Hacker News: deron12

New comment by deron12 in "ai;dr"

deron12 — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 18:43:12 +0000

AI never uses em dashes in a pair like this, whereas most people who like em dashes do. Anyone who calls paired em dash writing AI is only revealing themselves to be a duffer.

New comment by deron12 in "Gemini 3 Deep Think"

deron12 — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 18:14:35 +0000

It's worth noting that you mean excellent in terms of prior AI output. I'm pretty sure this wouldn't be considered excellent from a "human made art" perspective. In other words, it's still got a ways to go!

Edit: someone needs to explain why this comment is getting downvoted, because I don't understand. Did someone's ego get hurt, or what?

New comment by deron12 in "Launch HN: Omnara (YC S25) – Run Claude Code and Codex from anywhere"

deron12 — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 18:07:35 +0000

I think you mean "prestigious" rather than "major accomplishment". You're right, there was a small period of time when it was. However, that window didn't quite align with "best time to do YC" (several years prior to such prestige) nor with "best time to be doing YC" (the prestige embellishes your resume, which is useless if you're otherwise occupied).

It's interesting to me that YC has managed to dilute this prestige to a large extent. I don't think it's an inevitable result of scale: look at Google. I think "Xoogler" prestige has diminished, but it's not nearly as bad as what has happened to the YC label.

My theory is: YC never figured out their formula. The whole formula is essentially Paul Graham, who had a knack for trusting his gut (and sometimes his wife) when everything else in his "system" was saying NO.

Once they lost that, they had to rely on what was left, and it simply wasn't competitive anymore. It's like Apple in their John Sculley era. While Sculley is credited with growing Apple's revenue from $800 million to $8 billion, his approach created a "mess of dull SKUs" that eventually confused customers and diluted the brand.

They also have a (bad) habit of removing access to bookface for all the founders who aren't "active", decimating their network and in some ways discarding valuable knowledge around what didn't work.

New comment by deron12 in "Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit: Tools for Thinking Critically (2025)"

deron12 — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 17:03:03 +0000

Is it possible to get people to think critically and self-reflect, as a third party?

The answer to that question lies in the bottom of a cup of hemlock.

New comment by deron12 in "U.S. had almost no job growth in 2025"

deron12 — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 17:32:02 +0000

Unscientific indeed:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-17/nintendo-... [0]

They produced a record number...your observation should be the expected result (they are aiming to produce 25% more than are expected to sell).

[0] https://archive.is/RInO7