Hacker News: conqrr

New comment by conqrr in "Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?"

conqrr — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 21:36:49 +0000

Until Claude Sonnet 4, it was Meh no big deal. 4 onwards and Opus was when I was really surprised by the ability. But nowadays, I'm more convinced than ever that using AI for all code is a mistake. The sum total of productivity, although hard to predict, from anecdata seems to be a net negative if AI is blindly used everywhere. Using it at the periphery, observing, debugging etc is excellent aid. I use it at the day job I hate and at personal tasks that I don't have time for. But for personal projects I love, zero.

Coding was never the blocker and was a natural enforcer of quality. Healthy teams with strong opinions on quality will win eventually. I'm more hopeful after the bubble burst, companies will come back slowly to sanity.

New comment by conqrr in "The bootstrapper's EU stack for under €10 per month"

conqrr — Mon, 25 May 2026 21:32:09 +0000

For a bootstrapper's computeless log search solution using Duckdb and s3 compatible store, use Blobsearch (https://github.com/amr8t/blobsearch)

New comment by conqrr in "Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian"

conqrr — Mon, 18 May 2026 15:02:20 +0000

Looks really slick! I've been using Obsidian with git, and am thinking of moving back to the OG solution of simply using a text editor with a git repo. I'm wary of using cloud like google drive or dropbox for sync, especially if I'm using both phone and mobile to edit the same file throughout the day. I doubt using an external cloud really takes care of consistency and there's a possibility of losing data. Me being a developer can take the pain of a button click to git pull and resolve occasional conflicts. To me this is fully solved solution for note taking with tools I already know and trust. Having said that, I'm gonna try Files.md for some inspiration on what I could be missing.

New comment by conqrr in "Ask HN: Is the Job Market Actually Bad?"

conqrr — Fri, 08 May 2026 14:57:41 +0000

Have you tried freelancing? Curious if that has seen an uptick or fall.

New comment by conqrr in "Agentic Coding Is a Trap"

conqrr — Mon, 04 May 2026 01:43:33 +0000

I've been having the same feeling too. At work, I try to do a hybrid prompt where I fill in things at method level with some placeholder pseudocode and let the prompt fill in the blanks. This helps with remembering and keeping a memory map. But its a lost cause keeping up with other's PRs that are often very verbose and high volume. For a lot of backend programming without a very complex domain, I think this works fine.

But I still want to be in touch with coding by hand and have ventured into systems programming, outside of work, which I feel AI is less useful for currently.

New comment by conqrr in "Full-Text Search with DuckDB"

conqrr — Fri, 01 May 2026 13:28:18 +0000

I started with s3 and moved to R2. Log volumes are low enough that its covered in the free usage tier.

New comment by conqrr in "Full-Text Search with DuckDB"

conqrr — Fri, 01 May 2026 01:23:15 +0000

DuckDB is amazing. It has completely replaced my need of using Cloudwatch or Loki etc for logs. I simply emit parquet to s3 now and use DuckDB to query locally. No HA compute or paying cloud tax for log search.

https://github.com/amr8t/blobsearch

New comment by conqrr in "Ask HN: Why does tech industry not have more co-ops?"

conqrr — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 21:42:20 +0000

Can't disagree with that. Agriculture, Energy, Grocery, Credit all have co-ops, Yet tech is non-existent.

Ask HN: Why does tech industry not have more co-ops?

conqrr — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 21:26:46 +0000

Sounds like this should be the default path if AI is really enabling everyone and setting an even field. Why is it just winner (CEO and co) takes all and losers go home?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47941048

Points: 28

# Comments: 9

New comment by conqrr in "GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing"

conqrr — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 22:36:47 +0000

just cancelled mine. Only reason to have it was I could get a lot more done with a single prompt. No reason why I shouldn't go to the model provider directly instead.

New comment by conqrr in "AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it"

conqrr — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 20:31:01 +0000

This is a huge concern and I fully agree with the post. Even though one might think I am not fully giving into AI, this was always the case etc. It still affects YOU and everyone else. 1. Software, often, isn't built in vacuum. Lots of companies are shoving AI down throats like it or not. Most Bigtech is heavily using metrics to get to 100% AI generated code. Reviewing is a nightmare. 2. New entrants (new grads etc) are largely AI first and are losing out on the safety and reliability aspects that are enforced automatically when you learn coding without AI.

IMO, teams need to agree on a set of principles on AI usage, concrete examples of where and how to use it. Perhaps its much more useful in parts of your system that's faster evolving and doesn't have too much core logic like testing frameworks etc

Simply discarding it as 'yet another tool' is part of the problem.

New comment by conqrr in "The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code"

conqrr — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 16:49:17 +0000

License makes a lot of sense. Many engineering fields have licenses. Needs to be made mandatory. Tech rapidly evolves which was an excuse. Well, a lot has stabilized now in terms of technologies.

Ask HN: How much AI slop do you deal with at work?

conqrr — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 17:15:55 +0000

Struggling at work with AI mandates. There is heavy top down push to use AI, this is at one of the large Tech companies in the US. This has me quite depressed. Everyone sends slop for reviews and there is an expectation of 2-3x efficiency even after losing a lot of people. This has caused a lot of bugs and issues. I'm sure a lot of places have the same issue and we have accepted this as a new normal.

But are there places US or ROW that are more sane and let you or the team decide what tool to use? How do I find them? Does going lower in the stack help?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47878425

Points: 2

# Comments: 2

New comment by conqrr in "Parallel agents in Zed"

conqrr — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 22:17:58 +0000

Love Zed for my personal projects at home with Openrouter. But I cant use it at work as I'm forced to use claude code at work and find the VSCode+claude code combo better. I know zed has claudecode integration, but I found it to be very weak compared to zedagent+claudemodel. Has this improved?

Oracle accused of targeting employees with stock options in recent layoffs

conqrr — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 14:08:29 +0000

Article URL: https://nypost.com/2026/04/13/business/oracle-accused-of-targeting-employees-with-stock-options-in-recent-layoffs/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47765883

Points: 16

# Comments: 2

New comment by conqrr in "OpenAI backs Illinois bill that would limit when AI labs can be held liable"

conqrr — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 13:47:49 +0000

Wasnt this as accessible pre AI with just Google search too?

Ask HN: Who is solving hard problems and deep work?

conqrr — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 02:02:33 +0000

Seems like everyone thinks we don't need to solve hard problems or a lot of coding is solved. While I don't think this is true, the area has definitely narrowed. What are you doing that's hard,.deep and rewarding?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47712723

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

Ask HN: Best pivot for SWE to work on satisfying engineering challenges?

conqrr — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 14:58:25 +0000

Most Tech companies in the US have become a sweatshop of LLM generated code. I'm looking for a pivot to an adjacent related field that isn't as badly affected. My initial thoughts are places in tech still exist where people are skeptical of LLM and use it with caution. Places that prioritize correctness over velocity. I have nothing against AI, but I do have a lot against its wild uncontrolled use for everything and a greedy, shortsighted leadership that currently controls the tech industry. I know there is going to be a reckoning at some point, but I don't want to wait for our industry to course correct.

I doubt other engineering fields (Electrical, civil, mechanical) are affected as much as Software Engineering is. What would be adjacent places that I can pivot to without starting from scratch and getting a degree.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47650105

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

Show HN: Blobsearch – Object storage and DuckDB based Elasticsearch alternative

conqrr — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 22:55:48 +0000

Hey all, sharing my latest alternative to elasticsearch, cloudwatch etc that either require heavy cloud tax or cost more for a managed solution. This is a known pattern but maybe not well known enough to write logs to s3 as durable storage with Parquet and query rapidly with DuckDB. This has become the primary way I ingest logs for all my side projects and don't ever have to worry about losing logs and possibly free storage.

Features

    Format Agnostic - Works with any JSON log format via configurable field extraction
    Fast - 28K+ entries/sec ingestion
    Efficient - Parquet + Snappy (3.7x compression)
    Quick Queries - DuckDB queries in <50ms on 56K logs
    S3-Compatible - AWS S3, MinIO, DigitalOcean Spaces, R2, etc.
    Partitioned - Hive-style partitioning by date/level (no redundant part suffixes)
    Auto-Flush - Configurable automatic flushing (default: 90s)
    Dedupe - Optional deduplication

Hacker News: conqrr

New comment by conqrr in "Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?"

New comment by conqrr in "The bootstrapper's EU stack for under €10 per month"

New comment by conqrr in "Show HN: Files.md – Open-source alternative to Obsidian"

New comment by conqrr in "Ask HN: Is the Job Market Actually Bad?"

New comment by conqrr in "Agentic Coding Is a Trap"

New comment by conqrr in "Full-Text Search with DuckDB"

New comment by conqrr in "Full-Text Search with DuckDB"

New comment by conqrr in "Ask HN: Why does tech industry not have more co-ops?"

Ask HN: Why does tech industry not have more co-ops?

New comment by conqrr in "GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing"

New comment by conqrr in "AI should elevate your thinking, not replace it"

New comment by conqrr in "The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code"

Ask HN: How much AI slop do you deal with at work?

New comment by conqrr in "Parallel agents in Zed"

Oracle accused of targeting employees with stock options in recent layoffs

New comment by conqrr in "OpenAI backs Illinois bill that would limit when AI labs can be held liable"

Ask HN: Who is solving hard problems and deep work?

Ask HN: Best pivot for SWE to work on satisfying engineering challenges?

Show HN: Blobsearch – Object storage and DuckDB based Elasticsearch alternative

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