Hacker News: mholm

New comment by mholm in "Go is an ideal language for AI-assisted software engineering"

mholm — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 18:55:51 +0000

Black for Python https://github.com/psf/black

New comment by mholm in "Run Android ARM64 VR APKs on Apple Vision Pro"

mholm — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 15:35:26 +0000

> I guarantee you somewhere in their backlog is an item that says "require app store for app installations on macOS"

This has been said for over a decade and it still hasn't happened, and Apple hasn't even tried to do so.

I think a better way to model their approach is to push non-technical users further and further away from the typical .dmg app installation approach, and put hoops up to prevent them from following malicious instructions, like the privacy/security and unverified developer hoops. Mildly annoying for technical users, but near impassable for the tech illiterate. We've been seeing this transition across windows and android for a long time, and it seems to be a net positive, if my family is anything to go by. I spend much less time on tech support now.

New comment by mholm in "Investors in Situational Awareness deserved to lose their shirts"

mholm — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 19:31:22 +0000

> He reported returns of 439% for the first half of 2026

> which posted a loss of 67% in July

So it's still up 44% this year? The article notes this, but seems unnecessarily adversarial against an investor who is still wildly successful.

New comment by mholm in "Claude: Elevated errors across all models – Resolved"

mholm — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 21:19:43 +0000

98.99999%

New comment by mholm in "About the security content of macOS Tahoe 26.6"

mholm — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 15:12:26 +0000

Yes, they host it on their own infrastructure.

New comment by mholm in "About the security content of macOS Tahoe 26.6"

mholm — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 13:23:37 +0000

I don't believe it's published anywhere, but it's common knowledge to Apple engineers. I can second the poster's assertion that they run Claude internally.

New comment by mholm in "Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts"

mholm — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 20:30:40 +0000

The excessive spending was part of the point. The market is watching AI spend very closely. AI spend is a proxy for AI absorption. Expanding your MS contract to include Copilot for your rank and file doesn't move the meter much. Letting your engineers run up 100k/month shows extreme absorption. The share price increase potentially pays for the entire token bill once Wall Street goes through your earnings.

New comment by mholm in "I think you might be fooling yourself with AI"

mholm — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 15:55:37 +0000

The study itself from late 2025 is also written to be _highly_ favorable to non-ai usage. Developers on a codebase they're already experienced with, largely using these tools for the first time. Of course they aren't faster! They've already done the hard part! They're also open-source maintainers, which, ime, means they're already a cut above the average dev.

I'd be much more curious on a study that used regular developers on brand new-to-them codebases for significant features or migrations. I'm personally encountering what I'd describe as a 200%+ productivity boost.

New comment by mholm in "FreeInk: Open ecosystem for e-readers"

mholm — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 20:34:04 +0000

These are not competing with Kobo. These are micro-ereaders, often much smaller than a phone. They're characterized by extremely weak processors and minimal hardware. 'Apps' are not a concept here yet.

New comment by mholm in "Orion Browser by Kagi"

mholm — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 16:52:36 +0000

Yeah. I also noticed a fairly significant speed increase when I started using Safari again. Unfortunate. There are just too many features that Safari supports perfectly, that Orion either doesn't support at all, or has flakey support for. Especially the Apple ecosystem ones, which I'd think Apple doesn't expose, but Chrome seems to support some of them just fine, like 2fa codes.

New comment by mholm in "Is this the end of the once-mighty GoPro?"

mholm — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 01:50:24 +0000

I'm in the same boat. Nothing else is as rock solid or has the color accuracy of Hue. You can immediately tell when it's some random brand

New comment by mholm in "Stripe and Advent have made a joint offer to acquire PayPal – sources"

mholm — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 22:08:20 +0000

Once you start doing frequent business through PayPal, they begin 'holding' some of your money to form a buffer against chargebacks and fraud. This doesn't happen often at the consumer level, but dominates within the small business world.

New comment by mholm in "When AI Costs More Than the Engineer"

mholm — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 14:09:55 +0000

> It is unlikely this kind of agentic workflow will ever get cheaper

This seems like a very '500kB is all you'll ever need' thing to say. This exact scenario has seen a precipitous decline in cost and increase in reliability over the past year.

New comment by mholm in "The short leash AI coding method for beating Fable"

mholm — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 02:21:36 +0000

What questions? When I go into auto mode, it doesn't come back until it accidentally/intentionally tries to slip the guardrails, or completes the task. My prompt will generally include information on what it's allowed to do to accomplish the task, where to test, etc. Simple, but effective.

New comment by mholm in "Beyond All Reason (Free Total Annihilation Inspired RTS)"

mholm — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 16:15:53 +0000

As someone who loved Supreme Commander, I really wanted to like BAR, but I found it felt like death by a thousand cuts. I last played more than a year ago, so things might be different, but the QoL felt really lacking.

New comment by mholm in "GPT‑NL: a sovereign language model for the Netherlands"

mholm — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 02:50:11 +0000

If a teenager on your street said he was going to spend $1,000 to customize his Honda Civic for his needs, you'd believe him. If he says he's going to build a brand new car, better than a Honda civic, for $10,000, you'd laugh and say good luck.

New comment by mholm in "Apple reveals new AI architecture built around Google Gemini models"

mholm — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 20:35:00 +0000

OpenAI and Anthropic don't make small models. Google happens to already have a billion devices that would benefit from small models, so they made one. Google basically gets 1 billion per year for free*.

New comment by mholm in "The real cost of owning a home"

mholm — Tue, 26 May 2026 19:58:48 +0000

Predictable for a year or two, yes. I know how much I'll be paying a decade from now, exempting property tax and insurance fluctuations.

New comment by mholm in "The real cost of owning a home"

mholm — Tue, 26 May 2026 19:56:14 +0000

I was in middle school in 2007

New comment by mholm in "The real cost of owning a home"

mholm — Tue, 26 May 2026 16:40:38 +0000

Beyond the financials, the psychological impact of both being able to make greater-than-superficial changes, and having extremely predictable payments for years without worrying about substantial rent increases, is substantial.

I redid/improved the bathroom to exactly what I wanted. I renovated the kitchen. I added paneling to the walls. I added a few outlets to rooms that needed more. I wouldn't do these things in an apartment, because rent could go up any year and exploit me for liking my home. Property value has gone up by 50% in the years since I bought.