Hacker News: cleandreams

New comment by cleandreams in "Prioritize mental health, and why communication is so important"

cleandreams — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 02:41:45 +0000

My son has ADHD and I never knew what it meant but this year I made him get coaching for it and I made him get meds. He was living at home for free rent and the condition of staying was to address this. My experience is that getting treatment for this condition helped him a lot. The coach really helped, the meds really helped. He is full of zest for the work that lies ahead. He's off on his own now and while I think he'll have stumbles it's basically very positive.

One thing about ADHD coaching. The coach is a consistent person who helps frame a positive attitude with agency and skills and this takes you away from negative self talk. It's good. I think ADHD folks need this positive support.

New comment by cleandreams in "What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?"

cleandreams — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 20:35:28 +0000

There is more to this story. I have heard Harvard (and its ilk) described as a smallish university attached to a massive investment fund. One of the criteria for admission is how much you and your family will be "good for" donations to the university. They much prefer students from rich families, even if they are the children of disagreeable dictators.

New comment by cleandreams in "What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?"

cleandreams — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 20:31:55 +0000

No. Briahna Joy Gray and a guest whose name I don't remember.

New comment by cleandreams in "What will be left for us to work on?"

cleandreams — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 03:33:25 +0000

We'll be cleaning up tech debt from over-reliance on AI.

New comment by cleandreams in "What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?"

cleandreams — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 03:30:50 +0000

I was listening to a podcast where the host and the guest were both Black and both had been to Harvard. This was before the Supreme Court ruling. They joked that it was well known that the Black students at Harvard who were descendants of American slaves were about 10% of the Black student body at Harvard. There were a lot of children of Nigerians and 3rd world tycoons and such.

I think there is a good argument for a help up for people whose communities are still impacted by the history of American slavery (and all its ills) but giving these slots to children of the wealthy and often immigrants does not feel right.

New comment by cleandreams in "We took away psychological safety and then told everyone to be more productive"

cleandreams — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 20:14:24 +0000

what is missing from this is the issue of power. tech companies interpret the rise of AI as empowering management and disempowering workers.

It's the American way to disempower workers. Tech people used to have a moat called expertise and management believes AI has made that obsolete.

Eventually workers in America will need to fight for power, probably through unions. That is the time honored way. There will be a lot of degradation and impoverishment on the way there I think. Fasten your seatbelts.

New comment by cleandreams in "The early hiring funnel is now breaking on both ends"

cleandreams — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 17:46:03 +0000

I was walking through a startup neighborhood in San Francisco the other day and I encountered several telephone poles which were posted with advertisements for software engineering jobs. These were not generic or scam advertisements. This was a particular startup, looking for software engineers. What is old is new again.

New comment by cleandreams in "Brands got worse on purpose"

cleandreams — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 16:07:14 +0000

Shout out to American Giant. I have like 15 t-shirts from them, some are ten years old and they look new. Buying good stuff saves money in the long run!

New comment by cleandreams in "Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock"

cleandreams — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 23:55:48 +0000

Not just many foreign militaries. Our military. General Dan Caine by report advised Trump about the negative consequences of this action. MAGA elected a fantasist and narcissist and we will all bear the consequences. I was no fan of Kamala but the appalling limitations of Trump are of a different order and it is a disgrace that our voters by majority elected him.

New comment by cleandreams in "Physics Girl: Super-Kamiokande – Imaging the sun by detecting neutrinos [video]"

cleandreams — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 16:41:12 +0000

Wonderful to hear. Her long Covid was heartbreaking (saw the videos). I hope she gets stronger and stronger! Welcome back!

New comment by cleandreams in "Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective"

cleandreams — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 03:12:09 +0000

Private car ownership is better everyday for suburbs and rural areas but in cities that is not true. Public transit can improve downtown access and reduce congestion. You need some density for transit.

New comment by cleandreams in "Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective"

cleandreams — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 03:09:09 +0000

San Francisco put in some bus only lanes and those routes have greatly improved bus speed and ontime performance.

New comment by cleandreams in "Facebook is cooked"

cleandreams — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 00:24:07 +0000

This is not Facebook but I have a young friend who gets her news on Epstein from tiktok. She is convinced they were eating babies. I do worry (a little) that she will go over the conspiracy theories deep end. I told her tiktok news was bad "mental hygiene" but she didn't get it.

New comment by cleandreams in "Facebook is cooked"

cleandreams — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 00:20:47 +0000

My son -- early 30's -- is impacted by how everyone's life seems much better than his. I think it's a real issue for young people.

New comment by cleandreams in "Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking"

cleandreams — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 15:56:59 +0000

To be fair SF has had incomprehensible (to normies) billboards since at least the early 90's.

New comment by cleandreams in "Semaglutide improves knee osteoarthritis independant of weight loss"

cleandreams — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 04:30:39 +0000

I have a friend who was put on a GLP-1 and had an astonishing reduction in arthritis pain.

New comment by cleandreams in "Claude’s C Compiler vs. GCC"

cleandreams — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 05:49:39 +0000

The prospect of going the last mile to fix the remaining problems reminds me of the old joke:

"The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time."

New comment by cleandreams in "How AI assistance impacts the formation of coding skills"

cleandreams — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 20:10:01 +0000

I'm anxious about code quality in critical infrastructure in 5 years or so.

Also my mastery of code starts with design and implementation that results in deep, intuitive understanding. Then I can do good code reviews and fix bugs fast fast fast.

Now engineers leap from AI assisted or even dominated implementation to code reviews. Lots of reading code without that deep level of mastery. With this approach I have less confidence in the humans who are in the loop.

New comment by cleandreams in "Extracting books from production language models (2026)"

cleandreams — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 06:42:55 +0000

If you can extract a whole copyrighted book from a large language model, what is the point in copywriting your book?

Extracting books from production language models

cleandreams — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 06:42:55 +0000

Article URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.02671

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46563386

Points: 4

# Comments: 2