Hacker News: foz

New comment by foz in "Gemini 3.1 Pro"

foz — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 19:14:30 +0000

This is part of the reason I don't like to use it. I feel it's hiding things from me, compared to other models that very clearly share what they are thinking.

New comment by foz in "Die shots of as many CPUs and other interesting chips as possible"

foz — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 14:40:27 +0000

I love these. The https://www.youtube.com/@EvilmonkeyzDesignz channel does some wonderful explorations of chips with high powered microscopes, finding easter eggs and graphics left by designers. So much fun.

New comment by foz in "I've been using Claude Code for a couple of days"

foz — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 13:24:15 +0000

I think this core business model question is happening at all levels in these companies. Each time the model goes in the wrong direction, and I stop it - or I need to go back and reset context and try again - I get charged. The thing is, this is actually a useful and productive way to work sometimes. Like when pairing with another developer, you need to be able to interrupt each other, or even try something and fail.

I don't mind paying per-request, but I can't help but think the daily API revenue graph at Cursor is going up whenever they have released a change that trips up development and forces users to intervene or retry things. And of course that's balanced by churn if users get frustrated and stop or leave. But no product team wants to have that situation.

In the end I think developers will want to pay a fair and predictable price for a product that does a good job most of the time. I don't personally care about switching models, I tend to gravitate towards the one that works best for me. Eventually, I think most coding models will soon be good at most things and the prices will go down. Where will that leave the tool vendors?

New comment by foz in "Show HN: Inscribed, create stop motion animation and slide powered by Excalidraw"

foz — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 17:26:46 +0000

really nice! do you support onion-skinning for building smoother animations? Motion paths would be cool too. Ok enough ideas, it's a great project already!

New comment by foz in "Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools"

foz — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 17:30:53 +0000

After using Cursor and Copilot for some time, I long for a tool that works like a "real" collaborator. We share a spec and make comments, resolve them. We file issues and pull requests and approve them. We use tests and specs to lock down our decisions. We keep a backlog up to date, maintain our user docs, discuss what assumptions we have to validate still, and write down our decisions.

Like with any coworker - when ideas get real, get out of chat and start using our tools and process to get stuff done.

New comment by foz in "Busy Status Bar"

foz — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 16:09:06 +0000

This seems like an item that business would buy in bulk. $180 for single dev version, $90 each in packs of 10. Customized with your company branding maybe.

New comment by foz in "Busy Status Bar"

foz — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 16:07:15 +0000

yes this seems a strange choice. The operator is clearly controlling it from the side with the small screen.

New comment by foz in "Making USB devices – end to end guide to your first gadget"

foz — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 10:11:52 +0000

A very nice writeup and intro into USB, although - it's very focused on using an ST microcontroller, which is a lot more steps and toolchains compared the the recent ESP32 ecosystem that offers a number of easy plug-and-play ways to make USB devices work (for example, several projects from Adafruit's learning pages provide basic use cases). Another issue is differential pairs - having designed several working USB boards myself, this has not a concern for beginners, mainly relevant for doing high-speed work. USB controller ICs (as used typically with arduio/esp) can handle a lot of the details for you, so doing the calculations seems overkill, especially for someone making their first gadget.

New comment by foz in "Why I Rejected My Software Engineering Offer at Amazon"

foz — Sun, 24 Mar 2024 01:11:21 +0000

Robert Elder give a detailed story about his experience at Amazon as an intern, the management interactions and the culture he felt there

Why I Rejected My Software Engineering Offer at Amazon

foz — Sun, 24 Mar 2024 01:11:21 +0000

Article URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0e-k9HB3NU

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39804293

Points: 2

# Comments: 2

New comment by foz in "Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger"

foz — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 15:31:05 +0000

One of the key functions of procurement: Checking for automatic renewal clauses in contracts and removing them when found. This is a red flag in many companies.

New comment by foz in "Acoustic Keyboard Eavesdropping"

foz — Mon, 16 May 2022 21:53:51 +0000

If you're going to go through the trouble of placing a microphone under someone's table or keyboard, you mind as well just install a keylogger. It would be much more likely to succeed given the risk.

New comment by foz in "Fuckin' user interface design, I swear"

foz — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 09:12:05 +0000

Having actions on the right is more natural - this is reinforced by the UX of mobile devices we all use every day. Tap and we flow forward, to go backwards, we go left.

Like spoken languages, the language of design changes over time, and what used to be normal can be quickly outdated (like the reset button on forms).

New comment by foz in "How Apple fumbled a five-year lead in voice control"

foz — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 08:14:49 +0000

I would guess that this statistic is about using the voice button on the keyboard, rather then commanding Siri "send a message to...". I've watched people that do this constantly, and perhaps they send more messages overall as a result of the behavior.

New comment by foz in "AppStore Preferences can be unlocked by a local admin with any bogus password"

foz — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 17:26:11 +0000

A user with access to a mac could enable the option to automatically install macOS updates, which given recent trends, could impose a security risk.

New comment by foz in "How do I know if I'm good at programming?"

foz — Sun, 23 Jul 2017 13:36:39 +0000

1) You ship stuff often. Programming isn't useful unless someone besides you benefits. 2) The code you put into production is stable and doesn't require a lot of operational work (bugs) 3) Other people can understand your code easily and modify it when needed, without requiring long explanations from you 4) You can work with other programmers and use best practices they recognize, and you are also good at teaching these things

New comment by foz in "What Event Sourcing is not"

foz — Sun, 07 May 2017 20:30:57 +0000

This article resonated with me. We are going through a large platform re-launch, and using Kafka and events as a big part of the architecture. After much discussion, we decided against storing events, eventual consistency, or CQRS and so on. Instead, we use events to simply de-couple services. We have strong domain APIs and workers that respond to creates/updates/deletes. We use Kafka to partition things where it makes sense. Just stop there, and there's a ton of benefit. Things get simpler to reason about, easier to test, and result in less dependencies between teams.

New comment by foz in "As a software engineer, what's the best skill to have for the next 5-10 years?"

foz — Sun, 26 Feb 2017 16:25:54 +0000

"Managing Humans" by Michael Lopp made a huge impression on me and my career. https://www.amazon.com/Managing-Humans-Humorous-Software-Eng...

Also, "The Phoenix Project" which IMO is a groundbreaking work on how to make IT/business more effective (and the start of the DevOps movement). https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Busine...

Even if you're not a manager, both books are very approachable and packed with great lessons about how improve and better work with people, teams, and business.

New comment by foz in "As a software engineer, what's the best skill to have for the next 5-10 years?"

foz — Sat, 25 Feb 2017 17:35:06 +0000

It's hard to name one skill, but I'd put these into a single topic: the "soft skills" for becoming a more effective senior engineer.

Learning how to pair program effectively, and pass along skills to others. Performing great presentations and demos, and writing about your work. Being able to avoid complexity by finding simpler solutions. Separating yourself from your code and being open to criticism. Studying how goals, objectives and tactics relate to actionable tasks a software team needs to execute on. Becoming better a time management and prioritization, and delivering value faster.

None of these are very technical skills, but they require a lot of practice and a ton of patience.

New comment by foz in "Continuous Intrusion – Why CI tools are an attacker's best friends (2015) [pdf]"

foz — Tue, 06 Sep 2016 21:34:24 +0000

In case you would rather watch the talk than read the PDF: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H6jd5yG7_A&list=PLH15HpR5qR...