management is amazed when the lack of a "North Star" means the codebase is full of overlapping, piecemeal patterns that are lucky to work together at all.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 07 Apr 2026 17:06:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47678339</link><dc:creator>aaaronic</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47678339</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47678339</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by aaaronic in "Taste in the age of AI and LLMs"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It does amaze me when colleagues refuse to read what I (personally, deliberately) wrote (they ask AI to summarize), but then tell AI to write their response and it's absolutely bloated and full of misconceptions around my original document.<p>If they aren't willing to read what I put effort into, why should I be expected to read the ill-conceived and verbose response? I really don't want to get into a match of my AI arguing with your AI, but that's what they've told me I should be doing...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 07 Apr 2026 17:01:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47678277</link><dc:creator>aaaronic</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47678277</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47678277</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by aaaronic in "FSF statement on copyright infringement lawsuit Bartz v. Anthropic"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I also found the statement bizarre. They don’t seem to have any argument for compensation of any kind unless the books were under a restrictive license that required derived works to also be open source.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 20 Mar 2026 21:07:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47460566</link><dc:creator>aaaronic</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47460566</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47460566</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by aaaronic in "Leaving Google has actively improved my life"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>But some of Apple or Spotify Premium's recent moves Re: advertising show that even those who _are paying_ end up getting the ad experience eventually.<p>The old "If you aren't paying for a product, you're the product." adage doesn't apply anymore when even if you're paying, you're _still_ being productized.<p>The real problem is increasing concentration of _everything_ into ever-fewer (viable) players.<p>Doctorow's book "Enshittification" goes into way more examples of this phenomenon (though I'm far less optimistic than he is about the ability to reverse this trend).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 27 Feb 2026 21:07:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47185621</link><dc:creator>aaaronic</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47185621</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47185621</guid></item></channel></rss>