<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: smoll</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=smoll</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:47:59 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=smoll" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smoll in "Claude for Small Business"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Here’s what’s crazy: by making this widely available to SMB, they will soon have enough training data to beat this benchmark —- in probably less than a year is my guess.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 14 May 2026 12:33:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48134482</link><dc:creator>smoll</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48134482</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48134482</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smoll in "Dinosaur Food: 100M year old foods we still eat today (2022)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>isn't Sago Palm (Cycas revoluta) highly toxic? i don't think it's edible...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 19 Feb 2026 17:54:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47076748</link><dc:creator>smoll</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47076748</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47076748</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smoll in "What a Hacker Stole from Me"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>sorry to hear that and i can absolutely relate to this feeling of losing something, of perhaps even being dragged into a game you never wanted to even play, where no one wins and everyone loses something.<p>the one silver lining is that it seems to have strengthened your resolve, to keep planting and keep building instead of just letting chaos and destruction stop you in your tracks. so in that way maybe you haven’t lost after all and maybe this isn’t even a bad thing, it helped clarify the things you find important in life and even inspire others (me included). thank you!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 06 Jul 2025 05:05:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44477988</link><dc:creator>smoll</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44477988</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44477988</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smoll in "Diagrams · Diagram as Code"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>nifty tool!<p>> NOTE: It does not control any actual cloud resources nor does it generate cloud formation or terraform code.<p>would be kinda cool if it could, though</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 04 Nov 2024 20:48:35 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42045841</link><dc:creator>smoll</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42045841</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42045841</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smoll in "Spaceship that mows the lawn"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>"After receiving some bad news about my wife’s family, I suddenly realized that my future life had just been predetermined indefinitely. Due to the situation we’re now in, combined with my values and ethics, my actions for the foreseeable future are already decided."<p>But you have no idea how your life will turn out. Something could happen that would cause you to lose your entire family. And if that happens you might even say "look, here's another thing preventing me from achieving my full potential". All the while you're dismissing the life you're leading because it fails to live up to some imagined expectation you have in your mind.<p>Instead of lamenting how reality does not match expectation, consider immersing yourself in your reality. Look, hear, and touch the rich detail that every single moment contains, feel what it feels like to be a person in your exact life circumstances. You will never experience this collection of thoughts and feelings in this precise moment in your life ever again.<p>"No such thing as a life that's better than yours (love yours); no such thing, no such thing" - J. Cole</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 27 Nov 2023 09:03:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38429936</link><dc:creator>smoll</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38429936</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38429936</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smoll in "RoboCat – A Self-Improving Robotic Agent"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>When the operator was demonstrating "perturbations", they were reaching into the scene while the robot was very close to grabbing objects they had their fingers near - isn't this dangerous? What if the robot clamped down on their fingers?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 20 Jun 2023 23:08:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36412018</link><dc:creator>smoll</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36412018</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36412018</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smoll in "Enterprise Software Projects Killed the Software Developer"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Imagine you’re working at a startup and trying to solve a tough real-world problem by creating software that involves writing some CRUD APIs. You bring on someone to the team who says, “we gotta stop writing these pointless CRUD APIs and write compilers instead.”<p>I’m not trying to be dismissive, but I think this actually well illustrates the central tension between engineers who are more interested in the business problem and ones who are more interested in solving technology problems. I know that when you get to a later stage as a company you need both kinds of engineers, but at an earlier stage company you have to ensure all of your engineers are of the former kind and not the latter kind or you will probably not succeed.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 31 Aug 2021 07:21:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28364863</link><dc:creator>smoll</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28364863</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28364863</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smoll in "She Came to the US to Study with Only $300 – Now She’s a NASA Director"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>There’s a character on For All Mankind (the tv show) who sounds like she could be based on her.<p>I wonder if that character was based on her or if there are others at NASA who came from a similar sort of background.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 19 Mar 2021 03:21:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26509900</link><dc:creator>smoll</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26509900</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26509900</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smoll in "The American-Dream-as-a-Service"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> I think people need to realize you’re getting a terrible deal when you give Lambda School x% of your earnings at your first job<p>To people who have other options, yes, it's a bad deal. But to those who have no way of navigating those options, like the people mentioned in the article, fundamentally changing your options landscape in exchange for a fixed percentage of an income bump you never would have realized otherwise is a fantastic deal.<p>I say this as a largely self-taught programmer who at one time considered giving away a huge chunk of 2 years of salary in exchange for a programming bootcamp + apprenticeship type of opportunity (this was a few years before bootcamps became a mainstream thing). It was extremely tempting and many times on my self-taught journey I second-guessed whether I could figure it out on my own and TBH, without an extremely high level of self-confidence in my intelligence and scrappiness, I probably wouldn't have figured it out on my own.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 01 Mar 2021 16:56:03 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26304836</link><dc:creator>smoll</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26304836</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26304836</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smoll in "Why blockchain is not yet working (2018)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yes, but this is where politics comes into play. If you're a Google/Amazon/Samsung/any big player, why would you stick to the open standard when you could just change to a proprietary standard for more lock-in and profit?<p>With a blockchain-based standard, you could make vendor buy-in permanent and enforceable. The only way that one of the big players could win in this new normal is if the products on their proprietary standard are better (in merit) than the <i>entire marketplace</i> that implements the blockchain standard.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 14 Feb 2021 16:48:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26133823</link><dc:creator>smoll</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26133823</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26133823</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smoll in "When did “the Internet” become “the internet?”"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Perhaps this is too simple of an explanation to be true, but maybe the lack of capitalization comes from people on the internet typing internet without capitalization, and then the “important publications” all followed suit eventually. Sort of like how no one really uses “LOL” instead of “lol” even though it’s an acronym and of course acronyms are supposed to be capitalized.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 11 Dec 2020 11:19:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25384511</link><dc:creator>smoll</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25384511</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25384511</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smoll in "Sid Meier's Memoir"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Based on the title of this thread, I was disappointed that the title of his memoir did not end in an exclamation mark, but then was happy to discover that it is indeed titled "Memoir!"</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 09 Oct 2020 15:16:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24730675</link><dc:creator>smoll</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24730675</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24730675</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smoll in "GraalVM"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>because you wrote Futurama and referred to it so many times in this reply, when I skimmed the thread I read the word in this post and the one above it as Futurama. it took me like 3 re-reads to realize the original did NOT say Futurama.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 10 Aug 2020 13:04:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24108795</link><dc:creator>smoll</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24108795</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24108795</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smoll in "The worst tool for the job"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>What made you keep trying running even though you failed multiple times at it? And had you failed even with excellent running shoes, would you have even kept trying? (Maybe you would have thought: "Well, I already have the best shoes. If I still can't get good, maybe I should give up forever.")</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Jul 2020 23:55:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23981974</link><dc:creator>smoll</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23981974</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23981974</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smoll in "Life Is Made of Unfair Coin Flips"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I initially read the title and thought this would be about why "[the origin of life, on earth, or in the universe] is the result of a series of unfair coin flips" and got almost too excited, but what the article was actually about is just as interesting! And, if true, it maybe even informs how we might go about answering the origin question too...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 12 Apr 2020 08:32:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22846778</link><dc:creator>smoll</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22846778</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22846778</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Researchers explore a green light-based treatment for migraines and chronic pain]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/12/15/787138928/researchers-explore-a-drug-free-idea-to-relieve-chronic-pain-green-light">https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/12/15/787138928/researchers-explore-a-drug-free-idea-to-relieve-chronic-pain-green-light</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21823041">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21823041</a></p>
<p>Points: 2</p>
<p># Comments: 0</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 18 Dec 2019 08:51:17 +0000</pubDate><link>https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/12/15/787138928/researchers-explore-a-drug-free-idea-to-relieve-chronic-pain-green-light</link><dc:creator>smoll</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21823041</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21823041</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smoll in "Don’t Call Me a Pessimist on Climate Change. I Am a Realist"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>But necessity is the mother of invention, so we will probably invent a viable nuclear fission-based energy solution at the 11th hour, probably by someone who also helped cause the death of countless people through their earlier work[0]. I know this sounds absurdly far-fetched, but it’s pretty much par for the course for us humans.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 13 Nov 2019 00:01:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21519615</link><dc:creator>smoll</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21519615</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21519615</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smoll in "You can fool some of the people, all of the time"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Is it a pendulum then? When it’s less obvious is it still happening (and they just do a better job of hiding it from a more sensitive public) or is actual positive change happening?<p>There’s this saying that sunshine is the best disinfectant, but that somehow feels less true right now. It seems like you can be openly crooked in a democracy as long as you appeal to a sufficient majority for other reasons not related to your crookedness.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 07 Nov 2019 12:28:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21472554</link><dc:creator>smoll</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21472554</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21472554</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smoll in "You can fool some of the people, all of the time"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>If most people are hard-wired to be duped, why does it feel like only recently people are getting even more conspicuously duped by their political leaders (a la Trump and Johnson)? Presumably this effect should have had a more uniformly distributed effect throughout history.<p>Is it solely due to the weaponization of technology for this means? Or are there other reasons for “why now”?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 07 Nov 2019 12:13:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21472467</link><dc:creator>smoll</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21472467</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21472467</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by smoll in "Programmers can’t write algorithms without help"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I had an interview question a few weeks ago (writing a JSON parser from scratch) that required me to remember that in python that a for loop allows you to iterate through not just a list but also each of the characters in a string. I forgot about that and spent several minutes wasting time trying to think of a regex-based solution before I remembered that was an option.<p>Why should an interview question reward you/require you to remember this? If I actually had to solve a real-world problem similar to this, I would google it, see a solution that iterated through the characters with a for loop and go “oh yeah, I forgot you could do that. Duh.” Why am I not allowed to google dumb things? On most days, my brain is focused on high-level abstractions that tie together two or more tools via disparate APIs, why the hell should I remember or think about for loops?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 04 Nov 2019 17:01:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21443634</link><dc:creator>smoll</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21443634</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21443634</guid></item></channel></rss>