Hacker News: maxaw

New comment by maxaw in "Investigating how prompt politeness affects LLM accuracy (2025)"

maxaw — Thu, 28 May 2026 14:06:06 +0000

I’d rather lose 4% accuracy and practice kindness! I’ve been actively trying to avoid raging at the bot because I worry about this behaviour leaking into real world interactions

Show HN: Voice-note based social network prototype

maxaw — Thu, 07 May 2026 09:50:26 +0000

I love voice notes because they are intimate. I've been thinking of a platform based around them. Such a platform would likely be for close friends only. But I made this to show others what it might feel like. Any feedback is welcome :)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48047420

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by maxaw in "Show HN: GitRails-Let agents call only the GitHub endpoints and params you allow"

maxaw — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 02:10:26 +0000

Thanks for commenting :) The whole point is tighter scopes. You control what parameters the agent is allowed to pass when calling endpoints. This allows things like revealing only a few folders in your repo to your agent

Show HN: GitRails-Let agents call only the GitHub endpoints and params you allow

maxaw — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 04:35:15 +0000

This is a proxy over the GitHub API. The aim is to make it easy to provide untrusted agents very fine-grained access to GitHub. To test it, you can install the GitHub app, receive a principal key, and point a trusted agent at the README.md with the key and ask it to help you configure keys and permissions for untrusted agents, which can then call the proxied endpoints. It is open source and a work in progress :)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47885571

Points: 1

# Comments: 2

New comment by maxaw in "Show HN: Mediator.ai – Using Nash bargaining and LLMs to systematize fairness"

maxaw — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 11:49:44 +0000

I didn’t say it doesn’t exist, rather that it’s already taken into account. I’m also not sure what you are proposing- if mediation is required, and someone has more power than someone else, why would they voluntarily engage with a mediator who will reduce that power? Or if they are forced to use this mediator (eg by the state) then this means they never had the power in the first place

New comment by maxaw in "Show HN: Mediator.ai – Using Nash bargaining and LLMs to systematize fairness"

maxaw — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 08:12:41 +0000

In reality people never have equal power over anything (what would that look like, physically?) so something like nash bargaining is an attempt to get closer to a notion of fair given this inequality

New comment by maxaw in "Show HN: Mediator.ai – Using Nash bargaining and LLMs to systematize fairness"

maxaw — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 07:53:24 +0000

This is so cool. Even small disputes like roommate arrangements can feel very emotionally impactful at the time and it would be wonderful to have a tool for these moments

New comment by maxaw in "A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)"

maxaw — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 08:33:49 +0000

This is lovely. Thank you for sharing this

New comment by maxaw in "Ask HN: Building a solo business is impossible?"

maxaw — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 21:33:21 +0000

If you cant find the people, may not be the right market for you :) ideally you are exposed to target market directly, and daily. Or you team up with a cofounder who is. Re: building in saturated market - “prove” is a strong word. It’s another signal. And you can judge for yourself how strong :) i dont think anything can replace direct customer feedback

New comment by maxaw in "Ask HN: Building a solo business is impossible?"

maxaw — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 21:27:26 +0000

Begging is hyperbole, its as you describe. Just looking for the strong reaction

New comment by maxaw in "Ask HN: Building a solo business is impossible?"

maxaw — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 14:19:53 +0000

It is “simple” Find out what people want Make it Sell it to them Unfortunately, engineer brain loves to skip step 1

Ive recently become friends with a younger person who makes a lot of money off vibe coded mini saas. He is fanatical about step 1. If he can’t find n people begging him to make it he will go validate the next idea. He’s ruthless with this aspect and will drop an idea instantly if people dont care. It really woke me up to the reality of it all. Made me realise how much i delude myself into making things people dont want because i enjoy the making process. I will at best half ass step 1 and the proceed to spend a few months hand crafting some software no one wants. Meanwhile he spends two months validating and one month vibe coding something that people would be embarrassed to post on HN and then sell 100usd/month subscriptions to it. Its crazy

New comment by maxaw in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)"

maxaw — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 23:58:14 +0000

Proxy over GitHub’s REST API for fine-grained repo access – e.g. file-level scopes. For unpredictable agents :)

New comment by maxaw in "Fear and denial in Silicon Valley over social media addiction trial"

maxaw — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 04:17:25 +0000

The big difference is that in many cases the people who support this are the same ones that are addicted. You’re telling addicts to stop their moral panic over their own addiction

New comment by maxaw in "Fear and denial in Silicon Valley over social media addiction trial"

maxaw — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 03:49:31 +0000

The difference is that the media is 30 seconds not 2 hours so the feedback loop is shorter and the content pool is far far far deeper because it is user submitted so the content recommendation algorithms become so effective , and the experience so compelling, that it becomes addictive. And as a wise man once said “a difference in scale is a difference in kind”

New comment by maxaw in "Fear and denial in Silicon Valley over social media addiction trial"

maxaw — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 03:20:02 +0000

I watched my 78yo step mother become addicted to reels so older people are definitely not immune. But she was able to go cold turkey as she only communicated with her sister over instagram so it wasn’t a problem to just continue with WhatsApp. Young people real life networks are too enmeshed with instagram to have the same option.

Also, what you’re describing sounds like when you’ve haven’t spent enough time on the shorts for the content recommendation algorithm to learn your preferences. Which I agree, is unwatchable. I saw it recently when my friend put on YouTube shorts on a guest account (on an Airbnb smart tv). it was bad. But spend enough time and that will change. But best you don’t!

New comment by maxaw in "Fear and denial in Silicon Valley over social media addiction trial"

maxaw — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 02:40:21 +0000

I didn’t mention time? From Cambridge dictionary: ‘addiction: an inability to stop doing or using something, especially something harmful.’ I am in support of regulating things which are harmful and which people have trouble not doing

New comment by maxaw in "Fear and denial in Silicon Valley over social media addiction trial"

maxaw — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 02:33:42 +0000

I don’t know a single person who after exposure to short form video has not had to exert special effort to regulate their consumption.

New comment by maxaw in "Fear and denial in Silicon Valley over social media addiction trial"

maxaw — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 02:30:30 +0000

Screens on their own aren’t “uniquely and magically addictive”, but infinitely scrollable short form video delivered through that screen is, because a few companies spent billions on the smartest minds in the world to make it so.

New comment by maxaw in "Anthropic takes legal action against OpenCode"

maxaw — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 05:06:07 +0000

Fully agree with you

New comment by maxaw in "Anthropic takes legal action against OpenCode"

maxaw — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 01:10:05 +0000

It’s definitely to encourage Claude code usage. Owning the interface through which your core product is delivered is a hedge against the commoditisation that everyone talks about. Eg, it’s much harder to switch from Claude code to cursor or vice versa than it is to switch between models in cursor (I sometimes don’t even notice model defaulting to composer inside cursor)