<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: smeej</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=smeej</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Sun, 14 Jun 2026 22:36:55 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=smeej" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smeej in "How to earn a billion dollars"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Have you ever listened to a congressional hearing? Or spoken to an "average reader"?<p>Most <i>absolutely</i> glaze over at the idea of calculating the "log base" of anything. <i>If</i> they ever got that far in math class, they <i>certainly</i> have not used the concept since then and cannot remember what it means or how it works. They <i>might</i> remember exponents, but the compounding of them is absolutely lost on the overwhelming majority of people.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 14 Jun 2026 12:17:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48526484</link><dc:creator>smeej</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48526484</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48526484</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smeej in "AI coding at home without going broke"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Honestly, having spent a huge chunk of my career in customer support, 80%+ of the tickets could  be solved with a script and not need an AI. Just about every company has a catalog of macros for answering support tickets and once you have a good set, 80% of people just need you to send them a link to the support article where you actually already answered their question in great detail, if they'd bothered to look for it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 14 Jun 2026 04:56:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48524316</link><dc:creator>smeej</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48524316</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48524316</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smeej in "AI coding at home without going broke"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The solution in the article is, "Pay for a max plan and then buy the extra tokens you need by API." How is that noteworthy? Isn't that exactly what Anthropic and OpenAI recommend?<p>I feel like I <i>must</i> be missing something.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 14 Jun 2026 04:54:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48524300</link><dc:creator>smeej</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48524300</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48524300</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smeej in "Ear Training Practice"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Just testing out practice mode, I found what I really wanted was to be able to <i>stay</i> at a certain level until <i>I</i> felt I was getting good at sequences of that length, not immediately get pushed to the next level every time even when it took me 8 tries to get the 4-note sequence right. Give me a chance to feel like I'm improving! Don't just keep giving me harder things when I keep struggling with the existing ones.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2026 19:32:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48495320</link><dc:creator>smeej</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48495320</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48495320</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smeej in "Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I've been a longtime user of Logseq, and thankfully both it and its plugins are open source. I've just been having a lot of fun tweaking plugins I use a lot to have the additional features I've always wished they had. It's so easy to clone the repo and just say, "Claude, make this do X as well."</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 09 Jun 2026 19:20:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48466253</link><dc:creator>smeej</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48466253</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48466253</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smeej in "Home alone: Remote work, isolation, and mental health"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This seems like such a classic example of mixing up correlation and causation.<p>Who's more likely to choose a job that can be done from home? People who already have reasons they'd rather not go out and spend their entire day around other people. How do you control for all those reasons?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 06 Jun 2026 23:40:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48430235</link><dc:creator>smeej</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48430235</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48430235</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smeej in "Stop Advertising in Your Commits"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>And there is <i>something</i> useful about being able to trace the ballistics back to find out which gun was responsible for the shot, as a key to who was wielding it and is ultimately responsible for its use.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 26 May 2026 20:11:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48285329</link><dc:creator>smeej</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48285329</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48285329</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smeej in "Stop Advertising in Your Commits"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Your caring about the entity cited doesn't actually change the nature of the citation. Your saying "Co-authored by Copilot" does the same thing--gives Copilot possible exposure and definite credit--even if it doesn't need it and you don't care about it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 26 May 2026 20:09:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48285313</link><dc:creator>smeej</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48285313</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48285313</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smeej in "Anthropic Cofounder Chris Olah's Remarks on Pope Leo XIV's "Magnifica Humanitas""]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's an interesting context, too, because Catholics have an idea of "person" that is actually <i>broader</i> than "human," not narrower, and it doesn't require a physical body. Angels, for example, are considered persons, though by nature they do not have bodies.<p>In other words, the idea of a non-human, disembodied intelligent person is at least a category that exists for Catholics. And humans "co-creating" other persons with God is downright commonplace (in the Catholic view, that's how all humans come to be).<p>Whether humans could ever co-create a non-human, disembodied intelligent person with God (i.e., whether God would ever choose to do His absolutely necessary part in it) remains to be seen, but there's at least the theoretical framework to hold the question.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 26 May 2026 02:57:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48274475</link><dc:creator>smeej</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48274475</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48274475</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smeej in "Anthropic Cofounder Chris Olah's Remarks on Pope Leo XIV's "Magnifica Humanitas""]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's not really impotent when he's referring to a very specific person who's the head of a religion with 1.3 billion adherents, is it? What is this but a moment when a person on the inside and a person on the outside of the incentives Olah mentions are coming together to talk about the same thing?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 26 May 2026 02:52:12 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48274436</link><dc:creator>smeej</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48274436</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48274436</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smeej in "Claude for Small Business"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It doesn't surprise me but it does disappoint me that even though LLMs have made self-hosted open source tools easier to use than ever, something like this rolls out that's all about partnerships with mega corps.<p>It has never been easier to give Claude a list of tools you want in your stack and have it get them up and running on your own server, including audits against exploits.<p>I want <i>that</i> Claude for small businesses, even though I understand why partnering with these other companies is the better revenue play.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 14 May 2026 12:38:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48134537</link><dc:creator>smeej</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48134537</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48134537</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smeej in "Open Design: Use Your Coding Agent as a Design Engine"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Almost 20 years ago, a professor I had in grad school agreed to let me submit my very detailed outline rather than filling in all the text to turn it into paragraphs. It's still the way I write presentations where I'll be speaking.<p>Maybe the "fill in the paragraphs" step was always unnecessary and we've finally stopped making people do it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 02 May 2026 23:04:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47991489</link><dc:creator>smeej</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47991489</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47991489</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smeej in "Open Design: Use Your Coding Agent as a Design Engine"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>For some reason, I read "LGTM" as "Let's Go to Market," and spooked myself with the realization that that's absolutely the way this is all headed.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 02 May 2026 23:02:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47991470</link><dc:creator>smeej</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47991470</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47991470</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smeej in "Show HN: State of the Art of Coding Models, According to Hacker News Commenters"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Came here to offer this feedback. If I can't see the name of the model, nothing else in the chart really matters to me. I even tried going to the Google Sheet.<p>It's way too important a piece of information not to have it visible.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 02 May 2026 22:57:03 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47991440</link><dc:creator>smeej</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47991440</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47991440</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smeej in "Your website is not for you"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It is, but not until you actually get into the article.<p>I also assumed the article would be about personal websites until I read it.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 01 May 2026 13:02:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47974306</link><dc:creator>smeej</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47974306</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47974306</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smeej in "Opus 4.7 knows the real Kelsey"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>But then compare it to the corpus of any of the suspects <i>since</i> the whitepaper publication.<p>It's one thing to sound like Satoshi before the whitepaper, but does anyone <i>still</i> sound like Satoshi?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 01 May 2026 04:36:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47971336</link><dc:creator>smeej</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47971336</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47971336</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smeej in "Opus 4.7 knows the real Kelsey"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It's a hard stylometric challenge, just because of its format. The forum posts are probably better for comparison, but what I don't see people doing that I wish they would is comparing what the different Satoshi suspects have written <i>since</i> the forum posts and whitepaper.<p>Everybody's going to get more similar in terms of topic. Bitcoin actually exists now. There's more to say about it than there was at launch. But does anyone <i>still</i> sound like Satoshi? Or sound <i>more</i> like Satoshi than they did before?<p>The slight wrench in the works is that it's hard to do this with my personal favorite Satoshi candidate. He stopped writing altogether in 2014, and lost capacity from shortly after the whitepaper came out until he was writing with his eyes by the time he had his head frozen.<p>He's also the only candidate who seems <i>more</i> likely to me over time, though. The longer things go, the less likely a living person stays tight-lipped.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 01 May 2026 04:32:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47971320</link><dc:creator>smeej</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47971320</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47971320</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smeej in "The AI Industry Is Discovering That the Public Hates It"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It didn't even occur to me that this <i>might</i> not be sarcasm until I read the other comments. Still fighting to hold onto that assumption.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 25 Apr 2026 22:04:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47905012</link><dc:creator>smeej</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47905012</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47905012</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smeej in "Extra usage credit for Claude to celebrate usage bundles launch (Pro, Max, Team)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It got extra fun. I tried to talk to the Fin AI and it closed the chat twice without even responding. It just told me I'd have to try again.<p>Fin isn't half as useful as Claude, and if that's not telling, I don't know what would be.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 04 Apr 2026 02:32:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47635066</link><dc:creator>smeej</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47635066</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47635066</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smeej in "Extra usage credit for Claude to celebrate usage bundles launch (Pro, Max, Team)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Well this feels scammy, or at least annoying AF. I tried toggling it on to see if that would make the credit appear, even though I'd never had it on before and never needed to use it, and since my balance was under $5, it auto-charged me $15. All I wanted to do was try to make the free $20 banner appear, and I didn't get that either.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 04 Apr 2026 02:13:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47634953</link><dc:creator>smeej</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47634953</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47634953</guid></item></channel></rss>