<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: apalmer</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=apalmer</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Fri, 17 Jul 2026 04:20:21 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=apalmer" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by apalmer in "Google's 20% 'project' has become AI's 120% 'attention'"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The article didn't do a good job explaining the 120% attention angle, I kept reading waiting for that and it never really came. I definitely had the impression it was heavily using AI in the writing which I gave up on being against, but it just didn't explain the thesis well.<p>I guess the idea is AI gives you back time so you could now do the 20% but you still really can't because you have to still think about it even if the code is generated? Not even sure after reading all that text what the idea is
.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 09 Jun 2026 21:04:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48467748</link><dc:creator>apalmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48467748</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48467748</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by apalmer in "Bun support is now limited and deprecated"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's not really political. Or let me rephrase possibly yt-dl is being political. VUT the concept of 'not adopting a core dependency until it has been widely used in production for 6 months - a year.', is not a political on general. A full rewrite of 1 million loc is essentially a new runtime that has the same ABI as the previous  and for many downstream consumers it's not something they are comfortable taking a production dependency on. If for sale of argument BUn was fully rewritten by hand would be the same situation. I personally think this kind of decision is pretty standard, I also personally think the Bun LLM rewrite will be of good quality overall, but I certainly would not bet my product/company on it. I want to be the one making the risky changes on my software not being forced into it by downstream deps.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2026 19:42:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48240561</link><dc:creator>apalmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48240561</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48240561</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by apalmer in "I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I don't think it's helpful to call this psychosis. N
Beyond that I don't think it's even irrational.<p>It is definitely factual that there is a complete paradigm shift in the prioritization  of quality in software. It's beyond just AI side effects, and now its own stand alone thing.<p>There have always been many industries, companies, and products who are low on quality scale but so cheap that it makes good business sense, both for the producer and the consumer.<p>Definitely many companies are explicitly chosing this business strategy. Definitely also many companies that don't actually realize they are implicitly doing this.<p>Wether the market will accept the new software quality paradigm or not remains an open question.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2026 22:54:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48154989</link><dc:creator>apalmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48154989</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48154989</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by apalmer in "Agents need control flow, not more prompts"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Generally agree with this stance case in point: the breakthrough in ai coding was not that AI intelligence increased as much as that a lot of the core process execution moved out of the LLM prompt and into the harness.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 07 May 2026 17:14:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48051978</link><dc:creator>apalmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48051978</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48051978</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by apalmer in "We were right about Havana syndrome"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Didn't the US use some weapon that essential causes the same thing as Havana Syndrome?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 11 Mar 2026 21:10:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47341930</link><dc:creator>apalmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47341930</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47341930</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by apalmer in "Is Software the UFOlogy of Engineering Disciplines?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This again? In general, Software Engineering is not engineering.<p>It's not a technical issue, it's a 'software doesn't really kill people so government doesn't intervene in it'. In the case where the software is life and death it's generally developed in ways similar to 'real' engineering<p>Fundamentally folks built building/structures without engineering, just so consistently caused death and destruction that govt stepped in and started requiring licensed trained folks, approval trails etc. without this real world intervention regular physical 'engineering' the same crap shoot as software engineering.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 07 Nov 2025 13:50:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45846335</link><dc:creator>apalmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45846335</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45846335</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by apalmer in "Abstraction, not syntax"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I don't think the title and the article really communicates it's case well. Did not understand the goal until 90% through the article when they showed the source code of RCL with the loops.<p>This isn't syntax vs abstraction. This is how much programming language power do you want to enable in your configuration language. This is a big difference and I think we miss the interesting part of that discussion because we dip into this 'abstraction angle.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 13 Oct 2025 21:28:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45573538</link><dc:creator>apalmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45573538</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45573538</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by apalmer in "What if we treated Postgres like SQLite?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I upvoted this, because while it was critical it didn't feel meanspirited and it was factually correct.<p>After fully reading the article I came to understand it really was not referring to anything sqllite specific, was really 'what if you ran postgres as an application on a server', there really is nothing more to be gained from reading the article beyond this, and this is kind of the most basic deployment model for postgres for like the last 40 years.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 22 Sep 2025 18:02:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45337183</link><dc:creator>apalmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45337183</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45337183</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by apalmer in "How to stop functional programming (2016)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Ultimately the important thing is that the development team align on the style of programming that they will use at least per project. And the larger the  codebase and more developers working on it the more important the consistency in implementing the style guide is.<p>Imperative programming style has many advantages over functional for some problems. Functional programming style has many advantages over imperative for some problems.<p>The only clearly 'wrong' approach is codebases where you can look at the code and determine a specific developer on the team wrote feature x because it fundamentally looks completely different from the other sections.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 21 Sep 2025 17:27:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45324801</link><dc:creator>apalmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45324801</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45324801</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by apalmer in "The gentrification of videogame history"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I don't think 'gentrification' is the right word for this. However the comments here do illustrate an underlying 'real' phenomenon what ever you call it.<p>Just for clarity:
- Non-Japan Asia is new to gaming, and that's okay, it's going to take some time before they find their own voice.<p>This is not factually true, video games have one of the most popular forms of entertainment in non Japan Asia for 25 years. Nearly a quarter of humanity lives in non-japan asia. There were good non japanese games, bad non japanese games, and more than anything tons of 'mid' non japanese games. They aren't new too it, and they do have their own voices and styles.<p>What gets talked about as history of video gaming tends to reflect American video gaming history and the unavoidable influence of America's number one vassal state, Japan. Really this is the history of games marketed in North America and that's fine, it just isn't the whole history.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 20 Sep 2025 19:10:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45316349</link><dc:creator>apalmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45316349</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45316349</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by apalmer in "Memorizing the first 100 perfect squares (2022)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I am not knocking the article but seems like if you are going to dedicate the effort of learning quick mental math it's probably more efficient to 'just' know how to multiple 2 digits quickly than specifically focusing on 2 digit squares...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 10 Sep 2024 17:39:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41503421</link><dc:creator>apalmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41503421</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41503421</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by apalmer in "Handling complexity without abstraction: Algebraic Bricklaying C"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The ABC approach written about her seems good to me, but I still think of this as abstraction. I get that this is a 'zero' or 'low cost' abstraction but it's still an abstraction. Don't want to be overly nit picky so going to leave it there.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 06 Sep 2024 20:22:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41469440</link><dc:creator>apalmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41469440</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41469440</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by apalmer in "OpenAI board in discussions with Sam Altman to return as CEO"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is valid thought process BUT Altman is not going to come back without the other faction being neutered. It just would not make any sense.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 18 Nov 2023 23:15:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38325867</link><dc:creator>apalmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38325867</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38325867</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by apalmer in "Students made Oxford murder capital of late medieval England, research suggests"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>numerous things, for one much much greater likely hood of getting caught.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 30 Sep 2023 02:57:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37712437</link><dc:creator>apalmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37712437</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37712437</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by apalmer in "Baldurs Gate 3 comes out on Mac tomorrow. I will not play it"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Good for you? Different people have different challenges, I salute you for standing up to yours. I don't think you should change your mind on this, the feeling of sticking to you 'will' is better than any game.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 20 Sep 2023 23:16:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37591313</link><dc:creator>apalmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37591313</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37591313</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by apalmer in "Jsonformer: Generate structured output from LLMs"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Trying to understand why this is necessary? LLMs cannot reliably generate valid Jason?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 02 May 2023 20:11:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35793448</link><dc:creator>apalmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35793448</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35793448</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by apalmer in "Cloud services like AWS or Google Cloud Platform may be the wrong choice"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article doesn’t really present an argument. Pretty much starts with ‘you don’t want the cost and complexity’ and then goes on from that point as a given.<p>A more useful article would actually walk through the cost/complexity trade</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 14 Oct 2022 12:33:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33202663</link><dc:creator>apalmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33202663</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33202663</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by apalmer in "First make the change easy, then make the easy change (2021)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think there is a minimum floor that should be allocated to this kind of work.<p>It doesn’t make sense to clean everything to a perfect condition but there should be some amount of ‘keep your room clean’ level of hygiene that’s maintained</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 02 Oct 2022 23:08:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33061317</link><dc:creator>apalmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33061317</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33061317</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by apalmer in "Nobody optimizes happiness"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>But you are not actually retired. Seems more in line with what the article is saying.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 30 Jul 2022 01:19:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32283466</link><dc:creator>apalmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32283466</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32283466</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by apalmer in "DoorDash and pizza arbitrage (2020)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This to me is what killed delivery as a service. It doesn’t work even when they are charging what works out to  be double the salary the restaurant pays its own delivery people. And it works out for no one, restaurant, driver, even the delivery as a service providers since they are all hemorrhaging money.<p>It’s a fake industry held up by VC money.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 13 Jul 2022 19:23:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32087600</link><dc:creator>apalmer</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32087600</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32087600</guid></item></channel></rss>