Hacker News: jaredsohn

New comment by jaredsohn in "I won't download your app. The web version is a-ok"

jaredsohn — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 17:18:10 +0000

One thing that is useful to remember is that if you ask AI for help on using some app, it will likely refer to the mobile UI instead of the web UI. I find it annoying that sometimes there are features that are only available in the mobile UI.

New comment by jaredsohn in "Delve removed from Y Combinator"

jaredsohn — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 03:19:11 +0000

Interestingly, they show up in the company list. When you click the link it returns 404.

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/?query=delve

New comment by jaredsohn in "Claude Code's source code has been leaked via a map file in their NPM registry"

jaredsohn — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 18:51:45 +0000

>that conversation is lost forever.

You should be able to find it in ~/.claude

You can also ask Claude to search your history to answer questions about it.

New comment by jaredsohn in "Ask HN: Why isn't using AI in production considered stupid?"

jaredsohn — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 08:15:09 +0000

Your original post (and even after this comment I think) was vague in that AI can be used in a lot of different ways in 'production' - to generate code, to manage deployment / scripts, or as part of a feature that uses inference.

For example, if you're writing code with AI, you can still review it just like you would if a colleague wrote it. You can write tests (or have the AI do so) to prevent some hallucinations, too.

New comment by jaredsohn in "Ask HN: Why isn't using AI in production considered stupid?"

jaredsohn — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 08:02:05 +0000

This question is too vague to answer.

New comment by jaredsohn in "Our commitment to Windows quality"

jaredsohn — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 21:43:29 +0000

This xkcd is again relevant: https://xkcd.com/2501/

New comment by jaredsohn in "Ask HN: How do you use Coding Agents/CLIs out of coding?"

jaredsohn — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 18:59:29 +0000

I find it great for nutrition and cooking. I used AI to build a food tracker that works at the micronutrient level (LLMs built the code but are mostly not used in the app itself) but many of my prompts are helping me to learn nutrition in general.

I also use it to help me learn to cook more/better so I ask it questions about the how / why and have made a database of recipes that I tweak based on interests / abilities.

A neat thing is you can always ask AI - what can I do to eat or cook better? Then you do it and keep repeating.

New comment by jaredsohn in "MCP server that reduces Claude Code context consumption by 98%"

jaredsohn — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:39:15 +0000

Treat context like git shas. Yes, there is a specific order within a 'branch' but you should be able to do the equivalent of cherry-picking and rebasing it

New comment by jaredsohn in "The Day the Telnet Died"

jaredsohn — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 02:08:02 +0000

I connected a few times today to the IPv4 one. Have had no problems myself.

New comment by jaredsohn in "The Day the Telnet Died"

jaredsohn — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:04:08 +0000

To watch Star Wars in ASCII.

telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhcf6tc2jeQ

(Remember hearing about this a long time ago (from some searching I think it was in 1999 via Slashdot) and verified some instance of it still exists/works.)

New comment by jaredsohn in "AI has failed to replace a single software application or feature"

jaredsohn — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 01:48:54 +0000

To focus on Excel / Google Sheets itself, AI makes it a lot more usable in that you can describe what you want and it can generate formulas for you. I have a running spreadsheet that I had to manually manipulate because I didn't know how to automate some parts and a few minutes with an LLM fixed it for me.

New comment by jaredsohn in "Ask HN: How do you prevent children from accessing your products?"

jaredsohn — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:20:22 +0000

In other discussions of this, I've heard that it can be faked and it isn't great to get people - esp kids - in the habit of sharing video of themselves to websites

New comment by jaredsohn in "First, make me care"

jaredsohn — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 22:21:22 +0000

To respond to everyone at once -

I have experience and teachers so I'm not solely relying on these videos. I use the short videos as a fast discovery of what's out there and I'll sometimes watch long videos afterward. LLM sites also work well for this discovery and I use that sometimes but it is a bit more work from me (which sounds strange to write re: AI) because I have to type out what I want instead of relying on algorithms that use data collected about me.

I use Facebook Reels (rather thank TikTok) which show me stuff anyway after I click on a link shared by friends so having it show me things relevant to learning seems like the best option here in case I click on next video.

New comment by jaredsohn in "First, make me care"

jaredsohn — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 20:56:21 +0000

I've started using these platforms for learning (stretch exercises, argentine tango patterns/musicality I might want to lead, etc) and am finding the experience to work better in those kinds of situations. Agree it can be brain rot if using it for entertainment, politics, etc.

New comment by jaredsohn in "Show HN: Scroll Wikipedia like TikTok"

jaredsohn — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 00:59:23 +0000

Next step is allow viewing TikTok like wikipedia. Take a bunch of popular tiktok posts, use an LLM to describe what's happening via text/screenshots (with references to memes, etc), and link them to other relevant tiktoks.

Some meme sites might be somewhat similar to this.

New comment by jaredsohn in "Lessons from 14 years at Google"

jaredsohn — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 00:22:03 +0000

Good software engineers are concerned with product strategy. They might not be able to decide things but they can help inform product about options because they're closer to actually building things.

If you just implement product tickets you'll probably get replaced by LLMs.

New comment by jaredsohn in "Ask HN: How do you use 5–10 minute gaps productively?"

jaredsohn — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 22:50:05 +0000

You can do balance / stretching exercises - lean against a wall, stand on one foot, etc.

New comment by jaredsohn in "Ask HN: How did you learn to code?"

jaredsohn — Thu, 01 Jan 2026 20:09:34 +0000

Similar for me but maybe on a 386; used this 1989 book which had its own version of quickbasic called qbi since qbasic only got added to ms-dos in 1991.

https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Basic-Now-Mike-Halvorson/dp/155...

New comment by jaredsohn in "I built an API to stop manual data entry from invoices and resumes"

jaredsohn — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 23:06:36 +0000

Why not just use a standard LLM prompt?

New comment by jaredsohn in "Ask HN: By what percentage has AI changed your output as a software engineer?"

jaredsohn — Sun, 28 Dec 2025 18:43:56 +0000

>(my understanding of claude code is that it's a non-interactive agent, which is worse for what i have in mind. iteration and _changing my mind_ are a big part of my process, so even if I let the computer do its own thing for an hour and work on something else, that's less productive than spending even 10 minutes of focused time on the same thing.)

Just use 'plan mode'; it will ask clarifying questions.