Hacker News: macintux

New comment by macintux in "The new rules of context engineering for Claude 5 generation models"

macintux — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 01:17:52 +0000

They’re typically on the hook for making sure those tasks are accomplished, however. I’ve spent 30 years in this industry doing my best to avoid that role, because that’s a terrible place to be.

New comment by macintux in "Em dashes are amazing"

macintux — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 14:59:45 +0000

em dashes are also sometimes used to express interruption in dialog.

"I was thinking—"

"Well, there's your first mistake"

New comment by macintux in "Terence Tao's ChatGPT conversation about the Jacobian Conjecture counterexample"

macintux — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 16:07:36 +0000

That bothered me decades ago, when I heard people suggesting we no longer needed animal trials, we could just simulate human biology for testing.

Don't get me wrong, the way we collectively treat animals is evil, but the idea that somehow we know enough about biology even today to reliably simulate drug behaviors seems unlikely.

New comment by macintux in "Apple defeats liability for not scanning iCloud for CSAM"

macintux — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 16:24:28 +0000

I have a suspicion that Google and Android aren't going to just vanish.

New comment by macintux in "Amid Increased Scrutiny, ICE Detention and Deportation Data Goes Dark"

macintux — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 16:23:13 +0000

I'd definitely prefer random disturbed violence by civilians over a government militia with zero accountability.

New comment by macintux in "Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team"

macintux — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:50:06 +0000

It seems like all home technology adds friction and inscrutable failure modes in order to gain functionality/flexibility.

"Smart" seems to mean "powerful but complicated and frustrating."

I get the functionality benefits. I just don't want to pay the friction price.

New comment by macintux in "The US grocery slowdown is real"

macintux — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 23:44:43 +0000

Imagine how expensive it’s going to be for the world to help Russia if it collapses.

New comment by macintux in "Guide to data tools landscape for developers"

macintux — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 16:46:20 +0000

Are you sure? I can't find any reference indicating that.

Update: Huh, TIL https://avro.apache.org/docs/%2B%2Bversion%2B%2B/specificati...

New comment by macintux in "Collection of Digital Clock Designs"

macintux — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 19:53:56 +0000

I had one of these in my bedroom as a kid. Clearly I slept more deeply than I do now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_ball_clock

New comment by macintux in "Primate Is the Last Great Web Framework"

macintux — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 17:12:50 +0000

I thought of middleware as sitting on one server, with the database behind it typically on another.

New comment by macintux in "US House of Representatives takes step to make daylight saving time permanent"

macintux — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 15:13:45 +0000

You're right, I should have referred to sunrise instead. For me, permanent DST would mean the sun doesn't come up until 9am in late December.

New comment by macintux in "US House of Representatives takes step to make daylight saving time permanent"

macintux — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 15:05:22 +0000

Given how many times in my life I've internally groaned at yet another corporate email or website that references "EST" during the summer, I'm convinced no one is paying attention.

And that, if we do actually implement year-round daylight saving time, everyone will still call it EST.

New comment by macintux in "US House of Representatives takes step to make daylight saving time permanent"

macintux — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 14:54:44 +0000

I doubt it. People seem to have a strong aversion to sleeping before sunset.

New comment by macintux in "SpaceX bond worth 10% less than issue price – heading for junk bond status"

macintux — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 14:45:14 +0000

If a pillar is removed from a building with no warning, no one would claim that its collapse was from the unwillingness of anyone else to put a new one in place.

If DOGE had announced a 2-year phaseout of humanitarian aid, governments and NGOs might have had time to fill the gap. Doing so arbitrarily and abruptly was simply cruel.

New comment by macintux in "Show HN: Opening lines of famous literary works"

macintux — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 16:47:18 +0000

Curiously, it seems difficult to find John Donne's Meditations XVII with the original language. The spelling has been modernized everywhere I can find it online.

(I suppose this technically isn't the opening line, but it's the first line used when most people quote the passage.)

No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine

New comment by macintux in "LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire"

macintux — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 16:34:23 +0000

> A distributed system without consideration into how to coalesce the data together is no better of a solution vs what we have today.

Unless you'd rather prioritize liberty over safety. I want crimes to be harder to solve if the alternative is a panopticon.

New comment by macintux in "John Deere owners will get the right to repair equipment under FTC settlement"

macintux — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 01:26:14 +0000

> I'm not sure he cares since he's not running again

Don't underestimate the willingness of the GOP and the Supreme Court to kiss his feet.

> ...and I don't see a way he can use it for graft.

He's an expert at it.

New comment by macintux in "New Sweden: the US's long-lost 'secret' colony"

macintux — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 01:12:21 +0000

Or, just maybe, people are interested in knowing more about history? I certainly never knew there was a Swedish colony in the U.S., so I’m glad the article was written.

New comment by macintux in "GitLost: We Tricked GitHub's AI Agent into Leaking Private Repos"

macintux — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 21:51:43 +0000

> There will come a time when properly designed LLM apps are not vulnerable, and there will still be poorly designed apps that are.

Whether it’s possible to properly secure an LLM (and retain its utility) seems to be heavily disputed, in this thread and elsewhere.

New comment by macintux in "StreetComplete: Fixing OpenStreetMap, one tiny quest at a time"

macintux — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 17:19:26 +0000

My city had a very vanilla, but very useful mobile app for submitting problems like missed trash pickup or dead traffic lights.

Someone apparently decided it needed to be "more modern", making it nearly unusable for quick reports like traffic light problems while I was stopped at the light. Every page was a separate request to a server, slow JS, etc.

They've since improved the flow and performance, but it still asks me for contact information before I can submit it. Fortunately they haven't started server-side validations yet, so I can still submit bogus info.

Just let me tell you your traffic light is out! Why is this so hard?