Hacker News: burnto

New comment by burnto in "Gemma 4 on iPhone"

burnto — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 20:41:59 +0000

My iPhone 13 can’t run most of these models. A decent local LLM is one of the few reasons I can imagine actually upgrading earlier than typically necessary.

New comment by burnto in "What if the browser built the UI for you?"

burnto — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 05:20:29 +0000

This is ridiculous and I’m into it.

New comment by burnto in "What if the browser built the UI for you?"

burnto — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 05:19:13 +0000

I appreciate this idea. I don’t think it fits our current mental model of the web (or mobile), which makes it thought provoking. If you squint, it’s like the optimistic Web 2.0 era of open APIs expecting a bunch of various UIs and mashups to spring up. The business model could be challenging with the client-centric focus though, unless the adaptive browser slips ads in, which is an unpleasant thought.

New comment by burnto in "Show HN: Travel Hacking Toolkit – Points search and trip planning with AI"

burnto — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 11:04:54 +0000

Yes it’s not technically a scam because it’s legal.

But it has scam smells: layering, misdirection, lock-in, very fine print, gamification, adjacent complex social media apparatuses.

I’d place it near MLMs, loot boxes, timeshares, robux, liquidity mining.

New comment by burnto in "I built an AI receptionist for a mechanic shop"

burnto — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 22:55:45 +0000

Yeah a bunch of negativity about the business case instead of just appreciating someone sharing their work.

New comment by burnto in "Our Experience with I-Ready"

burnto — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 03:24:12 +0000

Yes my kids also hate it. They keep it muted and just watch for the visual indicator that the next section is available. It’s worse than the annual corporate compliance training that many adults have to suffer through. One thing to be optimistic about with LLMs is that even unattended poorly prompted vanilla coding LLMs won’t naturally produce such horrible software. It takes distinct human intervention to make it this bad.

New comment by burnto in "The dead Internet is not a theory anymore"

burnto — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 22:56:35 +0000

Yeah I agree. It’s an acute problem on social media platforms where there’s a market force incentivizing it. If you’re mostly engaging in specific niche interactions with known communities or people, it’s not nearly so prevalent. The internet still works fine as a whole.

New comment by burnto in "Hegseth gives Anthropic until Friday to back down on AI safeguards"

burnto — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 21:24:57 +0000

Surely this will end well. There are dozens of us who prefer to patronize corporations that aren’t actively evil.

New comment by burnto in "The EU moves to kill infinite scrolling"

burnto — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 01:36:12 +0000

That’s a thought-provoking suggestion. Most services would go out of business, and there would be a cascade of change. I wonder what would remain?

New comment by burnto in "GitHub Actions is slowly killing engineering teams"

burnto — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 06:06:10 +0000

Is it great? No. Is it usually good enough? Yes. CI shouldn’t be a main quest for most engineers. Just get it rolling early and adjust as needed.

New comment by burnto in "Iran rounds up thousands in mass arrest campaign after crushing unrest"

burnto — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 23:24:22 +0000

“Plainclothes forces raid homes across country, put detainees in secret lockups”

Huh.

New comment by burnto in "Please don't say mean things about the AI I just invested a billion dollars in"

burnto — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 00:59:07 +0000

Fair, but it’s an exaggerated statement that’s supposed to clue us into the tone of the piece with a chuckle. Maybe even a snicker or giggle! It’s not worth dissecting for accuracy.

Minnesota State Patrol uses long range acoustic device to disperse protesters

burnto — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 02:57:30 +0000

Article URL: https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/minnesota-state-patrol-long-range-acoustic-device/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46790495

Points: 8

# Comments: 3

New comment by burnto in "The Adolescence of Technology"

burnto — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 07:08:45 +0000

My recent hunch is a lot of the hyperbole in AI inherits from crypto. There’s more utility here, but the grandiosity is still absurd. These guys win biggest if we all believe their narrative.

New comment by burnto in "Yes, It's Fascism"

burnto — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 20:54:48 +0000

Yep, I also have been a bit alarmed how this is pattern matching to early phases of the many revolutions covered in the Revolutions podcast. A U.S. revolution is a frightening proposition, even if it’ll seem warranted at some future point.

New comment by burnto in "Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee"

burnto — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 21:27:40 +0000

> Fair enough, but is still a Subaru. So it doesn’t make sense to compare its value to a Tesla just because of auto steer.

Funny, I totally read this intro the opposite way of what you went on to argue.

New comment by burnto in "Slop is everywhere for those with eyes to see"

burnto — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 22:43:52 +0000

It’s fast food content. Convenient, cheap, fast, tasty, but also monotonous, unsophisticated, unhealthy, habit-forming.

People consume more and more of it until they get sick, and even then won’t stop.

New comment by burnto in "No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams"

burnto — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 21:26:13 +0000

> Motivation is a hired trait. The only place where managers motivate people is in management books

Initial motivation is the hired trait. It’s very easy to demotivate people. The trick is to not do that.

New comment by burnto in "Code is cheap now, but software isn't"

burnto — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 05:27:47 +0000

Turns out taste and judgement still matter. Weird.

New comment by burnto in "Software engineers should be a little bit cynical"

burnto — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 22:12:23 +0000

I appreciate that the author looks specifically at what elements of a given viewpoint are idealistic vs cynical.

Idealism about one’s own behavior vs idealism about others’ behavior is an interesting tension to explore further.