Hacker News: heckintime

New comment by heckintime in "Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?"

heckintime — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:20:28 +0000

Not all drones are one way

New comment by heckintime in "Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons"

heckintime — Sun, 03 May 2026 18:32:38 +0000

I like having a HUD to display speed and warnings like a car merging in front of me while I'm using cruise control. I am not a fan of large screens where I have to take my eyes off the road to control (ex. Tesla).

New comment by heckintime in "I still prefer MCP over skills"

heckintime — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 04:20:13 +0000

AI tools for non technical users that can work on browsers and mobile app will be super powerful. I think MCPs are currently the best way to reach this audience.

New comment by heckintime in "I turned Markdown into a protocol for generative UI"

heckintime — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 19:09:30 +0000

I think he's talking about CSS

New comment by heckintime in "Opus 4.5 is the first model that makes me fear for my job"

heckintime — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 21:43:31 +0000

Good question. I left my job to start something on my own so an AI help is really nice. Should note that AI does make many boneheaded mistakes, and I have to solve some of the harder problems on my own.

New comment by heckintime in "Opus 4.5 is the first model that makes me fear for my job"

heckintime — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 21:27:37 +0000

I used Claude Code to write a relatively complicated watchOS app. I know how to program (FAANG L5), but didn't really know Swift. I achieved a pretty good result for about $600, while a contractor would've cost much more.

New comment by heckintime in "Sampling and structured outputs in LLMs"

heckintime — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 17:51:30 +0000

I've found that writing a very simple DSL that resembles human speech and an interpreter that can output JSON is very effective.

Human

4x1200 with 30 second rest

AI DSL output

Repeat 4 times:

- Run 1200 meters

- Rest 30 seconds

I hand wrote a recursive descent parser in Python to process DSL. Human speech to DSL is pretty effective with a simple prompt and some examples.

I created a tool that can program Garmin & Apple Watches for interval training based on what I wrote above.

https://speedystride.com

Looking for beta testers- please give it a try :)

New comment by heckintime in "SQL Injection as a Feature"

heckintime — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 15:11:05 +0000

At this point, it'd be easier to give your users access to DBeaver or Bigquery directly. Also limiting their access to certain views with prepared data to avoid expensive queries.

For a UI based SQL tool I've used Looker few years ago and thought it was ok. I wonder how much AI tooling Google added since then to help with LookML generation. There are also other open source tools like mathesar (https://github.com/mathesar-foundation/mathesar) which look promising.

New comment by heckintime in "FDA Authorizes Juul E-Cigarettes"

heckintime — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 15:51:37 +0000

Seems like Zyn is better for you and others.

New comment by heckintime in "Happy 20th Birthday, Django"

heckintime — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 17:29:59 +0000

I've been a fan of Django templates and HTMX. I like how I can get interactivity without too much complexity. I do have specific parts of my website that rely on more complex tools, such as Codemirror. Even then, templates work well enough for me, so I haven't found a compelling enough reason to adopt more JS for my website.