<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: plasticeagle</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=plasticeagle</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Tue, 03 Nov 2026 02:12:25 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=plasticeagle" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by plasticeagle in "A farewell to Arc browser"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>If Arc has AI features then I never saw them. Arc was a superb browser, far superior to any of the others due to the care they took over the UX.<p>There is no AI in it so far as I can tell, and I'm using it right now to type this comment. It's a chromium skin really, of course, but it's great.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 22 Oct 2026 20:40:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50200714</link><dc:creator>plasticeagle</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50200714</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50200714</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by plasticeagle in "Florida's HOAs and condo associations are making the housing crisis worse"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>What points? Does the article make any points? I couldn't find any. For instance, point 1 ends with<p>"A foreclosure suit is not a lost home — most end when the owner, or the owner's lender, pays — but the pressure is the point."<p>Which makes no sense whatsoever. I thought they were making a housing crisis worse by forcing foreclosures, but now apparently "the pressure is the point." The point of what, exactly?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 18 Oct 2026 19:42:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50144628</link><dc:creator>plasticeagle</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50144628</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50144628</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by plasticeagle in "Florida's HOAs and condo associations are making the housing crisis worse"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Sweet f'kin christ that website is unreadable.<p>Maybe HOA's are bad, maybe they're good, but the intellectual laziness required to shit this kind of garbage out onto the internet in place of genuine thought and analysis will fuckin kill us all.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 18 Oct 2026 19:38:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50144593</link><dc:creator>plasticeagle</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50144593</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50144593</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by plasticeagle in "I love software rendering"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Firstly, if you're going to write about something you like, you should write it yourself. LLMs just make your writing worse. There are no exceptions to this rule.<p>Secondly, I love software rendering too. The nicest rendering I ever made was painters-algorithm sorted and shaded by the z-component. It just looked so simple and lovely.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 17 Oct 2026 09:44:12 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50129495</link><dc:creator>plasticeagle</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50129495</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50129495</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by plasticeagle in "You could have invented transformers from memory"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I find some aspects of your writeup to be... quite annoying if I'm honest. The writing is good, but you fail to define several of your terms early on.<p>What is d_k - I assume it's the dimension of the k vector. Similarly, I assume d_v is the dimension of the v vector. What is the "i" suffix for here at this early stage? It doesn't need to be there, it's just confusing.<p>You say the keys are "used for lookup based on similarity". What does this mean? Similarity to what? The existing keys? Something else?<p>Your first example then introduces the identifier "M", which seems to be the number of memories. Again, this is not defined. It speaks again of similarities, and introduces "weights". But the matrix Mxd_k is a matrix made of all your keys, which aren't "weights" - or at least this term is new. The term "tokens" makes an appearance around this time also - something else that needs defining.<p>I think you need to go through the text of this article, with an eye to someone who is reading it for the first time. Define every term you use, remove unnecessary notation - and also perhaps explain at the start why one would be interested in a "memory store" of this nature.<p>There is a place for something that really explains what's going on here. I've yet to find it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 17 Oct 2026 09:36:10 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50129449</link><dc:creator>plasticeagle</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50129449</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50129449</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by plasticeagle in "Call Center Jobs Are Declining, but 14,000 Calls Show Humans Still Outperform AI"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>"so companies are investing early on in the technology."<p>But this doesn't make sense. The AI bots are worse at the job, across all metrics, other than being cheaper. They're not "investing in the technology" in the sense of actual investment. They are just trying to save money. That's it.<p>If they cared about the experience of their customers, they wouldn't touch these things with a barge pole.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 15 Oct 2026 22:52:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50111499</link><dc:creator>plasticeagle</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50111499</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50111499</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by plasticeagle in "Call Center Jobs Are Declining, but 14,000 Calls Show Humans Still Outperform AI"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>AI slop article, of course.<p>It can be summed up thus : AI agents answer the phone slightly more often, but they get hung up on 7 times more often than humans. Overall they make customer service and your business work <i>much</i> worse.<p>It is also a bullshit advertorial for a product; In this case, an AI sales agent. There is (almost) no worse idea in human history than an AI agent trying to sell things to people. Their entire website is AI generated, and is so stuffed full of slop that it's impossible to read.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 15 Oct 2026 22:49:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50111477</link><dc:creator>plasticeagle</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50111477</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50111477</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by plasticeagle in "Tiny Little Office"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>"Encrypted here: the service holds only ciphertext, and only until then. Up to a hundred links a day from one address."<p>Random selection of one of the many, many pieces of text in the user interface for whatever this is. What does that mean? Does that mean anything?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 15 Oct 2026 08:46:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50100979</link><dc:creator>plasticeagle</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50100979</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50100979</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by plasticeagle in "2D Vehicles"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I wrote a 2D car physics engine, using Verlet integration. Unfortunately, I wrote it in ActionScript instead of something sensible.<p>It did work great though.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 11 Oct 2026 09:30:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50041308</link><dc:creator>plasticeagle</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50041308</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50041308</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by plasticeagle in "A map of every lighthouse"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Aside from the incredibly low quality of the data, this jumps out as being vibe coded due to the unbeleviably stupid text.<p>"Rain as a surface; Height is millimetres of rain per day. Nothing else is encoded."<p>Why does AI generated ridiculous sentences like these?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 04 Oct 2026 19:05:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49956830</link><dc:creator>plasticeagle</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49956830</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49956830</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by plasticeagle in "Reverse engineering my e-scooter and rewriting the firmware in Rust"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Very nice article, but I have a question about the rust bloat issues you encounter. Why do the size of the type names grow the size of the binary? Does rust look them up at runtime, and if not, why can they not be stripped like you would in C++?<p>I like how they used the USB C connector for whatever the hell they felt like. USB C is cheap and reliable, so it makes alot of sense.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 13 Sep 2026 20:55:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49688581</link><dc:creator>plasticeagle</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49688581</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49688581</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by plasticeagle in "Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>M1 Pro 2021 16GB RAM<p>Feels as snappy and impressive as the first day I got it. I never need to close apps, or reboot. I record multitrack audio on it without any perceptible latency. I write code on it. It's the best computer I've ever owned by a significant margin.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 25 Aug 2026 20:56:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49440517</link><dc:creator>plasticeagle</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49440517</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49440517</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by plasticeagle in "The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>"Dissonance" is a funny way to spell hypocrisy.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 18 Jul 2026 05:02:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48955372</link><dc:creator>plasticeagle</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48955372</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48955372</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by plasticeagle in "Building a real-time AI tutor for 5-year-olds"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>"I'm torn about this."<p>I'm not. Keep AI the hell away from teaching children.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 10 Jul 2026 11:49:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858652</link><dc:creator>plasticeagle</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858652</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858652</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by plasticeagle in "TypeScript 7"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I love Typescript, I think it's a fascinating language with a great runtime. It's already very fast to execute, but the compile times have been awful. Especially when you start to run production builds with minification and whatnot.<p>So I'm interested on what exactly has been sped up here. I can see compile times have been, but is that it? I suppose the runtime itself was always native code, and already very fast.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 09 Jul 2026 10:56:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48843865</link><dc:creator>plasticeagle</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48843865</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48843865</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by plasticeagle in "Half-Baked Product"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It sounds very slightly AI in some places, but I think this is an example of AI tropes turning up in human writing.<p>Which is a shame, because it makes those constructs less pleasant to read than they used to be. If you squint, and pretend AI doesn't exist (imagine!), then maybe you might be able to enjoy them again.<p>It <i>is</i> a little bit too long though.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 03 Jul 2026 12:58:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48774491</link><dc:creator>plasticeagle</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48774491</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48774491</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by plasticeagle in "The first early human eggs from stem cells"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I suppose that must depend on one's definition of "substantially". Human's haven't changed "substantially", and neither do new breeds of dogs and cats.<p>Besides which, why does it matter that Humans may or may not be fit according to old criteria? Whatever they might have been.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 02 Jul 2026 03:53:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48756352</link><dc:creator>plasticeagle</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48756352</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48756352</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by plasticeagle in "Internal Combustion Engine (2021)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I agree completely, and if you re-read what I wrote I didn't <i>exactly</i> suggest that it was used. But if he's reading this I'd hope he'd nevertheless accept my apology for even the hint of a suggestion.<p>Happy to find someone else who hates that infernal technology as much as I :)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 02 Jul 2026 03:51:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48756332</link><dc:creator>plasticeagle</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48756332</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48756332</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by plasticeagle in "How do wombats poop cubes? (2021)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>"exceptional excrement"
"sharp-sided scat"
"To get to the bottom of the mystery"
"...aptly titled journal Soft Matter."<p>Great to see someone having some fun writing an article.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 01 Jul 2026 23:52:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48754675</link><dc:creator>plasticeagle</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48754675</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48754675</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by plasticeagle in "Weave Robotics launches Isaac 1, a $7,999 home robot with Fall 2026 deliveries"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Slavery is better when you don't have to think about it, I suppose.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 01 Jul 2026 23:42:12 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48754585</link><dc:creator>plasticeagle</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48754585</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48754585</guid></item></channel></rss>