Hacker News: dinkumthinkum

New comment by dinkumthinkum in "Spending 3 months coding by hand"

dinkumthinkum — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 05:14:54 +0000

I mean, I know this may seem alien to you, but not everyone's life is about being a corpo good-boy. I don't know what career level you are but many people got into computing because they were really interested in it, not like a grad from 2016 that majored in CS because their dad said there was money in it and they should change their major from marketing. Also, there is something to be said for having people that still actually know what a computer is. What if your friends Altman and Amodei decide to start charging actual money for these tools? Sounds incredibly unlikely, I know, but it might be useful one day to have people that still know what the stack or the heap are.

New comment by dinkumthinkum in "Spending 3 months coding by hand"

dinkumthinkum — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 05:09:11 +0000

What LLMs are you all using that solves every problem in 5 minutes? It is fast at some various classes of problems but the idea that they solve complex bugs that took serious engineers significant time, I'm just not seeing that. Where is all this amazing software and revolution we were promised? Why are there even bugs?

New comment by dinkumthinkum in "Spending 3 months coding by hand"

dinkumthinkum — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 05:04:10 +0000

You will lose the ability to struggle through different problems. You will become psychologically weak. Degrees of time matter. Twenty minutes is about the time of a sitcom. If you can't sit with a problem then you will be weak and weak people make hard times. Oh well.

New comment by dinkumthinkum in "Spending 3 months coding by hand"

dinkumthinkum — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 04:56:02 +0000

When you say it's hard, what does that mean? Presumably, if the AI is so good, why can't you just ask it to do that? Why are you even needed?

New comment by dinkumthinkum in "Spending 3 months coding by hand"

dinkumthinkum — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 04:44:03 +0000

You may want to go back and ask the expert in that vibe coding equation if it would say this is a wise approach.

New comment by dinkumthinkum in "Americans still opt for print books over digital or audio versions"

dinkumthinkum — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 23:39:47 +0000

You are free to buy those books in Florida and give them to your kids. They are no more banned than other forms of pornography. Again, liberals like Gavin Newsome made this claim ironically about “To Kill a Mockingbird.” It is so interesting for liberals to hold to this view. It really is an 80/20 or 90/10 issue once the facts of this situation are revealed.

New comment by dinkumthinkum in "Midnight Captain – A midnight commander inspired file manager"

dinkumthinkum — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 04:26:26 +0000

I was mildly excited clicking the link and then I saw that ... I guess this is the shape of things to come.

New comment by dinkumthinkum in "Americans still opt for print books over digital or audio versions"

dinkumthinkum — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 04:23:12 +0000

With respect, this is just propaganda. That is not about banning books, that is about keep certain kinds of books out of school libraries. School libraries already kept other classes of books. This reminds of when Gavin Newsome or Pink tried to claim conservatives states banned "To Kill a Mocking Bird," which was not only untrue but it was the case that in their foolishness, they did not realize California banned the book, if anything.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/gavin-news...

New comment by dinkumthinkum in "Americans still opt for print books over digital or audio versions"

dinkumthinkum — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 04:14:34 +0000

The be fair the parent said "almost." I see this more as a backup of the physical book. Other than search, the experience of physical books is superior, I think, for most people for most uses. You can come up with counterexamples like certain aspects of studying textbooks, etc., but I think this is true in general.

New comment by dinkumthinkum in "Americans still opt for print books over digital or audio versions"

dinkumthinkum — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 04:10:05 +0000

I sort of get your point but I feel like its also a bit curmudgeon-y. In order to have the movies, shows, whatever, it has to be paid for somehow. Also, I think there is something to be said for discovering things. If you just have an API, what is the interface then? Is it like millions bespoke vibe-coded clients? That sounds like a bother too. How do you know in advance if a movie is something you want to see? I guess Dario or Altman can decide for us but what if they become a bother?

New comment by dinkumthinkum in "DRAM has a design flaw from 1966. I bypassed it [video]"

dinkumthinkum — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 05:04:25 +0000

This is an unreasonably good video. Hopefully, it inspires others to see we can still think hard and critically about technical things.

New comment by dinkumthinkum in "US and Iran agree to provisional ceasefire"

dinkumthinkum — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 01:34:17 +0000

With all due respect, I feel people that hold your views would believe it if someone told them that not only did Iran complete defeat and demoralize the U.S. war power in Iran, that Iran has actually successfully bombed the U.S. into submission and the U.S. essentially no longer exists except as a vassal to Iran. I really think there is no Anti-American narrative that is too ludicrous for people that hold this view to believe. I actually find it fascinating.

New comment by dinkumthinkum in "US and Iran agree to provisional ceasefire"

dinkumthinkum — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 01:28:06 +0000

I don't know. The Kuwaitis might feel differently about your brilliant assessment.

New comment by dinkumthinkum in "US and Iran agree to provisional ceasefire"

dinkumthinkum — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 01:26:33 +0000

When you use words like "decapitation strike that failed, but killed off all of the moderates," what do those words mean to you? With all due respect, I don't really get the Internet brain way of thinking of things. What decapitation failed? I guess, if you mean, there are still Islamic Revolution people in charge, I still can't see the point. When you say "failed" that would imply that they were literally attempting to kill literally every single member of the government at once. I don't think anyone serious would think that. Also, "failed?" I can't recall ever a decapitation happening so swiftly or so massively within the first few hours of a conflict. Also, the meat of what I wanted respond to was this idea of "killing the moderates." I get that most people here think the West and America is evil or whatever but the idea the Ayatollah and top members of the IRGC were moderate is just an affront to morality. The same people think that Trump is Hitler for doing things that 90s Democrats agreed with (even ones currently serving), would hold vigils for a truly monstrous regime. This is like some Billie Eilish "no one is illegal on stolen land" type stuff. We are talking about brutal executions for no reason at all.

New comment by dinkumthinkum in "US and Iran agree to provisional ceasefire"

dinkumthinkum — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 01:08:26 +0000

It's not oblivious. It's more willfully ignorant. Even that is not right. Most people are just so anti-America and anti-West that they side with actual despots and choose to believe strange things. If we send 10,000 bombs to Iran and lose an F-16E and have to search for a pilot for a few days, these people believe this means Iran has won the war. If China puts a balloon on our coast, these people believe China has defeated us militarily. I responded to a post the other day where someone was claiming Cuba could "easily" neutralize the entire U.S. Navy with a handful of drones or something.

New comment by dinkumthinkum in "Microsoft hasn't had a coherent GUI strategy since Petzold"

dinkumthinkum — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 05:08:04 +0000

Anyone else sit through one of those Microsoft "Project Reunion" and wonder "what the hell is even this?" Microsoft has had a completely confusing UI strategy for years.

New comment by dinkumthinkum in "Show HN: I built a tiny LLM to demystify how language models work"

dinkumthinkum — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 05:03:04 +0000

I think this is a nice project because it is end to end and serves its goal well. Good job! It's a good example how someone might do something similar for a specific purpose. There are other visualizers that explain different aspects of LLMs but this is a good applied example.

New comment by dinkumthinkum in "When legal sports betting surges, so do Americans' financial problems"

dinkumthinkum — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 06:52:31 +0000

I think this is a little myopic. There are degrees to this. It is very rare to see anyone chase their losses to a lottery ticket. I have literally never heard of anyone doing that in my life. If anything, you see some poor place overspend a bit on those tickets. With all the other types of gambling, you see people being wiped out. I think the details matter.

New comment by dinkumthinkum in "Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz"

dinkumthinkum — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 06:21:29 +0000

All of those are different conflicts. There hasn't been change in Venezuela? Have you seen the political prisoners being released? Are you aware of Germany, Japan, or Panama? Every conflict is different. I thought the Iraq war foolish and the Afghanistan war did not have clear goals and too many different presidents. I think it is interesting that you know that no Cuban living in the US that does not listen to Joe Rogan and is not on Reddit doesn't think of Cuba as communist. It's a pretty unbelievable statement. I don't know if this some leftist No True Scotsman thing or what. You think because they are authoritarian, they are not communist? How do you think we ensure that I have a right to your labor if not by force? I guess we will just see what happens.

New comment by dinkumthinkum in "Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz"

dinkumthinkum — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 06:09:58 +0000

That is not an argument, it is just weaseling. What did I make up? The great governor of California is a democrat and part of the Getty fortune. Perhaps you will believe them?

https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/public-hanging-iran