Hacker News: romanhn

New comment by romanhn in "Show HN: Permanym – for hiring teams overwhelmed by AI resume spam"

romanhn — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 15:06:10 +0000

To answer a couple of questions that are likely to pop up:

Is there an ATS integration?

Not at the moment, but once value is proven, ATS integration is for sure the first natural step. In the meantime, adding this to an existing job listing couldn't be easier. Simply include the verification link in your application instructions to get started. Then look up applicants by email to see whether they've been verified. This does mean that filtering spam is the primary benefit today, but a proper ATS hookup can help stop it at the source in the future.

What’s your stance on data privacy/security?

Liveness data is only visible to the hiring company, with time-limited access. The data is stored on AWS using managed services, with all sorts of best practices (that I can get into if needed). I've done technical due diligence for work the last few years, so very familiar with what good and bad look like re: data and privacy.

Show HN: Permanym – for hiring teams overwhelmed by AI resume spam

romanhn — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 15:05:55 +0000

Employers are facing a growing wave of automated AI submissions, fake applications, and low-effort spam. It’s not unusual for recruiters and hiring managers to receive thousands of resumes within hours of posting a job. Qualified candidates can easily get drowned out by all the noise.

Permanym brings just enough friction to the application process to make automated abuse impractical, without getting too much in the way of legitimate applicants. As a former hiring manager, the idea of adding friction to hiring, rather than removing it, goes against every fiber of my being, but the current situation is simply unsustainable and erodes trust across the board.

The core idea is to ensure there is a human behind the keyboard during application submission, primarily via a video liveness check. This verification can be completed in under 30 seconds, from start to finish. You can experience it here: https://permanym.com/verify/jJAiul58nF7kJ5FS/. If you use any @example.com email address, it will take you straight to the liveness check demo, skipping email verification.

Any and all feedback is sincerely appreciated!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49085054

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by romanhn in "Ask HN: Share Your Eccentric Hobby"

romanhn — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 05:14:04 +0000

Here's a recent similar thread that got a lot of traction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47654062. I posted about my hobby of banknote collection on there, so won't repeat here.

New comment by romanhn in "Show HN: AI resume spam ruined hiring so I built a tool to keep the bots out"

romanhn — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 18:11:42 +0000

Looks like the verification link above is not sufficiently open for testing, and the email address box was pushing people away - that's fair! Now you can use any @example.com email address and it will take you straight to the liveness check, skipping email verification for demo purposes.

Show HN: AI resume spam ruined hiring so I built a tool to keep the bots out

romanhn — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 15:48:47 +0000

Permanym introduces just enough friction into the application process to make automated abuse impractical, without getting too much in the way of legitimate applicants. As a former hiring manager, the idea of adding friction to hiring, rather than removing it, goes against every fiber of my being, but the current situation is simply unsustainable and erodes trust across the board.

No ATS integration is required. Simply include the verification link in your application instructions to get started. Then look up applicants by email to see whether they've been verified. Filtering spam is the primary benefit today, but a proper ATS hookup can help stop it at the source in the future. Liveness data is only visible to the hiring company, with time-limited access.

I think there are many opportunities for deeper ATS integrations and additional signals, but I wanted to start by solving the most immediate problem: verifying that every application comes from a real person. The end goal is to help both sides of the hiring process by taking bad actors out of the equation. If this goal resonates, let’s talk!

In the meantime, any and all feedback is sincerely appreciated.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49008695

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

California to impose sales and use tax on digital products including SaaS

romanhn — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 17:40:59 +0000

Article URL: https://www.pwc.com/us/en/services/tax/library/california-imposes-sales-and-use-tax-on-digital-products-and-saas.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48982122

Points: 6

# Comments: 0

New comment by romanhn in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)"

romanhn — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 07:08:01 +0000

AI resume spam has absolutely ruined hiring. I've seen countless stories of hiring managers complaining about receiving thousands of resumes within an hour of opening up a new job listing. Likewise, good qualified candidates are getting drowned out by loads of customized junk. I'm building a tool for the recruiters and hiring teams to combat this and bring some sanity back to the already challenging process. The general idea is to introduce a small bit of friction that will hopefully be not-too-impacting for legit applicants while stopping bots from proceeding.

First iteration is ready to fly, just working out the infrastructure at the moment. Hoping to drop this on Show HN soon. If anyone is interested in test driving this prior to launch, I've temporarily added my email to my profile.

New comment by romanhn in "GPT-5.6"

romanhn — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 05:50:38 +0000

The banked resets have been a game changer for me. I've been sticking to 5.4 medium mostly because 5.5 seemed to eat into my quota significantly faster. The reset bank gave me confidence to seriously start using 5.5 high. Lo and behold, I have yet to actually need a reset, but I'm now less likely to explore non-OpenAI models since there's an escape hatch with new models in case a coding session gets a bit crazy.

New comment by romanhn in "Venetian Bridge Brawls in 17th and 18th Century Art"

romanhn — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 18:50:29 +0000

I don't think we can conclusively say anything like that. Sure, a bunch of modern art is... odd, but that's more to do with the world generally being more ok with experimentation, and there's plenty of more classical work happening around the globe, even if it doesn't get the same recognition as various "clickbait", if you will. For instance, the bronze work of Luo Li Rong channels the art of the past pretty well, I'd say. https://mymodernmet.com/realistic-sculptures-luo-li-rong/

New comment by romanhn in "Napster is now "AI agents you can see, talk to, and create with.""

romanhn — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 17:26:13 +0000

The only thing not AI-generated on their website, as far as I can tell, is the original Napster logo.

Napster is now "AI agents you can see, talk to, and create with."

romanhn — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 17:26:13 +0000

Article URL: https://www.napster.com

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48700041

Points: 3

# Comments: 2

New comment by romanhn in "A human postmortem of the 1996 AOL outage"

romanhn — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 23:40:53 +0000

I was definitely listening to RealAudio radio stations over a 14.4 connection.

New comment by romanhn in "Ask HN: Conflicted about founding engineer role"

romanhn — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 22:52:04 +0000

You'd be taking on a founder's risk without a founder's title. If this was an offer to come in as a CTO co-founder in an equal, or close to it, partnership, that would be worth a consideration at least (though I'll be honest, at 2.5 YOE at big tech, you're not exactly the ideal candidate for that role). Given the actual offer, it's mostly downsides as far as I see it.

New comment by romanhn in "Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff"

romanhn — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 17:07:42 +0000

Same experience calling a dental office recently. The voice on the other side introduced itself by name and had this uncanny valley quality where I wasn't quite 100% sure it was a bot and felt weird asking it outright. Made for an awkward conversation. Once it became clear that I was, in fact, talking to AI, I quickly wrapped it up but came away feeling quite negative about the experience. It's not even that it gave bad responses, but pretending to be a human is a step too far.

New comment by romanhn in "'Wow, it really worked ': 70s TV show causing worldwide panic today"

romanhn — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 16:09:38 +0000

Yup, I remember getting the updates from Slashdot while Yahoo was completely unusable due to overwhelming traffic.

New comment by romanhn in "Old'aVista – The most powerful guide to the old Internet"

romanhn — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 14:55:41 +0000

Absolutely. Yahoo started out as directories, long before it added a search engine. They were a much better way to discover new corners of the internet (sorta like looking at a list of subreddits today). Web rings was another one. Internet was new, so it was always fun to surprise yourself with something different. Search engines were crap and would normally be used to look for something specific rather than discovery, which I guess hasn't changed.

New comment by romanhn in "Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left"

romanhn — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 20:32:22 +0000

Promotion culture at work, aka if I ship a feature and no one is using it, did I even drive measurable impact? Mix that with a healthy dose of fear for one's job with senior management pushing for "AI or bust" and you get these outcomes. Today it's AI non-features crowding out useful functionality, yesterday it was Google+, before it was Google Buzz, etc etc. This too shall pass (unless it truly is different this time).

Waymo suspends all freeway rides over safety issues

romanhn — Tue, 26 May 2026 02:57:02 +0000

Article URL: https://sfstandard.com/2026/05/21/waymo-suspends-all-freeway-rides-safety-issues/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48274472

Points: 35

# Comments: 8

New comment by romanhn in "Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy"

romanhn — Thu, 21 May 2026 01:43:25 +0000

> the fragment contains lines from Book 2’s epic “catalogue of ships,” which lists all the vessels the Achaean army sends off to Troy

It's been about 30 years since I've read The Iliad, but I remember that chapter as the worst part of the book. Just pages upon pages of names and where they came from. I wonder what significance it held for the buried individual to have been specifically included so.

New comment by romanhn in "An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry"

romanhn — Wed, 20 May 2026 20:32:46 +0000

I'm not sure what the point of this exercise is. My prompt to ChatGPT: "Create a new English word with a reasonably sounding definition. That word must not come up in a Google search." Two attempts did come up in a search, the third was "Thaleniq (noun)". Definition: The brief feeling that a conversation has permanently changed your opinion of someone, even if nothing dramatic was said. Nothing in Google. There, a new word, not sure it proves or disproves anything. Or is it time to move the goal posts?