Hacker News: horticulturist

New comment by horticulturist in "We've built an open-source feature flag server for 11 years"

horticulturist — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 13:46:07 +0000

usually some “data science” team takes the results and decides what to do. really heavy process for something that is usually quite simple.

New comment by horticulturist in "You've heard of CSV files, but have you heard of CCSV files?"

horticulturist — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 09:20:34 +0000

These control characters do sometimes appear in CSV files in the wild. The suggested method of parsing is unsafe and lazy.

New comment by horticulturist in "A scooter is cheating, a cargo bike is rude, the car is fine"

horticulturist — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 09:34:54 +0000

Appears to be AI slop. I don’t know why the author attempts to put cars in the same class as a bike, either. Bikes and scooters occupy the same space, both in terms of where they are expected to be found (and not) and how drivers and pedestrians alike might perceive them. You wouldn’t run on the highway. You wouldn’t drive on the sidewalk.

The car is fine if you drive it like a car. A bike is fine if you ride it like a bike. What’s lazy about an electric scooter in the bike lane is both physical and mental, and cyclists are bothered by the latter. Because scooters accelerate quickly, are heavy, and usually operated at speeds in excess of bicycles, cyclists perceive them more like cars driving in the bike lane. They exist in a different category altogether, one that isn’t bikes or cars.

New comment by horticulturist in "Infrastructure as Raclette"

horticulturist — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 05:15:57 +0000

that’s like going to the bank to pay your mortgage, a real, simple, and yet meatspace operation

New comment by horticulturist in "Decayfmt – a file format that corrupts itself a little every time you open it"

horticulturist — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 02:13:38 +0000

This sounds like Excel when you open a CSV file.

New comment by horticulturist in "Ask HN: Just saw a YC25 job posting front page that looks like a 7-day work week"

horticulturist — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 02:12:46 +0000

Seems more like a cult than a job. Hopefully the equity is like… a lot.

New comment by horticulturist in "I'm Done Using AI"

horticulturist — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 13:58:35 +0000

Nothing was lost using a graphing calculator because you assume the calculator produces the correct result every time. Imagine if, instead, 90% of the time it was wrong, and you needed to check the result and then take another pull on the slot machine lever.

Centering a div and using regex are basic programming skills that aren’t some kind of difficult exercise or the privilege of a select few. Everyone working (at least on typical business CRUD applications) should know how to use these tools.

If you don’t then I’m sorry - maybe you shouldn’t be a programmer.

New comment by horticulturist in "Humanity renamed genes because of Excel"

horticulturist — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 17:30:52 +0000

Pretty sure this happens in every field. Opening any sufficiently detailed tabular file with Excel almost guarantees data loss.

New comment by horticulturist in "Something is changing in the unit economics of software"

horticulturist — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 01:08:24 +0000

Wonder how much this cost the author to write, as it’s just AI slop…

New comment by horticulturist in "AI's debt binge can't last, hidden borrowing reaches $1.65T"

horticulturist — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 23:19:33 +0000

How long does a train track last? Does a fiber optic cable last? Both are greater than 30 years, both will persist (relatively well) without use, and the benefits of scrapping or removing them are minimal. This allowed future companies to take advantage of them. Even if GPUs running at high load last five years, if the data center they are in goes bankrupt (because the AI bubble bursts), it’s likely they’ll be stripped and sold to make way for more productive CPU-based uses and to recover some of the cost of the bankruptcy. The surrounding buildings and infrastructure will have longer use, but it doesn’t translate to a net future benefit with AI.

New comment by horticulturist in "Ask HN: After 8 Years of Failed Apps, Should I Give Up?"

horticulturist — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 01:59:09 +0000

Keep trying. You have limited downside and unlimited upside.

Take the outside capital and ride the dragon. Doesn’t always work but if it does you’ll be doing fine.

Took me 18 years to get to success. Sometimes these things take a while.

New comment by horticulturist in "AI productivity gains are closer to 10% than 10x"

horticulturist — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 19:59:06 +0000

The variation in individual developer throughput was as much as 20x pre-AI. 10% is basically nothing. You’d be better off firing your worst performer and replacing them with someone good (or great).

New comment by horticulturist in "Turning a dumb AC unit smart (without losing my security deposit)"

horticulturist — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 15:03:22 +0000

I have been using Sensibo for years. Never had a problem.

New comment by horticulturist in "Turning a dumb AC unit smart (without losing my security deposit)"

horticulturist — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 14:48:28 +0000

Garbage disposals were at one time illegal, and despite the passage of 30 years there’s still concern in existing buildings that the plumbing can’t handle it (which is probably unfounded).

New comment by horticulturist in "Everyone says Chinese AI is dirt cheap"

horticulturist — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 15:27:47 +0000

unreadable AI slop

New comment by horticulturist in "There are no lossless transformations of natural-language text"

horticulturist — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 23:51:02 +0000

I don't know about that. There's no understanding anywhere at that point.

New comment by horticulturist in "Boeing says it will be ready to fund new plane programme by 2030"

horticulturist — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 01:53:06 +0000

Why don’t they just pivot to AI? They could fund it tomorrow

New comment by horticulturist in "When AI Costs More Than the Engineer"

horticulturist — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 13:18:32 +0000

He didn’t come up with anything. This is just AI slop.

New comment by horticulturist in "Knoppix"

horticulturist — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 15:17:33 +0000

I used to use knoppix to rescue broken systems back in the day, including many a Windows machine. Always did what I needed it to. Glad to see it’s still around.

New comment by horticulturist in "Halvar's Guide to Entrepreneurship"

horticulturist — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 11:56:30 +0000

This is really well written and clearly from someone who has loved through it. I think just about all of their observations are correct (except for getting a coach - incredibly detrimental in my experience).