Hacker News: dyingkneepad

New comment by dyingkneepad in "Ask HN: Do you feel comfortable admitting that you use AI?"

dyingkneepad — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 16:53:42 +0000

> Hearing so many people say that AI-generated code is unusable and fixing it takes longer than writing it by hand, makes me wonder if they are working on a very specific field or I just have skill issues.

In my work, there are people everywhere in the "AI adoption" spectrum.

On one hand, a certain Senior engineer spent a month having an AI write him thousands of lines of code for a feature. The AI wrote a million tests, tools to visualize data, everything. But he still has not delivered the code to the main repository since he knows nobody will ever review the mess the AI wrote, and he can't even properly understand it to defend it in review. We have human reviews as part of our process, the coworker is 100% stuck on it.

I, on the other hand, don't ask AI to write code for me, but I have AI explain me concepts, track down bugs, review my patches, etc. Sometimes it shows me patch format, but I prefer it doesn't touch my filesystem. I treat it as a senior employee whose task is to be there and help me. It's been going great. I am definitely more productive, I am coding faster, and the future is sustainable for me. Having it write shit for me would definitely be faster, but I want to use AI as a tool to teach me what to do, not do it for me.

There are also employees who are still working on the pre-AI model. Whenever AI is mentioned, they automatically assume it could be hallucinating and whatnot. To these, I never mention AI, because it simply derails the conversation to a useless point.

New comment by dyingkneepad in "Learn how chips are made with this Rollercoaster Tycoon-inspired animation"

dyingkneepad — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 20:02:17 +0000

Nice website. One problem, though: the animation goes too fast for my reading speed, so I have to click stop. Then when I click on the next thing, I have to click stop again. Very annoying. If I click stop, just make it stay stopped until I click play again (which I won't).

New comment by dyingkneepad in "Ask HN: Is Zig worth it over Rust in 2026?"

dyingkneepad — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 17:03:37 +0000

I may be wrong, but my personal experience is just that AIs are better at better-documented languages. By now, Rust is very well documented, perhaps significantly better than Zig (I haven't verified!).

Try asking an AI to write OpenCL shaders for you. It constantly hallucinates function calls that don't exist. I presume it is just because the language is does not have the ocean of documentation that others have.

New comment by dyingkneepad in "Tell HN: I De-Googled Myself"

dyingkneepad — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 16:40:55 +0000

"De-googling" is a spectrum, and I was pretty proud of being farther and farther away (Android and Youtube being the main resistance). But recently, I find myself using Gemini more and more often... I hate that I am more relying on it, but Gemini seems significantly smarter than the other free alternatives for the stuff that I do :(. But Gemini has been extremely helpful for me.

New comment by dyingkneepad in "I Changed My Name"

dyingkneepad — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:02:46 +0000

It's a nickname: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pel%C3%A9

New comment by dyingkneepad in "Ask HN: Do you thank your agents when they did a good job?"

dyingkneepad — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 16:43:33 +0000

Only for the models where I'm not paying per token.

New comment by dyingkneepad in "Ask HN: Do you have an unusual income source"

dyingkneepad — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 17:11:49 +0000

Let me tell you something that does not make money: selling fiction books as an independent author (through physical copies, Kindle ebooks and Kindle Unlimited). Family member is a good writer, has been trying to "make it" for a few years already (published multiple books, has good reviews), and the monthly profit is still not enough to buy a pizza.

New comment by dyingkneepad in "A backdoor in a LinkedIn job offer"

dyingkneepad — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 20:44:50 +0000

Ah, c'mon! You went all the way to find out the issue and write about it, and won't do the most interesting part which is to tell us what was the remote script that would end up running!?

New comment by dyingkneepad in "Google killed my $1M ARR startup overnight"

dyingkneepad — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 17:46:21 +0000

How can you tell AI was used here? I'm curious.

New comment by dyingkneepad in "Brands got worse on purpose"

dyingkneepad — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 16:38:52 +0000

You're trying to say they are good quality!?

I recently had to gift someone some books, so I decided to try B&N online shipping since Amazon sometimes damages books. I ordered 3 books: all 3 came loose in a big box, all 3 were damaged: they looked like used books, unacceptable as a gift. I returned them, they didn't have ship-to-store option (which was what Gemini was telling me to push for), and they sent me new ones: all 3 arrived damaged, again. It turns out, B&N is worse than Amazon: 100% book damage rate on 6 books, worse customer support, worse return policy, worse everything. Enshitification 100%.

New comment by dyingkneepad in "I Won't Download Your App. The Web Version Is A-OK"

dyingkneepad — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 17:06:44 +0000

I wish there was a version of this website that was simpler, more educated and that I could show to the "normies" who own business and insist on asking me to download their app (I'm looking at you, TKD school!). This one is too aimed at the cooks.

New comment by dyingkneepad in "Email obfuscation: What works in 2026?"

dyingkneepad — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 19:23:29 +0000

Then I can't copy+paste, so I might make a typo when sending you a message.

New comment by dyingkneepad in "How do you plan to make a living after AI takes your job?"

dyingkneepad — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 17:20:27 +0000

My plan is to learn how to use AI and be proficient with it, so they will be more likely to keep me, as opposed to those who refuse to use it. Some people on my team still refuse to use AI, thinking you can't trust anything since it's all hallucinations.

New comment by dyingkneepad in "λProlog: Logic programming in higher-order logic"

dyingkneepad — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 17:31:31 +0000

University is not a competition, others have nothing to do with this? The unfairness here is between me and myself, as I was supposed force myself into doing it in Prolog.

New comment by dyingkneepad in "λProlog: Logic programming in higher-order logic"

dyingkneepad — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 17:35:09 +0000

As usual, try mplayer. It can play anything.

New comment by dyingkneepad in "λProlog: Logic programming in higher-order logic"

dyingkneepad — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 17:32:18 +0000

I also learned Prolog in the university.

In the Classsic AI course we had to implement gaming AI algorithms (A*, alpha-beta pruning, etc) and in Prolog for one specific assignment. After trying for a while, I got frustrated and asked the teacher if I could do it in Ruby instead. He agreed: he was the kind of person who just couldn't say no, he was too nice for his own good. I still feel bad about it.

Rest In Peace, Alexandre.

New comment by dyingkneepad in "0 A.D. Release 28: Boiorix"

dyingkneepad — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 17:39:15 +0000

Those who like this game may also want to try open-source The Battle for Wesnoth, which is a turn-based hexgrid war game.

New comment by dyingkneepad in "Simplifying Vulkan one subsystem at a time"

dyingkneepad — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 22:44:16 +0000

They have done it. The current modern abstraction is called Vulkan, and the binary spec code for this machine is called SPIR-V.

New comment by dyingkneepad in "Simplifying Vulkan one subsystem at a time"

dyingkneepad — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 22:37:59 +0000

The market is not just 3 players. These days we have these things called smartphones, and they all include a variety of different graphics cards on them. And even more devices than just those include decently powerful GPUs as well. If you look at the Contributors section of the extension in the post, and look at all the companies involved, you'll have a better idea.

New comment by dyingkneepad in "AI has failed to replace a single software application or feature"

dyingkneepad — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 17:10:44 +0000

I said I am a beginner in one of the languages.

How do I know their answer is best? I can verify their answers through other means, and I understand both languages enough to realize one answer is more appropriate than the other, even if I can't come up with those words directly using only my brain.