Hacker News: jaxr

New comment by jaxr in "What is a database transaction?"

jaxr — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 15:13:19 +0000

I love the work planetscale does on keeping this type of content accurate yet accessible. Keep it up!

New comment by jaxr in "Why I don't ride the AI Hype Train"

jaxr — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 12:49:44 +0000

Lost me un the first section. It's like when anti-vaxers say vaccines are bad because they were developed unethically. It's just a bad argument.

Also, I learned about Bitcoin when it was worth 8 USD and got obsessed with the tech but always thought it was over hyped. I never owned one Satoshi. I still think crypto ended up being hype and not adding real value to the world. But I could be very very wealthy if I had jumped to that hype train XD.

I think with all the hype, AI does provide some real value to the world. That's the train I'm jumping in.

New comment by jaxr in "The Einstein AI Model"

jaxr — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 11:29:48 +0000

The most useful way to leverage LLMs for me has been as "content fillers". I'm a software engineer, and work with a rather large code base. Some parts are rarely touched, and loading the context into my brain whenever I need to go back to them requires quite a bit of effort. I found that asking cursor/Claude to suggest how to make the required chande rarely comes up with the right solution but usually points me in the right direction and is enough to help me load the context up. Similarly with my side projects, which typically involves knowledge that I don't use in my day to day.

New comment by jaxr in "Are noise-cancelling headphones to blame for young people's hearing problems?"

jaxr — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 21:52:32 +0000

I get that feeling too. I have the Samsung Galaxy buds3 pro. They seem to be worse than my Bose 700. After wearing them for a while with NC, I feel like I have to take them off or turn the sound louder. I defaulted to using them with NC off unless I'm in a very loud environment.

New comment by jaxr in "Most-Watched Software Engineering Talks of 2024"

jaxr — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 22:22:56 +0000

It clearly says the most watched talks, so yes. The author mentions in the article "from the conferences I follow"

New comment by jaxr in "Ask HN: Would you recommend a framework laptop?"

jaxr — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 12:03:51 +0000

I mostly loved mine... While it lasted. I owned a 12th gen, and it ran really well. The stories about running hot, draining battery while sleeping and the lack of firmware updates are all true. I could live with that. I live in Argentina, and had to travel to SF for work. I ordered the tougher hinges in advance (the ones that came were very flimsy, but they fixed that in newer models). I changed the hinges, and it was a breeze, so they delivered there. The thing is.. the laptop never booted up again! I called support, and they instructed me several things to try bring it back to life. Nothing worked. Last message was: you're out of warranty, sorry. Which I'm ok with. But then it got me thinking about repairability. I'm by no means a hardware expert. For sure I messed up when changing the hinges. But still, the whole situation just fell awful, and the promise if repairability just stopped selling for me. I still want framework to exist. I love their mission. But I needed to work, so I ran to an apple store and bought a MBP. After 20 years of using Linux, it breaks my heart a little bit, but the hardware is unbeatable. I'm kind of hating macos tbh, but I can live with it. And who knows, Asahi might get good enough at some point...

New comment by jaxr in "YC is wrong about LLMs for chip design"

jaxr — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 19:26:55 +0000

I don't know the space well enough, but I think the missing piece is that YC 's investment horizon is typically 10+ years. Not only LLMs could get massively better, but the chip industry could be massively disrupted with the right incentives. My guess is that that is YC's thesis behind the ask.

New comment by jaxr in "Kagi Assistant"

jaxr — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 14:08:14 +0000

I've been trying out the new Android app. I know it's still beta, but it sucks big time. I'm a fan and paying user of kagi, just wanted to point that out in case any kagi developer is reading :)

among other things, it randomly says I have no connectivity in an awful modal, I click to search and the keyboard doesn't open, I hit "enter" to search and nothing happens (I need to tap on the search suggestion). pretty bad so far. will try it again in a couple of weeks to see if there is any progress...

New comment by jaxr in "Panic at the Job Market"

jaxr — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 17:39:00 +0000

What type of coding interview do you find more valuable for the interviewer? Algo code interview always looked like the interviewer trying to show off to me. Guess it depends on the requirements of the job, though...

New comment by jaxr in "Iconography of the X Window System: The Boot Stipple"

jaxr — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 02:36:47 +0000

Wow, I could have written that exact comment myself. Those were the happy startx, after you got the monitor sync rates right. The myth went that if you got them wrong, you could fry the monitor. I remember that suse package came with a couple of pins. one tux and one suse chameleon. I preserved them for a long time. But I moved way too many times. Fun times. Thanks for the nostalgia:)

New comment by jaxr in "Show HN: Flox 1.0 – Open-source dev env as code with Nix"

jaxr — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 20:02:12 +0000

Exact same experience here. Been fiddling with nixos for quite a while, but never got comfortable with .nix or flakes. The base concepts keep escaping my mind, I have to revisit every time I have to configure something new and I just got tired. Issues are difficult to debug and you have to go through very specific commands and a hellish filesystem to understand what's going wrong. I love the concept, but I feel like it just gets too much in my way.

New comment by jaxr in "Cloning a Laptop over NVMe TCP"

jaxr — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 11:48:02 +0000

Today a new nvme is arriving and I need to do EXACTLY this. Thanks Mr poster :)

New comment by jaxr in "From engineer to manager: what I love, what I hate"

jaxr — Sat, 17 Feb 2024 21:59:08 +0000

How would you define that one great manager? What personality traits, behavior, skills made that person stand out? I'm curious as I'm getting more managerial responsibilities.

New comment by jaxr in "What it was like working for Gitlab"

jaxr — Mon, 12 Feb 2024 02:50:54 +0000

You have more control on the data. Isn't that why you self hosted it in the first place?

New comment by jaxr in "Good DevEx increases productivity. Here is the data"

jaxr — Wed, 24 Jan 2024 18:37:33 +0000

Disclaimer: didn't read the paper yet. But the assertions are "Feel X% more Y", which is hardly hard data. Seems like the methodology was just interviews?

New comment by jaxr in "Ask HN: What side projects landed you a job?"

jaxr — Mon, 04 Dec 2023 01:19:48 +0000

Why is that? I recently bought a Sonos after getting plenty of recommendations. Even though it sounds great, I hate that they dropped support for Google assistant. Also, the Sonos voice commands can't handle Spotify or YouTube music. Kind of sucks.

New comment by jaxr in "Tinnitus linked to undetected auditory nerve damage"

jaxr — Sat, 02 Dec 2023 16:43:35 +0000

Exact same experience here! particularly, if I move my jaw backwards with my jaw muscles, the tinnitus would get worse. Never better, though. I do feel the same sometimes, that doctors are not listening hard enough to what we are saying. I've been suffering tinnitus for 20 years now, and it seems to be getting even worse. I really hope a viable treatment is found in my lifetime. It would improve my quality of life so much!

New comment by jaxr in "Titled Tuesday Cheating"

jaxr — Sun, 26 Nov 2023 22:30:29 +0000

I'm not sure that translates very linearly. Most of the chess YouTube "stars" are not even GMs. Most of the viewers are hardly good players, so what you can learn from an IM is astronomical. Charisma and good at teaching are much better skills than a 1000 ELO difference imo. To your point, beating Magnus might drag a lot of people to his stream.

New comment by jaxr in "Darling: Run macOS Software on Linux"

jaxr — Sun, 26 Nov 2023 18:10:04 +0000

As a long time Linux user, it's always felt kind of unjust that all good Linux software is ported to other os, but there is no reciprocity. I do understand all the nuances, but Apple and especially MS seem to get a lot out of the GNU/Linux ecosystem and give very little in return.I would appreciate using some open source software released for Mac in my Linux desktop. Thanks to the developers of this project! Will give it a spin...

New comment by jaxr in "Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and others to join Microsoft"

jaxr — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 12:58:22 +0000

That's a completely new take for me on how things went down. Thanks for sharing.