Hacker News: bumby

New comment by bumby in "How I use LLMs to learn complex topics"

bumby — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 02:55:01 +0000

I’m curious where you get the estimate that humans hold “like four” parameters in their mind at once?

New comment by bumby in "Software is about people, not code (2020)"

bumby — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 12:21:02 +0000

Right. As you said, sqlite was developed to fill a specific need, therefore it’s applied research and not basic research. (I wouldn’t even consider it research, but more development, but I’m trying to be generous to the discussion)

New comment by bumby in "Software is about people, not code (2020)"

bumby — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 03:01:06 +0000

I took “basic research” to mean “fundamental research”. Sqlite is not fundamental research. It’s an exception that proves the rule. It was literally designed for a solving a specific problem. Somewhat ironically, it also comes from the industry that originated the term “self-licking ice cream cone”. An occasional useful offshoot doesn’t justify massive amounts of otherwise less useful busywork

New comment by bumby in "Software is about people, not code (2020)"

bumby — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 21:48:51 +0000

I don’t agree, but understand the sentiment.

New comment by bumby in "Software is about people, not code (2020)"

bumby — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 21:21:36 +0000

It’s not basic research in the vast, vast majority of business cases you’re describing. They aren’t Bell Labs doing novel work, they’re usually doing busy work on mundane apps. I’m not going to move our understanding of financial physics forward playing around with a social media or CRUD app. Hell, most work isn’t even testing a hypothesis other than “I hope this change doesn’t break shit”

It comes across as “everyone else’s work is trivial and low value but my, MY, work is difficult and important”. We shouldn’t be so precious.

New comment by bumby in "Software is about people, not code (2020)"

bumby — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 19:34:38 +0000

Yeah, I see this. I think in that case, both the sales and development team are deadweight (ie self licking ice cream cones)

New comment by bumby in "Software is about people, not code (2020)"

bumby — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 17:37:06 +0000

What about charging people for electronic books? From an IP perspective, code is just a really bad book.

New comment by bumby in "Software is about people, not code (2020)"

bumby — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 17:32:32 +0000

A less cynical take is that sales connects the people who need a problem solved to the people who can solve it.

New comment by bumby in "Turning a dumb AC unit smart (without losing my security deposit)"

bumby — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 02:28:54 +0000

Isn’t that what they advertise as a “feature” on their website?

New comment by bumby in "Turning a dumb AC unit smart (without losing my security deposit)"

bumby — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 13:10:34 +0000

As someone else mentioned, a software-oriented solution is likely to introduce more failure modes because of the number of dependencies, updates etc.

New comment by bumby in "Show HN: I replaced a $120k bowling center system with $1,600 in ESP32s"

bumby — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 11:35:57 +0000

Is the fouling functionality more complicated than one would assume? From a naive perspective, it seems like it would just be a simple photo-eye sensor

New comment by bumby in "Former NOAA employees built Climate.us to preserve climate data and resources"

bumby — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 23:45:19 +0000

You can make even more money if you make sure you have accurate data while your competitors do not.

New comment by bumby in "Former NOAA employees built Climate.us to preserve climate data and resources"

bumby — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 23:38:09 +0000

As long as it’s properly addressed to avoid abuse, I don’t have a problem with private companies and individual citizens both benefiting. You could easily put rate limits if you think it’s a major issue while still maintaining the free service for smaller users. I personally don’t like the privatization of profits while also maintaining the narrative that companies don’t benefit from public works.

New comment by bumby in "Former NOAA employees built Climate.us to preserve climate data and resources"

bumby — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 20:31:19 +0000

I don’t follow. I would rather the government manage the API, like what NOAA does/did.

New comment by bumby in "Climate.gov was destroyed. Open data saved it"

bumby — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 20:30:23 +0000

Depends if the accuracy is counter to profit. Not to say governments don’t have their own biased incentives, but they tend to be of a different kind.

New comment by bumby in "Former NOAA employees built Climate.us to preserve climate data and resources"

bumby — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 20:26:37 +0000

As a counter example, the government manages and collects all kinds of weather station data. But the trend is for private companies to get contracts to privatize the dissemination of that data through fee-based APIs etc. I would rather the government provide it instead of taxpayers having to pay twice to enrich some rent seeker.

New comment by bumby in "The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war"

bumby — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 17:35:17 +0000

Annnd…we’re full circle. Again, DC-X was considered a successful proof of concept. Almost 40 years ago. Musk himself said SpaceX was “just continuing the great work of the DC-X project."

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3556/1

New comment by bumby in "SpaceX wants to launch 100k more Starlink satellites for 100x the bandwidth"

bumby — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 13:00:31 +0000

Maybe somewhat ironically, I think this is an overly cynical take.

People can acknowledge a difference of values and recognize what they consider a destruction of the commons without their stance being distilled to simply being a hater.

Would you also considering people who bemoan the degradation of Lake Erie by industrialists of the last century as “crab mentality”?

Similarly, people at the time took what may be closer to the opposite stance: “Fundamentally this level of environmental degradation was accepted as a sign of success.”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/cuyahoga-river-caught...

New comment by bumby in "The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war"

bumby — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 00:15:18 +0000

>”claiming it was impossible”

Again, what do you mean by “it”? Economic viability? I already stated I agree with that. Technologically viable? I disagree, since the proof of concept was shown decades earlier. We don’t need to to keep going around and around this point.

New comment by bumby in "The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war"

bumby — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 19:27:51 +0000

That’s kinda the point.

40 years ago it was questionable whether it was technically possible. It was “JWST-stuff”. The forerunners of ULA showed it was feasible.

20 years ago it was questionable whether it was economically viable. SpaceX changed that.

Your previous statement was too vague to make the distinction and implied Spacex did both, while ignoring the contributions of the previous group.