Hacker News: cammasmith

New comment by cammasmith in "Ask HN: What skills are future proof in an AI driven job market?"

cammasmith — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 15:08:17 +0000

Trade school seems to be looking more and more valuable these days. I feel bad for young people who are going to a 4 year university and gaining debt for a career that might not exist in 5 years. Being a plumber might not seem glamorous, but we're a long way off from AI learning to fix your toilet.

New comment by cammasmith in "Show HN submissions tripled and are now mostly vibe-coded"

cammasmith — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 14:55:28 +0000

Interesting post. I'm notoriously bad at noticing the common characteristics in AI writing, but once they were pointed out, I realized I've been seeing them everywhere in websites.

New comment by cammasmith in "How does GPS work?"

cammasmith — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 14:42:08 +0000

Cool article. Did a very good job explaining things simply and providing good diagrams.

New comment by cammasmith in "Medicare for all is the best hope for US healthcare (2025)"

cammasmith — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 15:02:34 +0000

I have a hard time imagining that universal medicaid would ever become reality. A more realistic goal might be making the premium tax credit more accessible or lessening the restrictions to qualify. That way, more people could afford marketplace health insurance.

New comment by cammasmith in "Middle schooler finds coin from Troy in Berlin"

cammasmith — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 16:20:17 +0000

Can't even imagine what it's like to live in Europe. Just casually going on a walk and finding a coin that is over 2 millennia old. Just another Tuesday.

New comment by cammasmith in "Universal INCOME via check is best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI"

cammasmith — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 16:12:25 +0000

Maybe, but I'm not surprised by the number. Saying something triggering about a topic that's triggering from a man that's triggering is bound to get responses. It got me to respond to your response.

New comment by cammasmith in "Making Wax Sealed Letters at Scale"

cammasmith — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 14:42:23 +0000

I think the price would need to be closer to $4 or $5 per letter for me personally to recommend it or consider it. My SIL just sent out wedding invitations with stamped seals, and I think she would have paid $5 per letter to mail 50 envelopes. But at $8 a letter, I start thinking about how I can pay someone to print the cards and I can buy a wax seal at Hobby Lobby myself.

New comment by cammasmith in "Making Wax Sealed Letters at Scale"

cammasmith — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:33:18 +0000

Cool idea. I can see you guys doing well in the wedding industry. The price seems steep, but I appreciate the transparency of your pricing. It's refreshing.

New comment by cammasmith in "Can you pass the reverse Turing test?"

cammasmith — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 13:01:54 +0000

That was a lot of fun. I got it wrong. I narrowed it down to two options, and neither was correct. Good stuff.

Show HN: DynamoSQL – I made a SQL query engine for DynamoDB

cammasmith — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 12:54:31 +0000

As a software developer, I've frequently used DynamoDB, and I have found myself missing the ease of SQL querying. So I built DynamoSQL to be a SQL layer. It allows you to write standard ANSI SQL in DynamoDB, including JOINs across tables, CTEs, subqueries, GROUP BY, and aggregations. There's no ETL, data export, or separate warehouse. The optimizer is index-aware and uses your partition keys, sort keys, and GSIs to minimize read costs.

Ultimately, I'd like to list DynamoSQL on the AWS Marketplace as pay-per-query SaaS. But first, I want to make sure that it works properly. If you actively use DynamoDB and know a little SQL, would you consider becoming a beta tester for DynamoSQL? It's completely free during beta testing, and I'm just looking for criticism and critical feedback you might have so that I can make it better.

AWS Marketplace listing: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/prodview-o2ddsn4oox2sy Beta tester page: https://dynamosql.com/beta

Happy to answer technical questions.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47765044

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by cammasmith in "Is math big or small?"

cammasmith — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 14:35:18 +0000

It kinda seems like the point of the article was to talk about different mathematical illustrations, not to determine if math was big or small. Even in the article, the conclusion is that it's both. I suspect the only reason for choosing the title is to grab attention (and it worked on me).

Of course, I am extra cynical as a number theorist who can't visualize most of my field. I wrote my doctorate on Siegel modular forms, and I can honestly say I have no way to visualize them any further than numbers on a page.

New comment by cammasmith in "Ask HN: What are you building that's not AI related?"

cammasmith — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 16:15:03 +0000

I agree for cases that need real-time replication and are querying at high frequency. There is a trade-off, though. You're adding three services to maintain, there's replication lag, and Aurora's running continuously whether you're querying or not. For teams that need occasional analytical access to their DynamoDB data without building and operating a replication pipeline, I still think the in-memory trade-off is worth it. Different teams, different trade-offs.

New comment by cammasmith in "Ask HN: What are you building that's not AI related?"

cammasmith — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:31:26 +0000

Valid points. The read cost and in-memory aggregation concerns are real and worth flagging. DynamoSQL is index-aware and will use your partition keys, sort keys, and GSIs where it can, but you're right that a well-designed native access pattern will be cheaper.

That said, not everyone using DynamoDB has the luxury of designing perfect access patterns from the start. Real production tables are often messier than the textbook examples. And for analytical or exploratory work (e.g. understanding your data, debugging a production issue, running ad-hoc reports) a slightly more expensive read is a reasonable trade-off for writing SQL in seconds rather than SDK code in minutes.

I appreciate the feedback. The cost visibility question is something worth being clearer about in the docs.

New comment by cammasmith in "Charcuterie – Visual similarity Unicode explorer"

cammasmith — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:13:14 +0000

I agree. If Word had something like this, it would be so much easier to find the symbol you're looking for.

New comment by cammasmith in "Model-Based Testing for Dungeons & Dragons"

cammasmith — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 14:07:49 +0000

One of my biggest issues with playing DND is that I never fully understood the rules. I'd play with people who had been playing for years, and they didn't explain things very well, and that made it hard to play. Hopefully, this will help with that.

New comment by cammasmith in "Ask HN: What are you building that's not AI related?"

cammasmith — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 15:51:01 +0000

Built a SQL interface for DynamoDB. I was tired of constantly trying to find workarounds for querying on a NoSQL database, so I built a direct interface for DynamoDB, which I'm calling DynamoSQL. With it, you can use standard SQL (even JOINs) on DynamoDB. I'm really excited about it, and I'm starting beta trials this week.

https://dynamosql.com

New comment by cammasmith in "Show HN: Moon simulator game, ray-casting"

cammasmith — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 15:43:24 +0000

Cool game. The sound keeps glitching on and off. Also, maybe I'm just dumb, but I couldn't figure out where to go or how to land.