Hacker News: senshan

New comment by senshan in "AI has already killed academia as we know it?"

senshan — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:57:13 +0000

> Is that an effective way to learn? No.

Sorry, but I must disagree. There is much more to learning process than just the material itself. We are social animals, so the emotional aspect matters to the majority of us. Highly technical fields are not an exception. The attitude of the lecturer and his reaction to the questions from the audience, sidetrack discussions -- it all counts. At least to me and the people I have known.

At the same time, lectures of those with no charisma is a real torture, no doubt about that.

New comment by senshan in "AI has already killed academia as we know it?"

senshan — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:26:48 +0000

On the flip side, the value of new, clever and repeatable experimental results goes up when compared to regurgitated publications.

New comment by senshan in "AI has already killed academia as we know it?"

senshan — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:14:45 +0000

> Lectures have been an incredibly ineffective way to learn forever.

Mainly due to shortage of very good lecturers, no? I can not see a better way to cultivate the professional pride than to attend lectures of truly remarkable professors. The style, the manner, the attitude go much beyond the dry proofs. I'm an applied math major.

New comment by senshan in "Did my old job only exist because of fraud?"

senshan — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 01:16:23 +0000

Is there evidence that no one else would fund Anthropic, Solana, Robinhood and Cursor?

New comment by senshan in "Tesco moving 40k server workloads off VMware amid Broadcom's abusive conduct"

senshan — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 01:00:28 +0000

Interesting -- none of the major VMWare customers had a second/alternative vendor/product? I hope they learnt the lesson.

New comment by senshan in "Bose has released API docs and opened the API for its EoL SoundTouch speakers"

senshan — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 16:34:40 +0000

Please suggest better alternatives

New comment by senshan in "Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design (2011) [pdf]"

senshan — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 19:02:31 +0000

The S/CNN for both trunk and nonloaded subscriber loop circuits shall not be less than 31 dB.

4kHz/2*log2(1+10^(31dB/10)) ~ 60.3kBps

[0] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-7/subtitle-B/chapter-XVII...

New comment by senshan in "OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026"

senshan — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:52:10 +0000

Correction: OpenAI investors do take that risk. Some of the investors (e.g. Microsoft, Nvidia) dampen that risk by making such investment conditioned on boosting the investor's own revenue, a stock buyback of sorts.

New comment by senshan in "OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026"

senshan — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:44:12 +0000

It is the term "mathematically impossible" that caught my attention. Since it is about the future promise of OpenAI, one could debate the likelihood or "statistically improbable", but "mathematically impossible" implies some calculation, proof and certainty. Hence my curiosity.

New comment by senshan in "OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026"

senshan — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:34:23 +0000

Not really. It was not about stocks. It was the collapse of insurance companies at the core of 2008 crisis.

The same can happen now on the side of private credit that gradually offloads its junk to insurance companies (again):

As a result, private credit is on the rise as an investment option to compensate for this slowdown in traditional LBO (Figure 2, panel 2), and PE companies are actively growing the private credit side of their business by influencing the companies they control to help finance these operations. Life insurers are among these companies. For instance, KKR’s acquisition of 60 percent of Global Atlantic (a US life insurer) in 2020 cost KKR approximately $3billion.

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/global-financial-stabili...

New comment by senshan in "OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026"

senshan — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:21:34 +0000

> It's mathematically impossible what OpenAI is promising

Citation is needed

New comment by senshan in "Professional software developers don't vibe, they control"

senshan — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 00:06:32 +0000

Page 2: We define agentic tools or agents as AI tools integrated into an IDE or a terminal that can manipulate the code directly (i.e., excluding web-based chat interfaces)

New comment by senshan in "Professional software developers don't vibe, they control"

senshan — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 23:32:52 +0000

I often tell people that agentic programming tools are the best thing since cscope. The last 6 months I have not used cscope even once after decades of using it nearly daily.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cscope

New comment by senshan in "Professional software developers don't vibe, they control"

senshan — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 23:23:28 +0000

> and our reports are bots.

With no gossip, rivalry or backstabbing. Super polite and patient, which is very inspiring.

We also brutally churning them by "laying off" the previously latest model once the new latest is available.

New comment by senshan in "Professional software developers don't vibe, they control"

senshan — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 22:51:59 +0000

Excellent survey, but one has to be careful when participating in such surveys:

"I’m on disability, but agents let me code again and be more productive than ever (in a 25+ year career). - S22"

Once Social Security Administration learns this, there goes the disability benefit...

New comment by senshan in "America's economy looks set to accelerate"

senshan — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 19:03:58 +0000

Same old, same old:

Economist, Nov 18th 1999: Readjusting the lens (The latest statistics require a new look at America’s productivity puzzle)

https://archive.is/hXJ8A

Economist, Sep 23rd 1999: A new economy for the New World? (Inflation may not be as dead as it seems)

https://archive.is/eHeiU

New comment by senshan in "Software engineers should be a little bit cynical"

senshan — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 04:37:45 +0000

Did you have to hire people? If so, why did you do that? Was it because you had "too much on your plate"? If so, did not hiring a good employee "make your life easier"? Was there another reason for doing that? (honest question)

Indeed, it was assumed that the manager is intelligent (per Carlo Cipolla). One would not take or stay in the job otherwise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_M._Cipolla

New comment by senshan in "Software engineers should be a little bit cynical"

senshan — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 04:34:34 +0000

Not quite. I do not think it was implied. This is why the interview was mentioned and the criterion for quitting.

What is your approach?

New comment by senshan in "Show HN: Stop Claude Code from forgetting everything"

senshan — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 23:12:25 +0000

What is the advantage over summarizing previous sessions for the new one?

Or, over continuing the same session and compacting?

New comment by senshan in "Software engineers should be a little bit cynical"

senshan — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 01:26:38 +0000

I do not understand the dilemma.

The sole reason I am hired for my position as an engineer is that I am expected to make the life of my hiring manager easier. Not to save the world, not to do "the right thing" (whatever this means), but help my manager. During the interview, I had a chance to a get a rough idea what I am going to be responsible for.

If the organization or the mission changes to the extent that it is no longer consistent with my values, I start pinging my former colleagues working elsewhere.

So where is the intrigue?