Hacker News: sasaf5

New comment by sasaf5 in "YouTube users get option to set their Shorts time limit to zero minutes"

sasaf5 — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 10:08:30 +0000

Open youtube through a browser with uBlock origin, with this line in the filter:

m.youtube.com##.rich-section-content

This blocks the shorts bar. I also block the other algorithmic surfaces and have only the search bar available.

New comment by sasaf5 in "Surprisingly, Emacs on Android is pretty good"

sasaf5 — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 01:49:03 +0000

I have been using Emacs+git on termux on an Android phone for more than 5 years.

I don't even use a third party software-keyboard, I just use termux's special key bar. To set it up, add the following to ~/.termux/termux.properties

  extra-keys = [['TAB','CTRL','ALT','ESC','HOME','END','LEFT','UP','DOWN','RIGHT']]

This has been enough for using org mode in everyday life tasks, and I don't need to keep swapping keyboards.

New comment by sasaf5 in "The force-feeding of AI features on an unwilling public"

sasaf5 — Sun, 06 Jul 2025 09:11:46 +0000

> I’ve seen employees spend days drafting documents that a free tool like Mistral could generate in seconds, leaving them 30-60 minutes to review and refine.

What I have seen is employees spending days asking the model again and again to actually generate the document they need, and then submit it without reviewing it, only for a problem to explode a month later because no one noticed a glaring absurdity in the middle of the AI-polished garbage.

AI is the worst kind of liar: a bullshitter.

New comment by sasaf5 in "Coding agents have crossed a chasm"

sasaf5 — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 00:43:20 +0000

Up to now, my attempts at doing what the author claims to be possible ends up in a broken piece of code that the agent only makes worse when asked to debug, and finally it wont even compile. There seems to be a threshold of difficulty above which the agent will go bug-runaway. I honestly haven't seen this threshold going up. If anything, it seems to be saturating.

New comment by sasaf5 in "Ask HN: How do you store the knowledge gained in a day?"

sasaf5 — Tue, 13 May 2025 23:07:27 +0000

Org mode versioned with git.

Every issue at work becomes an item in this org, and all information relevant to the issue goes there: emails, chats, code snippets, documentation paragraphs, etc...

It's amazing how clearer things become, and how quickly you can get back in action if the issue resurfaces a few years later.

New comment by sasaf5 in "Ask HN: How do you store the knowledge gained in a day?"

sasaf5 — Tue, 13 May 2025 23:01:57 +0000

Maybe this: https://www.supermemo.com/en/blog/twenty-rules-of-formulatin...

New comment by sasaf5 in "My Struggle with Doom Scrolling"

sasaf5 — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 03:59:16 +0000

I don't have this problem. Recommendation algorithms disgust me so much that I end up closing the site/app in anger.

New comment by sasaf5 in "Master the Art of the Product Manager 'No'"

sasaf5 — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 03:52:51 +0000

Yes, until all managers become "idea anti-bodies" and the winner is who can push all work to other teams. The company coasts along while its cash cows live.

New comment by sasaf5 in "GLP-1s like Ozempic are among the most important drug breakthroughs ever"

sasaf5 — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 14:00:55 +0000

I find it philosophical that suddenly everyone wants to take a medicine to stop wanting food. "I want to not want, but I can't help but wanting, so I want a medicine to make me stop wanting..."

New comment by sasaf5 in "Facebook Banned Me for Life Because I Help People Use It Less (2021)"

sasaf5 — Sun, 25 Aug 2024 16:48:39 +0000

> It also told me that it had permanently disabled my Facebook account—an account that I’d had for more than 15 years, and that was my primary way of staying in touch with family and friends around the world.

You don't need Facebook for that. Write down a list of the people you care about and contact them with some frequency, at least on their birthday.

New comment by sasaf5 in "AI copilots are changing how coding is taught"

sasaf5 — Sat, 04 May 2024 01:13:52 +0000

Early 2023, when everyone started using chat GPT for coding, I thought it would be a big boost because it enabled us to quickly employ a large number of people in a project regardless of language or framework.

An year into the project I am forced to revise my opinion. When browsing my code-base I often stumble in abstruse niche solutions for problems that should not have existed. It was clearly the work of someone inexperienced walking through walls in an AI-fuelled coding frenzy.

Having an oracle that knows all answers is useless if you don't know what to ask.

New comment by sasaf5 in "My 25-year engineering career retrospective"

sasaf5 — Sat, 20 Apr 2024 09:53:46 +0000

Also, I have seen several times someone "following their passion" and doing something that was not required by the business. The end result is a huge mess of overcomplicated things that doesn't do what was needed and no one else can fix.

Many times the business just needs a boring old solution for a tedious problem that no one would be passionate about, and it's normal to engage in that kind of grind.

I would change that advice to "do what you are passionate about, among the things that the business needs, and understand that sometimes you just can't do that".

On the other hand I have seen several devs who were just good at quickly tackling whatever was necessary at the moment and became very successful without ever showing a sign of passion for computing. For them it's just a craft and they go do some hobby after that.

Ask HN: Getting recommendation letters for grad school after 10 years in tech

sasaf5 — Tue, 09 Apr 2024 06:20:54 +0000

Most leaders I have worked with are too far in the past or will not be interested in me leaving my current organization. How to get recommendation letters then?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39976621

Points: 4

# Comments: 6

New comment by sasaf5 in "A Surprising Advantage of Vinyl (2011)"

sasaf5 — Sun, 24 Mar 2024 03:32:21 +0000

plus: no logins, no algorithms, no endless random play until end of time, no ads, no tracking, no buggy pairings, no subscriptions, no DRM, no licensing issues.

New comment by sasaf5 in "Show HN: Free Gantt Chart No Sign Up No Log In"

sasaf5 — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 07:11:15 +0000

Ah! Maybe I haven't seen it because I am on mobile... is it available on mobile too?

New comment by sasaf5 in "Show HN: Free Gantt Chart No Sign Up No Log In"

sasaf5 — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 07:42:11 +0000

Nice and simple UX! Any way to add dependencies?

New comment by sasaf5 in "You are never taught how to build quality software"

sasaf5 — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 22:23:57 +0000

+1 for teamwork... I wished there was an established field of study for teamwork in software. If you are impressed with 10x devs, imagine 10x teams!

New comment by sasaf5 in "Goodbye, clean code (2020)"

sasaf5 — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 17:00:44 +0000

The epitome of "no duplication's" failure is CMake. It subsitutes two duplicated build systems with a crudely unified version of both. What before were duplicated lists (tedious to maintain) become an algorithm (difficult to maintain). Add to it the plethora of other build systems and you really have something that has failed its unifying mission.

New comment by sasaf5 in "Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10?"

sasaf5 — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 02:25:41 +0000

All reviwers will complain about products being "plasticky" or "a fingerprint magnet", none of which are an actual issue for users.

New comment by sasaf5 in "My $500M Mars rover mistake"

sasaf5 — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 03:14:37 +0000

I would prefer fewer patients per doctor then. It seems that the problem is due to the limited supply of doctors. In both countries where I lived, supply of doctors was artificially limited by regulation.