<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: pflenker</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pflenker</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Wed, 10 Jun 2026 23:18:05 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=pflenker" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pflenker in "Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>As a parent, what I find effective are content rating systems, be it for movies, games or apps, along with the ability to control and fine-tune them.<p>For example, with Apple's parental controls, I can blanket-decline access to Social Media apps, or to apps recommended for a specific age or older, and I can also allow exceptions as I see it fit (for example, my kids have no access to WhatsApp but they are allowed to use Signal, both have the same age recommendations)<p>This moves the responsibility for age verification to me, the parent, and provides me with suitable tools to monitor this. With this, there is no need for my kid or me to upload sensitive data or go through some bad age verification implementation.<p>Websites are more difficult to control, but not impossible.<p>Long story short - improve tooling for parents that allow more centralized control instead of mandating social media to do the age verification on their end.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 02 Jun 2026 11:58:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48369071</link><dc:creator>pflenker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48369071</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48369071</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pflenker in "Anthropic surpasses OpenAI to become most valuable AI startup"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You confuse ease of using a tool with quality of output. 
A skilled carpenter can work both with high and with medium quality tools and prefer one over the other with no difference visible in the craft they produce.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 30 May 2026 15:35:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48337343</link><dc:creator>pflenker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48337343</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48337343</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pflenker in "The user is visibly frustrated"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>One skill that I still possess and that LLMs haven't been able to replace (yet) is to ask good questions, for example:<p>- Rephrasing the original question to validate my understanding
- Asking "why" a sufficient amount of times until I understand where the other party is coming from
- Asking open questions aimed at generating insights<p>et cetera.<p>Instead, LLMs (often badly) guess what the background of the question may be, answer with that in mind and find it very difficult to let go of what they have made up.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 26 May 2026 08:44:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48276919</link><dc:creator>pflenker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48276919</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48276919</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pflenker in "I Miss Terry Pratchett"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Pratchett introduced the concept of active laziness to me. One of his characters is so lazy that he’s working out frequently because he is too lazy carrying around excess weight all the time.<p>That has stuck with me, and a lot of things I do both in my professional and personal life can be attributed to this: I, too, am very actively lazy.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 23 May 2026 14:09:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48247874</link><dc:creator>pflenker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48247874</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48247874</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pflenker in "Google changes its search box"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The part where data providers lose traffic because their own data is displayed directly on the google premises is what repeats.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 20 May 2026 04:38:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48203162</link><dc:creator>pflenker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48203162</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48203162</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pflenker in "Google changes its search box"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>A couple of years back I worked with a company which maintained specific data which was the main traffic driver on that page. 
Google approached them and wanted to pay for the rights to get the data and display it on top of the search results, a feature which was fairly new back then.<p>This was an interesting dilemma because it was very clear that the money was way less than the loss in ad revenue due to traffic drop, but it was also clear that if we wouldn’t take the deal, a more desperate competitor would, which would result in the same traffic loss but without the extra google money. 
So the company took the deal.<p>History repeats itself here, with the difference that instead of paying for the data, the ai crawlers simply take it for free.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 19 May 2026 19:11:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48197951</link><dc:creator>pflenker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48197951</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48197951</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pflenker in "Don't become an engineering manager"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I had a similar realization today. I work as an EM, and one important aspect of my work is becoming worthless: experience.<p>Having been an IC for a long time usually enables me to support my team, or identify risks, lead projects and so on. However, since I never was an IC in the day and age of AI, I find that this experience is less and less applicable.<p>A significant part of what helps me increase impact of others is that I’ve „been there, done that“ and that’s going away right now.<p>I don’t mind - it’s exciting! 
But if I was an IC right now I would not switch tracks under any circumstances. There is so much more to learn directly in the trenches.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 03 Mar 2026 19:13:12 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47237272</link><dc:creator>pflenker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47237272</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47237272</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pflenker in "No Bookmarks"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>For me, this misses the point of bookmarks - it’s not about remembering where I have been but getting there extremely fast.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 28 Feb 2026 17:39:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47198053</link><dc:creator>pflenker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47198053</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47198053</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pflenker in "Letting Claude play text adventures"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>For a game like anchorhead, which is famous in its niche, shouldn’t Claude already know it sufficiently to just solve it right away? I would expect that its data source  contained multiple discussions and walkthroughs of the game.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 21 Jan 2026 21:23:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46711759</link><dc:creator>pflenker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46711759</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46711759</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pflenker in "25 Years of Wikipedia"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I was close to finishing school when Wikipedia came up. A lot of complaints and concerns about LLMs today echo remarks about Wikipedia back then. Kids won’t learn anything, they will just copy and paste! The information is unreliable, our kids will stop thinking critically or learning how to research!<p>While I don’t mean to equate both, I find the resemblance in this case striking.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 15 Jan 2026 18:45:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46637167</link><dc:creator>pflenker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46637167</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46637167</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pflenker in "Show HN: Website that plays the lottery every second"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>A teacher of mine used to say:<p>Lottery is a tax for people who don’t understand statistics.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 03 Jan 2026 06:21:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46473301</link><dc:creator>pflenker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46473301</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46473301</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pflenker in "Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>When was that? DB has gotten much worse in the past ~5 years</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 29 Dec 2025 14:05:51 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46420875</link><dc:creator>pflenker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46420875</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46420875</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pflenker in "Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>All this costs money for little return of invest. As long as the collateral damage is below a threshold that causes reputational damage, there is no business incentive to solve this.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 13 Dec 2025 10:49:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46253645</link><dc:creator>pflenker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46253645</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46253645</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pflenker in "Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I don’t mean to defend this, but I know from experience that gift cards are frequently used for money laundring. The laws against that are very strict, incentivizing companies to overshoot and block false positives.<p>At the same time, AML solutions tend to be a closely guarded black box which simply tells you to block a customer, finding out why is pretty difficult.<p>To add more to the problem, some anti money Landry solutions are … AI powered.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 13 Dec 2025 09:36:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46253311</link><dc:creator>pflenker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46253311</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46253311</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pflenker in "Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Gift cards are huge in the B2B business as they are used a lot as gifts from companies to employees.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 13 Dec 2025 09:34:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46253300</link><dc:creator>pflenker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46253300</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46253300</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pflenker in "An Homage to 90s –/Public_HTML Hosting"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It’s a well done homage - but no one should believe for one second the actual average page back then looked _that good_!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 26 Nov 2025 20:03:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46061741</link><dc:creator>pflenker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46061741</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46061741</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pflenker in "Pikaday: A friendly guide to front-end date pickers"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Easy. You have data available which tells you about the most likely travel dates, and you set this as the default. Many booking platforms pick a weekend in 2 weeks or something like that. This predefined field changes the task from entering a date to correcting a date, where the prefilled date is likely close to the desired date and thus requires less input/changes than starting from scratch.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 18 Nov 2025 17:48:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45969606</link><dc:creator>pflenker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45969606</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45969606</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pflenker in "Gemini 3"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Since then, it’s been incredible to see how much people love it. AI Overviews now have 2 billion users every month.<p>Come on, you can’t be serious.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 18 Nov 2025 17:23:38 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45969246</link><dc:creator>pflenker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45969246</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45969246</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pflenker in "Pikaday: A friendly guide to front-end date pickers"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The best date picker is the one which doesn’t require picking a date. If done correctly, the browser can auto-fill your birthday, for example. In many other cases it’s possible and makes sense to guess a date and prefill the date field. Phones attempt the same with being biased towards entering the current date or datetime.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 12 Nov 2025 08:17:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45897606</link><dc:creator>pflenker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45897606</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45897606</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by pflenker in "Gmail AI gets more intrusive"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Tangentially related, the AI integrated in Google Chat is hilariously bad. Find a thread which starts with „Bug: (…)“ that has 90+ answers. Hey, an AI could be useful here! Click summarize. Wait. Without fail the result will be along the lines of „X, Y and Z discuss a bug.“</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 07 Nov 2025 18:26:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45849334</link><dc:creator>pflenker</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45849334</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45849334</guid></item></channel></rss>