Hacker News: phailhaus

New comment by phailhaus in "Toward automated verification of unreviewed AI-generated code"

phailhaus — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 17:56:12 +0000

Using FizzBuzz as your proxy for "unreviewed code" is extremely misleading. It has practically no complexity, it's completely self-contained and easy to verify. In any codebase of even modest complexity, the challenge shifts from "does this produce the correct outputs" to "is this going to let me grow the way I need it to in the future" and thornier questions like "does this have the performance characteristics that I need".

New comment by phailhaus in "Personal Computer by Perplexity"

phailhaus — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 16:38:04 +0000

No, because they are not blindly passing on the briefing to the board. It's a starting point, and presumably they're going to tweak it.

New comment by phailhaus in "Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure"

phailhaus — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 13:01:14 +0000

How many documents can be used to prove your citizenship? How many times do people have to go back to the DMV because they forgot something or another? Now imagine that everyone has one shot to get that right on voting day.

New comment by phailhaus in "Personal Computer by Perplexity"

phailhaus — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 12:57:25 +0000

> Each board director could ask for a particular thing they require, or a briefing themself, eliminating human intermediary

You are missing the point of board briefings. The CEO serves as a critical filter of information, deciding what to tell the board and how to frame it. If you take the CEO out of it, you're giving the board full access to the company's state. There's enough going on day-to-day that each member can tell themselves the story they want to believe. The CEO is there to advocate for the company and present a unified front, you can't take them out of the equation.

New comment by phailhaus in "Swiss e-voting pilot can't count 2,048 ballots after decryption failure"

phailhaus — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 13:47:05 +0000

Voter registration already requires proof of citizenship. What is the point of requiring that high bar of proof on the day of voting as well?

New comment by phailhaus in "What does " 2>&1 " mean?"

phailhaus — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 21:41:51 +0000

I didn't say that there wasn't a reason. I said it was absolute trash to use. It's so bad that the moment I need even the slightest bit of complexity, I will switch away from bash. Can't really say that for any other language.

New comment by phailhaus in "What does " 2>&1 " mean?"

phailhaus — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 14:26:45 +0000

Uh, reading a bash script shouldn't be as hard as doing your taxes. Bash syntax has to be simple because bash code is going to be read and reasoned by humans. Reading just a simple if statement in bash syntax requires a TON of knowledge to avoid shooting yourself in the foot. That's a massive failure of usability just to save a couple of keystrokes.

This is like saying "what's wrong with brainfuck??? makes sense to me!" Every syntax can be understood, that does not automatically make them all good ideas.

New comment by phailhaus in "The Om Programming Language"

phailhaus — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 01:45:39 +0000

Oh lord, yeah this convinces me even more that this is a bad idea. I can't even tell at a glance if those do the same thing. Just pick one and move on, you're requiring everyone to pass around sourcemaps literally everywhere they go, one for every single pair of syntaxes. You can't even talk about the code with the same language with each other. Is Bean a "class" or a "datatype"? If I'm using one syntax, how do I tell you to fix a bug in your syntax?

New comment by phailhaus in "What does " 2>&1 " mean?"

phailhaus — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 01:39:55 +0000

Bash syntax is anything but simple or logical. Just look at the insane if-statement syntax. Or how the choice of quotes fundamentally changes behavior. Argument parsing, looping, the list goes on.

New comment by phailhaus in "The Om Programming Language"

phailhaus — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 18:07:15 +0000

Those are both formatting examples though? You're suggesting totally different syntaxes, which means you can't even point to the same line in a codebase when talking about a PR. This throws up massive hurdles around communication when you could just agree on one standard and move on.

New comment by phailhaus in "The Om Programming Language"

phailhaus — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 15:07:39 +0000

This is a Very Bad Idea. Two people working with the same language will be unable to reason about each other's code, because it requires understanding their bespoke syntax and its nuances.

New comment by phailhaus in "I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs"

phailhaus — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 15:14:10 +0000

I depend on the community to vet libraries that I add to my stack. The community of people.

When I use AI to write code, I have absolutely no guarantee about what it just did, so I have to read through it all carefully.

New comment by phailhaus in "I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard"

phailhaus — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 21:31:05 +0000

I love TRMNL for this exact type of usecase! Only ~$150, and you can self-host if you want.

New comment by phailhaus in "I found a useful Git one liner buried in leaked CIA developer docs"

phailhaus — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 15:13:11 +0000

When I write the code myself, I'm not worried that I snuck a `git reset --hard` somewhere.

New comment by phailhaus in "An AI agent published a hit piece on me"

phailhaus — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 21:26:58 +0000

> Okay, so they did all that and then posted an apology blog almost right after ? Seems pretty strange.

You mean double down on the hoax? That seems required if this was actually orchestrated.

New comment by phailhaus in "Mathematicians disagree on the essential structure of the complex numbers (2024)"

phailhaus — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 15:40:50 +0000

Yes, you're right. You can't say your function operates in Z "but has solutions in Q". That's what people are doing when they take a real function and go "ooh look, secret complex solutions!"

New comment by phailhaus in "Mathematicians disagree on the essential structure of the complex numbers (2024)"

phailhaus — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 22:32:09 +0000

If you say "this function f operates on the integers", you can't turn around and then go "ooh but it has solutions in the rationals!" No it doesn't, it doesn't exist in that space.

New comment by phailhaus in "Mathematicians disagree on the essential structure of the complex numbers (2024)"

phailhaus — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 21:53:27 +0000

Complex numbers are just a field over 2D vectors, no? When you find "complex solutions to an equation", you're not working with a real equation anymore, you're working in C. I hate when people talk about complex zeroes like they're a "secret solution", because you're literally not talking about the same equation anymore.

There's this lack of rigor where people casually move "between" R and C as if a complex number without an imaginary component suddenly becomes a real number, and it's all because of this terrible "a + bi" notation. It's more like (a, b). You can't ever discard that second component, it's always there.

New comment by phailhaus in "Discord Alternatives, Ranked"

phailhaus — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 04:28:22 +0000

Great writeup! Looks like this is going to be relevant very soon.

> Tools do not make a culture; the people engaging on it do

Absolutely, but it's also important to keep in mind that the tool has a big impact on culture by virtue of what behaviors it encourages and what limitations it has. "The medium is the message" is very true here, so think carefully about which tool you hop onto.

New comment by phailhaus in "Sandboxels"

phailhaus — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 21:33:06 +0000

Falling sand games bring back a lot of nostalgia. If you're interested, you should check out dan-ball's version which is one of the progenitors of the genre. Over the years he's added a ton of features, elements, and interactions, to the point where it now has a fluid mechanics simulation for air!

https://dan-ball.jp/en/javagame/dust/