Hacker News: stagger87

New comment by stagger87 in "Previewing GPT‑5.6 Sol: a next-generation model"

stagger87 — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 18:06:31 +0000

> I even referenced multiple code bases on GitHub

Well, GPT referenced every GitHub code base, no wonder it won! :)

New comment by stagger87 in "Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors"

stagger87 — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 15:27:42 +0000

> The return of the veteran engineers at Ford cuts against the prevailing wisdom — and fear — that AI will replace all kinds of knowledge workers. But Ford found the machines couldn’t replace experience.

I'm not sure this story is illustrative of that, when you have a VP of engineering saying “Over prior years, we didn’t pay as much attention as we should have to the experience of our most knowledgeable engineers that have been with us through many product cycles.”

He's saving face while almost certainly trying to figure out how to make the new systems work so that next time he won't need to rehire engineers.

New comment by stagger87 in "For thirty years I programmed with Phish on, every day"

stagger87 — Sun, 03 May 2026 23:10:59 +0000

I'm in the same boat, I code mostly by hand. I really enjoy it. The OP seems to have given it up without a fight, and that doesn't make sense to me. Especially because with 30 years experience I'm guessing they have FU money and are probably better than most people using AI anyways. Keep doing what you love and "surrender to the flow".

New comment by stagger87 in "How Passive Radar Works"

stagger87 — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 17:20:01 +0000

Uninformed FUD, not a single dsp "trick" related to passive radar is ITAR controlled. The equivalence the OP mentioned is literally described in every undergraduate dsp textbook.

New comment by stagger87 in "How Passive Radar Works"

stagger87 — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 15:32:36 +0000

That's very evil to recommend a graduate electrodynamics book to learn more about passive radar. I would suggest taking a look at Platos Republic to get some intuition on why that is.

New comment by stagger87 in "Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft"

stagger87 — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 23:00:58 +0000

I'm probably spitting in the wind, but stuff like this is why I removed all my hosted open source projects. I manage several niche projects that I have now converted to binary only releases (to almost no push back). It's niche enough that it's not very hard to get LLMs to output chunks of code that it managed to scrape before I took it offline. I don't see many people talking about this angle, but LLMs ripping off my work killed my open source efforts.

New comment by stagger87 in "70k Books Found in Hidden Library in This Germany Home (2023)"

stagger87 — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 21:15:50 +0000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsundoku

New comment by stagger87 in "Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux"

stagger87 — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 19:12:45 +0000

Why did you want to install windows 11 anyways? I also have a PC stuck on Windows 10 and it makes me happy that it's now stable and not part of the forced rolling releases in Win11. Im going to run it on Win10 as long as I can.

New comment by stagger87 in "Open source USB to GPIB converter (for Test and Measurement instruments)"

stagger87 — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 18:20:08 +0000

FWIW, You can buy legit used 82357s for quite a bit less than 1k. Anecdotally, I've never had one fail in 20 years. Probably bought a dozen over that time frame. All used daily.

New comment by stagger87 in "Microsoft lets bosses spot teams that are dodging Copilot"

stagger87 — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 17:41:54 +0000

I seem to remember a similar arc with Cortana. Didn't it briefly appear everywhere in MS365?

New comment by stagger87 in "Philz Coffee close to closing deal to sell to private equity firm for $145M"

stagger87 — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 20:04:57 +0000

I agree with you and don't know enough to speak authoritatively. That being said, I did find this definition of liquidation (below). The article hints the business was in trouble, the way I'm reading it, if the sale doesn't cover all obligations, its would be a liquidation.

"Business liquidation involves selling off a company’s assets, such as equipment, inventory, and real estate, and using the proceeds to pay off debts and obligations. This process usually occurs when a business is no longer profitable, facing insurmountable financial challenges, or the owner decides to retire or pursue other opportunities."

New comment by stagger87 in "Philz Coffee close to closing deal to sell to private equity firm for $145M"

stagger87 — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 19:38:54 +0000

"In a liquidation, common stockholders receive whatever assets remain after creditors, bondholders, and preferred stockholders are paid."

Coupled with what sounds like an already bad financial state of the company... I'm not claiming no foul play, but it looks like there is a reasonable avenue for what is happening.

New comment by stagger87 in "Rising graduate joblessness is mainly affecting men"

stagger87 — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 19:48:17 +0000

> "young people collecting disability."

Can you elaborate?

New comment by stagger87 in "Inside the box: Everything I did with an Arduino starter kit"

stagger87 — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 15:25:30 +0000

There is no one way to learn electronics. The Arduino will hold your hand through lighting up an LED, but depending on how much depth you want, may not teach you how it's happening. Working with an Arduino is like bowling with bumpers, which is a good place to start.

New comment by stagger87 in "Every 5x5 Nonogram"

stagger87 — Sat, 31 May 2025 06:22:41 +0000

Not OP, but you don't ever have to guess and backtrack, you can always work out the next move. After playing about 100 boards several simple "rules" emerge which allow for this.

New comment by stagger87 in "'I found your dad': The mystery of a missing climber"

stagger87 — Sun, 04 May 2025 01:49:17 +0000

That's fair. If you use any of the numbers closer to the activity described in the article (mountaineering at 22k') then you see the disparity. Even non elite mountaineering (mt ranier at 14k') has twice the mortality rate, according to this data.

New comment by stagger87 in "'I found your dad': The mystery of a missing climber"

stagger87 — Sun, 04 May 2025 00:30:43 +0000

Even a cursory glance of mortality rates for driving vs mountaineering show orders of magnitude higher rates for mountaineering.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6843304/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

New comment by stagger87 in "Perplexity Deep Research"

stagger87 — Sun, 16 Feb 2025 04:22:53 +0000

> You are a bit behind.

Quite the opposite. I'm familiar enough with these systems to know that asking the question "List the college majors of all Fortune 100 CEOs" is not going to get you a correct answer, Gemini and you.com included. I am happy to be proven wrong. :)

New comment by stagger87 in "Perplexity Deep Research"

stagger87 — Sun, 16 Feb 2025 01:07:24 +0000

Hopefully the end user of these products know something about LLMs and why asking a question such as "List the college majors of all of the Fortune 100 CEOs" is not really suited well for them.

New comment by stagger87 in "Quiet Quitting: Why Employees Are Demanding Fairness and Boundaries"

stagger87 — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 01:11:08 +0000

Working on weapons is important to maintain the freedom to be disappointed in others working on weapons.