Hacker News: photios

New comment by photios in "Specsmaxxing – On overcoming AI psychosis, and why I write specs in YAML"

photios — Sun, 03 May 2026 07:57:18 +0000

Yesterday I heard about lat.md [1] which seems to have similar ideas about annotating code with spec refs. I now need to try them both.

[1] https://www.lat.md/

New comment by photios in "Specsmaxxing – On overcoming AI psychosis, and why I write specs in YAML"

photios — Sun, 03 May 2026 07:55:21 +0000

Dreaming about ` | nindent 12` in my specs! :D

New comment by photios in "It’s Toasted"

photios — Fri, 01 May 2026 10:03:13 +0000

Somewhat tangential... I "love" how a pack of Luckies cost 10 cents in 1917 and now they are at about $10.

https://wtfhappenedin1971.com

New comment by photios in "The beginning of programming as we'll know it?"

photios — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 05:08:48 +0000

> Someday, I'll lose understanding of the code, because I didn't write it.

I've been wading through vast corporate codebases I never wrote and yet had to understand for the past 20 years. This isn't any different, and AI tools help with that understanding. A lot!

The tools and techniques are out there.

New comment by photios in "Kotlin creator's new language: a formal way to talk to LLMs instead of English"

photios — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 20:05:38 +0000

It's in the Quickstart article here:

https://codespeak.dev/blog/greenfield-project-tutorial-20260...

New comment by photios in "Kotlin creator's new language: a formal way to talk to LLMs instead of English"

photios — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 19:42:08 +0000

> codespeak login

Instant tab close!

New comment by photios in "Working and Communicating with Japanese Engineers"

photios — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 14:59:01 +0000

> The fact they don't really need it in their life (or job). English is definitely necessary if you work service jobs in Tokyo (to deal with tourists), but not much anywhere else.

But the linked article seems to imply the opposite. I mean, working with an English PM sure sounds like the language is one of the job's core competencies.

New comment by photios in "Working and Communicating with Japanese Engineers"

photios — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 13:27:31 +0000

Yeah. I'm not a native English speaker and I spent significant time and effort learning the damn language. It paid off.

What's preventing Japanese engineers from doing the same?

New comment by photios in "Poor Deming never stood a chance"

photios — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 14:53:48 +0000

I envy people that haven't had to deal with the OKR crap in "modern" IT orgs. :D

New comment by photios in "The Agentic AI Handbook: Production-Ready Patterns"

photios — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 17:40:49 +0000

I feel your pain. I used to work for a bank and the security team only approved Copilot use.

OpenCode can use Copilot natively: https://opencode.ai/docs/providers/#github-copilot

I got Claude Code running with Copilot APIs via the LiteLLM proxy, but it was a pain in the butt. Just use OpenCode.

New comment by photios in "The Agentic AI Handbook: Production-Ready Patterns"

photios — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 10:32:05 +0000

Copilot's agent mode is a disaster. Use better tools: try Claude Code or OpenCode (my favorite).

It's a new ecosystem with its own (atrocious!) jargon that you need to learn. The good news is that it's not hard to do so. It's not as complex or revolutionary as everyone makes it look like. Everything boils down to techniques and frameworks of collecting context/prompt before handing it over to the model.

New comment by photios in "Play Aardwolf MUD"

photios — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 08:16:17 +0000

I got back to briefly [1] playing Aardwolf this (2025) summer. It's still VERY good!

[1] ~50 lvls on my paladin char.

New comment by photios in "Show HN: Stop Claude Code from forgetting everything"

photios — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 08:19:26 +0000

Can it run with a local DB? I have zero interest in another monthly subscription pretending to be "an open source tool".

New comment by photios in "The future of software development is software developers"

photios — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 08:15:48 +0000

Ok, let's say the 20 devs claim is false [1]. What if it's 2? I'd still learn and use the tech. Wouldn't you?

[1] I actually think it might be true for certain kinds of jobs.

New comment by photios in "Staying ahead of censors in 2025"

photios — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 07:26:43 +0000

> No mention of EU chat control

> No mention of "age verification"

> No mention of people arrested for Twitter posts in the UK and the EU

What did they mean by this?

New comment by photios in "Maybe the default settings are too high"

photios — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 12:04:07 +0000

I could see value in slowing down or re-reading crafted writing like Tolkien's. I've been doing that with St. Paul's epistles.

There is no value in doing it for modern clickbait or AI slop though.

New comment by photios in "ELF Crimes: Program Interpreter Fun"

photios — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 17:47:56 +0000

OP would probably have a field day with NixOS's patchelf tool:

https://github.com/NixOS/patchelf

New comment by photios in "If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?"

photios — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 08:26:50 +0000

> Tax all the things.

EU in a nutshell.

New comment by photios in "Read Something Wonderful"

photios — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 07:05:58 +0000

Wondering about that too. What are the "wonderfullness" criteria?

For example, the first article I clicked on: https://juliagalef.com/2017/08/23/unpopular-ideas-about-soci...

has some pretty vile stuff:

> Non-offending pedophiles should be more widely accepted by society. It’s unfair to ostracize someone for a desire they were born with, and integrating them into society makes them less likely to cause harm.

New comment by photios in "2002: Last.fm and Audioscrobbler Herald the Social Web"

photios — Sun, 14 Dec 2025 21:49:03 +0000

I'd stopped scrobbling like 10 years ago, but recently got into it again.

My 16yo son discovered Last.fm and scrobblibg and got me to install the Jellyfin scrobbler plugin. And I recovered my old account! I got some boomer music jokes from him, but it was worth it.