Hacker News: hodgesrm

New comment by hodgesrm in "Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM"

hodgesrm — Sat, 30 May 2026 03:00:18 +0000

That was my 8th & 9th grade Latin teacher. Failure was not an option. I can still decline nouns and demonstratives 50 years later.

New comment by hodgesrm in "Magnifica Humanitas"

hodgesrm — Mon, 25 May 2026 17:12:05 +0000

Mark Zuckerberg is a builder in the context of the encyclical.

New comment by hodgesrm in "US is starting to see heavy job losses in roles exposed to AI"

hodgesrm — Sun, 17 May 2026 09:00:16 +0000

A lot of enshittification is driven by market consolidation. I really don't want my economic interactions to be with massive chains in a race to the bottom. The cure is to enable new competitors to offer alternatives. It starts with anti-trust but also includes reducing regulations and barriers to market entry. And maybe not so many billion-dollar, me-too AI investments and more focus on things like building delivering healthcare cheaply.

Edith Eger, Auschwitz Survivor Who Helped Others Cope with Trauma, Dies at 98

hodgesrm — Fri, 15 May 2026 04:58:14 +0000

Article URL: https://www.wsj.com/world/edith-eva-eger-dead-13268534

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48144735

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by hodgesrm in "SFO Gate Explorer"

hodgesrm — Sat, 02 May 2026 17:10:22 +0000

By the E gates, right? I love that one. https://www.sfomuseum.org/public-art/public-collection/18th-...

New comment by hodgesrm in "SFO Gate Explorer"

hodgesrm — Sat, 02 May 2026 17:09:02 +0000

SFO art shows are well-curated and interesting. There's a causeway in Terminal 3 to reach the F gates. It's now under construction but in years past it used to have outstanding art exhibitions that you could take easily while walking to your gate. I used to go out of my way to see them. The international terminal has a beautiful exhibition of flight attendant uniforms across the West face of the building.

Overall SFO is my favorite large airport. Things just work. The fact they went through the hurdles to get a private contract for TSA now looks like a prescient move. Only about 20 US airports have it. [0]

[0] https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/21/us/airports-without-tsa

New comment by hodgesrm in "Meta in row after workers who saw smart glasses users having sex lose jobs"

hodgesrm — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 20:40:31 +0000

It's a source of jokes in the UK at least. Most Americans don't know the difference. As the saying goes, "two countries separated by a common language."

New comment by hodgesrm in "Ghostty is leaving GitHub"

hodgesrm — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 12:12:17 +0000

> I'm sure folks will make fun of me for this. It is a stupid thing. But I truly love GitHub, and I hope they find their way.

So do I. At the same time, GitHub has evolved into a SPOF for the entire software industry. It badly needs some real competition.

New comment by hodgesrm in "Show HN: DataFrey – MCP server for Snowflake with text-to-SQL agent"

hodgesrm — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 13:44:09 +0000

> I’m convinced that it’s impossible to write good SQL without peeking into the data.

That's been my experience as well. One question that comes up is how to ensure confidential information does not leak out of the database and into somebody's model or otherwise escape containment. Is that an issue you considered in the design?

The Mythos Threshold

hodgesrm — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 15:27:41 +0000

Article URL: https://joereis.substack.com/p/the-mythos-threshold

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47816655

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by hodgesrm in "Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection"

hodgesrm — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 17:55:16 +0000

There does not seem to be an easy answer for which political system delivers the best benefits.

Direct democracy has defects that have been apparent for thousands of years. I believe Plato was one of the first to argue that democracy turned into mob rule.[0] It seems unlikely that this was entirely original. Similar ideas must have been current in Athens well before his time, since they had abundant experience with demagogues and other problems during the Peloponnesian War. I don't think Plato's solution (Philosopher Kings) was correct, but it's harder to argue against his framing.

It therefore seems like a question of which approach is less bad up front and whether it decays into something worse. Personally I would satisfied with a functioning republic in the US, which is where I live. What we have now is an oligarchy.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_political_philosophy

Agentic Coding at ClickHouse

hodgesrm — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 23:06:53 +0000

Article URL: https://clickhouse.com/blog/agentic-coding

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47621368

Points: 8

# Comments: 0

New comment by hodgesrm in "New Washington state law bans noncompete agreements"

hodgesrm — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 18:35:28 +0000

That's how it works in California. I had a 3 year non-compete with VMware after we sold a business to them. It was restricted to the specific market and technology our business covered but didn't limit activities in other areas. It seemed completely fair to me.

Besides, competing would have meant doing exactly the same thing over again. What's the fun in that?

New comment by hodgesrm in "AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion"

hodgesrm — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 18:55:58 +0000

Does anyone else find it a bit disorienting that we're essentially implementing the Blade Runner Voight Kampff test?

https://bladerunner.fandom.com/wiki/Voight-Kampff_test

New comment by hodgesrm in "Musketeer d'Artagnan's remains believed found under Dutch church"

hodgesrm — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 21:19:22 +0000

Don't forget the Duke of Buckingham - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Villiers,_1st_Duke_of_B.... Dumas' fictionalized version was far better than the real person.

New comment by hodgesrm in "Musketeer d'Artagnan's remains believed found under Dutch church"

hodgesrm — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 21:12:02 +0000

The Three Musketeers is my favorite adventure story of all time. The story of how D'Artagnan insults all three musketeers in succession at their first meeting, challenges them to duels one after the other, and ends up fighting on their side in a melee against the royal guards is just one of countless, hilarious adventures. The book just gets better from there.

New comment by hodgesrm in "Whistleblower claims ex-DOGE member says he took Social Security data to new job"

hodgesrm — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 15:00:35 +0000

> You can't make that up.

Unfortunately it seems quite believable. This is the same outfit that fired a bunch of people responsible for overseeing the US Nuclear Arsenal. [0] The combination of arrogance and stupidity was breathtaking.

[0] https://thebulletin.org/2025/04/doges-staff-firing-fiasco-at...

New comment by hodgesrm in "Show HN: What I learned running a crypto data pipeline at 120M messages/day"

hodgesrm — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 15:52:38 +0000

Nice summary of lessons. Thanks!!

New comment by hodgesrm in "Don't Cite Unsold eBay Listing Prices"

hodgesrm — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 18:09:08 +0000

If items are comparable the lowest unsold item should be an upper bound on price, no?

New comment by hodgesrm in "AI is making junior devs useless"

hodgesrm — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 17:57:38 +0000

That sounds like a bad hire, not a junior. Why didn’t your manager help fix that?