Hacker News: hatwd

Ask HN: AI use in the context of (hypothetical) professional licensing?

hatwd — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 11:45:52 +0000

How would you change the way you use modern AI if software engineering required a professional license, like many other engineering disciplines do? (One that could be suspended if you cause or contribute to a failure of high enough impact)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46525286

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

LLMs will never be alive or intelligent

hatwd — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 18:37:28 +0000

Article URL: https://hatwd.com/p/llms-will-never-be-alive-or-intelligent

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46479981

Points: 13

# Comments: 5

New comment by hatwd in "Amazon now discloses you're buying a license to view Kindle eBooks"

hatwd — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 21:42:20 +0000

This would only be acceptable if the ebooks cost 5 to 10% of what the physical book costs.

New comment by hatwd in "Carbon is not a programming language (sort of)"

hatwd — Sat, 08 Feb 2025 17:30:45 +0000

Interesting language - its syntax looks like a mix of Rust and Go, with a few of its own idiosyncrasies to distinguish it from those languages.

> Carbon is a concentrated experimental effort to develop tooling that will facilitate automated large-scale long-term migrations of existing C++ code to a modern, well-annotated programming language with a modern, transparent process of evolution and governance model.

This is probably where Go and Rust fail to be C/C++ "successor" languages, as interop between those languages doesn't seem to be as seamless as Carbon aims to be.

Will keep an eye on its development!

New comment by hatwd in "U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users’ encrypted accounts"

hatwd — Sat, 08 Feb 2025 17:02:25 +0000

I totally get the spy agencies' "moral flexibility" requirements, as I've heard it put.

From what I understand, the spy agencies have ways of obtaining your private information that don't necessarily involve blanket requirements to access all users' data (e.g. creative ways of injecting malware into specific people's devices). But those approaches don't scale, of course. And they shouldn't need to.

New comment by hatwd in "U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users’ encrypted accounts"

hatwd — Sat, 08 Feb 2025 16:58:50 +0000

Is it any different with Android phones? From what I've read it doesn't seem so.

My comment applies just as much to the people working at Apple and Google as to the folks in the UK government.

New comment by hatwd in "U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users’ encrypted accounts"

hatwd — Sat, 08 Feb 2025 16:52:29 +0000

It's baffling to me that any sane, healthy person would advocate for invasion of not just one person's privacy (in the case of known or highly suspected criminal activity), but a whole country's people's privacy. (In this case, at least, the privacy of all Apple users in the UK.)

Where does this problem start? Is it a basic education thing that valuing one's own and others' privacy needs to be taught to kids from a young age?

For instance, in the meetings in which these ideas are proposed, why are they not considered a serious, fireable offence, like bringing up racist or sexist comments?

New comment by hatwd in "Amazon, Google asked to explain why they were serving ads on sites hosting CSAM"

hatwd — Sat, 08 Feb 2025 16:33:26 +0000

On sites that serve user-generated content, how would one technically detect if one's ads are being served alongside CSAM? Wouldn't the ad source need to be able to fully read the contents of the page itself?

Are there good technical solutions to that problem? And whose responsibility is it to solve - the ad source, or the platform through which CSAM is being served?

Definitely something that needs solving, but sounds really hard to solve - unless you just don't serve ads on that site at all.

New comment by hatwd in "Ask HN: Best indoor/outdoor temperature/humidity sensor?"

hatwd — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 11:13:24 +0000

Thanks for the recommendation! What was the coldest temperature it was able to withstand?

Ask HN: Best indoor/outdoor temperature/humidity sensor?

hatwd — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 03:11:56 +0000

Does anyone perhaps have any recommendations for a home indoor/outdoor temperature and humidity sensor?

I've bought several off of Amazon in the past and they never make it through the winter here. The temperatures drop to around -20 degrees Celsius (just below 0 Fahrenheit).

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42720626

Points: 2

# Comments: 3