Hacker News: burnto

New comment by burnto in "I'm Eric Ries, author of "The Lean Startup" and new book "Incorruptible" – AMA"

burnto — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 21:43:10 +0000

Hm, so it’s almost like the corporation is not an ideal format for long-lived values driven institutions?

The Device Paradigm [pdf]

burnto — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 20:52:36 +0000

Article URL: https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/classes/188/spring04/projects/5.pdf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48482544

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Appreciating Exif

burnto — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 20:41:44 +0000

Article URL: https://brentfitzgerald.com/posts/appreciating-exif/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48467437

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

New comment by burnto in "Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI?"

burnto — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 05:58:07 +0000

These are lovely

New comment by burnto in "Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?"

burnto — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 14:03:16 +0000

I had received four very different bids for a home repair project. Just wildly different itemization breakdowns, costs, timelines, scopes, even formats. Opus helped me turn it into an apples-apples comparison, filled in missing areas with reasonable inferences based on the other bids, provided a nice pdf I printed to review with my partner, even offered suggested key questions for follow up calls. It really clarified the advantages of one of the bids.

I use it professionally all the time and could cite technical scenarios where it’s become almost indispensable, but saving me time and money and reducing stress on this mundane stuff… now imagine applying to people’s stressors: job searches, health, big purchases, debt… there’s an opportunity to actually make people’s lives better. After 30 years of hype cycles, I should be wary of techno-optimism. But here I am feeling cautiously optimistic anyway.

New comment by burnto in "Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?"

burnto — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 13:44:30 +0000

Yeah I feel like I’ve learned a lot from superpowers. It’s such a thoughtfully developed skillset.

New comment by burnto in "Domain expertise has always been the real moat"

burnto — Sat, 30 May 2026 21:59:54 +0000

The software generalist described in this post has domain expertise as well. In software.

If you’re a great generalist software engineer today, you aren’t jumping to some random domain to escape AI. Software is your domain. You’re sticking with it as it expands and transforms.

Starting a VM from a macOS sandbox: Seatbelt allow rules for virtualization

burnto — Thu, 28 May 2026 23:02:47 +0000

Article URL: https://brentfitzgerald.com/posts/lima-vms-from-a-sandboxed-agent/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48316750

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by burnto in "Can we have the day off?"

burnto — Thu, 28 May 2026 04:20:57 +0000

I think a lot of us aren’t rational about it. I tend to feel excited about changes for which productivity is a side effect, even if it’s not my motivation. It’s hard to say no to extending my capabilities and insulating myself from the more boring repetitive tasks.

If your job was 80-90% shoveling and one day you were offered use of an excavator, wouldn’t you find that exciting even while realizing the shoveling part of your career is probably dead?

New comment by burnto in "Can we have the day off?"

burnto — Thu, 28 May 2026 04:10:51 +0000

My thinking tends to be that our standard work week is an equilibrium among a few different forces. We’re motivated by social norms, capital markets, and biological needs and wants. In places like the U.S. the market forces have been powerful enough to really shift social norms. In tandem they’re probably slowly altering our biology too.

New comment by burnto in "Ask HN: When did computers stop being fun?"

burnto — Sat, 16 May 2026 22:53:59 +0000

Computer fun is inversely proportional to number of investors.

New comment by burnto in "Messing with Chrome's Local Gemini Nano to Deobfuscate LinkedIn Posts"

burnto — Thu, 14 May 2026 19:25:06 +0000

Or in other words: I made an extension to dumb down my professional network and unexpectedly found real human feelings

Messing with Chrome's Local Gemini Nano to Deobfuscate LinkedIn Posts

burnto — Thu, 14 May 2026 19:25:06 +0000

Article URL: https://brentfitzgerald.com/posts/linkedin-translator-browser-extension/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48140027

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by burnto in "OpenClaw Had a Rough Week"

burnto — Fri, 08 May 2026 01:47:27 +0000

I’ve been playing with nanoclaw since it came out, which has similar use cases to openclaw. I initially set it up to monitor various news sources for me about specific theses I’ve had. I had it grooming its growing knowledge base, trying to make connections. It would check in with me about certain goals I had.

My current take is that these projects are alluring for a kind of personal productivity or workflow tinkering. They are integration hubs centered around an LLM. Automation can be fun, like running model trains or setting up home assistant. And you can learn the shape of the technologies by tinkering. But I’m doubtful they have improved productivity in real world cases.

Maybe I’m using it wrong and I need to be spending a ton of tokens with a dark factory pattern and a fleet of claws creating new religions? Then I’ll see the benefits?

New comment by burnto in "Talking to 35 Strangers at the Gym"

burnto — Mon, 04 May 2026 13:54:34 +0000

I read this and feel happier for it. Keep it up OP! I like imagining a world where more people are curious, kind, and open to connecting.

New comment by burnto in "Why TUIs are back"

burnto — Sun, 03 May 2026 20:46:56 +0000

I think there’s also perhaps an organizational explanation.

A reasonable TUI can be built without any design or frontend people even looped in.

Collaboration and coordination tend to slow down processes and flatten outputs.

New comment by burnto in "$500M for Virtual Biology Initiative, Funded by Zuckerbergs"

burnto — Fri, 01 May 2026 01:14:18 +0000

Is this an investment that disease and genetics researchers believe will be valuable?

Or is this primarily tax deductible funds flowing back into the AI industrial complex?

(Honest question! If it’s a truly promising path that’s great)

New comment by burnto in "Zed 1.0"

burnto — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 15:25:57 +0000

Thank you, Zed team, for creating Zed. It’s clearly a labor of love, and I really want Zed to work for me. It seems like a quality project, it’s fast, and the base editor is easy to use.

I gave it weeks though, and the surrounding UI just never clicked for me. The various AI panels are confusing, the global search is awkward, and something about the type rendering just didn’t ever look right (maybe I’m hallucinating this?). I use VS Code only grudgingly, but I do think its ergonomics are actually pretty reasonable. I came from Sublime before that. I’ll keep trying Zed, and I hope you succeed.

New comment by burnto in "Redesigning the Recurse Center application to inspire curious programmers"

burnto — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 04:37:10 +0000

Yes I’ve noticed this as well! Now whenever I get a question of this format, I just relax the constraint.

New comment by burnto in "College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work"

burnto — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 17:54:54 +0000

Yeah writing out code by hand made me slow down and think more.

One thing I recall is that the grading policy made it very clear that minor syntax issues were inconsequential in handwritten answers. And more advanced classes only wanted pseudocode. Which are exactly the right priorities.