Hacker News: stephbook

New comment by stephbook in "GPS and the Lost Art of Getting Lost"

stephbook — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 17:56:06 +0000

The good old days. I used to live in a cul-de-sac and out-of-town people often wanted to get to a nearby street. The nearby entrance to that one was blocked for traffic reasons.

Tell people they have to turn right 6 times and drive 4 kilometers and they won't believe you.

New comment by stephbook in "Is the industry ready for tokens-constrained work?"

stephbook — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 13:35:54 +0000

You know what happened the last years when the internet went down and there were no emails, no Microsoft Teams, no "npm install", no stackoverflow, no Google, no coordination with other locations?

You know what happened when a PC broke? You know what happens at a construction site when the excavator breaks down?

Exactly nothing — and that's okay.

New comment by stephbook in "Semaglutide linked to lower predicted dementia risk"

stephbook — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 12:17:49 +0000

Haven't measured it exactly, but haven't noticed a reduction in my lifts either.

I do have a home gym, throttled my marathon training and try my best with Skyr and protein shakes though.

New comment by stephbook in "Semaglutide linked to lower predicted dementia risk"

stephbook — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 20:29:54 +0000

I'm using reta myself, but honestly it's because sema/tirz isn't allowed for me either. If you have medical tirz available, you should have some serious reasons to jump into the unregulated shark tank.

New comment by stephbook in "Study links GLP-1 drugs to bigger jump in women's employment than a degree"

stephbook — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 18:00:39 +0000

Why suffer hunger for the rest of your life when you can inject a drug weekly and it takes only 2 minutes?

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/21/well/eat/ozempic-food-noi...

New comment by stephbook in "Study links GLP-1 drugs to bigger jump in women's employment than a degree"

stephbook — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 17:52:27 +0000

Diminishing returns though. Once everyone is on glp-1, noone gets an employment advantage from it anymore. I still recommend riding the wave as long as it works.

New comment by stephbook in "Study links GLP-1 drugs to bigger jump in women's employment than a degree"

stephbook — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 17:48:58 +0000

The study also paints this as "kind of unfair against women", but didn't include men at all.

New comment by stephbook in "Improving GPT‑5.6 Sol in ChatGPT, expanding GPT‑5.6 Luna access for free users"

stephbook — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 07:37:34 +0000

Yes, but I do instruct it to give me the explanations. Maybe that helps.

New comment by stephbook in "Switching to electric stoves can dramatically cut indoor air pollution (2025)"

stephbook — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 07:36:21 +0000

That explains a lot, thank you. Still a weird quirk that the dirty gas is considered an elite symbol.

New comment by stephbook in "Ransomware gangs skip the CEO, head straight for the 40-something IT manager"

stephbook — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 20:52:01 +0000

The article is unclear: Do they "attack" the GenX managers and encrypt their stuff, or do they simply contact GenX managers in order to get paid faster?

In that case, the managers aren't "victims" and aren't "attacked", that would be the company..

New comment by stephbook in "Tech sucks: You have to vote with your wallet, or nothing will change"

stephbook — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 16:25:26 +0000

Not our problem to solve.

New comment by stephbook in "Switching to electric stoves can dramatically cut indoor air pollution (2025)"

stephbook — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 15:25:19 +0000

I don't get it. Did the US never get electric stoves? They're over 100 years old tech at this point.

It's weird that noone here mentions there are electric stoves between gas and induction.

New comment by stephbook in "Improving GPT‑5.6 Sol in ChatGPT, expanding GPT‑5.6 Luna access for free users"

stephbook — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 16:03:52 +0000

I'm getting all my questions (3-10 each evening) answered by "Gemini Pro Extended" in the free tier, sometimes with PDFs or photos attached. I wouldn't bother with anything "free" below that, unless I'm agentic coding or something.

New comment by stephbook in "Western Sahara"

stephbook — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 21:51:44 +0000

He never said northerners don't get the same benefit. The contrast was obviously with Sahrawis on the Polisario side, which stay poor and Moroccans outside of the Sahara, which have to pay VAT.

New comment by stephbook in "Western Sahara"

stephbook — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 21:45:08 +0000

I don't think you'll be able to argue with Moroccans. If they criticize their dictator they land in prison, so..

New comment by stephbook in "Atlassian Rovo Exfiltrates Data, Bypassing Controls"

stephbook — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 21:17:22 +0000

What's so hard about having the LLM tool calls scoped to the tenant? Inject "X-Scope-I" after the LLM decided on a tool call and you're done. Easiest fix ever.

New comment by stephbook in "That time when I failed the Microsoft interview"

stephbook — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 08:26:49 +0000

The interviewer might also just be a cog in the machine and know how it works.

"Just solve it and I'll note down an A+" is sometimes better than "candidate was honest, but didn't finish the alternative riddle."

New comment by stephbook in "That time when I failed the Microsoft interview"

stephbook — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 08:20:25 +0000

Maybe they were judging your perseverance and conduct, not whether you actually finished the work.

New comment by stephbook in "Don't be a meat proxy"

stephbook — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 07:36:58 +0000

If they continue doing this, delay your responses and keep them short. Don't spend more time on the response than they did on the question.

New comment by stephbook in "Why we write our own C and C++ inference engines"

stephbook — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 03:51:29 +0000

Should have started with writing your own blog posts.