<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: efitz</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=efitz</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Mon, 15 Jun 2026 18:05:56 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=efitz" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by efitz in "Statement on US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I don’t think there’s a vendetta.  I think that Dario is an ideologue who has been letting his ideology cloud his business judgment.<p>I don’t think he’s playing 4D chess; I think he truly believes all the “AI is going to eliminate all the jobs” crap.  I think his “Claude Constitution” is wishful thinking and his attempts to exert control over what his customers lawfully do with the product he sells them have made his company untrustworthy; certainly so by the US Dept of War.<p>I think lately his advisors have made him tone down the doomerism noting that it might tank his IPO, and I am uncertain whether his recent pushes towards more regulation are regulatory capture attempts or ideology or both.<p>The man is smart but IMO shouldn’t be running the company- he should be a CTO and let a business person make the decisions.<p>As for the government, bureaucracies gonna do what they always do.  If you scare them they regulate you.  ITAR is a real thing and the government throws it at technology all the time, from the minds that brought you 40-bit SSL in the 90s.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 13 Jun 2026 04:36:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48513219</link><dc:creator>efitz</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48513219</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48513219</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by efitz in "pg_durable: Microsoft open sources in-database durable execution"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>My only concern is that AI agents won’t be good at this.<p>For better or worse, they “understand” and have seen a lot of message queuing code and read lots of message queue support discussions.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 06 Jun 2026 07:26:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48422353</link><dc:creator>efitz</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48422353</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48422353</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by efitz in "Google employee charged with $1M Polymarket insider trading bet on search term"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> the purpose of these markets is to provide fair bets for entertainment<p>Pretty sure this statement is 100% wrong.  You’re describing a gambling site.  Is that how governments are treating them?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 29 May 2026 04:45:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48319153</link><dc:creator>efitz</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48319153</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48319153</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by efitz in "Google employee charged with $1M Polymarket insider trading bet on search term"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I’m completely failing to get outraged here.<p>I think that the person misused Google internal information and deserves termination or other discipline, but I’m struggling to otherwise see the harm in what they did. Is insider trading a crime on prediction markets?  Doesn’t it contribute to the accuracy of the pricing of prediction contracts, and therefore is good for the prediction market?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 28 May 2026 07:47:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48305918</link><dc:creator>efitz</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48305918</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48305918</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by efitz in "What Apple and Google are doing to push notifications"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Marketing and advertising people ruin everything they touch.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 27 May 2026 22:26:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48301609</link><dc:creator>efitz</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48301609</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48301609</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by efitz in "Using AI to write better code more slowly"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>If you only have one AI window open, you’re doing it wrong.  You task swap to another window/agent, get it working on something, rinse and repeat.  I can keep 4 busy most of the time.  When I task swap I also check in on what the other agents are doing to make sure they’re on track, not blocked and not struggling.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 26 May 2026 01:15:40 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48273860</link><dc:creator>efitz</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48273860</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48273860</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by efitz in "Using AI to write better code more slowly"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Great article and right on point.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 26 May 2026 01:11:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48273833</link><dc:creator>efitz</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48273833</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48273833</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by efitz in "Netherlands Seizes 800 Servers, Arrests 2 for Aiding Cyberattacks"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I’ve been on the defender side of security my whole career.<p>I know in some markets crime pays more than legitimate work, but it never ceases to amaze me how much thought, effort, planning, and engineering goes into providing infrastructure IT services for cybercriminals.  The people involved definitely have the skills to be profitable at legitimate work; it just puzzles me that they choose to support criminals.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 25 May 2026 15:42:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48268150</link><dc:creator>efitz</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48268150</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48268150</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by efitz in "Claude is not your architect. Stop letting it pretend"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I don’t depend on one shot prompts with lots of constraints to reliably produce, well, anything.<p>For any nontrivial task I spend 2-8 hours in specification (I spent 3-4 hours on a stateless rust CLI tool design this weekend) and detailed task breakdown in implementation planning.<p>I use TDD to start with red tests that turn green when acceptance criteria are met.<p>I write agents to use to check work and they are my enforcers of constraints, as well as fresh eyes.  I use these agents for spec review, plan review and code review.<p>I am actually pretty proud of the projects I create with generative AI. I just apply a lot of discipline so I don’t end up with slop.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 24 May 2026 21:59:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48261430</link><dc:creator>efitz</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48261430</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48261430</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by efitz in "Texas woman arrested for Facebook post about town water quality"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The process is the punishment.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 23 May 2026 20:25:44 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48251129</link><dc:creator>efitz</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48251129</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48251129</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by efitz in "Replacing My ISP Router with a UniFi Cloud Gateway Max"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I set up a Unifi system in Thailand that has to be downstream (DHCP) from an ISP provided router.  Both Unifi and ISP device want 192.168.1.x and want to be the DHCP server and there’s no easy way to tell Unifi that “WAN” is 1 hop away.<p>I agree with the poster that if you are doing anything that is not a defined happy path for Unifi, it is a freaking nightmare and will likely involve rebuilding, resetting and readopting several times.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2026 00:44:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48230589</link><dc:creator>efitz</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48230589</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48230589</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by efitz in "Not alive, but not dead: disembodied human brains used for drug testing"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>As long as this practice is legal then I am unwilling to be an organ donor.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 21 May 2026 00:18:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48216167</link><dc:creator>efitz</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48216167</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48216167</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by efitz in "The Third Hard Problem"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I have always called this the “one true taxonomy” problem, because whenever you sit with multiple stakeholders in a room talking about a taxonomy, you can never get to agreement, because there is no such thing as the “one true taxonomy”.<p>Any hierarchical taxonomy classifies on one dimension at each taxonomic level.  Invariably someone wants to classify on one criteria when someone else wants to classify on another.  Taxonomies that humans use aren’t multi-dimensional.  So if there is a disagreement, someone wins and someone(s) has to lose.<p>No one is wrong; they just have different priorities or preferences or goals.<p>So now as an architect I never argue (and seldom discuss) taxonomies.  I make two points and then bow out:<p>1. Whatever your taxonomy is, you need a rubric for each level.  You need a procedure or set of questions that unambiguously map any $THING you encounter into exactly one bucket. Validate that competent people with no specific domain knowledge can properly classify things with your rubric; it must be repeatable by amateurs, not just experts (software is dumb).<p>2. Existence trumps theory.  If there exists a taxonomy and rubric for what you’re classifying, you need to provide a $DARN_GOOD_REASON why this wheel needs reinventing.  Personal preference and your 1% edge case probably don’t justify all the work to reinvent everything.<p>Then, I go back to the implementers and tell them to design in a tagging system, which is a DIY taxonomy, and except in ridiculous use cases, I can make indexes make it fast enough to let everyone overlay their own classification system.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 17 May 2026 03:37:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48165852</link><dc:creator>efitz</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48165852</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48165852</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by efitz in "MCP Hello Page"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I love this. The best documentation is that which is presented at the exact place and time that it is needed, and users self support really well if you do that.<p>I once worked for $COMPANY and we had a network scanning application.  Always generated a lot of tickets from angry people wanting to scream about bots.<p>So we put a web page page on each worker that would inherit some details from whatever job was running, and say “I’m a $TYPE_OF_SCANNER FROM $COMPANY doing $THING_THAT_BENEFITS_YOU.<p>This behavior is covered by our terms of service page at $LINK.<p>If you believe that we should not be doing this, please contact $SUPPORT and provide this code:<p>$SCAN_JOB_IDENTIFIER”<p>Call volume and unhappy customers went way down.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 17 May 2026 03:23:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48165793</link><dc:creator>efitz</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48165793</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48165793</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by efitz in "Points are a weird and inconsistent unit of measure"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Well that there is your problem, LaTeX is using imperial points, and Inkscape is using metric points.<p>You need to start using SI points that are defined using wavelengths of ground state emissions of a decaying Americium atom.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 16 May 2026 16:27:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48161591</link><dc:creator>efitz</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48161591</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48161591</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by efitz in "I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Claude, please crease a routine and run it in a loop continuously.  The task in the routine is “create the most complex code possible, in a random programming language, that produces the exact output “My senior leaders are pinheads,”</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 16 May 2026 16:17:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48161513</link><dc:creator>efitz</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48161513</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48161513</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by efitz in "How to make your text look futuristic (2016)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I dunno, it’s kinda futuristic, but it’s missing the faux 3d effect where it appears to have warped up close to you and left a trail of light behind it, like the Star Trek example of the end.  Nothing says “future” like fake 3d effects.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 13 May 2026 04:48:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48117964</link><dc:creator>efitz</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48117964</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48117964</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by efitz in "Rumors of my death are slightly exaggerated"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Neither did he!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 08 May 2026 22:49:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48069706</link><dc:creator>efitz</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48069706</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48069706</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Show HN: I built a skill, grounded in research, to make your writing less boring]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>My job at a large tech company requires me to write. A lot. Mainly I write docs to help align technical people on a technical strategy, or to inform executives about technical matters, or to make requests of executives about technical proposals.<p>I wanted to ensure that my writing was captivating and that the audience didn't just read the summary and skip the rest.<p>I used a chat agent to build a research report on the academic literature about what makes writing boring or not-boring ("not-boring" is NOT the same thing as "interesting").  I synthesized that into a taxonomy, and built tooling for mechanistic analysis and prompts for LLM analysis, synthesis and recommendation.<p>What this is: research-grounded analysis of a document with concrete evidence-based suggestions of how to improve it.<p>What this is NOT: it's not a simplistic prompt "Help me make my document better" or even "make every section/paragraph/sentence earn its place". (I am developing a separate skill for that in the same repo, but with a much more diligent approach).<p>I hope this helps you improve your own writing and effectiveness in business communication.</p>
<hr>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48039841">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48039841</a></p>
<p>Points: 1</p>
<p># Comments: 0</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 06 May 2026 18:32:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://github.com/ericfitz/skills/blob/main/boring/README.md</link><dc:creator>efitz</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48039841</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48039841</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by efitz in "Agents can now create Cloudflare accounts, buy domains, and deploy"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>IANAL, but I wonder what it means for an agent to “agree” to terms of service or to “agree” to pay for something.  Can agents enter into contracts?<p>It’s a straightforward technical problem to wrap an API or MCP or something around the “create an account” function.<p>But what will a court do when the agent creates a million accounts, mines bitcoin for a month, and then cannot or will not pay?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 06 May 2026 08:45:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48033841</link><dc:creator>efitz</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48033841</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48033841</guid></item></channel></rss>