Hacker News: davidhunter

New comment by davidhunter in "The Joy of Folding Bikes"

davidhunter — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 23:09:12 +0000

I cycle 60 mins per day along the tow path in London on my Brompton, put it under my desk in the office, and then get the train back in the evening. No issues handling that distance.

New comment by davidhunter in "AirPods Max 2"

davidhunter — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 09:50:19 +0000

If you don’t understand then you should invest some time learning microeconomics, marketing, and moats. Principles from (at least) those 3 areas are involved here.

To give 3 examples:

1. The marginal value of these products is in the mind of the individual buyer. No individual is buying both the AirPods Max 2 AND the MacBook Neo for personal use. You can’t compare marginal value across two different individuals.

2. The MacBook Neo has a different set of substitutable goods vs the AirPods Max 2. This affects margin. AirPods Max 2 buyers are likely heavily bought into the Apple ecosystem already.

3. With the Neo, Apple are in some sense subsidising entry into the Apple Ecosystem and ‘getting them young’. Wouldn’t surprise me if there’s zero or negative margin. With the AirPods Max 2 they are exploiting people who are already bought into the ecosystem. Margins will be high.

New comment by davidhunter in "Tony Hoare has died"

davidhunter — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 16:24:31 +0000

There's the Tony Hoare Room [1] in the Robert Hooke Building. We held our Reinforcement Learning reading group there.

[1] https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/jennifer.watson/tonyhoare.htm...

New comment by davidhunter in "Self Driving Car Insurance"

davidhunter — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 17:52:38 +0000

Seems like the role of the human operator in the age of AI is to be the entity they can throw in jail if the machine fails (e.g. driver, pilot)

New comment by davidhunter in "AI is a horse (2024)"

davidhunter — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 11:03:40 +0000

"No, I am not a horse."

Horse rumours denied.

New comment by davidhunter in "iPhone Pocket"

davidhunter — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 16:14:44 +0000

Top of the market

New comment by davidhunter in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2025)"

davidhunter — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 13:09:24 +0000

Optimal | London, UK | ONSITE

Simulation and Control Engineer: Up to £150k + 2% depending on experience.

Full-stack Software Engineer (Python, React): Up to £150k + 2% depending on experience.

Reach out directly to me (founder): david@optimal.ag

Optimal is building agents to control the world’s most critical infrastructure - from factories, to datacenters, to farms.

We are backed by the Director of AI Research at Google DeepMind as well as early VC investors in SpaceX, Anduril, and Palantir.

We have built the world’s most advanced climate control system for high-tech greenhouses and have customers in North America and Europe.

https://www.optimal.ag

New comment by davidhunter in "The Leverage Paradox in AI"

davidhunter — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 18:21:15 +0000

I’d suggest reading about competitive moats and where they come from. The ability to replicate another’s software does not destroy their moat.

New comment by davidhunter in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2025)"

davidhunter — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 14:06:36 +0000

Optimal | London, UK | ONSITE

Backend Software Engineer (Python): Up to £150k + 2% depending on experience.

Optimal builds AI agents to control the world’s critical infrastructure - from factories, to datacenters, to farms.

We are backed by the Director of AI Research at Google DeepMind as well as early VC investors in SpaceX, Anduril, and Palantir.

We have built the world’s most advanced AI control system for high-tech greenhouses and have just signed out first customer contracts in North America and Europe having proven the performance of our AI across 3 seasons in our own demonstration greenhouse.

david@optimal.ag

https://www.optimal.ag

New comment by davidhunter in "Two publishers and three authors fail to understand what "vibe coding" means"

davidhunter — Thu, 01 May 2025 15:56:03 +0000

Anyone else think “vibe coding” is a poor choice of name. Too ambiguous.

Friend of mine suggested “apping”.

I ‘apped’ this in 2 hours vs I ‘vibe coded’ this in 2 hours.

New comment by davidhunter in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2025)"

davidhunter — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 13:05:27 +0000

Optimal | London, UK | ONSITE

AI Simulation and Control Engineer: Up to £150k + 2% depending on experience (https://wellfound.com/l/2AUs7A)

Backend Software Engineer (Python): Up to £150k + 2% depending on experience (reach out direct to david@optimal.ag)

Optimal builds AI agents to control the world’s critical infrastructure - from factories, to datacenters, to farms.

We are backed by the Director of AI Research at Google DeepMind as well as early VC investors in SpaceX, Anduril, and Palantir.

david@optimal.ag

https://www.optimal.ag

New comment by davidhunter in "Larry Ellison's Half-Billion-Dollar Quest to Change Farming Has Been a Bust"

davidhunter — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 16:58:29 +0000

Bill Gates also lost money on greenhouses [0][1]

[0] https://www.reuters.com/technology/bill-gates-green-tech-fun...

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/03/iron-ox-lays-off-50-amount...

New comment by davidhunter in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2025)"

davidhunter — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 17:43:29 +0000

Optimal | London, UK | ONSITE

AI Simulation and Control Engineer: Up to £150k + 2% depending on experience (https://wellfound.com/l/2AUs7A)

Full-Stack Software Engineer (Python): Up to £150k + 2% depending on experience (reach out direct to david@optimal.ag)

Optimal builds AI agents to control the world’s critical infrastructure - from factories, to datacenters, to farms.

We are backed by the Director of AI Research at Google DeepMind as well as early VC investors in SpaceX, Anduril, and Palantir.

david@optimal.ag

https://www.optimal.ag

New comment by davidhunter in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (January 2025)"

davidhunter — Fri, 03 Jan 2025 06:44:03 +0000

Optimal | London, UK | ONSITE

AI Simulation and Control Engineer: Up to £150k + 2% depending on experience (https://wellfound.com/l/2AUs7A)

Optimal builds AI agents to control the world’s critical infrastructure - from factories, to datacenters, to farms.

We are backed by the Director of AI Research at Google DeepMind as well as early VC investors in SpaceX, Anduril, and Palantir.

david@optimal.ag

https://www.optimal.ag

New comment by davidhunter in "Eventually consistent plain text accounting"

davidhunter — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 22:00:05 +0000

That's a nice idea. Thanks for sharing.

I have a single sheet per account (current accounts, share accounts etc). I download csvs and append to the relevant sheet - usually once per month.

In each sheet I've added a column called 'tag'. And I just tag anything that I want to keep track of - which is a small percentage of transactions. Then I can filter transactions by that tag.

Whilst it was a nice idea in theory to book every transaction to an account in a chart of accounts, I found that I very rarely looked at the PnL. And so it didn't justify the time involved in booking each transaction.

New comment by davidhunter in "Eventually consistent plain text accounting"

davidhunter — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 11:17:26 +0000

Has anyone else gone on the following journey:

1. Use excel

2. See ledger/hledger. Think this must be 'the way'. Go all in.

3. Constantly wrestle with ledger/hledger because you only do your accounting once per month/quarter which is not enough frequency to really grok it.

4. Use excel with a new sense of calm that you're not missing out on something better

New comment by davidhunter in "The Elimination Strategy – Why More Makes Your SaaS Worth Less"

davidhunter — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 20:30:42 +0000

AI-generated content marketing has finally got to the front page of HN

New comment by davidhunter in "NASA is selling a brand-new Moon rover: Never used, one previous owner"

davidhunter — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 08:41:33 +0000

The answer my friend, is rovin’ in the wind

New comment by davidhunter in "Framework Series A-1"

davidhunter — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 14:44:03 +0000

Skin in the game for evangelists

New comment by davidhunter in "Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores"

davidhunter — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 23:21:55 +0000

Did anyone else check each item manually one-by-one to ensure that the system was accurate?