Hacker News: brobdingnagians

New comment by brobdingnagians in "What being ripped off taught me"

brobdingnagians — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 16:07:08 +0000

So true. And I'll add, no matter how trustworthy you believe the other party to be based on reptutation, relationships, or otherwise-- they should understand requiring assurances. The worst backstabs are from the people you know and who should know better. And a lot of people will justify it to themselves if they get in trouble. They will continue telling themselves that they are fundamentally good people and it just didn't work out as they rip you off for a lot of money. If they say the equivalent of "why don't you trust me?" that's a red flag.

New comment by brobdingnagians in "F-15E jet shot down over Iran"

brobdingnagians — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 08:38:22 +0000

The open letter to Americans from Iran:

https://www.straitstimes.com/world/middle-east/full-text-of-...

Vs Trump's speech:

https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-transcript-address-i...

New comment by brobdingnagians in "F-15E jet shot down over Iran"

brobdingnagians — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 08:21:24 +0000

I watched an interview with a retired British military guy who said that the radar destruction does complicate things, but the US still has the other AWACs, so there is still early warning and visibility, just complicates things and reduced range/more risk.

New comment by brobdingnagians in "Sweden goes back to basics, swapping screens for books in the classroom"

brobdingnagians — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 11:54:41 +0000

Especially since kids these days aren't even very good at using computers:

http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-co...

It seems to me that if someone can read and think critically-- they can RTFM and get much better much quicker at computers and AI than people who spent all their time tapping an ipad to watch the next video.

New comment by brobdingnagians in "Stop Sloppypasta"

brobdingnagians — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 11:21:30 +0000

I have a very similar situation. Except it isn't even a ticket, just an export of a very long "conversation" with ChatGPT with a vague indication that this is what needs to be implemented. When questioned about it, the person insists they completely understood it before but just forgot after a few days. Sometimes the prompts are removed. Lots of contradictory material in it, some doesn't make sense even in context. Very difficult to figure out what is wanted.

New comment by brobdingnagians in "Agents that run while I sleep"

brobdingnagians — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 07:09:27 +0000

I would encourage my competitors to use AI agents on their codebase as much as possible. Make sure every new feature has it, lots of velocity! Run those suckers day and night. Don't review it, just make sure the feature is there! Then when the music stops, the AI companies hit the economic realities, go insolvent, and they are left with no one who understands a sprawling tangled web of code that is 80% AI generated, then we'll see who laughs last.

New comment by brobdingnagians in "AI Made Writing Code Easier. It Made Being an Engineer Harder"

brobdingnagians — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 14:59:12 +0000

AI made writing blog posts easier. It made critical thinking harder.

New comment by brobdingnagians in "OpenCiv3: Open-source, cross-platform reimagining of Civilization III"

brobdingnagians — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 21:39:30 +0000

Slightly tangential but recently I've gotten into the Ilwinter Game Design games Dominions 6 and Conquest of Elysium 5. I was surprised how similar but how different they are to Europa Universalis and Civilization respectively. Very interesting studies in horizontal game design where every faction has dramatically different gameplay strategies.

New comment by brobdingnagians in "Fossil versus Git"

brobdingnagians — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 12:53:07 +0000

Git is only better in the same sense that Windows is better than Linux. I really need the tools I use that only run on Windows. I prefer Linux for a lot of things, including daily web development, but the experience of developing Unreal Engine on Linux is lacking. I love fossil and the many features it provides in itself and would use it for everything, except that it doesn't have (working) Intellij plugin for integration, a good GitHub alternative, etc.

New comment by brobdingnagians in "Coursera to combine with Udemy"

brobdingnagians — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 13:00:52 +0000

I use Udemy courses all the time; great for compliance, game engine training, and insightful training of soft skills. Good instructors have insight and comprehensive coverage that questioning LLMs do not have.

New comment by brobdingnagians in "Cloudflare was down"

brobdingnagians — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 10:06:53 +0000

Two's a coincidence, three's a pattern; I guess we will have to wait until next month to see if it becomes a pattern. Was there a particular aspect of the React Server Components that made it easy to have this problem appear? would it have been caught or avoided in another framework or language?

New comment by brobdingnagians in "Anthropic acquires Bun"

brobdingnagians — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 11:33:25 +0000

Thank you

New comment by brobdingnagians in "Anthropic acquires Bun"

brobdingnagians — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 19:40:54 +0000

Do you know of any YouTube videos where you would say they do a very good job of showing off this style of coding?

New comment by brobdingnagians in "Anthropic acquires Bun"

brobdingnagians — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 19:37:47 +0000

I'm curious what people think of quotes like these. Obviously it makes an explicit, falsifiable prediction. That prediction is false. There are so many reasons why someone could predict that it would be false. Is it just optimistic marketing speech, or do they really believe it themselves?

New comment by brobdingnagians in "Xlibre is a fork of the Xorg Xserver with lots of code cleanups"

brobdingnagians — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 12:18:56 +0000

Which shows that the mega-corporations that endorsed it before weren't even sincere in that. Further evidence that you shouldn't trust a soulless mega-corporation-- no matter what they profess in public.

I respect someone who stands up for their beliefs, even if I think they are flawed.

New comment by brobdingnagians in "APT Rust requirement raises questions"

brobdingnagians — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 12:12:18 +0000

I hear you. I feel like my personal experience has definitely influenced my view. I've seen management who want to have a timeline and a deadline from day 1, but don't want to put any effort into thinking out how they could allocate resources to make that happen or what was required of them. So they just ask someone else for a calendar and ask if someone's already made a ticket.

New comment by brobdingnagians in "APT Rust requirement raises questions"

brobdingnagians — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 17:12:36 +0000

Perhaps that is the ideal when it was laid out, but the reality of the common implementation is that planning is dispensed with. It gives some management a great excuse to look no further than the next jira ticket, if that.

The ideal implementation of a methodology is only relevant for a small number of management who would do well with almost any methodology because they will take initiative to improve whatever they are doing. The best methodology for wide adoption is the one that works okay for the largest number of management who struggle to take responsibility or initiative.

That is to say, the methodology that requires management to take responsibility in its "lowest energy state" is the best one for most people-- because they will migrate to the lowest energy state. If the "lowest energy state" allows management to do almost nothing, then they will. If the structure allows being clueless, a lot of managers will migrate to pointy haired Dilbert manager cluelessness.

With that said; I do agree with getting products to clients quickly, getting feedback quickly, and being "agile" in adapting to requirements; but having a good plan based on actual knowledge of the requirements is important. Any strict adherence to an extreme methodology is probably going to fail in edge cases, so having the judgement of when to apply which methodology is a characteristic of good management. You've got to know your domain, know your team, and use the right tool for the job.

New comment by brobdingnagians in "Building more with GPT-5.1-Codex-Max"

brobdingnagians — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 20:09:07 +0000

Such great case studies of how LLM coding will make all of your employees 1000x more productive at coding, design, and UX. They really are leading the way showing us into the brighter future of AI software /s

New comment by brobdingnagians in "When UPS charged me a $684 tariff on $355 of vintage computer parts"

brobdingnagians — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 13:05:57 +0000

Those are more recent examples, but I think Germany is still a more visceral example for a lot of Western nations because Germany was a high tech, educated industrial nation that was hit with such massive problems from government policy. It's closer to home. Other countries are (wrongfully) easier to dismiss as being just too different from our wealthy and enlightened selves.

New comment by brobdingnagians in "When did people favor composition over inheritance?"

brobdingnagians — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 12:45:42 +0000

Kotlin switches that back to opt in-- they did as a specific design level thing learning from their observation of how to improve java.