Hacker News: bsoles

New comment by bsoles in "Emacs Turns 50"

bsoles — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:11:33 +0000

The best thing that my PhD advisor did was to require me to learn emacs and latex, 32 years ago.

New comment by bsoles in "Emacs Turns 50"

bsoles — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 23:08:48 +0000

So your cat is about to get fired?

New comment by bsoles in "Tailscale SSH: Investigation and remediation update"

bsoles — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 18:25:39 +0000

This must be the new "Just Google it". I am pretty sure the poster is perfectly aware that they could ask an LLM.

New comment by bsoles in "Ask HN: How to deal with shipping AI-written code you don't understand?"

bsoles — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 19:58:10 +0000

Then whose role is it now to understand the code?

New comment by bsoles in "Knuth reward check"

bsoles — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 02:35:37 +0000

Bjarne Stroustrup did, at some point at least. I have a $32 real check from him for finding an error in "The C++ Programming Language (Special Edition)".

New comment by bsoles in "Sorry, I'm in a meeting"

bsoles — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 20:19:48 +0000

Stealing my data bandwidth by sending me unsolicited ads is also unethical. Profiling my online behavior and monetizing it is also unethical. YouTube doesn't seem to be bothered with compensating me for that. Why should I care about them?

New comment by bsoles in "How to keep enjoying programming in a world of LLMs"

bsoles — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 17:30:46 +0000

> The second thing is that using LLMs in a useful way is a skill in itself.

Not really. I don't even bother writing complete sentences as my prompts anymore. Once the LLM has enough context on my current issue, even incomplete sentences or phrases result in the same outcome quality in LLM's responses.

New comment by bsoles in "Don't let anyone take away your big box of cables"

bsoles — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 22:30:23 +0000

I routinely steal my wife's hairbands to tie various cables in my cable stash. You can never have enough USB cables of various types. But as Murphy dictates, the USB cable that I need now is one that I don't have in my stash.

New comment by bsoles in "Casey Muratori – The Root of the Root of All Evil – BSC 2026 [video]"

bsoles — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 16:47:21 +0000

As much as I like to watch Casey, Prime, etc. on YouTube, they are not going to teach anybody anything. They are just entertainment for software people with a certain viewpoint.

New comment by bsoles in "Proton Global Outage"

bsoles — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 23:11:06 +0000

Mine does. I am able to login to the browser extension with my password and see all my passwords. I think there was a setting to enable local caching somewhere.

New comment by bsoles in "2,500-year-old sculpture discovered at UNESCO site in Turkey"

bsoles — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 22:56:46 +0000

If Göbekli Tepe doesn't count as an indication of a civilization, I don't know what does.

Requirement for a writing system is an arbitrary condition. A lot of civilizations, especially in that region, have strong oral traditions.

New comment by bsoles in "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"

bsoles — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 22:48:24 +0000

At least in small scale, having your own git server is trivially easy. Why are organizations so eager to put a third-party layer on top of that?

New comment by bsoles in "Show HN: I spent 2 years designing a mechanical Magic Keyboard"

bsoles — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 19:00:29 +0000

I am sure there are afficionados of these things, but $349 for a keyboard is crazy. I am not sure what you get in return for such a price..

New comment by bsoles in ""Clean" Code, Horrible Performance (2023)"

bsoles — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 17:52:36 +0000

This comment cannot be overstated. Armchair "software engineers" like them do a lot of disservice to the community by promoting non-workable solutions in real production environments.

On the other side, I still consider McConnell's Code Complete to be a gem.

New comment by bsoles in "Why do you suck at juggling now?"

bsoles — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 22:42:11 +0000

It is going to be easy this year. I'll make up some bullshit story about how I used Claude to improve my productivity, and how learned and used AI tools to speed up the feature delivery process. It doesn't have to be true...

New comment by bsoles in "Writing by hand is good for your brain"

bsoles — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 22:16:22 +0000

With mild (self-diagnosed) OCD, I can't even read a book with a single dog ear on it, let alone markings and writing.

This may not be you aim, but there is research out there indicating that highlighting text does not help with retention.

New comment by bsoles in "Prioritize mental health, and why communication is so important"

bsoles — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 22:45:27 +0000

Being silent about it when they fully know about it is not much different than promoting.

New comment by bsoles in "Prioritize mental health, and why communication is so important"

bsoles — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 21:32:50 +0000

> Nobody attacks children.

Ever heard of the Catholic Church? What does rape count as?

New comment by bsoles in "Prioritize mental health, and why communication is so important"

bsoles — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 18:56:30 +0000

Are we talking about the same church where children were raped, "witches" were burned, non-believers were tortured, gays are demonized, women are treated as lower beings, ..? Yeah, so good for our souls?

New comment by bsoles in "Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?"

bsoles — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 22:42:47 +0000

> Many LLM maximalists say they use the tech to learn new things, but to what effect?

I would also argue that they use LLMs to learn "about" new things, but not really the thing itself. I, myself, learned a lot about complex SQL queries just recently using LLMs. But I really don't know how to write complex queries myself.

People often confuse reading about a thing with knowing the thing.