Hacker News: pmg101

New comment by pmg101 in "90% of US working hours are spent on tasks not covered well by AI benchmarks"

pmg101 — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 14:51:19 +0000

This is the old comfort/friction/happiness dichotomy isn't it.

Each incremental reduction in friction and improvement in comfort feels good. But is the net effect happiness? I think it's anomie, in the limit.

New comment by pmg101 in "My old job feels distant now"

pmg101 — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 08:36:20 +0000

Ok but... You aren't planning to get paid to be a software engineer? Or you are? Surely this is the way in which the futures are entwined, for most of us?

New comment by pmg101 in "90% of US working hours are spent on tasks not covered well by AI benchmarks"

pmg101 — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 06:57:43 +0000

What if what we call "white collar work", for the most part sitting at a desk, interacting with a computer, isn't really the sort of work suitable for human flourishing at all?

When you think about it humans were never really well suited to such a lifestyle. Of course the transition may be bumpy but maybe the end point, of machines doing these machine-like tasks, isn't so bad for us.

What work does suit humans? Anything involving interaction with the world or other humans, perhaps.

New comment by pmg101 in "90% of US working hours are spent on tasks not covered well by AI benchmarks"

pmg101 — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 06:53:40 +0000

Now you do it in your time off instead.

New comment by pmg101 in "Suicide rates highest ever among middle-aged men"

pmg101 — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 20:42:04 +0000

I'm an absolute doofus in the physical realm. No hand eye coordination of any kind. No common sense. No social skills or ability to read and understand humans.

In any other era I would have been a useless drain on society and yet I happened by an incredible stroke of luck to be born at a time when the few skills I do have perfectly aligned with a career niche. It's been a good few decades. Now I just go back to being a useless nobody but at least I have my memories and my investments.

New comment by pmg101 in "ASML's strong orders ease fears AI spending boom is running out of steam"

pmg101 — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 16:45:29 +0000

Does this advice still hold once 99.99% of people are invested in index funds?

New comment by pmg101 in "Were software engineers blue-collar workers all along?"

pmg101 — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 12:29:16 +0000

Maybe that's a reasonable definition of white vs blue collar worker?

If you have enough excess income that you can build wealth in assets/investments until you become financially independent and no longer dependent on selling your labour, you're white collar.

If you don't, so you're condemned to work forever (apart from state support), you're blue collar.

New comment by pmg101 in "Fable Took My Job"

pmg101 — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 13:40:20 +0000

Sitting at a desk and pressing buttons: $1

Knowing which buttons to press: $999

To paraphrase an old meme.

If an LLM now knows which buttons to press... the $1 part of my job is not going to pay my bills

New comment by pmg101 in "AI agents in a stand-up call"

pmg101 — Sun, 11 Oct 2026 06:55:27 +0000

It's great. I remember bemoaning how little things had really changed between 2006 and 2016. Given that in theory software is infinitely malleable I found it depressing how it felt like we were just doing the same things. It's exciting we've finally unblocked progress and are finding amazing new ways to work, although I never would have foreseen this being the way! 2026 sure feels nothing like 2016.

New comment by pmg101 in "No Man Is an Island"

pmg101 — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 06:08:12 +0000

Maybe I don't think it's hard because I have a blind spot. That's possible.

It's also possible that I have no blind spot and it isn't hard though.

New comment by pmg101 in "No Man Is an Island"

pmg101 — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 21:42:23 +0000

What even is product management? Just saying what you'd like? That's like equating the person ordering their meal with the person who will create it.

New comment by pmg101 in "Ask HN: What are you reading?"

pmg101 — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 20:46:59 +0000

Middlemarch, finally!

I'm 50% of the way through and it's good but I don't entirely see the hype. Brontë is more atmospheric, Austen funnier and more incisive, Dickens more immersive. But I've still got a way to go.

New comment by pmg101 in "Sonnet 5.5"

pmg101 — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 10:23:14 +0000

"Sometimes"? I and I think many other people have been doing exactly this for most of 2026, assuming they look at the diff/PR at all and aren't all-in on dark factories.

New comment by pmg101 in "The LLM Job Paradox"

pmg101 — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 07:45:02 +0000

This is why I find the idea of the fully automated software factory a little questionable.

It is only through writing the code that I know what code to write. I do find it a productivity boost to have an LLM do the donkey work for me but I still need to read the code and think about it to know what to do next.

The LLM Job Paradox

pmg101 — Sun, 27 Sep 2026 07:42:19 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.nilesh.io/post/llms-and-jobs

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49864319

Points: 6

# Comments: 2

New comment by pmg101 in "Toyota is taking the Corolla electric"

pmg101 — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 13:29:52 +0000

I personally never wanted "an EV", I just wanted a car that happened to have an electric drivetrain. So Stellantis's choice to present models with a choice of drivetrains suited me perfectly. I'm neither ashamed nor proud to drive electric, it's just a choice I made and it doesn't need to be part of my identity.

New comment by pmg101 in "UK military jamming other nations' satellites to defend itself, BBC told"

pmg101 — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 18:49:36 +0000

Surely one of the great dividends of being at peace is not having to live like you're at war?

New comment by pmg101 in "A graphical desktop for the ZX Spectrum"

pmg101 — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 16:55:31 +0000

I had fun playing around in Claude getting it to write 6502 assembler for the BBC Micro. It is fun to imagine what we could have built on those old machines with these new coding agents! But it is kind of hollow isn't it.

New comment by pmg101 in "How to Write with an LLM"

pmg101 — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 06:58:57 +0000

It's extremely refreshing reading good human prose isn't it! It's like when I would read a newly-written Paul Graham essay 20 years ago.

He also uses rule of three and the phrase "load-bearing", just for fun, which elicited a wry smile from me.

Thanks OP for a pleasant start to my day!

EU announces plan to ban social media for under 13s

pmg101 — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 15:16:24 +0000

Article URL: https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/16/europe/eu-social-media-ban-children-intl

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49728352

Points: 3

# Comments: 0