Hacker News: burntoutgray

New comment by burntoutgray in "AI-pilled Arm CEO teases mystery products that will turn it into a money machine"

burntoutgray — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 02:06:53 +0000

Some ARM licensees might switch to RISC-V if ARM decides to compete by making their own chips. With the possibility of a recession looming, the build-out of data centres is likely stall. Could become a negative outcome for ARM.

New comment by burntoutgray in "The three pillars of JavaScript bloat"

burntoutgray — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 02:57:48 +0000

I have a single pillar, admittedly for in-house PWAs: Upgrade to the current version of Chrome then if your problem persists, we'll look into it.

New comment by burntoutgray in "Why craft-lovers are losing their craft"

burntoutgray — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 02:49:15 +0000

To use an analogy, back in the days of film cameras and before 1 hour labs, the "craftsman" photographer would carefully frame the shot, carefully setting the exposure, aperture and focus. The most meticulous would take notes in a notebook. There were only 36 frames to a roll of film and all going well, the photographer had to wait a couple of days to get back the proof sheet. Those were the days when expert photographers were commissioned to take photos for special events, etc.

These days, everybody is an expert photographer, taking thousands of irrelevant photos with their smartphones. The volume of photos has exploded, the quality of the best has minimally changed (i.e. before being photoshopped, etc.)

The current crop of AI-aided tools are comparable to the early digital cameras in phones.

New comment by burntoutgray in "Why craft-lovers are losing their craft"

burntoutgray — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 02:42:25 +0000

The way some people wield LLM, etc is like using a chainsaw to cut a dovetail because it is faster.

New comment by burntoutgray in "Screaming into the AI Void"

burntoutgray — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 20:11:55 +0000

The void isn't about AI. It is the ever present machinations by managements to extract maximum profit and reduce expenses. AI is simply the latest fad by which to lay off personnel. Technical debt can be deferred by focusing on making this quarter's profit forecasts.

In my experience, every job is a compromise between earnings (or even just having a job) and personal values.

New comment by burntoutgray in "Ask HN: Solo Senior Developers, Where do we find you?"

burntoutgray — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:07:44 +0000

How about you put your contact details into your profile, so that an interested developer can make contact, etc?

I've worked on construction software systems. Wouldn't mind an off-line chat.

New comment by burntoutgray in "RISC-V Is Sloooow"

burntoutgray — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:59:59 +0000

I thought I read somewhere that Z CPUs run at 5GHz ??

New comment by burntoutgray in "RISC-V Is Sloooow"

burntoutgray — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:54:24 +0000

ISAs fail to gain traction when the sufficiently smart compilers don't eventuate.

The x86-64 is a dog's breakfast of features. But due to its widespread use, compiler writers make the effort to create compilers that optimize for its quirks.

Itanium hardware designers were expecting the compiler writers to cater for its unique design. Intel is a semi company. As good as some of their compilers are, internally they invested more in their biggest seller and the Itanium never got the level of support that was anticipated at the outset.

New comment by burntoutgray in "RISC-V Is Sloooow"

burntoutgray — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:47:59 +0000

+1 -- misinformation is best corrected quickly. If not, AI will propagate it and many will believe the erroneous information. I guess that would be viral hallucinations.

New comment by burntoutgray in "Military Leaders Say Iran War Is So Trump Can Bring About "Armageddon""

burntoutgray — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 02:00:26 +0000

The military is owned by the MIC. Trump is merely following the orders from the Epstein era buddies. Such beautiful guys, those bankers.

New comment by burntoutgray in "Trump Worries Iran's Leaders May Be Just 'As Bad' After War"

burntoutgray — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 01:49:41 +0000

For a guy who craves a Nobel Peace Prize, why is he starting wars? The campaign promise was to stop needless wars.

Like the story "The Emperors New Clothes" the media needs to call him out and very forcibly. Until then the sycophants are just going to admire his naked butt.

New comment by burntoutgray in "If AI writes code, should the session be part of the commit?"

burntoutgray — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 02:08:05 +0000

YES! The session becomes the source code.

Back in the dark ages, you'd "cc -s hello.c" to check the assembler source. With time we stopped doing that and hello.c became the originating artefact. On the same basis the session becomes the originating artefact.

New comment by burntoutgray in "Would you choose the Microsoft stack today if starting greenfield?"

burntoutgray — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 04:38:29 +0000

I never chose MS, ever. Most systems have been based on Debian servers. Some special needs I've used Alpine Linux and NetBSD (yes it does run on older, limited hardware).

Of course, some potential clients demand MS based solutions. I simply decline those contracts and ring them up 12-18 months later to see if the CTO/CIO has been replaced.

New comment by burntoutgray in "Would you choose the Microsoft stack today if starting greenfield?"

burntoutgray — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 04:33:55 +0000

PowerShell is available for Linux and MacOS. Which means you can have the tool you like and run on a non-MS platform.

New comment by burntoutgray in "Hold on to Your Hardware"

burntoutgray — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 03:41:20 +0000

Timely warning. But might end up inconsequential once the AI bubble bursts.

Psst -- wanna a data centre ... cheap?

New comment by burntoutgray in "Quality is a hard sell in big tech"

burntoutgray — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 04:47:42 +0000

Enshitification follows becoming a monopoly or a cartel.

For example, how is any scrappy, quality focused startup going to unseat Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc? Even Apple seems to be heading down that path.

New comment by burntoutgray in "I dropped my Google Pixel 9 XL Pro from 6th floor balcony to the street"

burntoutgray — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 04:39:04 +0000

Absolutely amazing! Good on your for being able to repair it.

New comment by burntoutgray in "Nightmare Startup, or Bad Comms"

burntoutgray — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 04:33:32 +0000

Hard to make suggestions when so much context is missing. For example, did you 2 start and then bring on the 2 C-Suite guys?

From my way too extensive experiences in interacting with C-suite folks, the only thing they are very good at is maximizing outcomes for themselves. Being in their rarified suite, they look down upon ICs as being the plebs, to be exploited.

Based on the above assumption, I would predict that things won't get better once you raise. With dilution and other investor tricks the C-suite guys will bleed you dry and then replace you with AI.

tl;dr LEAVE!

New comment by burntoutgray in "Ask HN: Where do you look for semiconductor jobs?"

burntoutgray — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 06:58:25 +0000

Being a specialist field, networking is probably the most effective approach.

The other alternative might be to go to the specific company's HR careers pages. It's not like there's hundreds of potential employers.

New comment by burntoutgray in "I rejected "Scalability" to build a logistics nightmare (works)"

burntoutgray — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 07:53:31 +0000

In the 1980s Panasonic started making bicycles to order customized to the customer's requirements and preferences. That division continues to operate to this day.