<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: sporkland</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sporkland</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Thu, 20 Aug 2026 17:13:12 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=sporkland" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sporkland in "Cursor launches Origin, GitHub alternative"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'm with you on the pros and cons of centralization.  But what makes you think if linear became the unified platform that it wouldn't just become like GitHub?  See jira.<p>Given the history here, No matter which tool becomes the death star of developer workflow it always trends towards complexity and the challenges that come with it.  Hosting your own doesn't become a panacea as most IT/ops teams also struggle with uptime and upgrades (increasingly relevant).<p>The only way out IMHO as customers picking two of these goliaths of sending a clear signal to them that we're happy to pay them handsomely for a stable and less sprawling product.  Or a hosted open source version with a different cost structure that doesn't drive these wild swings at feature bloat and the inherent instability that comes with that chase.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 19 Aug 2026 15:01:22 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49362561</link><dc:creator>sporkland</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49362561</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49362561</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sporkland in "And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In college they made us study the case of therac-25 so we understood the dangers of creating too many errors in our software.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 19 Aug 2026 13:37:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49361434</link><dc:creator>sporkland</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49361434</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49361434</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sporkland in "Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The airlines are certainly bad actors, the problem on the other side is there are a massive number of people that are willing to waste massive amounts of time to get undeserved freebies if the boundary is too permissive.  I agree with your underlying sentiment that the needle is too strongly on the side of the airlines at the moment, but I think if they shifted towards a more healthy stance they'd quickly be swamped by these abusers.<p>I'm curious what the game theoretic optimal here is.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 18 Aug 2026 16:39:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49348334</link><dc:creator>sporkland</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49348334</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49348334</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sporkland in "Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>For me the music on the Monkey Island CD-ROM remaster was a real jaw dropper.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 18 Aug 2026 14:30:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49346158</link><dc:creator>sporkland</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49346158</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49346158</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sporkland in "Mars Bar from 1991 found – and it's 20g bigger than today's"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'm not sure why this is surprising.<p>In the US we try to maintain inflation at a target rate of 2%.  For commodities where the costs aren't able to keep pace with inflation you'd either expect prices to double every 35 years or for the product to be half-ish  the size (assuming labor costs scale by size).  It's a 99 cent candy bar so...<p>I think inflation rate and costs of lots of things due to oil has jumped so much in the last few years that both the costs have gotten mouth watering and sizes have gotten noticeably smaller.  But I prefer either of those to leveraging even more low cost filler, which I assume is the other option.<p>I honestly think in the US portion sizes tend to be larger than I need here so I'd honestly prefer if they lowered prices and dropped sizes to something reasonable.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 11 Aug 2026 11:32:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49256558</link><dc:creator>sporkland</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49256558</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49256558</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sporkland in "If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>A few reasons I'd say:<p>1. Our incentive structure in software has always been to a large extent driven by more features [1].  Agent driven development has poured gasoline on that fire.<p>2. Despite all the effort we put into quality assurance by engineering teams, it's still hard to full de-risk releases across a broad set of configurations use cases, etc.  Especially as most agents and even the test hierarchy itself tends to favor unit or module tests and these issues tend to pop up at integration points or hard to test non functional requirements.<p>So I think what we're seeing is people are rapidly adopting agent lead development due to #1 but the risk reduction pipelines haven't caught up with #2.  I think they eventually will but we're definitely in for a rough road for a bit.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/12/09/simplicity/" rel="nofollow">https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/12/09/simplicity/</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 27 Jul 2026 17:13:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49072684</link><dc:creator>sporkland</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49072684</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49072684</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sporkland in "$100 AI Music Video: Claude Fable 5 vs. GPT-5.6 Sol"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>People keep referring to the output of neural nets as the "average of the training data" but imho the deep value in neural nets and the interesting philosophical part is they are massive conditional probability engines whose results can change based on the variables you feed in.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 17 Jul 2026 16:37:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48949324</link><dc:creator>sporkland</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48949324</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48949324</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sporkland in "Count Binface"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>While I appreciate how deservedly hated all of our politicians are, isn't it such a sad state of affairs that we can't find trustworthy folks to lead these critical institutions?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 13 Jul 2026 17:29:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48895969</link><dc:creator>sporkland</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48895969</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48895969</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sporkland in "Zig Creator Calls Spade a Spade, Anthropic Blows Smoke"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> There's so much good stuff in this post.<p>The post starts off so cynical.  I know a few people at anthropic and oai and the simplest explanation also matches my observations that they actually believe what they say. That agents will be doing the bulk of the programming in the not so distant future.  They believe they themselves will be out of jobs at that point.<p>They aren't managing some message and trying to teach the anti AI folks a lesson.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 13 Jul 2026 14:03:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48892889</link><dc:creator>sporkland</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48892889</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48892889</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sporkland in "Windows 11 users are tired of MS account requirements creeping into everything"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I just made a crappy Microsoft account that I don't check or tie to anything. I'm sure it will backfire at some point.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 16 Jun 2026 03:19:03 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48550150</link><dc:creator>sporkland</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48550150</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48550150</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sporkland in "Ask HN: Agents get dumber before release of new model version?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Was hoping to understand if anyone has done any research on it.  I could only really find one research paper on the topic [1], but it seems less focused on this specific issue.<p>[1] <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.09009" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.09009</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2026 22:52:12 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48497494</link><dc:creator>sporkland</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48497494</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48497494</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Ask HN: Agents get dumber before release of new model version?]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I've noticed an effect with openai where my codex agents seem to perform worse in the week(s) leading up to a new release.  I'm wondering if the vendors tweak effort params at all to free up hardware to host the new version.  It's a double win as the new model will look night and day better to their regular users when the new model is released presumably with effort back at normal levels.<p>Is this a known phenomenon?  Are any folks trying to measure any of this objectively?</p>
<hr>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48492515">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48492515</a></p>
<p>Points: 9</p>
<p># Comments: 7</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2026 16:27:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48492515</link><dc:creator>sporkland</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48492515</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48492515</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sporkland in "Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I walked into the Mint one night because I liked to grab a bad cocktail and some good karaoke.. some guy got on stage and belted out a beautiful version of Rocket Man.  I looked closed and it was Drew.<p>Guy has pipes.<p>Oh his software was pretty good too.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 27 May 2026 05:29:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48290056</link><dc:creator>sporkland</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48290056</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48290056</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sporkland in "Mythos Finds a Curl Vulnerability"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Not to discredit anything that was said in any particular blog post.<p>Folks also need to remember that a lot of blog posts are written by engineers or managers that have their own agendas and careers and often external blog posts can be a form of self marketing or idea marketing that an engineer or director has been pushing internally.<p>I have no idea if this happened in mozilla's case but the person that wrote it seemed to talk about the their own internal harness / fuzz testing framework quite a bit, and I imagine it was probably a big part of that person's scope / accomplishments and will probably show up at their end of year review and on their resume.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 11 May 2026 15:51:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48096639</link><dc:creator>sporkland</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48096639</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48096639</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sporkland in "OpenAI’s WebRTC problem"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think as a user I have 2 modes:
1. Q&A mode where it's basically Google search by voice.
2. I'm trying to process an idea I have with an LLM buddy.<p>My desires are pretty different in the two scenarios. Q&A mode if it's not quick to respond I'll think something is wrong with my phone.<p>Deep think mode I'm honestly kind of pissed off at how fast it tries to respond.  I want it to slow down and give me a chance to process and use extra compute on its side (including newer models) so it doesn't just spew low thought bullshit at me.<p>It seems like the system could detect which of these two modes was happening and adapt, including protocol.<p>I haven't tried the voice mode since the new model updates, maybe it's gotten better.<p>Counter to everything I just said though and germain to the topic at hand, when I'm in q&a mode that's probably the worst time for it to drop audio as it changes the query significantly.  vs when I'm talking at it for 2 minutes it could probably throw half away.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 09 May 2026 14:48:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48075420</link><dc:creator>sporkland</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48075420</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48075420</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sporkland in "Ask HN: We just had an actual UUID v4 collision..."]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I was doubting this for a minute as I wondered with a significantly biased coin towards the head side would you be more likely to get HT. With probability problems like Monty Hall I like to think about extreme cases like say it's 99 heads to every 1 tails. You'd expect HT 0.99% of the time. Ditto TH.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 09 May 2026 13:36:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48074864</link><dc:creator>sporkland</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48074864</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48074864</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sporkland in "Accelerating Gemma 4: faster inference with multi-token prediction drafters"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Is there any current research on as agents w/tools start dominating LLM use, if making making models smaller / less single-shot, more like efficient engines that can process a lot of context, and feeding a lot more into context windows is going to be more of a path forward vs trying to memory the world?<p>Like smaller models that show effectiveness on problems with verifiable rewards when run in a loop with external grounding context?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 06 May 2026 15:24:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48037331</link><dc:creator>sporkland</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48037331</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48037331</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sporkland in "Drunk post: Things I've learned as a senior engineer (2021)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I went through college around 2000 in compsci and I remember even back then noticing that there were about 10% of us that cared. The other 90% were just in it for money/prestige.  The dotbomb cleared them out, but post 2009 you could see the folks creeping back in due to Facebook and co.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 23 Apr 2026 04:52:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47872364</link><dc:creator>sporkland</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47872364</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47872364</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sporkland in "Live Nation illegally monopolized ticketing market, jury finds"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>We can agree scalpers are net negative.<p>And I like your ideas but I don't see why the venues and artists don't want to capture more of what people are willing to pay enabled by what the parent comment suggested.<p>I wonder if in your system it actually attracts fans or just people that have the time to wait for tickets.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 16 Apr 2026 01:54:31 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47787743</link><dc:creator>sporkland</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47787743</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47787743</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by sporkland in "Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Or a Ford f150:
<a href="https://www.jalopnik.com/youre-not-wrong-american-trucks-and-suvs-have-gotten-1847370961/" rel="nofollow">https://www.jalopnik.com/youre-not-wrong-american-trucks-and...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 09 Apr 2026 17:37:59 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47706729</link><dc:creator>sporkland</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47706729</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47706729</guid></item></channel></rss>