Hacker News: rand17

New comment by rand17 in "Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration"

rand17 — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 06:49:07 +0000

I do not think that all LLMs are evil; they are valid tools, but it's not a hammer with meta glasses attached to render everything into a nail. I also find it very useful in certain situations - but not in all situations.

Two more things. Bad code (in work, in reality, not in a hobby project) is rarely converted into good code. And the last one: in my twenty plus years of being a dev, this is the first year job offers simply just dried up. With bad code being good enough (hey, it compiles! it mostly works!), hopefully you and I will be the lucky few to still be in the business five years later.

New comment by rand17 in "Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration"

rand17 — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 06:30:19 +0000

So you don't like writing "the boring code". What do you expect from writing a CRUD? What would you like to write? What "interesting problems" would you like to focus on? Great sadness will fall upon the industry when the last graybeard dies, who had this arcane knowledge of "writing code". I have bad Player Piano vibes nowdays.

Around me devs are beginning to warm up to the idea, that they are not coders (and neither should I be), but "prompt engineers". When I take too much time on a task, when I can't solve a problem with a push of a button, when I muse about copilot hallucinations in my PR - someone usually comes helpfully to tell me, I need better prompting skills. Have you tried this expression? Have you tried more context? Have you tried with this copy pasted magical formula?

No creative worker in human history was so overjoyed to devalue his or her work and knowledge in such haste.

New comment by rand17 in "RCE Vulnerability in React and Next.js"

rand17 — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 06:22:52 +0000

You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. The amount of time I've spent debugging other PRs (and mine) around hooks is just unruly, then React turned its attention to the server, something that I (most of us? we?) never ever asked for; but I guess that's what Meta, a company of cancer needs. I sure don't need it. Never have I imagined during the last 15 years that I'll be happy to say I'm using the mountain of enterprise spaghetti called Angular, but now I am. For years I hoped I'll be able to get back to React projects one day; that hope is long gone.

New comment by rand17 in "Show HN: I built the literal Duolingo Killer"

rand17 — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 10:11:40 +0000

This is a description that turns on every red light in my head: "netflix for", "binge watching", "turning into", "keep you hooked", "but smarter" etc. - probably I'm not the target age demographic or maybe this is an American thing? Also, the meaning of literal, here, would be something like having a hamster named Duolingo and you built a gun to kill the animal. That's a literal killer appliance.

New comment by rand17 in "Japan's gamble to turn island of Hokkaido into global chip hub"

rand17 — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 06:56:53 +0000

I respect China (in fact, in this stupid timeline more than the U.S.) but China is already huge. The whole world would be a much better place if China just chilled the fuck out and would just stop harassing border countries (I know, I know, this is true for at least two quarters of planet Earth). Let them have Taiwan if that would make them shut up, but it won't. Tributary system? Allowed to keep? Pressure Japan? How much more do you want and how long will you go back in history to justify your greed for power and territory? China is trying to look nice and they succeed in many places, they are very close to something of a heavenly kingdom in my book, but this behavior always makes me ask which face is real. The power hungry bully, or the wise emperor?

New comment by rand17 in "Windows 11 adds AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders"

rand17 — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 06:22:40 +0000

Probably. Apart from the pun about a certain good looking employee of MI6 and his gadgetry, at this point I'm relatively sure not even Redmond knows how many different products they have called Copilot Something, let alone how to kill them with a single switch, but of course we will see.

New comment by rand17 in "Windows 11 adds AI agent that runs in background with access to personal folders"

rand17 — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 06:59:29 +0000

A secret agent running in the background, with my data stolen from the foreground? How queer! I see the battlegrounds shift from large networks to the personal computer, where malware, hand in hand with AI will steal the virtual crown jewels day after day, slurping and leaking PII data non stop.

AI will be baked in so deep into the Windows eco- and subsystem, that it's a wet dream come true for hackers and nation state adversaries. It's a huge win for everyone selling hacking and security, virtual cops and robbers, black hats and white hats: only the end users and already piss poor facilities will suffer, but they're just collateral damage in a war of numbers and terabytes of leaks.

New comment by rand17 in "Show HN: DroidDock – A sleek macOS app for browsing Android device files via ADB"

rand17 — Sat, 15 Nov 2025 07:07:00 +0000

The general consensus around here is that web and sleek/native will not mix, Swift probably is the way to go if we are talking about modern, appealing MacOS applications, but that may be outside your comfort zone with or without the help of AI tools.

New comment by rand17 in "Unofficial Microsoft Teams client for Linux"

rand17 — Sat, 15 Nov 2025 07:03:15 +0000

Copilot has neither eyes, nor feelings.

New comment by rand17 in "Show HN: DroidDock – A sleek macOS app for browsing Android device files via ADB"

rand17 — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 06:34:36 +0000

I wouldn't dare to call an app with a webview approach (be that tauri or electron), react, typescript and the whole frontend Pandora's box "sleek", but each to his own. I find using the adb bridge for such operation a bit of an overkill, but fortunately I don't own Apple made devices this year so I don't face such problems; maybe drastic times call for drastic measures: Apple's and Google's hatred towards end users is palpable these days. I took a quick look at the source and the naming convention is not "conventional" and the lack of eslint/prettier made me raise my eyebrows (raised it high enough to not want to touch this project with a ten foot pole), just like the 2452 line main App.tsx and the rampant useEffect abuse in it - but again, I'm not the target audience, maybe this is super useful for the poster and aesthetics have always been subjective.

New comment by rand17 in "End of Japanese community"

rand17 — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 06:56:07 +0000

I call this the AI theater. If a company can (still) look good AND decrease dealing with pesky flesh and bone humans, that's not collateral, that's a win. On the surface you act caring, concerned, rendering investors and HR both happy while you decrease "human complexity" - then you are winning the AI game. Mozilla always wanted to join the big boys, but while yearning for their soft power status the yearn bore the fruits of a rotten soul they will also have to embrace. There is no light without shadows and AI's shadows are drawn long and deep.

New comment by rand17 in "Active listening: the Swiss Army Knife of communication"

rand17 — Sat, 01 Nov 2025 07:58:16 +0000

English is not my mother tongue, so all I can say is no, that's not how communication works (of course you can think whatever you want or your neurons conjure up, I can't argue with what you think). Discourse analysis revolves around the dynamics of speaking, speakers and conversations: gender, age, empathy, attention there are lots of factors in play that decide who speaks and how or when the other party or parties can take turn (or whether the turn is given). Taking turns is not a social contract; it's a rule in your head. You're free to decide to punish people for violating rules in your head, but depending on the level of punishment, you may end up in court.

New comment by rand17 in "Counter-Strike's player economy is in a freefall"

rand17 — Sat, 25 Oct 2025 06:15:00 +0000

Yet most computer games employ firearms and the targets are other humans, rarely (but of course not never) you hunt and gather food for survival. Don't get me wrong, I played my fair share of games from the earliest 8bit machines in the eighties to modern day shooters but in my opinion glorification comes unintended and killing is a cheap game mechanic, and has always been: here, in backwater European country, middle of nowhere, we have zero domestic gun violence, maybe even 0.0001% is just too much.

New comment by rand17 in "Counter-Strike's player economy is in a freefall"

rand17 — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 06:19:02 +0000

Wasted is a rather strong word and yes, the whole argument is a slippery slope _but_ I can imagine sports that are less about glorifying deadly violence in a very realistic manner - the loot box and real money part is just the bitter cherry on top.

New comment by rand17 in "Second Chances on YouTube"

rand17 — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 15:02:34 +0000

We may have banned some nazis in the past, but now we're sorry, please come back. The political climate has changed and you are sorely needed. At least until the next election.

New comment by rand17 in "How I bypassed Amazon's Kindle web DRM"

rand17 — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 05:52:20 +0000

Last time (couple of months ago) I could still claw the book back from my physical kindle device and then deDRM it but the whole process changes from year to year and it's always a great frustration for me (it's backup time! oh no). Looked around what alternatives are there, but I don't want to trade one DRM process for another (even if it's easier to do on a Kobo branded device).

Here in Eastern Europe the local ebooks have no DRM (just a "please don't steal this" message or something similar), but my cynical side says we have like 10 contemporary writers and maybe 20 readers, it's not a big business to begin with. Physical books are heavy, hard to store/pack/move and are quite expensive to ship here - I guess I can't have a cake and eat it as well (for cheap, low effort baking at least).

New comment by rand17 in "The elegance of movement in Silksong"

rand17 — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 05:44:38 +0000

It's not an easy decision, putting down a book, a movie or a game halfway through, but my lifetime on this planet is very limited.

New comment by rand17 in "Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors"

rand17 — Sat, 06 Sep 2025 05:36:33 +0000

I wonder how many author will see real money out of this (if any). The techbros prayed to the new king of America with the best currency they had: money - so the king may intervene, like he did many times.

New comment by rand17 in "We regret but have to temporary suspend the shipments to USA"

rand17 — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 20:06:12 +0000

Good. I have removed the USA from my mental map, with its petty little money hungry king. In the meantime China delivers on promises, in time, high quality gadgets, toys and metalworks, with excellent customer service and care.

New comment by rand17 in "XSLT removal will break multiple government and regulatory sites"

rand17 — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 19:46:36 +0000

XML and XSLT: an elegant tool for a more civilized age. Anything that came later was worse: YAML and JSON; while dark forces bastardized XML and silently killed XHTML.

See if you parse an HTML page these days - heck, if you're lucky Anubis girl will let you in and see the javascript trash soup, maybe even taste it.