Hacker News: floren

New comment by floren in "There's yet another study about how bad AI is for our brains"

floren — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 15:04:51 +0000

Agreed, and I feel like it was pretty rare to distinguish junior devs before LLMs, we just used to talk about devs and senior devs. Then we needed a way to make sure it's understood that WE understand how dumb an LLM can be, so "junior" smashed its way into the discourse.

If anything, it's more like an over enthusiastic intern who'll go way down a rabbithole of self-doubt and overengineering when you're away at a conference for 3 days.

New comment by floren in "Sam Vimes 'Boots' Theory of Socio-Economic Unfairness (2022)"

floren — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 16:39:38 +0000

But then you're constantly either breaking in a new pair, or dealing with a pair that's falling apart, and you're lucky to get 1 month of good comfortable wear out of those cheap shoes. And you have to go buy them every three months, and shoe models change constantly so you have to find the current cheap pair that actually fits you.

New comment by floren in "The Fediverse deserves a dumb graphical client"

floren — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 17:20:52 +0000

Sidebar, am I alone in absolutely hating "smol"?

New comment by floren in "I went to America's worst national parks so you don't have to"

floren — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 14:15:39 +0000

Ah, Baden-Powell's Principle proves itself true yet again: How can you tell if somebody was an Eagle Scout? Don't worry, he'll tell you immediately.

New comment by floren in ""Not Even Government Agencies" - Proton's misleading marketing"

floren — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 19:41:38 +0000

Just post the prompt next time.

New comment by floren in "One item purchased, ten emails"

floren — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 18:37:55 +0000

I strongly suspect that "Do not send me marketing emails" at checkout time ACTUALLY means "Wait 6 months before sending me marketing emails, when I might plausibly forget that I checked this box", because I always do my best to opt out of mailing lists and I always seem to start getting stuff anyway 6-12 months after making a purchase. The Silicon Valley model of consent strikes again.

New comment by floren in "One item purchased, ten emails"

floren — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 18:31:19 +0000

I documented the 13+ emails I received over the course of trying to buy a wallet: https://jfloren.net/b/2022/12/12/0

Everybody just assumes they're the only thing hitting your inbox, like I don't also have "engagement" messages from 3 other stores I bought shit from two years back, plus PG&E trying to convince me to install a meter that can turn off my A/C remotely, plus Nextdoor trying to update me because somebody thinks they heard a gunshot...

New comment by floren in "The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess"

floren — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 16:27:47 +0000

Six months bro, we're still so early

New comment by floren in "Take better notes, by hand"

floren — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 02:38:16 +0000

> The moment you lose sight of the habit and instead pay homage to paper and pens, its a fetish instead of a practical discipline.

"Practice the hard thing until you are good at it" isn't as fun of a topic as "what can I buy?"

See any subreddit about cameras, guitars, ham radio, etc.

New comment by floren in "A Japanese glossary of chopsticks faux pas (2022)"

floren — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 22:57:32 +0000

For those cheap chopsticks, I've found the best way to break them is to grasp them at the very tips, then move your two hands away from each other briskly without twisting, just straight apart. I haven't had many break badly since I started doing this.

New comment by floren in "Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15"

floren — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 16:48:23 +0000

Both and also AI became the sexy thing before they really got anywhere with metaverse shit

New comment by floren in "Sci-Fi Short Film “There Is No Antimemetics Division” [video]"

floren — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 17:11:56 +0000

A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge

Player Piano by Vonnegut

Dune

New comment by floren in "Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional"

floren — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 18:04:13 +0000

But the reason for the ruling is that if your teen runs a red, YOU get points on your license.

New comment by floren in "He saw an abandoned trailer, then uncovered a surveillance network"

floren — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 18:53:13 +0000

Well, there's a reminder to donate to the EFF again!

New comment by floren in "New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes"

floren — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 06:54:59 +0000

You're right, you posted a lot about LLM style but only pasted LLM output twice. I apologize for misrepresenting your posting in that fashion.

I do think you would do well to revisit the thread you linked at https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=46986446, because I saw the OP's comment when it was posted, I agreed with it then and I kind of still do.

New comment by floren in "I don't know how you get here from “predict the next word”"

floren — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 06:48:11 +0000

No, I'm quite sure that's why it's better.

New comment by floren in "I don't know how you get here from “predict the next word”"

floren — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 06:29:45 +0000

They're saying LLMs do better when outputting English than other languages, an assertion I'm not really able to test but have heard elsewhere.

New comment by floren in "New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes"

floren — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 05:11:09 +0000

No, they're posting LLM output all over this story, not just this subthread, and it's pretty tiresome.

edit: he only did it twice, I exaggerated and that's my bad.

New comment by floren in "Ask HN: Are "% improvement" stats in resumes an AI indicator?"

floren — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 01:02:10 +0000

Forgot to mention in the OP but I also see a lot of resumes where the recent job conveniently involved EVERYTHING we ask for in the job posting, which I assume is another LLMism

Ask HN: Are "% improvement" stats in resumes an AI indicator?

floren — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 19:13:58 +0000

I've been reviewing a lot of resumes lately, and most of them include very detailed statistics in the previous employment sections: "improved performance by 30%", "reduced memory usage by 55.3%". I counted 14 such statistics in a recent resume, for instance.

I swear I didn't see this kind of thing the last time I was reading resumes. Is this something LLMs tend to do when writing a resume, or has everyone been keeping extremely detailed performance metrics for the last 10 years and I've missed it?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47156331

Points: 4

# Comments: 4