<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: njovin</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=njovin</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Thu, 20 Aug 2026 08:11:54 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=njovin" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by njovin in "Don't be a meat proxy"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>We once interviewed a candidate for a senior engineering position and when asked what his primary role was at his current job, he said "I mostly make sure that nobody changes the software".<p>He wasn't wrong, and his role was still valuable to the company.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 03 Aug 2026 17:11:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49158623</link><dc:creator>njovin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49158623</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49158623</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by njovin in "Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When the AI Bubble Bursts"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>A better way to frame this might be that Apple tried VR and quickly realized the market wasn't there and moved on.<p>Compare that to Meta, who went all-in (so much so that they changed the company name) despite apparent overwhelming user apathy toward the product.<p>The estimates I've seen say that Apple spent ~$10b on their VR program, whereas Meta is in for about $80b.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:27:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49071941</link><dc:creator>njovin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49071941</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49071941</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by njovin in "Data centers have hiked electricity prices on the public by $23B"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The hill to die on might be the one behind your house that has a nice view of the illegal methane generators that these data centers are using, because they sure as hell aren't running on solar.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:36:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49022353</link><dc:creator>njovin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49022353</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49022353</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by njovin in "ICE to Pay Thomson Reuters $125M to Find Voter Fraud"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is a core misconception about how the 2020 election results have been investigated.<p>Trump has hired multiple qualified firms to find fraud in the 2020 election and thus far none of the reputable ones have found any.<p>> they might take this evidence seriously<p>Whether the cause is global warming, vaccines, election fraud, the effect of gender rights on society, or any one of the military actions being taken by this admin - the only time evidence matters is when it aligns with their previously -held biases and can be yielded as a weapon.<p>The rest of the time (read: almost all of the time), it doesn't and is swept under the rug or called fake, without any counter-evidence to back that claim up either.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:35:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49022335</link><dc:creator>njovin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49022335</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49022335</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by njovin in "ICE to Pay Thomson Reuters $125M to Find Voter Fraud"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Doubtful, the ones I still receive come from people faking caller IDs so these are not good actors and can simply continue abusing the system.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:27:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49022215</link><dc:creator>njovin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49022215</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49022215</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by njovin in "ICE to Pay Thomson Reuters $125M to Find Voter Fraud"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>If you're a California resident, under the CCPA you can submit a request for Thomson Reuters to both provide you with and then delete any information they have collected about you.<p>The state's even setup a nice portal to automate these requests across 600+ data brokers.<p><a href="https://privacy.ca.gov/drop/" rel="nofollow">https://privacy.ca.gov/drop/</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:34:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48993688</link><dc:creator>njovin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48993688</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48993688</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by njovin in "Data centers have hiked electricity prices on the public by $23B"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>First they gave all the water away for free to big ag, and now they're doing the same with the power.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 15 Jul 2026 04:53:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48916423</link><dc:creator>njovin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48916423</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48916423</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by njovin in "LAPD lets contract with surveillance giant Flock expire"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>IANAL but if this is actually true then they're violating California law.<p>I submitted a CCPA request to them to give me and delete everything they had on me.<p>Their response is that they own no data, and I have to make the request to their customer, whomever that may be.<p>If they're retaining any identifying data about me and then selling it to new customers, they are explicitly violating CCPA.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 13 Jul 2026 18:38:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48896894</link><dc:creator>njovin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48896894</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48896894</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by njovin in "Steam Machine launches today"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I would guess that users of the Steam machine would mostly be as locked-in to Steam purchases as PS5 users are to PS Store purchases.<p>I stopped PC gaming about a decade ago and my current daily driver is a Macbook.  I periodically play games on my a PS5 or XBOX, but there are a ton of great games on my Steam wishlist.<p>I feel like I'm the exact target market for this (although I'm not going to buy at this price point at this time).  I don't want to bother with Windows and would love a 'console' allowing me to play most Steam games without a lot of hassle.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2026 21:49:10 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48636700</link><dc:creator>njovin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48636700</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48636700</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by njovin in "Show HN: Are You in the Weights?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>And here I thought my being a murder victim was bad.<p>I looked up the city and year cited by the model for my untimely demise, and it turns out the crime is real, but the real victim was a female sharing my last name, with a middle name loosely resembling my first.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 18 Jun 2026 21:41:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48592028</link><dc:creator>njovin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48592028</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48592028</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by njovin in "SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> was pushing the envelope of "interplanetary" travel/species<p>I don't think they were.  All the Mars stuff is just dressed up version of The Boring Company - a distraction by Elon to better position his other interests.<p>There's no money in going to Mars and there's no reason to, from a financial perspective, and Elon doesn't care about anything beyond wealth and power.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 16 Jun 2026 18:08:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48559458</link><dc:creator>njovin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48559458</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48559458</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by njovin in "Fox to buy Roku"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Much in the same way that the company selling tickets and taking a percentage of all ticket resales shouldn't also own the venues which can then force artists to use a specific ticketing provider, thus creating a monopoly.<p>We have antitrust laws in the US but they do us absolutely no good when the government refuses to even consider enforcing them, which seems to be the case in the past few decades.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 15 Jun 2026 17:00:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48544087</link><dc:creator>njovin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48544087</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48544087</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by njovin in "If AI data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Not covered in the article are two critical reasons:<p>1. They're breaking environmental laws in order to meet power demands.  xAI has already been busted on this [1], but they keep finding willing accomplices in rural parts of the country to bypass public opposition or speedrun through regulatory exceptions [2].<p>2. Companies seem to be fudging their numbers when it comes to GPU capacity & current workloads [3], likely to inflate their IPO valuations.  I know Ed Zitron is a divisive figure but I've not seen any journalist on the other side of the argument provide the volume of data that he has.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.selc.org/news/xai-built-an-illegal-power-plant-to-power-its-data-center/" rel="nofollow">https://www.selc.org/news/xai-built-an-illegal-power-plant-t...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/10/musks-xai-draws-more-opposition-over-mississippi-power-plant-permit.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/10/musks-xai-draws-more-opposit...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.wheresyoured.at/where-are-all-the-data-centers/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wheresyoured.at/where-are-all-the-data-centers/</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 03 Jun 2026 17:46:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48387191</link><dc:creator>njovin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48387191</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48387191</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by njovin in "AI has a multiplying effect on existing technical skills"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Many of us recognize that the days of nearly-free tokens is quickly drawing to a close, and at some point humans may very well have to dig their keyboards out of cold storage and return once again to the code mines.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2026 15:03:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48236924</link><dc:creator>njovin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48236924</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48236924</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by njovin in "Going full AI engineer, not touching code anymore"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Have you tried drilling into the reasoning when this happens?  This is why I usually leave it in "Plan Mode" and when it proposes a solution that seems unusual or unexpected, I point out why I think it is and ask it to justify it's position.<p>Sometimes I get the "you're right!" response, but often it will also explain why it made the decision it did, and it's rational enough that I accept the new approach.<p>It's still very much like a junior dev in this way - pretty good at 'just make it work', pretty good at monkey-see-monkey-do, and occasionally surprises you with something novel (to you).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 19 May 2026 14:54:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48194140</link><dc:creator>njovin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48194140</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48194140</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by njovin in "OpenAI is connecting ChatGPT to bank accounts via Plaid"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Depending on the rate difference, I'd be tempted to setup a 'burner' checking account at a separate financial institution and just auto-transfer the loan amount from my primary bank to the burner every month.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2026 17:26:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48151363</link><dc:creator>njovin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48151363</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48151363</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by njovin in "How Claude Code works in large codebases"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>PHPStorm's indexing is incredible.  Aside from a scant few times it's been corrupted, which is easily corrected, I've never gotten stale results.<p>Although if you've ever used Claude's search tool, you'll be unsurprised that the team knows nothing about indexing.<p>How a company, whose primary product is text-based chat, doesn't allow users to easily perform text search on said chat is beyond comprehension.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2026 05:47:44 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48144990</link><dc:creator>njovin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48144990</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48144990</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by njovin in "More than sixty percent of the United States is experiencing drought conditions"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>And we're still selling what little water we have to foreign & domestic corporations for a fraction of what residential citizens pay.<p>We are also refusing to maintain critical water-system infrastructure, setting ourselves up to lose critical water storage capacity [1].<p>We can get fined for washing our cars at certain times (although it's rarely enforced), but nobody ever turns the screws on the business machine.<p>[1] <a href="https://fox5sandiego.com/news/local-news/north-county/plan-for-lake-hodges-dam-in-question-after-cost-jump/" rel="nofollow">https://fox5sandiego.com/news/local-news/north-county/plan-f...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2026 05:37:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48144934</link><dc:creator>njovin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48144934</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48144934</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by njovin in "MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I've read the same, but for me, a newly-formatted microSD will overheat as soon as it's plugged into the MBP.  The OS may be reading/writing something to cause that, but it's automated as part of the mounting process from what I've seen.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 14 May 2026 17:07:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48138132</link><dc:creator>njovin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48138132</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48138132</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by njovin in "MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Anecdotally, and as a big fan of Apple laptops, I've had so much trouble with their USB and SDCard hardware when it comes to data transfer that I wonder if I'm cursed or if I'm crazy.<p>Transferring a about a dozen GB of data over USB3 is a crapshoot depending on the drive you have.  Even amongst name-brands with similar advertised speeds, some thumb drives are basically useless with my 2024 MBP and I've had similar issues with a previous 2015 MBP model.  The transfer speeds will be so slow as to be considered unusable.<p>On the 2024 MBP, using ANY microsd card adapter with any microsdcard causes the card to immediately overheat, and the card will never be properly usable by the OS.  Only full-size SDCards work.<p>I've seen some posts about this elsewhere, but it seems to me like one of the few peripherals on this expensive piece of kit being incompatible with the vast majority of the hardware it's supposed to work with would be kind of a big deal.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 14 May 2026 05:25:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48131407</link><dc:creator>njovin</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48131407</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48131407</guid></item></channel></rss>