Hacker News: brightstep

New comment by brightstep in "Beyond agentic coding"

brightstep — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 18:30:27 +0000

Totally agree about the chat interface. I like to say it’s “infinitely powerful and infinitely confusing.” A dangerous combination. And, arguing with myself, I think it’s fair to say the code is AN object of our attention, if not THE object. A common metaphor being applied to agentic coding is the invention of power tools. If AI is the drill, and the goal is a house, then the code is the framing.

New comment by brightstep in "Beyond agentic coding"

brightstep — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 12:45:44 +0000

> A tool is not meant to be the object of our attention; rather the tool should reveal the true object of our attention (the thing the tool acts upon), rather than obscuring it

I think this is true of AI agents. What is the object of our engineering attention? Applications, features, defect resolution. Not code.

New comment by brightstep in "Why Twilio Segment moved from microservices back to a monolith"

brightstep — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 23:36:51 +0000

They have a monolith but struggle with individual subsystem failures bringing down the whole thing. Sounds like they would benefit from Elixir’s isolated, fail-fast architecture.

New comment by brightstep in "Reddit is taking over Google"

brightstep — Wed, 17 Apr 2024 23:31:57 +0000

That’s true, and it’s still more reliable for useful information than the top results on Google.

New comment by brightstep in "Goodbye Auth0"

brightstep — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 14:46:54 +0000

> I was being exposed to engineering concepts that just weren't a thing in agency work: unit testing, CI/CD, git hygiene, release management.

As someone who’s worked at an agency that’s grown from twenty engineers to hundreds over the last five years, what? Even when we were small and scrappy we still wrote unit tests…

New comment by brightstep in "Google AI has better bedside manner than doctors – and makes better diagnoses"

brightstep — Tue, 16 Jan 2024 16:38:15 +0000

It won’t be only for the disadvantaged.

New comment by brightstep in "The perils and pleasures of bartending in Antarctica (2017)"

brightstep — Sat, 06 Jan 2024 23:50:17 +0000

“Tending bar” puts more emphasis on what one might argue is the more important part of the phrase. No one is there for the tender. Consider versus “woodworking”: you want the work, not the hunk of wood.

New comment by brightstep in "‘Inert’ ingredients in pesticides may be more toxic to bees than thought"

brightstep — Mon, 11 Dec 2023 01:13:01 +0000

Both. Unknowingly usually means uncaringly. And the FDA clearly has duty to thoroughly test products.

New comment by brightstep in "Strategies for making reproducible research the norm"

brightstep — Sat, 25 Nov 2023 18:26:01 +0000

We need a publicly funded body whose purpose is to issue grants for firms to reproduce scientific findings. A scientific reproduction corps. Extra can be awarded for finding flawed/fraudulent research. This would create a community of organizations that counter-balance industry incentives and instill trust in our scientific process.

New comment by brightstep in "Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses"

brightstep — Fri, 29 Sep 2023 00:04:42 +0000

Activation via Pegasus spyware will not be overt

New comment by brightstep in "Doing laundry on campus without a phone"

brightstep — Sat, 02 Sep 2023 12:34:52 +0000

Would you still have, if you knew the strings that would come attached? Tracking your every move? Enabling governments to surreptitiously snoop on your audio and camera? Constant exposure to experiences designed to addict and immiserate you?

New comment by brightstep in "Doing laundry on campus without a phone"

brightstep — Sat, 02 Sep 2023 12:23:44 +0000

It’s not always possible to have a personal laundry machine available. Is it too much to ask that the machines also accept a credit card scanned in-person?

New comment by brightstep in "The Wrath of Goodreads"

brightstep — Sat, 29 Jul 2023 22:43:54 +0000

The solution is trust. Crowd sourced reviews are junk because you don’t know who wrote them, what their intentions are, or if they are in any way qualified (whatever that means to you) to review a book. With well known and trusted reviewer, you understand their biases and can adjust accordingly.

New comment by brightstep in "U.S. pedestrian deaths reach a 40-year high"

brightstep — Mon, 26 Jun 2023 15:22:43 +0000

It's always amazing to me how on this engineering-heavy forum, so many users fail to recognize the benefit some simple engineering can deliver.

New comment by brightstep in "JPMorgan Chase and Co tracks employees to dystopian extents"

brightstep — Tue, 16 May 2023 12:36:47 +0000

This is a perfect example (finally) of why even white collar workers need unions. Yes, even you in finance. Yes, even you in software engineering. It’s not just about pay!

New comment by brightstep in "Scientists Use GPT AI to Passively Read People's Thoughts in Breakthrough"

brightstep — Tue, 09 May 2023 14:53:40 +0000

That’s not true. We don’t need to do this. Absent intervention, sure these technologies are likely to be introduced and invade our lives. But we are humans, not computers, and despite the decisions of the last several decades, we are not required to allow market forces and the profit motive algorithm to make all decisions in our society. We can make whatever rules and decisions we want. It won’t come without a fight, but this horrifying development seems a pretty good place to start.

New comment by brightstep in "America will soon see a wave of bank mergers?"

brightstep — Tue, 02 May 2023 17:56:31 +0000

The same kind of behavior happens in the private sector. Since it’s not government, we don’t call it corruption.

New comment by brightstep in "FDIC Takes over Silicon Valley Bank"

brightstep — Sat, 11 Mar 2023 03:07:14 +0000

Because the bank, like all capitalist entities, exists to make a profit. Why else?

New comment by brightstep in "An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer"

brightstep — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 23:19:32 +0000

So have I. I love the people I work with (usually). That doesn’t change the nature of the wage relationship. We workers produce value through our labor which companies pay for in wages. Capital (CEOs, founders, VCs) wants to maximize the ratio of value to cost, therefore they wish to pay us as little as possible while getting maximum efficiency. It has nothing to do with liking your coworkers.

New comment by brightstep in "An Introduction to Class Warfare for the Software Engineer"

brightstep — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 21:17:58 +0000

The only difference is our capital is digital, not physical. Binaries, not machines. As such we can build it without expensive raw materials and components, as those which form an assembly robot for example. Once one owns those binaries and other non-physical capital, one takes on the economic interests and incentives of that capitalist class, including the reduction of labor costs.