Hacker News: mlaretallack

New comment by mlaretallack in "I Ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii"

mlaretallack — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 18:35:03 +0000

100% agree, I find that sometimes I hit a dead end, but the things I build or learn on the way are usable at a later date.

New comment by mlaretallack in "Stop Publishing Garbage Data, It's Embarrassing"

mlaretallack — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 16:30:10 +0000

I saw the RAC one this morning, though I was miss reading the graph, as why would the RAC publish such an obvious mistake.

I have written my own Home Assistant custom component for the UK fuel finder data, and yes, the data really is that bad.

While one partner sleeps, another vibe codes

mlaretallack — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 05:24:33 +0000

Article URL: https://www.businessinsider.com/claude-gap-relationship-vibe-code-couples-2026-3

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47560608

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by mlaretallack in ".apks are just .zips; semi-legally hacking software for orphaned hardware [video]"

mlaretallack — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 09:20:58 +0000

I use AWS Kiro, with the Claude models, and its only to happy to help. I give it the headerless ghidra, and decompilers etc... and away it goes.

New comment by mlaretallack in "LLMs can be exhausting"

mlaretallack — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 05:44:25 +0000

Yes, I follow the same sort of pattern, it took a while to convince myself that it was ok to leave the agent waiting, but it helps with the human context switching. I also try to stagger the agests, so one may be planning and designing, while another is coding, that way i can spend more time on the planning and designing ones and leave the coding one to get on with it.

New comment by mlaretallack in "The 100 hour gap between a vibecoded prototype and a working product"

mlaretallack — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 14:50:12 +0000

Yes, I mostly do spec driven developement. And at the design stage, I always add in tests. I repeat this pattern for any new features or bug fixes, get the agent to write a test (unit, intergration or playwright based), reproduce the issue and then implement the change and retest etc... and retest using all the other tests.

New comment by mlaretallack in "Relicensing with AI-Assisted Rewrite"

mlaretallack — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 06:22:34 +0000

Its very important to understand the "how" it was done. The GPL hands the "compile" step, and the result is still GPL. The clean Room process uses 2 teams, separated by a specification. So you would have to

1. Generate specification on what the system does. 2. Pass to another "clean" system 3. Second clean system implements based just on the specification, without any information on the original.

That 3rd step is the hardest, especially for well known projects.

New comment by mlaretallack in "How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution"

mlaretallack — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 14:00:45 +0000

I use AWS Kiro, and its spec driven developement is exactly this, I find it really works well as it makes me slow down and think about what I want it to do.

Requirements, design, task list, coding.

New comment by mlaretallack in "Evaluating AGENTS.md: are they helpful for coding agents?"

mlaretallack — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 18:28:24 +0000

I also try to avoid negative instructions. No scientific proof, just a feeling the same as you, "do not delete the tmp file" can lead too often to deleting the tmp file.

New comment by mlaretallack in "Ask HN: Are you using an agent orchestrator to write code?"

mlaretallack — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 05:55:59 +0000

Not the best way to do it, but I use xfce, multiple workspaces, each with there own version of AWS Kiro, and each kiro has its own project I am working on. This allows me to "switch context" easier between each project to check how the agents are getting on. Kiro also notifies me when an agent wants somthing. Usually I keep it to about 4 projects at a time, just to keep the context switching down.

New comment by mlaretallack in "I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed"

mlaretallack — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 17:50:08 +0000

I agree with this, I put myself in the "glorious hacks to bend the machine into doing things it was never really intended to do" camp, so the end game is somthing cool, now I can do 3 cool things before lunch instead of 3 cool things a year

New comment by mlaretallack in "I am happier writing code by hand"

mlaretallack — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 16:27:28 +0000

I am currently doing 6 projects at the same time, where before I would only of doing one at a time. This includes the requirements, design, implementation and testing.

New comment by mlaretallack in "How to effectively write quality code with AI"

mlaretallack — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 05:58:07 +0000

This is where I think its going, it feels that in the end we will end up with an "llm" language, one that is more suited to how an llm works and less human.

New comment by mlaretallack in "UK government launches fuel forecourt price API"

mlaretallack — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 05:24:04 +0000

The api seems very unstable (or it might just be me) keeps timing out when I try to fetch.

New comment by mlaretallack in "TP-Link Tapo C200: Hardcoded Keys, Buffer Overflows and Privacy"

mlaretallack — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 19:33:24 +0000

Very interesting, I had a go with Ghidra and AWS Amazon Q, used it to reverse the video feed on a toy drone. I did not think to look for GhidraMCP, would of made it a lot quicker.

New comment by mlaretallack in "LineageOS 23"

mlaretallack — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 07:28:58 +0000

I use moto devices, my current one is a g45. But I have also setup a second hand g30.

New comment by mlaretallack in "Tau: Open-source PaaS – A self-hosted Vercel / Netlify / Cloudflare alternative"

mlaretallack — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 18:49:25 +0000

In a company, there may me multiple teams, each doing there own projects, PaaS can be within the same company and provide a common way to do stuff without each team having to start from scratch each time.

New comment by mlaretallack in "Why It Was Almost Impossible to Make the Blue LED [video]"

mlaretallack — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 19:26:52 +0000

When I graduated, my first project was to make a UK LED based wait indicator. The problem was, the standard specified "white" light. At the time while LED's where made using UV LED's and phosphors was used to make it white. This meant that for 100 LED's, the coat would be about £100 just for the LED's. In the end we got the specification changed to include a yellow, (we showed that a tungsten light bulb running at 45vac is very yellow anyway, so it was more a correction in the spec than a change)

New comment by mlaretallack in "Ask HN: My client want an agent on my laptop. Is this the new normal?"

mlaretallack — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 10:56:21 +0000

I work for a large company and even before remote working, all company laptops had to run CrowdStrike, this sounds very similar. However the rules where very clear, no using non-company laptops for work, this included contractors etc...

New comment by mlaretallack in "A Gov.uk site dedicated to porn?"

mlaretallack — Thu, 25 Nov 2021 17:38:23 +0000

I am now taking bets on how long it will last.

'This site is hosted on a Raspberry Pi 4B in the author's living room (behind the couch)'