Hacker News: piker

New comment by piker in "The Closing of the Frontier"

piker — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 20:57:27 +0000

Also offers an explanation for their recent move down the stack including silliness like writing Word add-ins.

New comment by piker in "I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack"

piker — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 12:44:27 +0000

Not sure that’s always right either though. For example Mapbox used to use an SQLite database as the disk cache for map tile info. You cannot possibly store that amount of data in memory, so it’s a great use case.

New comment by piker in "I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack"

piker — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 08:57:29 +0000

I love them both too but that might not be the best metric unless you’re planning to run lots of little read queries. If you’re doing CRUD, simulating that workflow may favor Postgres given the transactional read/write work that needs to take place across multiple concurrent connections.

New comment by piker in "Volunteers turn a fan's recordings of 10K concerts into an online treasure trove"

piker — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 19:40:02 +0000

lol! yes, typo. I don't blame her, but man Freud might disagree.

Reading that comment again (which I can't edit now), I would like to make it clear I was just responding to the OP's note that the bad was super tight in that set.

New comment by piker in "Volunteers turn a fan's recordings of 10K concerts into an online treasure trove"

piker — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 13:19:53 +0000

Before then heroine and fame took over Kurt

New comment by piker in "Launch HN: Twill.ai (YC S25) – Delegate to cloud agents, get back PRs"

piker — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 19:37:31 +0000

> 24/7 running coding agents are pretty clearly the direction the industry is going now.

This assertion needs some support for those of us that don't have a macro insight into the industry. Are you seeing this from within FAANG shops? As a solo developer? What? Honest question.

New comment by piker in "Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers"

piker — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 20:10:06 +0000

Yeah, sorry that wasn't intended as a slight to Texas. Texas just does have a lot of barren landscape where datacenters wouldn't offend as much. I modified it to make that clear. Also, energy is playing a role here.

New comment by piker in "Maine is about to become the first state to ban major new data centers"

piker — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 20:06:27 +0000

Such a law illustrates the beauty of federalism. Texas and other states can have them if they want them! Maine has not nearly as much space and much more natural beauty to protect [per square mile], so it can and maybe should have a different set of rules. That's cool.

New comment by piker in "Marc Andreessen is wrong about introspection"

piker — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 17:06:49 +0000

I'm not defending Musk, but "problematic" used in this type of context is one of those words that says more about the speaker than it does the subject.

New comment by piker in "The Claude Code Leak"

piker — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 06:25:49 +0000

> The success of Claude Code and Cursor at the higher end of the market shows that even the people pickiest about their software (developers) will use your software regardless of how good the code is.

Seems wrong. Devs will whine, moan and nitpick about even free software but they can understand failure modes, navigate around bugs and file issues on GitHub. The quality bar is 10-100x amongst non-techno-savvy folks and enterprise users that are paying for your software. They’re far more “picky”.

New comment by piker in "The OpenAI graveyard: All the deals and products that haven't happened"

piker — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 19:55:04 +0000

WOW. That does really drive home the perspective. I was an adolescent during those years and it did seem quick then, but that's an insane pace in retrospect.

Amazon is perhaps a counter-example to your point, though, to be fair. It seems to me they did a lot of spaghetti throwing while making accounting losses for a good number of years. Granted, they did it on OpenAI's dining budget.

New comment by piker in "The OpenAI graveyard: All the deals and products that haven't happened"

piker — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 19:44:38 +0000

People are much more willing to give the benefit of the doubt on things like that when the flagbearers of your industry aren't running around sucking all of the oxygen out of the system and telling people things are "solved": that your product will obsolete them in the next 6-12 months.

We get it. They say that stuff to raise money, make sales and keep the party going. But don't expect too much sympathy when the strategy falters a bit.

New comment by piker in "Claude Code Unpacked : A visual guide"

piker — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 08:56:25 +0000

New comment by piker in "Why the US Navy won't blast the Iranians and 'open' Strait of Hormuz"

piker — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 23:33:28 +0000

No, it wouldn't.

New comment by piker in "Car Seats as Contraception"

piker — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 09:05:42 +0000

It’s this everywhere: the constant fear of not raising children perfectly in every aspect puts downward pressure on a family’s desire (and perceived ability) to have more children.

New comment by piker in "Some uncomfortable truths about AI coding agents"

piker — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 20:57:53 +0000

> More usage compounds the problem only if inference is unprofitable.

No... only if you're charging full boat for that inference. As I said above, loss-leading caps are a in play here. Obviously encouraging people to use more of basically anything that is an all-you-can-eat subscription leads to less profitability. Not sure if we're talking past each other or what.

New comment by piker in "I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era"

piker — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 17:52:57 +0000

> Even professional authors go to an editor who identifies things that need to be fixed.

Yes, and these people are good at it. What’s your point?

If you need grammar checking, there are thousands of apps including word processors, web browsers and even most mobile devices that will check your inputs for grammar and spelling mistakes as you type. All of that without burning down the rainforests or neutering your thesis.

New comment by piker in "I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era"

piker — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 16:57:53 +0000

Well, for one example, it inhibits your desire to improve against those very blind spots. In exchange for that your audience gets 3-4x length normalized bullshit to read instead.

New comment by piker in "I am definitely missing the pre-AI writing era"

piker — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 16:42:20 +0000

AI for editing is garbage. Chat to it to get ideas maybe, but in its current incarnation it’s just going to degrade anything you filter through it.

New comment by piker in "The Cognitive Dark Forest"

piker — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 14:24:04 +0000

Yes, but in this case the aircraft carriers represent the entire civilization and there is no repeat player such as nations in times of peace. So if you spot an alien civilization with even a 1% probability of trying to kill you, you don't really have the opportunity to "wait and see". And there's no meta higher-level arrangement that will protect you.