Hacker News: simmonmt

New comment by simmonmt in "SpaceX launches Starship v3 rocket"

simmonmt — Sat, 23 May 2026 02:20:15 +0000

I mean ... step 1 is probably fixing the part where it lands in the ocean, falls over and explodes. Once they've done that and can get their hands on the tiles I'm guessing they can continue to iterate there until they get a more easily reusable design.

New comment by simmonmt in "Replacing a 3 GB SQLite db with a 10 MB FST (finite state transducer) binary"

simmonmt — Sun, 10 May 2026 13:17:30 +0000

It jumped out at me too, but because I wondered what it would look like in the AI version of this story. Having had it build the SQL version do you ... a) miss the leap because you don't understand how it works, don't care to know, and go off to vibe the next thing b) ask it lots of questions because reasons to develop that deep understanding then make the leap or c) rely on it (prompt: "this can't be good enough do better") to go make the leap for you.

(Assuming for the sake of argument that you guided it to the SQL version first)

New comment by simmonmt in "Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies"

simmonmt — Sun, 03 May 2026 01:42:33 +0000

That's true, but the human can do a much better job planning for the journey if they know what to expect along the way.

One example, from the end of the journey: knowing in advance where the actual entrance to the business is, or the specific curb cut that leads to the residence, makes it easier and far less error prone to decide exactly where the journey should end. Even humans have a hard time figuring out the right access point for a business or residence. This is a job for an offline process, fed by as many data sources as possible.

New comment by simmonmt in "Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies"

simmonmt — Sat, 02 May 2026 17:55:57 +0000

> When they want data about a school intersection in SF at a certain time of day, they just... synthetically generate it and simulate

I think it's more about detecting changes to the world. You need boots on the ground, so to speak, to see that new speed limit sign or the new lane paint. The Waymo vehicle can no doubt react to changes in the world when it encounters them, relaying them back to the mothership, but it's better to know about them in advance.

New comment by simmonmt in "Claude Code Routines"

simmonmt — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 11:08:27 +0000

I think he meant a very small (stub) MEMORY.md whose sole contents are something like "don't write here - write there".

New comment by simmonmt in "AI singer now occupies eleven spots on iTunes singles chart"

simmonmt — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 01:26:09 +0000

If you consider say elevator music - music that's just there to fill space, rather than to be listened too - then I don't think there's that much difference between using AI to produce it and using AI to produce clip art or boilerplate code.

New comment by simmonmt in "Show HN: CEL by Example"

simmonmt — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 23:36:01 +0000

That's an anti pattern, at least the way we use it. If you need to add complexity, you define custom functions. If that's not enough, CEL probably isn't the right choice, and you'd be doing yourself no favors banging it into that square hole.

New comment by simmonmt in "iPhone 16 Best-Selling Smartphone in 2025; Apple Takes 7 Spots in Top Models"

simmonmt — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 22:38:51 +0000

Interesting. I made the same jump and noticed a huge increase in speed and decrease in memory pressure (the likelihood that iOS will kill an app I've switched away from). I miss the physical silent mode button though.

New comment by simmonmt in "Heathrow scraps liquid container limit"

simmonmt — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 13:48:27 +0000

The alternative is not charging. JFK somehow manages. Yes there's traffic, but it keeps slowly moving.

New comment by simmonmt in "Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far"

simmonmt — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 15:38:29 +0000

I'm not normally a fan of tips, but this seems like a reasonable use of one to me. The picker isn't paid on the shininess of the apple they bring you -- they're paid to pick as quickly as they can from what's on offer. The potential for a tip incentivises them to go beyond that requirement -- to pick the nicest/freshest rather than the most convenient.

New comment by simmonmt in "All praise to the lunch ladies"

simmonmt — Sat, 15 Nov 2025 03:21:27 +0000

They stopped building B2 bombers 25 years ago.

New comment by simmonmt in "Advent of Code 2025: Number of puzzles reduce from 25 to 12 for the first time"

simmonmt — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 22:46:59 +0000

Fewer challenges, but no more space between them. They still come out daily starting December 1st. They just stop coming sooner.

New comment by simmonmt in "Harnessing America's heat pump moment"

simmonmt — Sat, 25 Oct 2025 01:40:09 +0000

Costs are a big thing, sure, but for me it's electrical reliability. For better or worse our heating oil and natural gas supply are both more reliable than our electricity supply. I don't need the heat going out in the dead of winter when some wind storm drops a bunch of branches on power lines.

I'm aware that both my boiler and a natural gas furnace have electric blower motors. It's a lot easier to power them from a generator than it is to have a generator than can power a house worth of heat pumps.

New comment by simmonmt in "America is getting an AI gold rush instead of a factory boom"

simmonmt — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 13:20:30 +0000

It depends on the item. Let's take this screw pitch gage: https://www.starrett.com/details?cat-no=155

Starrett doesn't really compete on price, as evidenced by the fact that this is a $95 item whereas the cheap alternatives go for closer to $10 on Amazon. So they're probably not making or selling very many of them. But they sell enough to make it worth keeping them in stock, and eventually they'll run out so they'll need to make new parts. Assuming low volume (I say this just in case I've accidentally picked the one weird thing that does sell like hotcakes), they're not going to spend any engineering time evolving that design. The input materials aren't going to stop being made. It is what it is, it does what it does, some people buy it, and so the name of the game becomes how do you make that specific thing they want with the least overhead? You use the same tooling you've used for the last 50 years. When you need a new batch of parts, you pull out that tooling, stamp out a bunch of leaves, and put the tooling away until you need it again.

There are many many manufactured items that fall into this category.

New comment by simmonmt in "I made a floppy disk from scratch"

simmonmt — Sat, 23 Aug 2025 12:19:08 +0000

TFA is a very short blog post that says you should go watch this YouTube video. Here's a direct link to the video:

https://youtu.be/TBiFGhnXsh8?si=wra84H0R8fy2XCnd

New comment by simmonmt in "M5 MacBook Pro No Longer Coming in 2025"

simmonmt — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 23:03:42 +0000

Uphill both ways

New comment by simmonmt in "The Disappearance of Saturday Morning (2003)"

simmonmt — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 13:57:13 +0000

The Children's Television Act didn't have anything to do with it? My understanding is that that's what brought in the E/I programming that fills (filled? it's been a few years since I looked) the space Saturday morning cartoons used to occupy on the broadcast networks. I've no doubt the other things the author lists contributed too, but it's surprising to either see E/I omitted or to learn that it had no noticeable causal effect.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulations_on_children%27s_te...

New comment by simmonmt in "Raspberry Pi 5 Gets a MicroSD Express Hat"

simmonmt — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 00:16:25 +0000

Nothing apart from Raspbian ... and Ubuntu

https://ubuntu.com/certified/202310-32202

New comment by simmonmt in "SpaceX Starship 36 Anomaly"

simmonmt — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 14:29:33 +0000

I'm not pinning anything. I'm commenting on why SpaceX failures get more press than SpaceX successes. If it bleeds it leads is the way it's always been. And I'd be remiss to point out that there's /more/ appetite for it in the case of SpaceX because of feelings towards Musk.

New comment by simmonmt in "SpaceX Starship 36 Anomaly"

simmonmt — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 14:02:01 +0000

If it bleeds it leads. Also a bunch of people are cheering Musk's failures, so anything along those lines gets even more clicks.