<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: spandrew</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=spandrew</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Mon, 15 Jun 2026 12:18:56 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=spandrew" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by spandrew in "Artificial intelligence is not conscious – Ted Chiang"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I wish people would knock this off. There is zero path to AGI at the moment — and all the Anthropic/pentagon Sam Altman/AI-skynet stuff is scaring people into being fearful (and outright ignorant) to the actual uses of this probabilistic NPL tool.<p>You can't use AI atm without a human with proper knowledge spot checking and directing it. We should market it that way.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 04 Jun 2026 16:39:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48401142</link><dc:creator>spandrew</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48401142</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48401142</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by spandrew in "Googlebook"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This is not correct. People trust their "apps". They know Spotify's algo can feed them novel music. They know Kobo's reader connects to libraries in a way that isn't the DRM-lockin that Amazon shovels.<p>Most <i>non-tech</i> folks are incredibly skeptical about AI due to the piss-poor brand management of OpenAI and Anthropic—pushing an AGI Skynet post-employment narrative to make the tech feel bigger than it is.<p>I trust Google (and certainly Apple) to figure some of this stuff out—but nobody wants an LLM, that nobody knows how it operates, to run the show entirely. Heuristically, we may get away with a Human-on-the-loop approach—-not a Human-in-the-loop or Out-of-the-loop approach.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 13 May 2026 16:38:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48124216</link><dc:creator>spandrew</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48124216</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48124216</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by spandrew in "US summons bank bosses over cyber risks from Anthropic's latest AI model"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You're making a hubris-laden assumption coders know the gaps their baking into their software — that any human has a decent enough grip on the multitudes of spinning logic duct taped together to make the internet run. Most vulnerabilities aren't "ignored"; they're in a neverending backlog or unknown.<p>If you closed all of the AI-discovered security vulnerabilities tomorrow - by the next day there'd be a host of new ones. That's software, baby.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 10 Apr 2026 17:06:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47720985</link><dc:creator>spandrew</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47720985</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47720985</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by spandrew in "People inside Microsoft are fighting to drop mandatory Microsoft Account"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I would never advise anyone buy a Microsoft Windows laptop these days — between the forced updates, the account and service-fee thirst, ads, and consumer unfriendly product release process (forced opt-in).<p>Guess what? With Apple's new Neo laptop the price is also way way wayyy out to lunch.<p>If MSFT gives a business a huge bulk discount to buy their laptops + Office360 + Teams... OK? But as a "consumer" it really sucks.<p>Want PC gaming? Steamdeck or Steambox.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 27 Mar 2026 15:41:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47544138</link><dc:creator>spandrew</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47544138</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47544138</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by spandrew in "The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yea, the front service desk worker doesn't deserve that shit. Dick move.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 27 Mar 2026 15:32:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47543988</link><dc:creator>spandrew</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47543988</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47543988</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by spandrew in "macOS Tahoe"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Apple used to be like... the standard for how to do this.<p>IMO we're losing a lot of writing craftsmanship across many industries with Gen X'ers retiring</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 15 Sep 2025 18:54:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45253559</link><dc:creator>spandrew</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45253559</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45253559</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by spandrew in "They're Killing the Humanities on Purpose"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Let me push back and say that is not the point of university.<p>If you take the stance that education's function is to act like a feeder for business institutions; I guess? But that's only one byproduct of a strong education. Another is research; the other is critical thinking and civil productivity as a whole.<p>I'm as pro-capital as any private industry-focused tech worker is; but lets not pretend that's all the value we get out of the humanities.<p>Ever watch Netflix these days? Woof.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 15 Aug 2025 17:59:07 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44915500</link><dc:creator>spandrew</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44915500</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44915500</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by spandrew in "Perplexity Makes Longshot $34.5B Offer for Chrome"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>A social media ad company would be the least favourable. At least Google's central ad business is based off of search queries the user gives to them willingly for value.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 12 Aug 2025 15:54:44 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44878024</link><dc:creator>spandrew</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44878024</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44878024</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by spandrew in "Perplexity Makes Longshot $34.5B Offer for Chrome"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Not me — Perplexity is so much better than Google. This troll bid made me laugh</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 12 Aug 2025 15:53:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44878005</link><dc:creator>spandrew</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44878005</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44878005</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by spandrew in "Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I have to admit, everytime I hear the <i>"Two guys hated x, so they built their own!"</i> I see the XCKD cartoon <a href="https://xkcd.com/927/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/927/</a><p>It's not a fair comparison; competition can drive price down, but I pessimistically just see two guys who'll inevitably join the Comcast billionaires club. That's just where these "small guys" end up.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 14 Jul 2025 21:09:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44565335</link><dc:creator>spandrew</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44565335</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44565335</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by spandrew in "Anthropic signs a $200M deal with the Department of Defense"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>People pointing out NLP are missing the point — pulling and crafting rules to run effective NLP is time consuming and technical. With an LLM you can just ask it exactly what you want and it interprets. That's the value; and as this deal just proved it's worth the scaling costs.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 14 Jul 2025 21:06:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44565298</link><dc:creator>spandrew</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44565298</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44565298</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by spandrew in "Japanese grandparents create life-size Totoro with bus stop for grandkids (2020)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>A future where Miyazaki prefecture become littered with grandparent-fueled Ghibli characters and quickly become overrun with tourists...<p>Or kids at this specific stop are treated to a moment of joy while waiting for their train to come...<p>Time will tell...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 14 Jul 2025 18:22:50 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44563510</link><dc:creator>spandrew</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44563510</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44563510</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by spandrew in "Underwater turbine spinning for 6 years off Scotland's coast is a breakthrough"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Carbon fibres tend to crack under extreme torque.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 10 Jul 2025 20:24:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44525145</link><dc:creator>spandrew</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44525145</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44525145</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by spandrew in "So you wanna build an aging company"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It isn't right. Curing cancer is a noble pursuit.<p>And researchers on planet earth aren't a monolith. Even "longevity" research can take vastly different shapes across the labs driving towards it. The mess of research towards a goal is kinda the point; nobody knows where the universe hid the nuggets of world-bending discoveries. It's not quite pray and spray; but the shapes are diverse and irregular <i>by design</i>.<p>Cancer, alzheimers, cell senescence — all of it's fair game. Why are we pretending like anybody knows how to police this thought work?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 07 Jul 2025 20:26:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44494331</link><dc:creator>spandrew</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44494331</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44494331</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by spandrew in "Anthropic cut up millions of used books, and downloaded 7M pirated ones – judge"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Amazon has been doing this since the 2000's. Fun fact: This is how AWS came about; for them to scale its "LOOK INSIDE!" feature for all the books it was hoovering in an attempt to kill the last benefit the bookstore had over them.<p>Ie. This is not a big deal. The only difference now is ppl are rapidly frothing to be outraged by the mere sniff of new tech on the horizon. Overton window in effect.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 07 Jul 2025 20:22:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44494292</link><dc:creator>spandrew</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44494292</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44494292</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by spandrew in "Dyson, techno-centric design and social consumption"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I dunno about this; that greenlight vacuum they brought to market a few years back is dope af. My first little orb Dyson is still kicking almost 15 years after I bought it.<p>I think their brand isn't just about tech itself, but the utility exploring novel tech can drive.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 07 Jul 2025 20:19:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44494264</link><dc:creator>spandrew</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44494264</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44494264</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by spandrew in "Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>From a GTM perspective, Apple is fine to be behind OpenAI and others. Other than Search and studying, most consumers just aren't finding compelling use cases for a lot of this tech. The news woman herself said it herself that<p>> I've had iPhone 16 and haven't used any of these features.<p>Not only did she not use it, she wasn't even sure <i>how</i> she would start to use it. Emoji customization is kinda fun, but hardly a killer offer.<p>Folks in business are finding a lot of use: Research summation, data structuring, rapid prototyping, copy editing, and all sorts of business-grade use cases are phenomenal. None of them are central to Apple's core business or user experience. Use cases might be found closer to the Macbook/Pro line-up... but most of these are already accessible via a web layer through Chrome/Safari. They're making good use of Apple's performant M-chips. Of course, we all know  Siri really should be able to do a helluva lot more than it currently does.<p>Apple being behind tech-wise is a *huge* risk bc it puts them on the back foot, but short-term not enshittifying their tech with worthless AI use cases may be the right move.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 21 Mar 2025 20:27:48 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43440446</link><dc:creator>spandrew</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43440446</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43440446</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by spandrew in "Apple Invites"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I, for one, welcome our new Apple overlords. I'd like to remind them as a trusted personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 04 Feb 2025 23:10:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42940531</link><dc:creator>spandrew</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42940531</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42940531</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by spandrew in "Chat is a bad UI pattern for development tools"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>AI "Agents" that can do tasks outside of the confines of <i>just</i> a chat window are probably the next stage of utility.<p>The company I work for integrated AI into some of our native content authoring front-end components and people loved it. Our system took a lot of annotating to be able to accurately translate the natural language to the patterns of our system but users so far have found it WAYYY more useful than chat bc it's deeply integrated into the tasks they do anyway.<p>Figma had a similar success at last year's CONFIG when they revealed AI was renaming default layers names (Layer 1, 2, etc)... something they didn't want to do anyway. I dare say nobody gave a flying f about their "template" AI generation whereas layer renaming got audible cheers. Workflow integration is how you show people AI isn't just replacing their job like some bad sci-fi script.<p>Workflow integration is going to be big. I think chat will have its place tho; just kind of as an aside in many cases.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 04 Feb 2025 23:05:03 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42940465</link><dc:creator>spandrew</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42940465</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42940465</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by spandrew in "The Alpha Myth: How captive wolves led us astray"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> Consider how these dynamics manifest in Silicon Valley, where Facebook's infamous "move fast and break things" mantra shaped a generation of tech culture. This emphasis on speed and disruption at any cost has created work environments that mirror the artificial pressures of captivity, where displaying dominance often takes precedence over fostering sustainable innovation.
–<p>Yeaa..... this is a huge stretch. I'm not a hustle culture proponent by any means (Patagonia's 'let them go surfing' seems great to me!), but "Move fast and break things" is a pragmatic mantra that speaks to the nature of enterprises in highly competitive markets.<p>Laypeople will balk at the idea of "breaking things". But that's hubris. It takes humility to admit that the breaking things part of discovery and invention isn't <i>isn't optional</i>. Fast or slow, you will break things pursuing an idea unknown space. The mantra speaks to the need to adjust risk tolerances in futuristic-leaning businesses.<p>There are other ways, of course. Bio-med breaks things in controlled trials, for example. But it's also slow as molasses. Rife with in-fighting.<p>But to equate alpha-male captivity with futuristic pragmatism is a huge reach.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Jan 2025 18:49:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42856283</link><dc:creator>spandrew</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42856283</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42856283</guid></item></channel></rss>