Hacker News: codexb

New comment by codexb in "Reinventing the pull request"

codexb — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 14:53:37 +0000

Because those changes might depend on those other changes. Git merges aren't linear. They're branched. And PR reviews are meant to just examine the merge of 1 branch back into master. They're not really meant to review multiple steps along the same branch to make it easier to review.

There are so many times where I want to create 3-4 Merge requests that all build on each other along the same branch instead of creating one giant MR but the UI for reviewing them doesn't really work that way.

New comment by codexb in "Do your own writing"

codexb — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 22:30:32 +0000

I find LLM's particularly good at filtering and distilling a large rambling idea that I have into a well-formatted and coherent paragraph, and also removing any statements that would be perceived as overly argumentative or rude.

In essense, LLM's are a much better spell check.

New comment by codexb in "No one is happy with NASA's new idea for private space stations"

codexb — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 13:37:32 +0000

NASA hasn't had a proper goal or mission for decades. That's their problem. And the spaceflight goal that everyone wants -- making things cheaper -- is not something that government agencies are particularly good at producing.

New comment by codexb in "Britain today generating 90%+ of electricity from renewables"

codexb — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 13:26:19 +0000

Well, in the sense that it's possible to be eating zero calories in the time between meals. You still need the meals. If you're just looking at brief snapshots, it doesn't tell you much.

New comment by codexb in "'Tiny Shortcuts' Are Poisoning Science"

codexb — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 16:46:17 +0000

People get doctorates in these fields and post studies in journals that get picked up by thinktanks and media outlets. It's "science" for all intents and purposes; they're used as a source of authority based on data and analysis and formal papers.

New comment by codexb in "'Tiny Shortcuts' Are Poisoning Science"

codexb — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 16:10:58 +0000

I think part of the problem is that what is often referred to as "science" these days is very different from the hard sciences of yesteryear.

There are a lot of "soft" sciences that get increasingly softer every year. Social sciences, gender and women's studies, political science, some of the fast and loose use of "economics" these days.

There are a lot of "studies" these days that are little more than slanted questionnaires or selective correlational studies with wild unsupported theories as to the results.

New comment by codexb in "America's pensions can't beat Vanguard but they can close a hospital"

codexb — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 18:15:23 +0000

Germany and other EU countries that offer free tuition begin segregating students into vocational and university tracks starting around age 10. Only about 30% of students qualify for university. The rest stop school around 15-16 and go into vocational training. These aren't student choices, their dictated by the school system.

The US would never approve of a school system that told parents that their children weren't allowed to go to university and had to go into vocational training.

New comment by codexb in "America's pensions can't beat Vanguard but they can close a hospital"

codexb — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 16:19:26 +0000

Ok, but forgiving student loans doesn't do that. It signals to borrowers that they don't have to repay high loans if their career can't support it. It tells borrowers that they can make risky loans without a chance of default. It tells universities that they can keep charging exorbitant tuitions because kids can still get loans to pay them.

The solution is to allow judges the discretion to default them in bankruptcy after X number of years after graduation. Lenders need to accept the risk. With no risk, they can loan as much as they want and have guaranteed repayment. This drives tuition higher and higher.

New comment by codexb in "The Waymo World Model"

codexb — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 18:55:16 +0000

3d from moving 2d images has been a thing for decades.

New comment by codexb in "Launching the Rural Guaranteed Minimum Income Initiative"

codexb — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 19:00:07 +0000

I'm always surprised how even the people I consider incredibly intelligent get pulled into bad ideas.

New comment by codexb in "Willison on Merchant's "Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry""

codexb — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 18:05:21 +0000

There will always be value in doing work that other people don't want to do themselves or that requires expertise and skill that isn't conveyed all that well through books or pictures. The economy used to be full of stable masters for horses and carriages, and manual typists, and street lamp lighters, and television repairmen, and any number of jobs that don't exist anymore.

I'm pretty sure we'll survive.

New comment by codexb in "Willison on Merchant's "Copywriters reveal how AI has decimated their industry""

codexb — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 17:53:33 +0000

I think it's a stretch to call having to make a living in a career other than your preferred job "suffering". Even before AI, there were surely millions of people who grew up wanting to be an artist, or an astronaut, or an architect, or any number of things that they never had the skills or the work ethic or the resources to achieve. I'm sure before cars there were people who loved maintaining stables of horses and carriages, and lamented the decline of the stable master profession. It's no different now.

New comment by codexb in "Epic celebrates "the end of the Apple Tax" after court win in iOS payments case"

codexb — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 16:47:58 +0000

At one point, there was a case for preventing scammy and fraudulent apps. For a long time, the ios App store had a much higher quality than android.

But now? There are tons of scammy and fraudulent apps on the app store. If you try to search for any popular app, you'll be presented with a dozen apps that look similar with similar names and logos.

New comment by codexb in "CBP is monitoring US drivers and detaining those with suspicious travel patterns"

codexb — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 22:32:01 +0000

License plate holders that obscure the license plate on private property.

New comment by codexb in "The Death of Arduino?"

codexb — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 20:48:34 +0000

Look at any hobby and there are lots of beginners and casuals and far fewer people who are very skilled at it. The Maker hobby is no different. It's certainly not a problem of the microcontrollers available. Arduino is the simplest, but there are plenty of others.

The "blinky LED" roadblock is really just a result of the fact that more complex "maker" projects require some amount of electrical or engineering or fabrication knowledge and skill, which takes some trial and error and practice -- the same thing that limits progress in lots of other hobbies.

The real "Maker" movement is the demand that drives so many consumer level fabrication tools and components that were only available as expensive industrial and commercial orders in the past -- 3d printers, laser cutters, microcontrollers, IC sensors, brushless motors -- there are so many options now that just weren't available at all 20 years ago.

New comment by codexb in "Project Euler"

codexb — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 19:55:16 +0000

Wow, I can't believe this is still around! I'm glad to see artifacts from the past like this are still out there on the internet.

Makes me miss Google CodeJam though.

New comment by codexb in "Time to start de-Appling"

codexb — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 16:44:28 +0000

Sounds more like people need to de-UK. It's going to be a problem with any company or technology.

New comment by codexb in "Keep Android Open"

codexb — Wed, 29 Oct 2025 15:24:51 +0000

I agree with you, but that only works if people value it and are willing to pay for it.

Look at email. It’s technically open, but in reality there are a few large players who control the majority of it.

The only way open source phone software succeeds is if there is real money behind it and there is an attractiveness to it that makes people pay for it.

New comment by codexb in "The story of DOGE, as told by federal workers"

codexb — Thu, 25 Sep 2025 16:06:11 +0000

They were, but the actual cuts needed (to entitlements) are politically impossible to make.

New comment by codexb in "A leap year check in three instructions"

codexb — Thu, 15 May 2025 23:30:23 +0000

That's basically compilers these days. It used to be that you could try and optimize your code, inline things here and there, but these days, you're not going to beat the compiler optimization.