Hacker News: austinkhale

New comment by austinkhale in "Experimental surgery performed by AI-driven surgical robot"

austinkhale — Fri, 25 Jul 2025 21:06:48 +0000

If Waymo has taught me anything, it’s that people will eventually accept robotic surgeons. It won’t happen overnight but once the data shows overwhelming superiority, it’ll be adopted.

New comment by austinkhale in "AI threatens to raid the water reserves of Europe's driest regions"

austinkhale — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 13:43:41 +0000

Per the article, all current European data centers used 62 million cubic meters of water for 2024. That is 3.4% of only Spain's existing desalination capacity (≈1.8 billion m³/yr).

Seems like this is solvable:

1. Keep rolling out the closed-loop cooling improvements now appearing in new DC designs.

2. Add more desal capacity where it’s cheap (sunny coastlines + renewables) to cover the residual demand.

Sources: - https://aedyr.com/plantas-desaladoras-agua-salobre-espana/

New comment by austinkhale in "Snyk security researcher deploys malicious NPM packages targeting cursor.com"

austinkhale — Tue, 14 Jan 2025 16:39:40 +0000

Upvoting this since presumably you're actually the CTO at Snyk and people should see your official response, but wow this feels wildly irresponsible. You could have proved the PoC without actually stealing innocent developer credentials. Furthermore, additional caution should have been taken given the conflict of interest with the competitor product to Cursor. Terrible decision making and terrible response.

New comment by austinkhale in "Ask HN: Examples of agentic LLM systems in production?"

austinkhale — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 15:38:05 +0000

This has been my experience. Lots of companies are implementing LLMs but are not advertising it. There's virtually no upside to being public about it.

New comment by austinkhale in "Ask HN: Examples of agentic LLM systems in production?"

austinkhale — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 15:26:43 +0000

I know of many, many LLM systems in production system, since that's what I've been helping companies build since the start of the year. Mostly it's pretty rote automation work but the cost savings are incredible.

Agentic workflows are a much higher bar that are just barely starting to work. I can't speak to their efficacy but here's a few of the ones that are sort of starter-level agents that I've started seeing some companies adopt:

- https://www.intercom.com/fin

- https://www.rox.com/

- https://devin.ai/

- https://bolt.new/

- https://v0.dev/

New comment by austinkhale in "1 bug, $50k in bounties, a Zendesk backdoor"

austinkhale — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 22:16:39 +0000

Presumably one of the PMs you’re referring to has posted this article for additional information. Feels like they’re doubling down on their initial position.

https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/8187090244506-...

New comment by austinkhale in "1 bug, $50k in bounties, a Zendesk backdoor"

austinkhale — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 22:13:01 +0000

Wild response. It appears you did not learn a single lesson through this process.

New comment by austinkhale in "It's Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word"

austinkhale — Sat, 05 Oct 2024 13:51:02 +0000

There are legit criticisms of Sam Altman that can be levied but none of them are in this article. This is just reductive nonsense.

The arguments are essentially:

1. The technology has plateaued, not in reality, but in the perception of the average layperson over the last two years.

2. Sam _only_ has a record as a deal maker, not a physicist.

3. AI can sometimes do bad things & utilizes a lot of energy.

I normally really enjoy the Atlantic since their writers at least try to include context & nuance. This piece does neither.

New comment by austinkhale in "OpenAI changes policy to allow military applications"

austinkhale — Sat, 28 Sep 2024 00:08:06 +0000

Good. In the US, we should all wake up to the fact that we enjoy the lives we lead in large part to the fact that we’re able to project strength. AI will be another piece in the puzzle of national defense.

PSA: Mercury closing all Ukrainian founder bank accounts

austinkhale — Tue, 23 Jul 2024 15:06:07 +0000

Article URL: https://twitter.com/AlonaMysko/status/1815466572024070521

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41046744

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by austinkhale in "Slack to destroy >90d history of free communities"

austinkhale — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 19:15:02 +0000

Seems reasonable? If you’re planning on staying free forever and are already gated to 90 days of history, why would you care if they delete 1+ year old content? From a privacy perspective, I’d even say it’s a positive update.

New comment by austinkhale in "Ask HN: Are you still using your Vision Pro?"

austinkhale — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 17:05:24 +0000

Yeah. I enjoy it for watching movies/shows, especially while flying. I also like to do a couple of hours of work (programming) in a cool environment with immersive music every couple of days. I keep it on my standing desk and when I stand up, I frequently will put it on.

I don't recommend it for non developers until there is more content, but it's a really neat dev kit device that shows where the future is headed.

New comment by austinkhale in "FDA denies petition against use of phthalates in food packaging"

austinkhale — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 16:28:26 +0000

Feels like this is going to become one of those things we look back on in retrospect and regret. We should be full steam ahead on identifying what effects microplastics & phthalates more broadly are having on our health & adjust accordingly. Early indications seem... not great.

California Senate Passes SB1047

austinkhale — Wed, 22 May 2024 03:37:21 +0000

Article URL: https://twitter.com/Scott_Wiener/status/1793102136504615297

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40437067

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

New comment by austinkhale in "Slack AI Training with Customer Data"

austinkhale — Fri, 17 May 2024 02:23:29 +0000

Wow. I understand business models that are freemium but for a premium priced B2B product? This feels like an incredible rug pull. This changes things for me.

New comment by austinkhale in "Neuralink's First Patient: 'It Blows My Mind So Much'"

austinkhale — Thu, 16 May 2024 15:12:22 +0000

Gift link: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-05-16/neuralink...

New comment by austinkhale in "Beeper acquired by Automattic"

austinkhale — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 15:20:50 +0000

Seems that way. From the announcement: "This is a big bet. Automattic is doubling down on chat after their acquisition last year of Texts.com, a messaging app with a similar mission. Our teams and products will merge, and I will take on the role leading the team as Head of Messaging. It will take a bit of time for us to integrate and combine forces under the Beeper brand. We’ve got big plans!"

New comment by austinkhale in "Figure 01 robot demos its OpenAI integration"

austinkhale — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 15:50:49 +0000

I'm not sure when OpenAI added them, but you can hear similar things when using the ChatGPT voice mode on iOS. Sometimes it feels almost like a latency stutter and other times it feels intentionally human.

Inflection 2.5 Released. Claims "neck-and-neck" parity with GPT-4

austinkhale — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 15:27:46 +0000

Article URL: https://inflection.ai/inflection-2-5

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39630256

Points: 9

# Comments: 2

New comment by austinkhale in "California Approves Waymo Expansion to Los Angeles and SF Peninsula [pdf]"

austinkhale — Fri, 01 Mar 2024 23:16:01 +0000

Fantastic news. I use them all the time in Phoenix. My mom uses them to get to her doctor appointments. I think people underestimate how much of a quality of life improvement these are for people even when compared to Uber/Lyft.