Hacker News: lkramer

New comment by lkramer in "Pop!_OS bans AI-generated code from much of its codebase"

lkramer — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 22:56:42 +0000

What I meant by it was that I read every line of code generated, made sure I understood its purpose and either manually rewrote it if I felt there was a better way or asked Claude to do it. E.g. there was a bug where the password could end up in a configuration labelled as a username. Claude's initial fix was to simply exclude 'username' in a for loop, but I asked it to find examples in similar code in other codebases to see what the best practice was and ended up basing to fix on what is done in Gnome.

New comment by lkramer in "Pop!_OS bans AI-generated code from much of its codebase"

lkramer — Sat, 03 Oct 2026 19:07:46 +0000

I had a PR in flight that got closed because of this. I had an issue with passwords in the network applet for the VPN and had used Claude to help me identify and then come up with a fix. I did spend a lot time handcrafting and making sure the quality was good, but I respect their decision and no hard feelings, but as someone who have struggled to find time and opportunity to contribute to open source it was a small set back.

New comment by lkramer in "Ask HN: What are you reading?"

lkramer — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 07:35:39 +0000

I had begun the 7th Expanse book, Persepolis Rising, but got distracted by a copy of Joseph Conrad's Victory I found lying around, so I'm half way through that.

I recently finished Gibson's Mona Lisa Overdrive.

The Expanse have been great, but I think I will be good and ready to say good bye when I'm done with the mainline novels.

I don't really read long form non-fiction, which is probably a character flaw, but for me reading is a form of escapism. I love Sci-Fi very much (both classical and modern) and I try to mix and match so I read about equal amounts sci-fi and non-sci-fi.

New comment by lkramer in "Claude is only available to people over 18 years"

lkramer — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 17:11:33 +0000

Unless you think they are outright lying, the press release does say it will be immediately deleted.

New comment by lkramer in "Switching to electric stoves can dramatically cut indoor air pollution (2025)"

lkramer — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 14:56:31 +0000

I find it significantly harder to cook with electric than gas, and the first hurdle these days is always that for some reason all modern stoves use awful touch interfaces instead of just plain knobs. I don't understand how we got there. It should be obvious to anyone that it's a terrible interface when you are trying to multitask several pots and might also have greasy hands

New comment by lkramer in "That time when I failed the Microsoft interview"

lkramer — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 11:05:45 +0000

You can not improve on perfection!

New comment by lkramer in "UEFA and its national associations will not participate in FIFA competitions"

lkramer — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 20:42:40 +0000

Instead of just various penis challenged nation leaders doing so...

New comment by lkramer in "Ron Gilbert started production on Thimbleweed Park 2"

lkramer — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 15:44:36 +0000

I agree Thimbleweed Park was a little rough, a bit like Maniac Mansion if you like. What gives me hope is that Monkey Island 5 was really really good, so I feel he's back in his grove.

New comment by lkramer in "Did they ghost you?"

lkramer — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 07:49:35 +0000

I did that, and had to take a bollocking from the HR guy at the company I took the first offer from, but I don't regret it.

New comment by lkramer in "It's a shame what's happened to radio"

lkramer — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 08:50:29 +0000

It might not work in your scenario, but I too listen to radio a lot and found the signal issues annoying. My car is pretty old and doesn't have aux/bluetooth input so I can't plug in my phone and use the Sounds app, but I got a bluetooth to FM signal transmitter and now listen to my phone through my car radio, including a lot of streaming radio.

New comment by lkramer in "Vint Cerf, “father of the Internet”, is retiring"

lkramer — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 07:43:37 +0000

I believe it's what is called a joke. I'm with you, I don't like them either.

New comment by lkramer in "Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?"

lkramer — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 08:52:34 +0000

I don't necessarily agree with all these measures, but there is a lot more harm in social media than just pedophiles hunting children.

New comment by lkramer in "England Runestones"

lkramer — Sat, 16 May 2026 11:16:29 +0000

Conveniently the hammer is deceptively similar to the cross in general shape.

New comment by lkramer in "The US is winning the AI race where it matters most: commercialization"

lkramer — Thu, 14 May 2026 10:38:09 +0000

As a non-American I agree with this. There is a whole different energy to Americans in terms of mindset compared to Europeans (not just in business). I think Europe have outstanding talent, and when it comes together it can be exceptionally good and often in a more sustainable way than the American equivalent, but it's a somewhat sad fact that many of the most successful European companies have been successful by emulating (parts of) the American culture.

New comment by lkramer in "Kids bypass age verification with fake moustaches"

lkramer — Tue, 05 May 2026 14:22:21 +0000

LSL 1 EGA specifically is pretty much how I learned English. It was certainly much more efficient than my teachers :)

New comment by lkramer in "Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent"

lkramer — Tue, 05 May 2026 13:01:55 +0000

at this point you're barely the product either. You're more a passive platform for them to execute their strategy on.

New comment by lkramer in "How to be anti-social – a guide to incoherent and isolating social experiences"

lkramer — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 19:07:08 +0000

`constantly analyze other people's perception of you` I find this a really hard trap to escape...

New comment by lkramer in "Your Backpack Got Worse on Purpose"

lkramer — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 16:15:02 +0000

There are so many examples of this. Processed food, sweets and so on. Cadbury, Toblerone, etc live on the brand recognition, but have come objectively worse over the years. Often they are owned by the same mega corp that have a strategy of milking the brands for as long as possible.

It's bait and switch on global, organised scale and it's almost impossible to fight except on an individual level.

New comment by lkramer in "France's aircraft carrier located in real time by Le Monde through fitness app"

lkramer — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 17:12:16 +0000

Because even the UK is getting fed up with Trump? They literally started preparing to deploy on of the carriers to the Gulf and Trump basically told them to fuck off because they were "late" to the war? Now he's changed his mind again, who gives a damn? He can reap what he has sowed.

New comment by lkramer in "I verified my LinkedIn identity. Here's what I handed over"

lkramer — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 11:04:49 +0000

They will have an app that asks to scan you passport with your phone's NFC reader. It's pretty common for Identity Verification.