Hacker News: jstrebel

New comment by jstrebel in "WSL 2 is getting faster Windows file system access"

jstrebel — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 07:29:23 +0000

It's always good to see improvements around WSL2, but especially this one is not so relevant IMHO, since it only affects WLS2 file access to Windows file system. If you store your dev environment in WSL2 anyway, this won't help you.

New comment by jstrebel in "Where does next-token prediction leave us?"

jstrebel — Wed, 27 May 2026 06:51:35 +0000

AI is like TV in that old saying: AI makes the smart ones smarter and the dumb ones dumber.

LLMs can both help you advance your knowledge and do your homework (preventing you from learning).

New comment by jstrebel in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2026)"

jstrebel — Mon, 11 May 2026 07:55:03 +0000

I am trying to build a simulation that lets a simulated organism come up with its own small language, purely learned from sensory input: https://github.com/JoergStrebel/VirtualZoo/blob/main/compute... I would like to implement the ideas put forward by Stevan Harnad in his symbol grounding problem paper (Harnad, 1990).

New comment by jstrebel in "Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler"

jstrebel — Mon, 11 May 2026 07:48:03 +0000

Banking apps are the deal-breaker for me. I only do business with banks that offer alternative ways of securing transactions e.g. eTan / ChipTAN / PhotoTAN with a separate reader / generator (see https://www.bsi.bund.de/EN/Themen/Verbraucherinnen-und-Verbr...). This is probably a pretty European thing to do, but at least it avoids being locked in and being tracked.

New comment by jstrebel in "GTFOBins"

jstrebel — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 07:01:01 +0000

But you would already have to have shell access to the system to execute those commands, right?

New comment by jstrebel in "When do we become adults, really?"

jstrebel — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 09:00:51 +0000

An adult is a person who managed to leave childhood behind, especially in his thoughts. It's the independence of and emancipation from childhood.

New comment by jstrebel in "Ask HN: Are you too getting addicted to the dev workflow of coding with agents?"

jstrebel — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 07:49:10 +0000

I also love it. Finally, I am no longer constrained by syntax errors or forgotten API details. I can focus on the feature. It's like taking programming to a higher level - programming in English (instead of Java).

New comment by jstrebel in "Show HN: AI SDLC Scaffold, repo template for AI-assisted software development"

jstrebel — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 14:24:10 +0000

How does your framework compare to spec-driven development e.g. https://github.com/github/spec-kit? In my experience, spec-kit produces a lot of markdown files and little source code.

New comment by jstrebel in "Chuck Norris has died"

jstrebel — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 20:08:14 +0000

Death will soon realize that he messed with the wrong man.

New comment by jstrebel in "Floppinux – An Embedded Linux on a Single Floppy, 2025 Edition"

jstrebel — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 20:04:36 +0000

Well, in a world of finite resources, I think I would need a better reason to invest time into this topic than just "for the challenge". I mean I just think that I have ample opportunities to do something more sensible with my time. Climbing a mountain at least gives you bragging rights; I don't think a bootable floppy disk is impressing anyone these days.

New comment by jstrebel in "Age of Empires: 25 years of pathfinding problems with C++ [video]"

jstrebel — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 19:58:24 +0000

A very nice video. It shows that computer games are glamorous on the outside, but once you look behind the scenes, they just look like normal software. I was also surprised to hear that the team did not only rely on computer graphics textbook algorithms, but built their own pathfinding algorithm in a pragmatic manner.

New comment by jstrebel in "Floppinux – An Embedded Linux on a Single Floppy, 2025 Edition"

jstrebel — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 07:50:16 +0000

Ok, impressive, but - why? No current computer has a floppy disk drive anymore. The Web Page claims building such a disk is a learning exercise, but the knowledge offered is pretty arcane, even for regular Linux users. Is this pure nostalgia?

New comment by jstrebel in "Tally – A tool to help agents classify your bank transactions"

jstrebel — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 13:00:52 +0000

Hmm, no, I don't think I want to tell OpenAI my banking details and transactions. (sorry, Google and Microsoft, you need to stay out, too)

New comment by jstrebel in "Fahrplan – 39C3"

jstrebel — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 13:55:41 +0000

Lefties sympathizing with criminals, sharing their wealth distribution fantasies, agitating against competing political views. You've come a long way, CCC! The initial ideas was political, but with a clear focus on freedom of information, and the power to govern your own personal data.

New comment by jstrebel in "Your job is to deliver code you have proven to work"

jstrebel — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 08:20:53 +0000

In all fairness: human senior devs see AI-written source code with some disdain, as it usually does not match their stylistic and idiomatic preferences (although being correct and fully working). I don't think that untested code is the problem here - you can easily measure test coverage and of course. every CI/CD pipeline should run the existing unit and integration tests.

New comment by jstrebel in "Using LLMs at Oxide"

jstrebel — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 14:10:26 +0000

I am certain that LLMs can help you with judgment calls as well. I spent the last month tinkering with spec-driven development of a new Web app and I must say, the LLM was very helpful in identifying design issues in my requirements document and actively suggested sensible improvements. I did not agree to all of them, but the conversation around high-level technical design decisions was very interesting and fruitful (e.g. cache use, architectural patterns, trade-offs between speed and higher level of abstraction).

New comment by jstrebel in "AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time"

jstrebel — Thu, 23 Oct 2025 07:38:13 +0000

The publicly funded media (radio, TV) obviously use this finding to claim that they need more money and/or a tighter regulation of AI companies' products. Sounds a bit self-serving to me...

New comment by jstrebel in "Ask HN: Does sentience put stress on the brain?"

jstrebel — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 07:46:05 +0000

If you want to do research, usually the first thing to do is refine your research question up to a point where it becomes relatable to the scientific state of the art and where it becomes clear how to test / evaluate it. I don't think you are there yet.

New comment by jstrebel in "Cops say criminals use a Google Pixel with GrapheneOS – I say that's freedom"

jstrebel — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 14:12:25 +0000

I think this "argument" has always been flawed. I don't need to justify what information I would like to share especially with state agencies. In Germany, this is even encoded in a legal principle called "Informationelle Selbstbestimmung" (informational agency). It's not about the information, it's about my right to decide about sharing it.

New comment by jstrebel in "My Self-Hosting Setup"

jstrebel — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 08:43:54 +0000

Impressive setup, but I would assume it to be very operations-intensive because of the high number of deployed components and their complex configuration. Plus, if you are serious about self-hosting, you would need the facilities and infrastructure to deploy it: server rack, redundant power supply, smoke detectors, fire extinguisher... I would never let my PC-grade hardware run unsupervised in my home. And if I understood correctly, you would still have to have some server on the Internet for running your Headscale VPN, so you need your own dedicated Internet connection - ADSL, dial-up, cable modem would not be enough.