Hacker News: abakker

New comment by abakker in "Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs"

abakker — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 01:12:21 +0000

Yeah, that makes sense. I suppose the flip side of all of this is that neither OpenAI nor Anthropic have made a lot of money relative to their spending. Google is probably just trying to be more prudent. But, AI so far is a money spending contest, more than a money making one.

New comment by abakker in "Changes at Google DeepMind: Demis Hassabis from CEO to Chair, Jeff Dean departs"

abakker — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 16:49:01 +0000

you are right. I guess what I was thinking was that google's bigness was essentially a bad capital allocation strategy, since they were lazy and not motivated by absolute return, but some combination of acceptable risk, politics, personal preferences, etc in a large management team that has seemed...disconnected for quite some time.

They have a structural advantage in cash flow and stability of funding, but stability is also a handicap when disruption is the objective.

New comment by abakker in "Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis is stepping down"

abakker — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 16:36:24 +0000

Wouldn't this be a demonstration of the downsides of the anticompetitiveness of monopolies?

New comment by abakker in "There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]"

abakker — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 17:16:22 +0000

An obligatory mention, also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEtQfqpKi1I

New comment by abakker in "The AI industry is discovering that the public hates it"

abakker — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 22:17:09 +0000

All the proposals I’ve seen would set the marginal tax rate on the 120 so high that his earnings would end up more like 40k from the 120k job and then he gets his 60. So, still some benefit to working, but a very progressive tax rate on higher earnings. Not sure I agree with this, but that is what I’ve seen.

New comment by abakker in "Vulnerability research is cooked"

abakker — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:22:17 +0000

But, have you any code that has been vetted and verified to see if this approach works? This whole Agentic code quality claim is an assertion, but where is the literal proof?

New comment by abakker in "Show HN: A weird thing that detects your pulse from the browser video"

abakker — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 02:53:15 +0000

It registered in the low 40s for me, while my watch was saying 72-75. I guess YMMV

New comment by abakker in "The Hunt for Dark Breakfast"

abakker — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 04:19:57 +0000

If you add baking powder and butter, that dark breakfast recipe is very close to crepes.

My crepe recipe - cook on medium heat pan:

Blend on low: 4 eggs- 3/4 cup whole milk, 1/2 stick of melted butter, and 1/4cup to 1/2 cup plain flower, 1 heaped tbsp of baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, vanilla optional and to taste

New comment by abakker in "Trump's global tariffs struck down by US Supreme Court"

abakker — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 03:13:45 +0000

And bought a house from Epstein for $10

New comment by abakker in "RIP Low-Code 2014-2025"

abakker — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 21:14:01 +0000

Great to see your name here, Zack. I think the problem with low-code is that its a catch all that spans between primarily data-storage-and-use work (Airtable, quick base, Filemaker, etc), the primarily app-alternative platforms (retool, Mendix, etc, and the ETL tools.

To me, AI changes the inflection points of build vs buy a bit for app platforms, but not as much for the other two. Ultimately, AI becomes a huge consumer of the data coming from impromptu databases, and becomes useful when it connects to other platforms (I think this is why there is so much excitement around n8n, but also why Salesforce bought informatica).

Maybe low-code as a category dies, but just because it is easier for LLMs to produce working code, doesn't make me any more willing to set up a runtime, environment, or other details of actually getting that code to run. I think there's still a big opportunity to make running the code nice and easy, and that opportunity gets bigger if the barriers to writing code come down.

New comment by abakker in "Games Workshop bans staff from using AI"

abakker — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 22:46:55 +0000

People don't respect the salary premium software developers have received and expect relative to other creative, human endeavors.

You lay it out perfectly in your answer, and I'll add that the entire non-tech world generally feels that if tech jobs lose their shine due to AI, its actually a welcome reversion to the mean. Software has likely depressed wage growth in many other jobs.

New comment by abakker in "AI coding assistants are getting worse?"

abakker — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 05:15:02 +0000

That perfectly ties with my experience. Just direct prompts, with limited setup and limited context seem to work better or just as well as complex custom GPTs. There are not just diminishing, but inverting returns to complexity in GPTs

New comment by abakker in "Show HN: I made a spreadsheet where formulas also update backwards"

abakker — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 19:46:18 +0000

Graphically, I really like the way autodesk makes sketches in fusion 360 blue until they are fully constrained, and then they are black. My intuition here is that you could color code “degrees of freedom” and “locked” states so that it was more intuitive.

New comment by abakker in "Microsoft increases Office 365 and Microsoft 365 license prices"

abakker — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 03:45:07 +0000

and, its so cheap. there are alternatives for individual components, but nothing that comes close to being this low cost. And, the ultimate value is that if you buy a niche tool (like notion) then only people with licenses can use it. Everybody at the company has office, so it's easy to share/collaborate. You have to really commit to avoiding office at all if you're going to replace parts of it.

New comment by abakker in "NVIDIA frenemy relation with OpenAI and Oracle"

abakker — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 19:53:48 +0000

0% NET accretive profit - the OP was saying that the invest/return wash doesn't affect prior profitability, just revenue. Obviously, the new profitability inclusive of the new revenue will actually by lower because of the zero margin wash trade.

New comment by abakker in "OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race"

abakker — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 01:04:31 +0000

I think he was getting at the fact that the Truth is not good news to everyone.

New comment by abakker in "The Baumol Effect and Jevons paradox are related"

abakker — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 18:12:08 +0000

Welll, if you were good at drywall already, drywall patches would be faster and better. But if you are good at printing and scanning, and you enjoy that process, then it’s fine.

The challenge with the example is that “success” is personal preference. With plenty of examples, the success criteria are external.

New comment by abakker in "I was right about dishwasher pods and now I can prove it [video]"

abakker — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 04:59:41 +0000

My only addition to this discussion is that the Dirty Labs dish soap has been legitimately better for our baby stuff and other plastic stuff that sometimes gets oily. I recommend it.

New comment by abakker in "Solarpunk is happening in Africa"

abakker — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 21:16:39 +0000

And, for a refrigerator and a lot of loads, being down for 2 days straight is way worse than a few hours a year. losing 48 hours of supply a year if broken into 2 hour chunks is not nearly as bad as losing 48 consecutive hours.

New comment by abakker in "Carice TC2 – A non-digital electric car"

abakker — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 16:35:21 +0000

I mean, even back in the OnStar days, you could "opt out" and cancel the service and it would track you anyway. With BYD or any other car maker, I'd be worried the SIM was a placebo.