Hacker News: bobbiechen

New comment by bobbiechen in "How can I keep from singing?"

bobbiechen — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 14:51:52 +0000

I was agreeing with you! Though I can see how I came on a little strong there.

New comment by bobbiechen in "How can I keep from singing?"

bobbiechen — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 23:52:29 +0000

It's interesting how many people I know who jump instantly from hobby to thinking about hustling, Etsy, Patreon, fame, etc. and the thought that they'll never be good enough to go pro is a real barrier. You don't need to monetize your joy.

New comment by bobbiechen in "Forcing an inversion of control on the SaaS stack"

bobbiechen — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 15:43:41 +0000

Enterprise userscripts? Very neat, though I wonder if typical enterprise security policies would allow for this.

New comment by bobbiechen in "Lighter, Not Faster"

bobbiechen — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:15:07 +0000

What LLM tool are you using to write this comment? It must have been really good to lift the stress of _10 years_ of never commenting?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#generated

Lighter, Not Faster

bobbiechen — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 14:06:34 +0000

Article URL: https://digitalseams.com/blog/lighter-not-faster

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47765842

Points: 2

# Comments: 3

There is no escape from Ashby's law (2020)

bobbiechen — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 20:27:56 +0000

Article URL: https://surfingcomplexity.blog/2020/01/18/there-is-no-escape-from-ashbys-law/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47757399

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by bobbiechen in "Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator"

bobbiechen — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 21:45:39 +0000

This article is a great example of "strong + weak = weak".

I only made it to the interesting stuff because of Carreyou's name, otherwise I would have stopped.

The email timing and lack of email metadata were also strong, in my opinion. But all of this nonsense like "Wow, these guys both talk about PGP??" distracts from it.

Clashes of Tech and the US Government

bobbiechen — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 20:21:18 +0000

Article URL: https://digitalseams.com/blog/assorted-links-2026-03-01

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47666493

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by bobbiechen in "iNaturalist"

bobbiechen — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 18:06:09 +0000

I'm a big fan of Merlin and learning more about its development changed my perspective on software development! I wrote about that here: https://digitalseams.com/blog/what-birdsong-and-backends-can...

New comment by bobbiechen in "AI companies charge you 60% more based on your language, BPE tokens"

bobbiechen — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 18:01:32 +0000

I heard an anecdote that Qwen Coder works better when prompted in Korean - haven't tested it for myself though.

Tools and Toolmaking

bobbiechen — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 16:15:03 +0000

Article URL: https://unsung.aresluna.org/on-tools-and-toolmaking/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47576189

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

PostalForm lets agents place a real print-and-mail order for their owner

bobbiechen — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 15:52:27 +0000

Article URL: https://postalform.com/agents

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47575841

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by bobbiechen in "The Washington Post Is Using Reader Data to Set Subscription Prices"

bobbiechen — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 04:04:29 +0000

I'm sure it's planned. To miss out on the Warren Buffet sale is to miss out on additional revenue on zero COGS, and it's against the goal of individualized pricing to squeeze out all consumer surplus.

I recently wrote about the harms here and it made the front page at the time: https://digitalseams.com/blog/the-behavioral-cost-of-persona...

New comment by bobbiechen in "Optimizing Content for Agents"

bobbiechen — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 16:41:18 +0000

This is an extension of running untrusted code, except AI agents are basically interpreting everything -> prompt injection.

I'm surprised we haven't _already_ seen a major personal incident as early adopters tend to be less cautious - my guess is that it has already happened and no incident has been publicized or gone viral yet.

Okmain: Pick an OK main colour of an image

bobbiechen — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 21:15:56 +0000

Article URL: https://dgroshev.com/blog/okmain/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47328868

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by bobbiechen in "Intel Demos Chip to Compute with Encrypted Data"

bobbiechen — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 15:31:46 +0000

Agreed. When I was working on TEEs/confidential computing, just about everyone agreed that FHE was conceptually attractive (trust the math instead of trusting a hardware vendor) but the overhead of FHE was so insanely high. Think 1000x slowdowns turning your hour-long batch job into something that takes over a month to run instead.

Electrical upgrades for our Winnebago Solis camper van

bobbiechen — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 21:32:50 +0000

Article URL: https://www.jamesxli.com/2026/van-electrical-upgrades/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47315843

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by bobbiechen in "Ethiopia gets $350M World Bank financing for its digital ID project (2024)"

bobbiechen — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 04:34:06 +0000

> your bank (hopefully) doesn't check with some central database the government controls before issuing you an account.

Hmm... the OFAC SDN and other sanctions lists? Politically exposed persons lists? These are very standard KYC/AML checks.

New comment by bobbiechen in "Where things stand with the Department of War"

bobbiechen — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 01:47:07 +0000

>I’m going to tell you about how I took a job building software to kill people.

>But don’t get distracted by that; I didn’t know at the time.

Caleb Hearth: "Don't Get Distracted" https://calebhearth.com/dont-get-distracted

New comment by bobbiechen in "Show HN: Poppy – A simple app to stay intentional with relationships"

bobbiechen — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 09:36:37 +0000

Not sure if it's top 3, but I use Monica https://www.monicahq.com/ which does advertise itself as a personal CRM. I certainly underutilize its features but things like birthday reminders + a place for a few notes (where do they live again? who's their partner?) is nice