Hacker News: caprock

New comment by caprock in "Retrieval is not the future of AI – if it was, Google would have won already"

caprock — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 18:09:35 +0000

Few things are all or nothing in life. There are many forms of retrieval and many conditions for their use. In some scenarios it is helpful to have retrieval with LLMs and other times less so.

New comment by caprock in "Ask HN: Procrastination with AI?"

caprock — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 21:34:07 +0000

It's interesting how one AI approach is to do similar amounts of work with less intensity and energy. Glad it has improved your mental health.

New comment by caprock in "Ask HN: Procrastination with AI?"

caprock — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 21:32:57 +0000

Sounds pretty cool!

Ask HN: Procrastination with AI?

caprock — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 17:10:49 +0000

For software engineers and related fields, I know what procrastination has traditionally looked like, and how it manifests.

Now, things like codex, cursor, claude code can remove some kinds of friction but also change workflows.

So are you procrastinating less? More? Differently?

What does it look like?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48777321

Points: 3

# Comments: 4

New comment by caprock in "Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?"

caprock — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 21:59:40 +0000

Having a strong internal locus of control, balanced with prayer centered around gratitude.

New comment by caprock in "Ask HN: Are people generally interested using LLMs for learning purposes?"

caprock — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 21:41:34 +0000

Same. The ability to investigate a topic from almost any angle or starting point has been really fun and helpful.

New comment by caprock in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)"

caprock — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 01:13:41 +0000

Agreed that it's an underserved market (personal genome sequencing).

Do you own or have access to a sequencing platform / machine? Or do you just buy and prepare kits, and then send the prepared sample out for sequencing?

New comment by caprock in "Pro Max 5x quota exhausted in 1.5 hours despite moderate usage"

caprock — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 16:43:52 +0000

Roughly agreed. I'm a bit baffled when it seems like someone is having long conversations with multiple tasks and loads of add-ons. I generally have one or two iterations and then a new session.

I'm using another tool, not claude code, but I don't think that matters much.

New comment by caprock in "The Last Quiet Thing"

caprock — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:29:30 +0000

In many many ways our technology is not working on our behalf. Even though it seems possible.

New comment by caprock in "Ask HN: Any Interesting Niche Hobbies?"

caprock — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 21:23:42 +0000

You might look into applying RL in the domain of low cost robotics and drones. That would draw on some of your past experience but applied to a domain (robotics) which I perceive is seeing renewed interest.

New comment by caprock in "The risk of AI isn't making us lazy, but making "lazy" look productive"

caprock — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 15:58:59 +0000

I find value in learning some things deeply but not all things.

The ability to be more selective about where I attend deeply, while leveraging fast shallow learning to complete other tasks... That seems like a potential benefit and a nice choice to have in the toolbox.

New comment by caprock in "Ask HN: How do you get recommendations for books that are up your alley?"

caprock — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 15:40:50 +0000

It's technically quite feasible with modern search and language model technology.

The challenge is in acquiring all the book text, meaningful cost to implement, and minimal paths to revenue generation.

For various reasons, the organizations that have the text aren't incentivized to deliver best recs for a user, as tim noted.

New comment by caprock in "Ask HN: What's the best advice your would tell your 20 year old self?"

caprock — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 15:36:36 +0000

Basic index etfs for Nasdaq and SP500.

New comment by caprock in "Ask HN: How do you get recommendations for books that are up your alley?"

caprock — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 18:36:15 +0000

It's intriguing how book recs aren't really that good anywhere. I mean they are ok, but rarely great. Google and Amazon have most of the text but still don't solve this so well.

In any event, I sometimes use GoodReads. You can go to the page for a representative book and then start browsing the "readers also enjoyed" list.

I also use LibraryThing in a similar way.

New comment by caprock in "Ask HN: What's the Deal with Forward Deployed Engineers?"

caprock — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 18:28:49 +0000

Significant chunks of the software engineer community self select into minimizing time spent with customers or even any non-engineers. It's understandable but unfortunate too.

I would suggest looking for people that were initially hands on but converted to sales engineer or professional services roles. Some switch because they don't like the programming. Some will quietly be very good engineers that have seen a lot of scenarios.

You'll have to pay a premium for travel if you want to get experienced people that have families at home.

New comment by caprock in "Ask HN: What's the best advice your would tell your 20 year old self?"

caprock — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 18:17:45 +0000

- Invest money from each paycheck.

- Make a practice of walking daily.

- Casually lift a few times a week.

- Pray daily. Focus on gratitude.

New comment by caprock in "Ask HN: Realistic prospects of getting back to management later"

caprock — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 04:09:40 +0000

Yes, very realistic.

Search for the engineering / manager pendulum online to see various discussions on the topic.

There are lots of differences between management in a startup vs a larger or more mature company too.

New comment by caprock in "Ask HN: How to stop an AWS bot sending 2B requests/month?"

caprock — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 06:11:58 +0000

Agreed. You should be able to set the waf to just drop the packets and not even bother with the overhead of a response. I think cloud flare waf calls this "block".

New comment by caprock in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2025)"

caprock — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 00:19:57 +0000

Where do you get the data?

New comment by caprock in "Ask HN: What is one thing that help you the most to become a better engineer?"

caprock — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 19:00:53 +0000

Working in ISP and Managed Hosting environments made me a better engineer. Lots of unix/linux, networking, DNS, etc. Lots of support and problem solving. It all led to both a breadth and depth of experience. It's been a useful foundation for my career even after moving into other areas like swe and ml.