Hacker News: captain_coffee

New comment by captain_coffee in "Spotify playing ads for paid subscribers"

captain_coffee — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 02:01:53 +0000

I was having ads played even with the most expensive Spotify subscription a few years ago because ... feel this: The ads were CHOSEN BY THE END CLIENT, not Spotify itself as a legal entity. Needless to say that I am no longer using Spotify for a few years now and I highly encourage a mass exodus from the platform.

New comment by captain_coffee in "Despite Doubts, Federal Cyber Experts Approved Microsoft Cloud Service"

captain_coffee — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 01:57:10 +0000

So, Microsoft products still are a garbage fire in March 2026. Fully aligned with the expectations

New comment by captain_coffee in "AI Agent Hacks McKinsey"

captain_coffee — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 14:14:51 +0000

Music to my ears! Couldn't happen to a better company!

New comment by captain_coffee in "IBM Plunges After Anthropic's Latest Update Takes on COBOL"

captain_coffee — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 23:59:24 +0000

What do you mean "only the tests would take a few thousand days"?

Did running the test suite take 10 years? Like literally what exactly do you mean?

New comment by captain_coffee in "Surely the crash of the US economy has to be soon"

captain_coffee — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 11:25:45 +0000

Some sort of an AI crash / bubble bursting is expected to be honest - now if that will take the rest of the US economy as well.... debatable. Any strong opinions on this?

New comment by captain_coffee in "The tech market is fundamentally fucked up and AI is just a scapegoat"

captain_coffee — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 14:13:34 +0000

> Europe just became a lower-cost extension of Silicon Valley.

Pretty much spot on. The UK included in the above definition of Europe as well.

New comment by captain_coffee in "Putting Gemini to Work in Chrome"

captain_coffee — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 07:10:58 +0000

Me personally: absolutely not - and I fundamentally do not understand the need for something like this. I would never use such a tool under any possible circumstance knowing what I know about the current technology underpinning these clankers.

These feels on par with Microsoft's push to shove Copilot down everyone's neck at every step possible whether we like/need it or not

New comment by captain_coffee in "How London became the rest of the world’s startup capital"

captain_coffee — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 22:53:05 +0000

Could you give only a few examples from those PLENTY of other places that are better? Like the first 10 that come to your mind, you made me very curious!

New comment by captain_coffee in "New books aren't worth reading?"

captain_coffee — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 22:50:22 +0000

I was thiking the exact same thing: Either a troll or someone that should be actively ignored.

New comment by captain_coffee in "SoftBank in talks to invest up to $30B more in OpenAI"

captain_coffee — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 13:46:22 +0000

So ... will the crash be bigger that the one causing The Great Depression or smaller? Any bets?

New comment by captain_coffee in "Any application that can be written in a system language, eventually will be"

captain_coffee — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 17:07:01 +0000

Yes OK, but that was not the point that I was trying to make.

You are developing in a language + framework that you are not familiar with, without having any human feedback in the process at all - see where I am going with this?

Even with a quarter of a decade of experience you are still in what can basically be reffered to as uncharted territory.

New comment by captain_coffee in "Any application that can be written in a system language, eventually will be"

captain_coffee — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 03:51:12 +0000

So let me get this straight - you vibe code, make what you consider as necessary changes to the LLM-generated code, create PRs that get to be reviewed by another AI tool (Copilot), potentially make changes based on Copilot's suggestions and at the end, when you are satisfied with that particular PR you merge it yourself without having any other human reviewing it and then continue to the next PR.

Did I get that right or did I miss anything?

New comment by captain_coffee in "Any application that can be written in a system language, eventually will be"

captain_coffee — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 02:31:33 +0000

> in 2026 devs write 90% of the code using natural language, through an LLM.

That is literally not true - is the author speaking about what he personally sees at his specific workplace(s)?

If 90% of the code at any given company is LLM-generated that is either a doomed company or a company doesn't write any relevant code to begin with.

I literally cannot imagine a serious company in which that is a viable scenario.

New comment by captain_coffee in "France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc."

captain_coffee — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 18:08:06 +0000

the first 10 what? Years? It's actually not like that: https://www.government.nl/topics/income-tax/shortening-30-pe...

From 1 January 2024, expats who meet the conditions receive the following tax benefits:

- 30% tax free for the first 20 months;

- 20% tax free for the next 20 months;

- 10% tax free for the last 20 months.

So that's a tapered reduction over the first 5 years and the amount of money that you gain after tax is between negligeable and insultingly small.

Basically in its current form "The Dutch 30% ruling" is not really worth it, if you want to move to The Netherlands do it for other reasons, and the advertisment of this mechanism feels borderline disingenious in its current form.

New comment by captain_coffee in "France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc."

captain_coffee — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 17:08:21 +0000

more like 50+ % less salary, just saying

New comment by captain_coffee in "France Aiming to Replace Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc."

captain_coffee — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 16:57:08 +0000

I doubt Americans will even pick up the phone or respond to LinkedIn messages / emails when they will se the budgets for the software Engineering roles in the EU.

I am saying that as an European, just to be clear.

New comment by captain_coffee in "UK House of Lords Votes to Extend Age Verification to VPNs"

captain_coffee — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 11:53:43 +0000

They REALLY want people to become more tech-savvy and to learn how to create their own VPNs using cheap VMs instances from __INSERT_CLOUD_PROVIDER_HERE__, don't they?

New comment by captain_coffee in "Microsoft suspects some PCs might not boot after Windows 11 January 2026 Update"

captain_coffee — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 09:43:07 +0000

"suspects".... they are not 100% sure guys, there is only a vague suspicion that "some" users "might"

Can't believe how low Microsoft have sunk and how fast in the last few years

New comment by captain_coffee in "I don't write code anymore – I sculpt it"

captain_coffee — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 09:45:04 +0000

> strongly resonate with this post. I am not a programmer

Yep - there it is

New comment by captain_coffee in "I don't write code anymore – I sculpt it"

captain_coffee — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 09:42:42 +0000

Don't waste your time with valid arguments, that guy is somewhere between a troll and a willful ignorant