Hacker News: btbuildem

New comment by btbuildem in "How the Claude Code team does code review"

btbuildem — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 00:55:55 +0000

It makes sense for Anthropic to pitch "more code = more better" but as anyone who's been in this game long enough knows, "less is more" often enough. And good luck coercing an AI coding agent to solve a problem by removing things.

Personally, I find Claude's degenerate urge to just spew uncontrollable amounts of code quite counterproductive. Yes I get it, you get paid by the token. I'd like to see more reasoning, more understanding, and less generating.

Truth is, we are still very very far from actual AI software engineering. Some people are working on useful tooling, and (predictably, like anything good and useful) it is taking a long time. LLMs are great, and hopefully they will help us accelerate building the tools that bring this profession to the next level.

30k PRs in a month (or whatever) is not the brag they make it out to be.

New comment by btbuildem in "Artificial Insanity"

btbuildem — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 21:45:04 +0000

You read it, you let it tickle your braingibbles, you think about it for a few moments. That's it, that's the purpose.

New comment by btbuildem in "Artificial Insanity"

btbuildem — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 21:43:58 +0000

I've taken to calling it Human Unintelligence, in response to people arguing "it's not artificial, it's 'alien' intelligence". It's not intelligent. It is missing key aspects of intelligence, one of them being creativity.

New comment by btbuildem in "GPT 6.1 Sol: Near-Astra intelligence for a fifth of the price"

btbuildem — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 18:12:11 +0000

That mirrors how disappointing Opus 5 and Fable were, for anything beyond one-shotted tasks or shiny demos. Maybe OAI is just a step behind Anthropic? Opus 5.5 seems like the real deal again, consistent good results on large, complex codebases.

New comment by btbuildem in "Generating the P3 Tiling"

btbuildem — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 16:30:43 +0000

Oh it's been a while since I looked, one of the tile stores I used to go to in Montreal had them -- not as a set mind you, but as two different lines of tiles that happened to be the right proportions to reproduce the pattern.

New comment by btbuildem in "Generating the P3 Tiling"

btbuildem — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 18:58:00 +0000

If you want something truly diabolical, attempt to tile your bathroom with either of those patterns (yes, these tile shapes can be bought).

New comment by btbuildem in "Any Human Ever – One life, drawn at random from all who have ever lived"

btbuildem — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 18:57:44 +0000

I drew one that died as a newborn, 960BCE, then another that lived a long long life! https://anyhumanever.com/life/2139137610-1449878292-21360978...

New comment by btbuildem in "Porting my 1993 Amiga game to Godot, with an LLM reading the 68000 assembly"

btbuildem — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 18:54:43 +0000

> one copy of the Amiga Hardware Reference Manual

aka The Book... my, this brings back dusty memories

Babylonian Twins has such strong "Gods: Into the Wonderful" vibes, I wonder if that game was an inspiration for you

https://www.lemonamiga.com/game/gods-into-the-wonderful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kAXGjUwHyA

New comment by btbuildem in "EPA says power for data centers can sidestep pollution laws"

btbuildem — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 15:01:38 +0000

> truly cannot comprehend the mindset

The mindset is "if I could harvest your organs for profit I absolutely would, and I would make it illegal to protest against it"

New comment by btbuildem in "Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border"

btbuildem — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 19:53:31 +0000

The naivete of some of the comments here is astounding. It doesn't matter whether you're right, it doesn't matter whether it's the law, it's irrelevant that you have rights, etc. Those things are of the past now, for the US.

I think it would be easier to understand the playing field and choose your actions accordingly, if you accept the US has entered its East Germany / late 20th century Soviet era -- except of course with 1000x more invasive and effective surveillance tech.

The social dynamics are the same - the abuses, the selective enforcement, the lack of recourse, the same characters in the roles of various levels of "law enforcement" and "politics". I'm so very sorry, but the best you can do from here is speedrun the collapse.

New comment by btbuildem in "Israel creates fake think tank in likely attempt to dupe AI chatbots"

btbuildem — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 11:25:01 +0000

It's interesting that (as per the article) the work pumped out by this synthetic think tank does not seem to align / disfavours the official party line of the country. You'd imagine if this was propaganda, it would be supportive of the official stance. I wonder what the objective is then, reputation-building for later influence? Something else?

New comment by btbuildem in "Ask HN: Do you know of any company that went back to hand-written code?"

btbuildem — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 12:23:54 +0000

My employer is encouraging AI adoption across the board, to the point of basically making tokenmaxing part of performance KPIs. I think they're pushing headlong into disaster, but they are not the kind of people to take advice, or admit mistakes.

I use AI coding tools both at work and in my hobby projects. It very clear to me they're nuclear-powered footguns, and we have a long, long way yet in developing practices, structures and workflows that will enable true benefits while minimizing the absolutely toxic baggage/fallout/side effects.

I look at the big corp push for AI adoption as another instance of boards of directors choosing the large investors / their own personal gain over the success of the corporations they govern (first instance being the "back to the office" push in attempt to shore up commercial real estate). I think the circular economy of the AI bubble has spread far and wide, and we're watching a lot of invested players trying to keep it going.

New comment by btbuildem in "Qwen 3.8 27B"

btbuildem — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 18:01:20 +0000

Most people cannot draw a bicycle that well!

New comment by btbuildem in "Qwen 3.8 27B"

btbuildem — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 17:57:25 +0000

O joyous day!

New comment by btbuildem in "Illinois just passed a law that puts Linux on the hook for age verification"

btbuildem — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 22:07:14 +0000

Ok so, all the appliances and cars and TVs and who knows what other embedded electronics sold in Illinois will require the user (?) to verify their age?

New comment by btbuildem in "The USSR in 100 Photographs"

btbuildem — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 12:53:15 +0000

https://cdn.trinixy.ru/pics2/20070801/ussr_18.jpg my favourite of the lot.

Runner up, the inconsolable background pooper (towards the end), what a weird photo to take btw.

New comment by btbuildem in "DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731"

btbuildem — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 01:00:42 +0000

> only saving grace might be some sort of a 'national security' proclamation banning the use of state-of-the-art Chinese (and non-US) models

In what kind of sad and failed dystopia is this a "saving grace"? For whom?

New comment by btbuildem in "Cops Used Flock to Track a Man Across State Lines for a Pretextual Weed Search"

btbuildem — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 22:36:51 +0000

Kickback would be bad if it binds in the kerf - I think sawzall is better/safer for cutting pipe that's under load.

New comment by btbuildem in "Cops Used Flock to Track a Man Across State Lines for a Pretextual Weed Search"

btbuildem — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 16:39:07 +0000

No one who has answered "no" made it thru the selection process, so there might be some survivor bias at play here.

New comment by btbuildem in "An Honest Review of AI Programming"

btbuildem — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 13:03:08 +0000

It reads like something written by a time traveler from the past.