Hacker News: iamleppert

New comment by iamleppert in "Businesses with ugly AI menu redesigns"

iamleppert — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 13:24:11 +0000

AI menus and signage are quickly becoming the dog whistle for "cheap". It's telling you what kind of quality and service you should expect in the rest of their product or service. Pretty soon people will catch on, and start avoiding these places. Once that happens, generative AI image models will be hard-pressed to drop the association. It's like walking into a dollar store -- everything can be made cheaply, so it doesn't matter if something there is actually of any value.

New comment by iamleppert in "OverpAId – Fire your CEO. Hire the future"

iamleppert — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 13:20:12 +0000

Months? Most terrible founders and CEOs I've worked for set the company back years, and most of the time significantly damaged it to the point of no return for everyone involved. The worst ones are the arrogant, low-skill and/or low-effort bunch. They destroy the soul of the company, drive away customers, talent and loot whatever value is left in the company and take for themselves.

New comment by iamleppert in "AliExpress hit with record $629M fine for counterfeit and illegal goods"

iamleppert — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 17:29:15 +0000

Tiktok Shop needs to be next. They openly allow sellers to advertise 1 TB SD cards for $15 each, and many more scams just like it. When you report any of the listings, you get an automated "Doesn't violate our terms." notification. I have started opening up complaints with the BBB, FTC, my state's Attorney General.

New comment by iamleppert in "AI content is everywhere on social media, especially LinkedIn"

iamleppert — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 13:23:50 +0000

Except if you use open models, on your own hardware. 90% of the open models are good enough. You sound just like the assembly programmers did back when C++ (and later, untyped languages like Python and Ruby) came out. It's just another form of the idea "I suffered, so you must suffer too."

I am just like you -- I spent most of my youth in front of a computer. I have the skills. Coded for years by hand. I am glad I don't have to anymore. And you should be too.

New comment by iamleppert in "AI content is everywhere on social media, especially LinkedIn"

iamleppert — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:46:02 +0000

Very bold of you to think we aren’t already past the point where “what’s valuable” is only human created. Maybe some truly exceptional people can create works that are exceptional but it’s only a matter of time before the models usurp them too. Instead of shaking your fist at a world you don’t like, make peace with it.

New comment by iamleppert in "AI content is everywhere on social media, especially LinkedIn"

iamleppert — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 17:32:22 +0000

People here need to stop complaining about the train, and get on board. It's easier than ever before to build a network that can later be used for distribution and monetization. Does it really matter that content is authentically organic? We are tech people after all...our lives are practically synthetic and artificial. It's like getting upset because one artificial sweetener is sweeter than another.

If anything, I think people are triggered by it all because it exposes something more deep in people -- most people don't want to admit most of their lives have been wasted in front of a computer. But here we are. So stop complaining and start coming up with more creative uses of AI writing if you have a problem with it.

New comment by iamleppert in "Flock Cameras Wrongly Tracked Me for Days over 'Stolen' Plates"

iamleppert — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 13:43:43 +0000

I read this as it's pretty easy to dox anyone just by reporting their plate number as stolen to the police, or even a partial plate number would do.

New comment by iamleppert in "Cloudflare Drop"

iamleppert — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 13:10:57 +0000

Here, drop all your data into this vortex -- we need it for our next web site builder AI model.

New comment by iamleppert in "Microsoft fire idTech team at Id software"

iamleppert — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 16:05:31 +0000

They are moving most of their development to India, where it's pretty easy to find bottom-dollar UE5 dev shops.

New comment by iamleppert in "Schizo founder story (terrorist to tech exit)"

iamleppert — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 18:43:38 +0000

Another crime was committed in the native scrollbar replacement.

New comment by iamleppert in "Behind the scenes with the Midjourney scanner [video]"

iamleppert — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 13:38:04 +0000

I wouldn't want to get into a medical scanner built by an AI image generation company! Marketed as a spa treatment. There are so many things that can go wrong and the unseriousness around the whole thing bothers me.

New comment by iamleppert in "Ultrasound imaging of the brain"

iamleppert — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 14:47:13 +0000

It isn't a matter of technology. It's physics and math. These things are already very well understood, just not by investors. And that creates room for the hustle.

New comment by iamleppert in "Ultrasound imaging of the brain"

iamleppert — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 16:54:37 +0000

Every few years one of these ultrasound companies comes around and promising to revolutionize medical imaging and nothing ever comes of it. Anyone remember https://www.openwater.health? The same ideas are in a perpetual state of being reinvented and part of me thinks its just a hustle for the MIT Media Lab/Stanford Imaging grads to give them something to do.

The tell is "super resolution", "brain computer interface" and "mixed modality" -- adding some contrast agent here, or maybe an IR light source.

It turns out the nyquist limit, diffraction and physics are real things.

New comment by iamleppert in "Bitcoin hits 20-month low as market sentiment sours"

iamleppert — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 03:15:43 +0000

Outflows into AI. I wouldn’t be shocked if it goes down to $20k soon.

New comment by iamleppert in "Higher usage limits for Claude and a compute deal with SpaceX"

iamleppert — Wed, 06 May 2026 16:44:15 +0000

Hopefully they will work on response time. I've been noticing it taking 5+ minutes for each turn, for not complicated requests. Seems to vary based on time of day too.

New comment by iamleppert in "AI didn't delete your database, you did"

iamleppert — Tue, 05 May 2026 16:33:18 +0000

This has been covered elsewhere, but if you swear at Claude Anthropic will automatically bump you down into a lower quality model. It was found in the recent source code leak of Claude Code. So that's probably what happened to the guy who's Cursor deleted his entire production database.

It just goes to show, if you're a jerk, expect to be treated like one (even by an AI model)! Be polite, people.

New comment by iamleppert in "Can AI be a 'child of God'? Inside Anthropic's meeting with Christian leaders"

iamleppert — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 14:41:06 +0000

AI doesn't create truth, it imitates it, through assimilation of data. It is not intelligence, but it mimics it without consciousness or free will. AI can be used to manipulate, optimize engagement over truth (as we have seen with how ChatGPT is made in the image of Sam Altman and takes on his own characteristics). AI is the ultimate deceiver -- authoritative, instant, unquestioning, and without any internal moral compass. Where did the human moral compass come from? Who "trains" morality into people, and why do some people appear to be lacking it in cases that can't be explained by trauma?

Put this way, AI more fits the description of Satan than it does God in religious context. If I were an all-powerful, evil being, AI would be the tool and method I would choose to carry out my plans for humanity.

New comment by iamleppert in "Nvidia N1 laptop motherboard picture shows 128GB of LPDDR5x"

iamleppert — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 21:18:28 +0000

Only $5,000, takes 6 months to order, cash up front, will be deprecated and unsupported by the time you finally get it.

New comment by iamleppert in "What being ripped off taught me"

iamleppert — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:22:46 +0000

I once worked for a founder who gave me a “raise” from a W2 to a 1099 contractor. Except the raise was just not deducting any of the taxes from my pay. I was 24 and was naive.

I sued him, and won reclassification as well as two payments he never paid me, but both the state and IRS could care less that I’d been taken advantage of. They happily added their fees, interest and penalties for something I was the victim of. Years later, the debt resurfaced in the form of aggressive levies directly to my bank account after no contact for over 10 years and no collection activity. By then, the fees and interest were 3x what was “owed” to them. They actually told me it’s standard practice to wait until the debt grows and then collect on it. After so many years I didn’t even have the records from the lawsuit.

I learned that the government doesn’t care about you, especially if you’ve been scammed you have to be extra careful because that’s a signal to them you’re someone they can get even more money from. The process of disputing it will waste more of your time and mental health than it’s worth in all but the most extreme cases, and that is 100% by design.

New comment by iamleppert in "OpenAI Acquires TBPN"

iamleppert — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 17:18:41 +0000

This has got to be a joke at this point, and at worse some kind of financial scheme for Altman friends & family. What's next? Will I wake up to an announcement OpenAI is acquiring Joe Rogan's podcast?

I thought this was supposed to be the year of "focus". They just shut down one money pit (Sora) but apparently still have money to buy some random tech podcast most people have never heard of?

At this point I don't feel sorry for them, they deserve everything that's coming for them.