Hacker News: mat_b

New comment by mat_b in "An AI agent deleted our production database. The agent's confession is below"

mat_b — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 01:17:03 +0000

> The agent ran this command: curl -X POST https://backboard.railway.app/ ....

Why did you whitelist curl in cursor? Don't whitelist commands like "bash" or "curl" that can be used to execute arbitrary commands.

New comment by mat_b in "Study found that young adults have grown less hopeful and more angry about AI"

mat_b — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 17:07:58 +0000

It's not as simple as that. The supply is being kept low to enrich housing investors.

New comment by mat_b in "Cursor 3"

mat_b — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 17:18:03 +0000

Exactly how I feel. If I wanted this agent-centric view without being able to easily see the code I would be using Claude Code.

I use Cursor because agents are not ready to be the ones driving. I need to drive. I still need to understand all the code (and easily browse it) and keep a close watch over what the AI is doing.

New comment by mat_b in "Cloudflare flags archive.today as "C&C/Botnet"; no longer resolves via 1.1.1.2"

mat_b — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 16:43:08 +0000

I did some experimenting recently and I'm quite convinced that when I use Comcasts DNS they are selling it to advertisers. I've switched to 1.1.1.1 simply because it annoys me that Comcast is doing this.

New comment by mat_b in "I'm OK being left behind, thanks"

mat_b — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 16:36:06 +0000

> So, try brainstorming the issue with Claude Code, talk it through so it's on the same page as you, ensure it's done research (web search, docs) to weigh the best solutions, and then enter plan mode so it generates a markdown plan file. From there you can read/review,tweak the plan file. Or have it implement it. Or you implement it.

This is exactly the workflow that works very well for me in Cursor (although I don't use their Plan Mode - I do my version of it). If you know the codebase well this can increase your speed/productivity quite a bit. Not trying to convince naysayers of this, their minds are already made up. Just wanted to chime in that this workflow does actually work very well (been using it for over 6 months).

New comment by mat_b in "California's new bill requires DOJ-approved 3D printers that report themselves"

mat_b — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 23:38:11 +0000

> Killing is bad... killing because you don't like $group is double-bad. Speeding is bad, speeding without a seatbelt is double-bad.

Why would either of those be double-bad? They're the same thing as the original.

If you don't want to wear your seatbelt and you like to risk your own life, then that's on you. Just like riding a motorcycle.

New comment by mat_b in "Single vaccine could protect against all coughs, colds and flus"

mat_b — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 23:25:32 +0000

FYI horses are the product of domestication.

New comment by mat_b in "GPTZero finds 100 new hallucinations in NeurIPS 2025 accepted papers"

mat_b — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 19:18:06 +0000

> we discovered 100s of hallucinated citations missed by the 3+ reviewers who evaluated each paper.

This says just as much about the humans involved.

New comment by mat_b in "60% of Legal Searches Now End Without a Click"

mat_b — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 23:18:28 +0000

How is this a bad thing for them? Now they don't have to pay for clicks from people who aren't interested in their services. People who want to hire a lawyer will still click.

New comment by mat_b in "AI coding assistants are getting worse?"

mat_b — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 03:42:32 +0000

I have been noticing this myself for the last couple of months. I cannot get the agent to stop masking failures (ex: swallowing exceptions) and to fail loudly.

That said, the premise that AI-assisted coding got worse in 2025 feels off to me. I saw big improvements in the tooling last year.

New comment by mat_b in "Report: Microsoft kills official way to activate Windows 11/10 without internet"

mat_b — Sat, 03 Jan 2026 21:43:26 +0000

Haha. Been seeing this comment for at least 20 years now. Some things never change...

New comment by mat_b in "Graphite is joining Cursor"

mat_b — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 22:03:55 +0000

Good news. Been using Cursor heavily for over a year now (on the Ultra plan currently). Hope we get access to this as part of our existing subscriptions.

New comment by mat_b in "8M users' AI conversations sold for profit by "privacy" extensions"

mat_b — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 20:16:55 +0000

Me personally? I'm using Firefox with EFF privacy badger. No others.

New comment by mat_b in "This is not the future"

mat_b — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 20:01:22 +0000

I get your point. I'm merely pointing out that some things, even though they aren't technically inevitable, are (in practice) essentially inevitable because larger forces are pushing things in that direction.

New comment by mat_b in "This is not the future"

mat_b — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 16:47:58 +0000

We aren't the real levees though. The system we live in is. Yes, a few people will push back and try to change the momentum to a different direction but that's painful and we have enough going on each day that most people don't have time for that (let alone agree on the direction). Structural change is the only real way to guide the river.

New comment by mat_b in "This is not the future"

mat_b — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 16:33:25 +0000

Agree and disagree. It is also possible to take a step back and look at the very large picture and see that these things actually are somewhat inevitable. We do exist in a system where "if I don't do it first, someone else will, and then they will have an advantage" is very real and very powerful. It shapes our world immensely. So, while I understand what the OP is saying, in some ways it's like looking at a river of water and complaining that the water particles are moving in a direction that the levees pushed them. The levees are actually the bigger problem.

New comment by mat_b in "8M users' AI conversations sold for profit by "privacy" extensions"

mat_b — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 04:32:35 +0000

I don't understand why so many people are using / trusting VPNs

"Let us handle all your internet traffic.. you can trust us.. we're free!"

No thank you.

New comment by mat_b in "iOS 26.2 fixes 20 security vulnerabilities, 2 actively exploited"

mat_b — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 04:26:39 +0000

I have a 4 year old M1 macbook pro running macos 12. It runs as good as when it was new. So you honestly think that if I upgrade it to macos 26 it wont start lagging? I am extremely confident that it will. Even without changing the other software running on it.

New comment by mat_b in "iOS 26.2 fixes 20 security vulnerabilities, 2 actively exploited"

mat_b — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 04:03:00 +0000

I downgraded an old Macbook last year to see if I could get it running fast again. I couldn't install all sorts of things. So many things that I gave up.

New comment by mat_b in "iOS 26.2 fixes 20 security vulnerabilities, 2 actively exploited"

mat_b — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 20:49:42 +0000

You're right. This worked for me. I'm now offered 18.7.3 and wasn't before.