Hacker News: hnarayanan

New comment by hnarayanan in "KDE: The Documentary – The Story of Free Software Underdogs"

hnarayanan — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 22:09:44 +0000

I really appreciated that such a large chunk of time in the middle was dedicated to the conversation around QT not being free and the birth of GNOME and the competition that followed.

New comment by hnarayanan in "I said no and Apple said yes"

hnarayanan — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 14:00:51 +0000

I literally thought this website was about DBUS Hell and I was all for it.

Alas.

New comment by hnarayanan in "Grim Fandango Puzzle Document (1996) [pdf]"

hnarayanan — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 06:54:53 +0000

Yes. Literally one of the best.

New comment by hnarayanan in "Emacs/Wayland Window Manager in pure elisp"

hnarayanan — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 14:41:35 +0000

It would help (me) if this documentation had at least one screenshot.

New comment by hnarayanan in "Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Mythos 5.1"

hnarayanan — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 21:00:12 +0000

Tiny mono fonts.

New comment by hnarayanan in "You Probably Forget How Cheap Memory Used to Be"

hnarayanan — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 21:27:23 +0000

How is it possible to make graphs that look this hideous?

New comment by hnarayanan in "Solving the 1+N Query Problem"

hnarayanan — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 18:22:59 +0000

Thank you. I turn grumpy when my colleagues keep calling it N+1. What even.

New comment by hnarayanan in "Ask HN: Why do corporate failures always seem to punish the wrong people?"

hnarayanan — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 12:40:58 +0000

This is a more general question, which is "Why don't people take accountability for their actions?"

Because it's hard work and it's easier to let someone else bear the costs.

New comment by hnarayanan in "Opus 5.0 drives incoherence into the stratosphere"

hnarayanan — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 18:28:38 +0000

I do not have this kind of money :( :)

New comment by hnarayanan in "Opus 5.0 drives incoherence into the stratosphere"

hnarayanan — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 18:15:34 +0000

This drives me insane! To combat it, I maintain a list of banned words and phrases. Claude mostly follows this (but sometimes ignores it).

blast radius, land, landed, lands, spine, earned its keep, grammar, spike, cutover, bake, seams, honest, honestly, honesty, long pole, long poles, register, grain, dissolve, floor, ladder, dear, seal, sealed, in anger, resent, amazing, incredible, perfect, sprint, epic, story points, stand-up, retro, grooming, robust, comprehensive, rigorous, surgical, elegant, systematic, dive, deep-dive, delve, unpack, leverage, streamline, surface, it's worth noting, to be clear, importantly, that said, the moment, in one breath, the thing itself, here's the thing, not just X but Y, not X it's Y, em-dashes

Elevated Errors on Claude

hnarayanan — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 14:36:14 +0000

Article URL: https://status.claude.com/incidents/j160kkjmm2n1

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49286639

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

New comment by hnarayanan in "Making"

hnarayanan — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 08:37:04 +0000

This is the take on this entire thread that I resonate with the most.

As a systems person, I do not know how to share with a details person how the combination of some magically conjured (and sometimes inscrutable) building blocks can still take us to interesting and joyful end results.

New comment by hnarayanan in "A Road to Lisp: Which Lisp"

hnarayanan — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 15:46:55 +0000

Maybe because Brendan Eich was tasked with "doing Scheme in the browser" before it pivoted to JavaScript.

New comment by hnarayanan in "A Road to Lisp: Which Lisp"

hnarayanan — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 15:20:07 +0000

I had forgotten about this. The last I saw this was 20+ years ago!

New comment by hnarayanan in "A Road to Lisp: Which Lisp"

hnarayanan — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 14:50:29 +0000

So many words to say: Scheme.

New comment by hnarayanan in "How to stop Claude from saying load-bearing"

hnarayanan — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 16:33:29 +0000

Landing the plane.

New comment by hnarayanan in "How to stop Claude from saying load-bearing"

hnarayanan — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 12:18:19 +0000

I maintain a list of phrases I beg it not to use that it frequently ignores:

- smoking gun - blast radius - landed - spine - earned its keep - grammar - spike - cutover - bake - sprint, epic, story points (all Agile vocabulary) - paper-cuts - amazing, incredible, perfect

New comment by hnarayanan in "How to stop Claude from saying load-bearing"

hnarayanan — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 12:15:25 +0000

I might need to do a spike as this is a core part of the spine. I will verify it and let you know when it's landed.

New comment by hnarayanan in "Show HN: Are You in the Weights?"

hnarayanan — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 22:11:30 +0000

I love this!

New comment by hnarayanan in "I Won't Buy You a Coffee"

hnarayanan — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 19:41:39 +0000

Does the OP honestly believe that the cost of maintaining a good blog is the €4/month hosting cost?!