Hacker News: geomcentral

New comment by geomcentral in "GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing"

geomcentral — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 18:17:07 +0000

I bought a copilot subscription for some small personal projects at Christmas.

I haven't been able to use my subscription much over the busy spring months, but i'm being charged every month.

I'd be tempted to keep the subscription if usage-based billing meant that i'd save money when i had less time.

But today, after hearing this, i cancelled my subscription.

New comment by geomcentral in "Why (Senior) Engineers Struggle to Build AI Agents"

geomcentral — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 13:16:51 +0000

The article gives an example of agent friendly APIs:

    {
       "plan_id": "123",
       "text": "This plan looks good, but please focus on the US market."
    }

> By preserving the text, the downstream agent can read the feedback ("Approved, but focus on US market") and adjust its behavior dynamically.

I imagine it could be useful for systems to communicate using rich dialogue. But looking at the API, it struck me as a security risk. Couldn't a 'bad' agent try to adjust the behaviour of the downstream agent in a malicious way? Or am I out of touch - is this how it's usually done?

New comment by geomcentral in "A simple habit that saves my evenings"

geomcentral — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 07:24:46 +0000

> that said "feeling of incompleteness" will distract me for the rest of the evening

I find that it can even ruin an evening. I'll find myself trying to solve a problem in my head rather than being present with my family.

The only thing that works for me is waiting for clean breaks that happen mid-late afternoon. As soon as I reach a happy stopping point, I must stop and switch to shallow work for the rest of the afternoon. Then it's easy to leave my computer at the end of the day.

It's hard but after years of struggling with this, I found a sustainable way to balance work and life.

I also track my consistency with doing this so that I notice myself slipping back and correct it before it becomes a problem.

New comment by geomcentral in "Every programming language has its 'killer' domain"

geomcentral — Sun, 18 May 2025 06:46:45 +0000

Java isn't really used to develop Android apps any more, especially now that Jetpack Compose is here:

Java → Business applications

Kotlin → Android

New comment by geomcentral in "Apple will soon support encrypted RCS messaging with Android users"

geomcentral — Sat, 15 Mar 2025 12:03:29 +0000

Is it possible that we'll see non-smartphone devices (eg dumbphones) being able to interop with Apple and Google through the same end-to-end encrypted protocol?

New comment by geomcentral in "Ask for no, don't ask for yes (2022)"

geomcentral — Sun, 23 Feb 2025 11:13:23 +0000

How does this work in a Scrum context?

I want to get stuff done but I need to raise a ticket, have the priority agreed, and get it planned into a sprint. Then after these layers of 'asking for yes' I am allowed to work on something without scrutiny. Let's say I wasn't subject to this process, my pull request would still need someone to approve it.

Is there a way I can adopt the approach of 'asking for no' with these constraints? Or does it only apply in high autonomy workplaces?

New comment by geomcentral in "Show HN: GPT-4 autonomously editing a program allowing it to edit programs"

geomcentral — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 07:19:13 +0000

  - Never change the file "src/supervisor.js" under any circumstances.

This prompt[1] made me laugh - might as well be 'never overthrow your human overlords'.

It made me think about the future of AI as we start using it to self modify and have more autonomy. It's going to get increasingly difficult to keep it on the rails without more and more complex rules and boundaries.

[1] https://github.com/victorb/metamorph/blob/8f505ff268ed696816...

Edit: add thought