<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: phailhaus</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=phailhaus</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sun, 13 Sep 2026 09:15:04 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=phailhaus" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by phailhaus in "Bodily Oddities"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is delightful! What a nice and wholesome resource.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:30:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49652012</link><dc:creator>phailhaus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49652012</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49652012</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by phailhaus in "Agents still can't automate Excel"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The story is that the writer is Orcaset, which is trying to sell you their own analysis tools.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 31 Aug 2026 17:00:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49512028</link><dc:creator>phailhaus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49512028</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49512028</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by phailhaus in "Ask HN: GitHub employees what's going on? Why?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>And yet, the React/SSR infra has never gone down.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 19 Aug 2026 19:26:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49366069</link><dc:creator>phailhaus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49366069</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49366069</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by phailhaus in "Chain-of-Thought Reasoning in the Wild Is Not Always Faithful (2025)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>No they don't, human intelligence has the ability to form an internal model of itself, which allows it to "notice" its own mistakes and change.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 19 Aug 2026 17:33:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49364571</link><dc:creator>phailhaus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49364571</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49364571</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by phailhaus in "Norway should buy OpenAI"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>We used to think that if a computer could play chess, it would be intelligent. Maybe back then they were also people saying "stop trying to draw lines, just admit it's intelligent!!" Good thing we didn't listen to them.<p>The act of distinguishing between human intelligence and LLMs is what allows us to figure out how to make it better. There are still some deep limitations, and to ignore them is a mistake. That doesn't take away from how crazy good they are.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 18 Aug 2026 22:39:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49353813</link><dc:creator>phailhaus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49353813</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49353813</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by phailhaus in "How I use LLMs to learn complex topics"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yeah that's the problem. Imagine trying to learn calculus as a top-down isometric 2D animated simulation. It doesn't make sense for the topic.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 10 Aug 2026 14:50:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49244467</link><dc:creator>phailhaus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49244467</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49244467</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by phailhaus in "How I use LLMs to learn complex topics"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The fact the author thinks every topic can be fit onto a rollercoaster tycoon-style analogy leads me to think they do not actually understand these topics very well.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 10 Aug 2026 13:34:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49243449</link><dc:creator>phailhaus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49243449</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49243449</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by phailhaus in "TSON – A JSON superset with immutable, hash-pinned schemas"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That's because you're trying to snarkily jump into a conversation you don't understand.<p>User `flanked-evergl` is asking why do you need a whole new format for this instead of just using json. And the answer is because everyone needs to agree on how to specify the format in the json, which `crote` suggests is as simple as doing `{"schema": ..., "data": ...}`.<p>There's your format. If you want everyone to agree on the `{"schema": ..., "data": ...}` pattern, you can no longer accept just `[]` as a return type. Every response has to include the `schema` and `data` keys.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 07 Aug 2026 14:28:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49210979</link><dc:creator>phailhaus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49210979</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49210979</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by phailhaus in "How to think about software quality (2022)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> So your argument is that no solution could satisfy your new requirement<p>No, read my comment again. They <i>could</i> do it but it would absolutely destroy the responsiveness of the app.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 06 Aug 2026 18:34:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49200526</link><dc:creator>phailhaus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49200526</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49200526</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by phailhaus in "TSON – A JSON superset with immutable, hash-pinned schemas"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Are you serious? Do you honestly think that I am talking about a schema for passing empty lists around?<p>If you are passing around lists of structured objects, I need you to send me what those objects are supposed to look like even if the list is empty sometimes. If you say "ok so sometimes I'll give you an object with a schema key and a list of data, other times I will just give you an empty list because I don't feel like it", everyone will hate you.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 06 Aug 2026 18:14:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49200299</link><dc:creator>phailhaus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49200299</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49200299</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by phailhaus in "TSON – A JSON superset with immutable, hash-pinned schemas"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>And there you go, just `[]` is no longer valid, so you need a new format.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 05 Aug 2026 14:55:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49183871</link><dc:creator>phailhaus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49183871</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49183871</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by phailhaus in "How to think about software quality (2022)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>My new requirement is NOT physically impossible. I did not mean "immediately" as in "zero milliseconds", it meant strong read-after-write consistency. It makes facebook so slow and unscalable as to be unusable. Facebook deliberately decided that stale reads are worth it for responsiveness and scale.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 30 Jul 2026 14:37:24 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49110663</link><dc:creator>phailhaus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49110663</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49110663</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by phailhaus in "How to think about software quality (2022)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Completely untrue. Every design can be destroyed by a single poorly-thought out requirement. I can take down Facebook's design just by saying "any edit must immediately be visible to all users".</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 29 Jul 2026 21:56:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49103606</link><dc:creator>phailhaus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49103606</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49103606</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by phailhaus in "OpenAI and Anthropic unite against open-weight AI risks to their bottom line"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>"Quick scan"? It's a few paragraphs. You can't read a few paragraphs? What's the point of replying when you don't even know what you're replying to?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:19:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49022067</link><dc:creator>phailhaus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49022067</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49022067</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by phailhaus in "Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Your theory is that he found "very dark stuff" that is accessible to any MIT student? Schwartz didn't "hack" anything, he connected to their student network and downloaded articles that they had access to but the public didn't.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 22 Jul 2026 14:46:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49007677</link><dc:creator>phailhaus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49007677</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49007677</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by phailhaus in "Jelly UI: Soft-body physics for native HTML form controls"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Nobody expects the scroll behavior to be different on a webpage, so it's always a surprise when a page does something like this. Then, you have to learn to adapt to how <i>it</i> expects <i>you</i> to scroll so that you don't screw up its animations or overshoot.<p>It's the kind of UI that works if you scroll a specific way. A lot of people probably do. But if you don't, it's all very tedious. I consider that to be poor design.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 20 Jul 2026 20:03:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48984165</link><dc:creator>phailhaus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48984165</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48984165</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by phailhaus in "98% isn't much"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Look at the HN comments and you'll see many saying they don't get the point</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 07 Jul 2026 19:16:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48822333</link><dc:creator>phailhaus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48822333</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48822333</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by phailhaus in "98% isn't much"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The broader point is that percentages can be misleading, and are often because of that. It makes things sound better. But usually, the more accurate thing to do is use odds-notation ("1 in 50" instead of 98%). Percentages have a kind of singularity at the edges, where small numerical changes have massive real effects. Going from a success rate of 98% to 99% doesn't sound like much, but that's failing 1 in 50 vs 1 in 100. You've <i>doubled</i> the efficacy.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 07 Jul 2026 13:53:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48817886</link><dc:creator>phailhaus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48817886</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48817886</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by phailhaus in "You shouldn't copy-paste errors into Claude Code"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>There is simple correctness but there are also second order effects to consider. How does this particular implementation allow you to grow, and in which directions? What does it prevent? If you don't already have an opinion about this, then the LLM is going to do <i>something</i> and you're going to have to live with it, because it has no idea that it is "making a decision". And now, neither do you!<p>This is why LLMs do their best work at "leaf nodes", building on existing infrastructure but not designing new patterns on their own.<p>LLMs can't introspect, reason, or build internal models of the world. You can get very far without that, but there are some subtle ways it will bite you, and it's a <i>fundamental</i> limitation. Hallucinations are one: they are the feature, not a bug.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 29 Jun 2026 23:36:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48726725</link><dc:creator>phailhaus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48726725</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48726725</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by phailhaus in "Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is why I get worried about the hatred for income taxes. No, you <i>want</i> the government to want you to be richer. If all they raised was property taxes, then they don't care if you get priced out of your home, as long as someone's buying.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 16 Jun 2026 14:21:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48555772</link><dc:creator>phailhaus</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48555772</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48555772</guid></item></channel></rss>