<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: nlawalker</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=nlawalker</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Mon, 20 Apr 2026 23:37:57 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=nlawalker" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nlawalker in "Stop trying to engineer your way out of listening to people"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>><i>And if you're wondering why this happens, it's normally because:<p>1. people aren't talking to people<p>2. people aren't listening</i><p>I don't think this is right; I think the reason is - to use the metaphor from the cartoon image at the top - that what most of the people involved in the not talking and/or not listening were looking to get out of the situation in the first place was the ribbon cutting, not the road, and they got it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 20 Apr 2026 04:20:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47830357</link><dc:creator>nlawalker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47830357</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47830357</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nlawalker in "College instructor turns to typewriters to curb AI-written work"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Typing as a service is a whole cottage industry on Etsy.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 18 Apr 2026 21:08:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47819536</link><dc:creator>nlawalker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47819536</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47819536</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nlawalker in "The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: New Jobs"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is the aspect of AI I ponder the most. I wonder if we’ll get to the point where it prompts a real hard think about what “accountability” really is, and what value it provides (and to whom), particularly in the standard employment situation where an employee generally can’t “make their employer whole” in the event of a mistake and can really only be “punished” for it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:56:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47787391</link><dc:creator>nlawalker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47787391</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47787391</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nlawalker in "VR Realizes the Cyberspace Metaphor"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>VR will go mainstream when gaming and the internet did - when it fits in your pocket, can turn on and off instantly, and allows you to split your attention between it and something else. The last one seems like a contradiction but maybe someone will figure it out.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 05 Apr 2026 04:52:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47646199</link><dc:creator>nlawalker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47646199</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47646199</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nlawalker in "How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I actually was just thinking about doing something very similar for this but for "agent," specifically in the Microsoft ecosystem. There are a zillion different proper nouns (products, services, frameworks, toolkits and tools, SDKs etc.) containing "agent" now, plus a bunch of other things that are now "agentic".</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 04 Apr 2026 20:42:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47643146</link><dc:creator>nlawalker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47643146</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47643146</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nlawalker in "We replaced RAG with a virtual filesystem for our AI documentation assistant"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Relative to making docs accessible to AI via filesystem tools, I've been looking around to see what kinds of patterns SDK authors are using to get AI coding agents to use the freshest documentation, and Vercel is doing something interesting with their AI SDK that I haven't seen elsewhere (although maybe I just haven't looked hard enough).<p>The "ai" npm package includes a root-level docs folder containing .mdx versions of the docs from their site, specific to the version of the package. Their intended AI-assisted developer experience is that people discover and install their ai-sdk skill (via their npx skills tool, which supports discovery and install of skills from most any provider, not just Vercel). The SKILL.md instructs the agent to explicitly ignore all knowledge that may have been trained into its model, and to first use grep to look for docs in node_modules/ai/docs/ before searching the website.<p><a href="https://github.com/vercel/ai/blob/main/skills/use-ai-sdk/SKILL.md" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/vercel/ai/blob/main/skills/use-ai-sdk/SKI...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 03 Apr 2026 20:33:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47631890</link><dc:creator>nlawalker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47631890</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47631890</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Agent-Friendly Documentation Spec]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="https://agentdocsspec.com/">https://agentdocsspec.com/</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47620377">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47620377</a></p>
<p>Points: 2</p>
<p># Comments: 0</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 02 Apr 2026 21:22:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://agentdocsspec.com/</link><dc:creator>nlawalker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47620377</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47620377</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nlawalker in "'Backrooms' and the Rise of the Institutional Gothic"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p><i>>House of Leaves</i><p>And then from there back to another game: MyHouse.wad, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyHouse.wad" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyHouse.wad</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 02 Apr 2026 19:29:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47619057</link><dc:creator>nlawalker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47619057</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47619057</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nlawalker in "AI chatbots are "Yes-Men" that reinforce bad relationship decisions, study finds"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Relevant article from The Atlantic a couple weeks ago, "Friendship, On Demand": <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/family/2026/03/ai-friendship-chatbot/686345/?gift=Ex_YT3j3w4bpWvzqHtkwOxiGllfs26URbGLTLG5F_DQ&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share" rel="nofollow">https://www.theatlantic.com/family/2026/03/ai-friendship-cha...</a> (gift link)<p><i>>The way that generative AI tends to be trained, experts told me, is focused on the individual user and the short term. In one-on-one interactions, humans rate the AI’s responses based on what they prefer, and “humans are not immune to flattery,” as Hansen put it. But designing AI around what users find pleasing in a brief interaction ignores the context many people will use it in: an ongoing exchange. Long-term relationships are about more than seeking just momentary pleasure—they require compromise, effort, and, sometimes, telling hard truths. AI also deals with each user in isolation, ignorant of the broader social web that every person is a part of, which makes a friendship with it more individualistic than one with a human who can converse in a group with you and see you interact with others out in the world.</i><p>I also thought this bit was interesting, relative to the way that friendship advice from Reddit and elsewhere has been trending towards self-centeredness (discussed elsewhere in this thread):<p><i>>Friendship is particularly vulnerable to the alienating force of hyper-individualism. It is the most voluntary relationship, held together primarily by choice rather than by blood or law. So as people have withdrawn from relationships in favor of time alone, friendship has taken the biggest hit. The idea of obligation, of sacrificing your own interests for the sake of a relationship, tends to be less common in friendship than it is among family or between romantic partners. The extreme ways in which some people talk about friendship these days imply that you should ask not what you can do for your friendship, but rather what your friendship can do for you. Creators on TikTok sing the praises of “low maintenance friendships.” Popular advice in articles, on social media, or even from therapists suggests that if a friendship isn’t “serving you” anymore, then you should end it. “A lot of people are like I want friends, but I want them on my terms,” William Chopik, who runs the Close Relationships Lab at Michigan State University, told me. “There is this weird selfishness about some ways that people make friends.”</i></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 28 Mar 2026 16:14:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47555916</link><dc:creator>nlawalker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47555916</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47555916</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nlawalker in "Schedule tasks on the web"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Make sure to see channels too, just shared here last week -<p>Push events into a running session with channels: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47448524">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47448524</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 27 Mar 2026 20:48:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47548060</link><dc:creator>nlawalker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47548060</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47548060</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nlawalker in "We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>What's even more interesting is when you consider that A) it doesn't have to be one person taking out a large position, it can be multiple people, over time, and B) the assassin doesn't have to be known or confirmed ahead of time, if someone decides their "reserve price" has been met, all they have to do to receive a payout is place the appropriate bet before performing the act.<p>The end result is a combination of Kickstarter and Doordash for targeted homicide.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 26 Mar 2026 20:51:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47535559</link><dc:creator>nlawalker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47535559</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47535559</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nlawalker in "We haven't seen the worst of what gambling and prediction markets will do"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Ah, you beat me to it. I learned about assassination markets in a previous post about the overall gambling/prediction markets topic a few weeks ago; the concept is so coherent that it has its own Wikipedia page: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 26 Mar 2026 20:14:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47535145</link><dc:creator>nlawalker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47535145</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47535145</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nlawalker in "Newly purchased Vizio TVs now require Walmart accounts to use smart features"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>For a while, Costco had a reputation as the place where you could buy a TV and be confident that it was usable as a "dumb" TV. The rumor (unconfirmed as far as I know) was that, among the customizations that manufacturers would make for retailer-specific models, the Costco ones included firmware tweaks to pull back on requirements for things like mandatory connectivity, account creation and the like.<p>I'm not sure how true any of that is, but in any case Costco still has a reputation as a place where it's easy to return a TV, and they pay attention to the stated reason for return.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 26 Mar 2026 15:57:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47532091</link><dc:creator>nlawalker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47532091</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47532091</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nlawalker in "Chest Fridge (2009)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>If you designed around it, it would fit where existing kitchens have drawers, and the space typically reserved for a vertical fridge would be occupied by shelving. Kind of a neat idea. Microwave drawers are a thing.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 22 Mar 2026 03:20:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47474137</link><dc:creator>nlawalker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47474137</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47474137</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nlawalker in "Our commitment to Windows quality"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Best insight I’ve seen today, thanks for this!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 21 Mar 2026 03:06:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47463618</link><dc:creator>nlawalker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47463618</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47463618</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nlawalker in "Push events into a running session with channels"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It’s going to be fascinating to see what kinds of malicious execution and exfiltration this enables.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 20 Mar 2026 04:12:51 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47450410</link><dc:creator>nlawalker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47450410</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47450410</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nlawalker in "Prompt Injecting Contributing.md"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Is it really <i>prompt injection</i> if you task an agent with doing something that implicitly requires it to follow instructions that it gets from somewhere else, like CONTRIBUTING.md? This is the AI equivalent of curl | bash.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 19 Mar 2026 17:47:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47443169</link><dc:creator>nlawalker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47443169</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47443169</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nlawalker in "What 81,000 people want from AI"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Before AI this style of prose was called "thank you for coming to my TED talk", with a little bit of "LinkedIn broetry". Confident assertions and pat explanations about truths that will make you a better person upon internalization; a pop psychologist convincing you of an unintuitive and surprising new idea about how the universe works that catches you off guard but then <i>turns your perception on its head</i> and revolutionizes the way you see the world. Contemporary marketing speak of a particular "coolly subverting your expectations and injecting the truth straight into your veins" flavor.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 19 Mar 2026 13:57:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47439548</link><dc:creator>nlawalker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47439548</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47439548</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nlawalker in "Rob Pike’s Rules of Programming (1989)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This reminds me of a portion of a talk Jonathan Blow gave[1], where he justifies this from a productivity angle. He explains how his initial implementation for virtually everything in Braid used arrays of records, and only after finding bottlenecks did he make changes, because if he had approached every technical challenge by trying to find the optimal data structure and algorithm he would never have shipped.<p>"There's a third thing [beyond speed and memory] that you might want to optimize for which is much more important than either of these, which is years of your life required per program implementation." This is of course from the perspective of a solo indie game developer, but it's a good and interesting perspective to consider.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjDsP5n2kSM" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjDsP5n2kSM</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 18 Mar 2026 16:20:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47427687</link><dc:creator>nlawalker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47427687</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47427687</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by nlawalker in "US Job Market Visualizer"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Re: kitchen appliance analogies, I stand by my "AI is a dishwasher" analogy.<p>It's annoying that the dishes still have some pooled water in them when the cycle finishes; it doesn't always get everything perfectly clean; I have to know not to put the knives or the wooden stuff or anything fancy in it. But in spite of all of that, I use it every day, it's a huge productivity boost, and I'd hate to be without it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 16 Mar 2026 17:19:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47401912</link><dc:creator>nlawalker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47401912</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47401912</guid></item></channel></rss>