Hacker News: englishspot

New comment by englishspot in "Toyota is taking the Corolla electric"

englishspot — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 13:10:14 +0000

I absolutely abhor the spaceship design of all modern EVs (and even some ICE vehicles). both exterior and interior.

especially with how screen-centric they typically are.

New comment by englishspot in "The entire city of San Francisco as a video game"

englishspot — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 17:35:28 +0000

my first experience with San Francisco in a video game was through the City Escape stage in Sonic Adventure 2. and I didn't even know then that it was San Francisco (I had never been there when I played the game). only realized this when I visited the city many years later.

New comment by englishspot in "Don't be a meat proxy"

englishspot — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 15:18:29 +0000

You know what's even worse? When they don't even bother to copy-paste. They just have claude code/codex post a slack message, with all the telltale signs of an AI message (caution emojis everywhere!)

New comment by englishspot in "My midlife crisis Corolla is fast, furious, and modded"

englishspot — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 17:58:52 +0000

I mean yeah, stock is one thing, but when WRX owners build it out, it's usually slammed and sometimes embarrassing levels of negative camber. Rally builds are rare, even though the AWD and (for the current gen WRX) the cladding would suit it.

New comment by englishspot in "My midlife crisis Corolla is fast, furious, and modded"

englishspot — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 20:14:42 +0000

wdym, what else am I going to use to crush my enemies /s

New comment by englishspot in "My midlife crisis Corolla is fast, furious, and modded"

englishspot — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 20:03:22 +0000

it's not just about straight line performance. lots of subie fans won't trade their STI for the current gen WRX, even though the engine is way better, because the driving dynamics are just not as good.

that said, it's possible to have a fun ICE car and not build it in a way that your neighbors will hate you.

New comment by englishspot in "My midlife crisis Corolla is fast, furious, and modded"

englishspot — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 18:59:48 +0000

yeah, majority of people just want to have something that is capable of doing cool stuff, but can't really commit to actually doing it. it's like how so many buy and tune WRXs, but don't actually take it to gravel roads.

New comment by englishspot in "My midlife crisis Corolla is fast, furious, and modded"

englishspot — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 17:58:59 +0000

nah, I like cars, and I agree. I have some cosmetic mods on mine (it's none of those models in your list) and they're very subtle and inoffensive. very much iykyk. I also want a new exhaust, but mostly because I want a deeper tone, not louder.

New comment by englishspot in "Chat Control 1.0 and 2.0 Explained"

englishspot — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 20:16:27 +0000

so much for the principle of least privilege..

New comment by englishspot in "Why I Stopped Arguing with People"

englishspot — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 14:01:50 +0000

people generally only care about their personal experiences. doesn't matter if you're right if it's not something they personally experience. my approach for years has been to just say my piece, and leave it at that. when they run into the exact pain points that I mentioned early on, that's usually the only time they're willing to listen (though some still won't).

of course if the stakes are higher, I may have to push a little.

New comment by englishspot in "U.S. government will decide who gets to use GPT-5.6"

englishspot — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 20:28:00 +0000

we still have this delusion that we can just pound our chests and throw our weight around. it's clearly not working, it's not helping the citizens, but people still demand this.

New comment by englishspot in "What job interviews taught me about Kubernetes"

englishspot — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 16:19:48 +0000

even with just k3s and a few plugins/operators, it still takes someone dedicated to babying it. I've been running a k3s cluster at home for years and I dread upgrading all the things running on it, and all the things needed to keep it running.

and more to that last point, we haven't talked about maintaining the actual nodes themselves yet.

New comment by englishspot in "What's gonna happen to software engineers?"

englishspot — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 14:28:01 +0000

idk if anyone here is a gamer, but it feels like I'm playing Dynasty Warriors. endless wave after wave after wave of things to do, notifications about fires to put out all over the map, all at once.

and that's just on my terminal.

New comment by englishspot in "What's gonna happen to software engineers?"

englishspot — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 02:03:57 +0000

I work on backend infra. I touch a lot of things and have multiple instances of claude code running at once. I do feel like I'm doing more simultaneously. but that's still more that I have to keep track of and make sense of in my head. claude is making me way more productive, for sure, but at the same time I feel way more overwhelmed than I've ever been.

idk how anyone else is doing it and managing all of this. supposedly there's people with large teams of agents that they can just trust to do everything end-to-end.

New comment by englishspot in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2026)"

englishspot — Mon, 11 May 2026 00:47:37 +0000

I got most of my must-haves for my car maintenance tracking web app out of the way. it already does everything I wanted all the paid alternatives to do, even has SSO integration (only Google OAuth for now). the other must-haves, I do actually need, but I think they can wait. notifications, and an export mechanism for my history (including file attachments). for now I think I'll focus on the other things I've been putting off, like upgrading my car's audio.

New comment by englishspot in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)"

englishspot — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 13:34:17 +0000

basically IT work. trying to "refactor" my home network, from wiring to the VLANs. created quite a few VLANs with plans for the future that I no longer remember and probably don't need anymore. and the wiring is very much spaghetti.

New comment by englishspot in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (March 2026)"

englishspot — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 13:15:13 +0000

I didn't like any of the car maintenance apps I've tried, so I'm building my own. simpler, can be run locally (I run it in a k3s cluster). I don't think I have any stand-out features for it right now, or planned for the near future, but it works well for my purposes.

New comment by englishspot in "AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected"

englishspot — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 16:21:56 +0000

I review even before they implement. My typical workflow for anything major is to ask for a plan and an overview of the steps to execute. This way I can read the plan, mull over it, make a few changes myself. And then when I'm ready I go through the steps with claude code, usually in fresh sessions.

New comment by englishspot in "AI’s impact on engineering jobs may be different than expected"

englishspot — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 18:46:14 +0000

I keep hearing about how they're "really good" now, but my personal experience has been that I've always had to clear sessions and give them small "steps" to execute for them to work effectively. thankfully claude seems really good at creating "plans", though. so I just need claude code to walk through that plan in small chunks.

New comment by englishspot in "Porsche sold more electrified cars in Europe in 2025 than pure gas-powered cars"

englishspot — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 15:33:56 +0000

as a wannabe "car enthusiast", I'd happily buy a fun EV if one existed for a reasonable price. the xiaomi su7 for example looks incredible, and I'd jump on that if sold here in the US in a heartbeat.

but for the majority of people, yeah, I don't think they really care either way. if we had the infrastructure and EVs were sold at the prices that people are seeing for the Chinese EVs, I think they'd switch away from ICE fairly easily.