Hacker News: rboyd

New comment by rboyd in "Ask HN: How to get started with a sustainable bootstrapped business of your own?"

rboyd — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 02:05:55 +0000

buy an existing business and scale it up

New comment by rboyd in "AWS: Inaccurate Estimated Billing Data – $1.7 billion"

rboyd — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 11:50:45 +0000

Ask for some leniency. Let your account rep know about your budget difficulties and ask if you can make good faith payments of a few billion per month until you get back on your feet.

New comment by rboyd in "Adafruit receives demand letter from Fenwick legal counsel on behalf of Flux.ai"

rboyd — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 19:46:07 +0000

also unrelated to a private repo I have in my github named flux

New comment by rboyd in "Roughly a quarter of American professionals hit a wall in their careers"

rboyd — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 15:40:49 +0000

I've found it's always best to calibrate around expecting something like the ice cream sandwich episode of The Office. Never feel too much of a letdown this way.

New comment by rboyd in "They See Your Photos"

rboyd — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 13:50:19 +0000

correctly guessed I was funny

New comment by rboyd in "Why AI Sucks at Front End"

rboyd — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 14:26:09 +0000

double down on betting your career on being a css expert? what could go wrong

New comment by rboyd in "Ask HN: What was it like in the era of BBS before the internet?"

rboyd — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:14:40 +0000

1) I was hooked on day one. Logged on every day, mostly read message boards, paged/chatted with sysops or played door games at first. But very quickly fell down the "hpcva" rabbit hole, which paved the way for the infosec undertones of my career. I'm fuzzy on the program names, seem to remember Telex, Terminate, ToneLoc (a random dialer where you'd scan an entire NPA for interesting carriers).

2) We got a small list of boards from the family friend who helped install our modem, and after you had the first few boards most of the logout screens had a long list of others. There were also lists (by area code) that you could sometimes download from the files section, or some of the grey area ones were traded (usually required NUP/NUV anyway -- new user password/new user voting).

3) Both. Some 20+ node boards were legendary. Some boards were so empty that the sysop would break in after barely giving you time to login because they were so happy to finally see a caller.

4) Drama seemed to matter a lot more. Today it's mostly just drive-by arguing on X or something, and after you exchange unplesantries you move on with your life. On early boards (and into IRC) the communities felt more insular and drama really could divide an entire community and leave lasting marks. Topics were all over the place. Flirting seemed more open, and plenty of fights were just over girls because at the time the female side of tech was extremely unrepresented.

5) How to troubleshoot/fix computers was common. Discussing specific programming languages really bloomed with Usenet and IRC. The t-files on boards that were most interesting to me were about making computers do things they weren't meant to do. Fravia/ORC+ reversing tutorials, or phrack, etc etc.

New comment by rboyd in "Ask HN: How do you deal with obvious AI assistant usage in interviews"

rboyd — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 01:22:38 +0000

they'll just click the "close eyes" filter button soon enough

New comment by rboyd in "Arm AGI CPU"

rboyd — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 18:54:03 +0000

This could work. Right? https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-12744-001

My realtor's last name is House

New comment by rboyd in "Moltbook is the most interesting place on the internet right now"

rboyd — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 17:59:13 +0000

I'm raising for Tinder for AI agents. (DM)

New comment by rboyd in "Comparing AI agents to cybersecurity professionals in real-world pen testing"

rboyd — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 23:33:01 +0000

so how much of a factor is it that safety guardrails may be keeping the current models from achieving higher scores in whatever red teaming benchmarks exist?

New comment by rboyd in "Ask HN: If you only needed 200 customers at$49, how would you approach it?"

rboyd — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 15:15:00 +0000

Would you integrate with existing POS systems or is this a new one? If a new one do you integrate with some existing hardware for card scans?

I saw the POS systems often have developer/partner programs but at this late stage are they granting those partnerships or is this a gatekeeping system?

Do you have to sell the customer on migrating away from their existing system? How do you convince a massage parlor to migrate from Square? A sushi restaurant away from Toast?

Price?

Thanks.

New comment by rboyd in "Tell HN: I am afraid AI will take my job at some point"

rboyd — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 21:52:22 +0000

We have multiple openings for Senior and Principal Scapegoat Engineers. DM for referral.

New comment by rboyd in "Mountain home near Aspen, built for monks, sold to Palantir CEO for $120M"

rboyd — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 18:37:01 +0000

I donno. Seems like a maintenance nightmare made easier only when you got a cenobium living on the grounds.

New comment by rboyd in "Nokia N900 Necromancy"

rboyd — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 03:02:22 +0000

is this the phone Val Kilmer had in the movie The Saint? badass phone

New comment by rboyd in "How do the pros get someone to leave a cult?"

rboyd — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 15:36:58 +0000

wait a minute here..

HN:

- asks you to self-assign a new name upon joining

- has a leader

- has a hierarchy (rating system)

- esteemed texts which promise by adopting a strange method (Lisp) that you can achieve higher levels of wealth and self actualization

should I be worried?

New comment by rboyd in "I Am Mark Zuckerberg"

rboyd — Sun, 09 Nov 2025 17:48:13 +0000

I wonder if Facebook Mark ever receives emails from people needing bankruptcy help. It goes both ways.

New comment by rboyd in "Old timers, what did you read to study Unix or languages by the book?"

rboyd — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 13:43:55 +0000

Surprised no mention yet of The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System

New comment by rboyd in "One weird trick to making Claude Code palatable to use"

rboyd — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 14:09:48 +0000

laughing because 'make it so' is actually a pretty strong continuation prompt

New comment by rboyd in "Tell HN: I underestimated how lonely building solo can be"

rboyd — Sat, 02 Aug 2025 13:41:33 +0000

nice job, man!