Hacker News: suttontom

New comment by suttontom in "EFF is leaving X"

suttontom — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 18:54:03 +0000

What is with the constant use of "folks" in "queer folks"? Is it offensive to call them "queer people" now?

New comment by suttontom in "Anatomy of the .claude/ folder"

suttontom — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 17:28:12 +0000

How odd, are you under the impression that LLMs have self-awareness or understand their own internal mechanisms? Do you know that you can tell an LLM almost anything and, absent a tool, it will tell you that you're correct? By your logic, why do we even experiment with skills, planning modes, harnesses, etc. when we could just ask the model what the best way to get it to produce information is?

New comment by suttontom in "Are LLM merge rates not getting better?"

suttontom — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 22:54:20 +0000

This is unfair and dismissive of many roles. Coordination in a massive, technically complex company that has to adhere to laws and regulations is a critical role. I don't get why people shit on certain roles (I'm a SWE). Our PgMs reduce friction and help us be more productive and focused. Technical writers produce customer-facing content and code, and have nothing to do with supporting internal bureaucracy. There are arguments against this in Bullshit Jobs but do you think companies pay PgMs or HR employees hundreds of thousands of dollars a year out of the goodness of their own hearts? Or maybe they actually help the business?

New comment by suttontom in "What are the best coping mechanisms for AI Fatalism?"

suttontom — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 21:52:39 +0000

"Python" or Pynchon?

New comment by suttontom in "Claws are now a new layer on top of LLM agents"

suttontom — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 07:50:21 +0000

If all you're doing is telling an LLM to do something in all caps and hoping it follows your instructions then it's not a "security model" at all. What a bizarre thing to rely on. It's like people have literally forgotten how to program.

New comment by suttontom in "AI Doesn't Reduce Work–It Intensifies It"

suttontom — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:03:32 +0000

At some FAANG companies, using AI is now part of the role profile against which your performance and compensation is assessed. So, yes, some engineers are technically getting a raise for using AI.

New comment by suttontom in "Roger Ebert Reviews "The Shawshank Redemption" (1999)"

suttontom — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 05:56:44 +0000

PTA did not make Everything Everywhere All at Once.

New comment by suttontom in "Ozempic Melted Away Weight–and the Idea of 'Body Positivity'"

suttontom — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 05:43:23 +0000

I realize this is a nuanced discussion, but could you clarify the predispositions you're referring to? I'm asking because there are people who blame obesity on a predisposition to hunger (obese people have a stronger hunger drive than thin people) but also people who blame it on a predisposition to weight gain, meaning that obese people can eat the same amount of food as thin people and still be obese. Are you saying GLP-1 drugs have refuted the idea of the latter?

New comment by suttontom in "I watched Gemini CLI hallucinate and delete my files"

suttontom — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 11:43:21 +0000

Before people let their confirmation biases go wild about how terrible Gemini is, the original author was completely wrong. His files were never deleted: https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/issues/4586#issu.... He is a technically incompetent PM "vibe coding" who created a false story:

"Okay, my bad. I did find these files in the C:\ root upon a deeper search. Apologies for raising such an alarm about the file deletion, but the gemini CLI responses and the subsequent 'analysis' by gemini and claude really sent me down a bad rabbit hole. I should have searched my system more thoroughly. Thank you for flagging this @amensel

I think the bug is still valid from a user experience perspective, but obviously not nearly as severe."

Yes, "not nearly as severe" as in "never actually happened."

New comment by suttontom in "New tools for building agents"

suttontom — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 21:25:05 +0000

What is a "qtns"?

New comment by suttontom in "Regent – Electric coastal travel"

suttontom — Wed, 24 May 2023 21:32:14 +0000

Seriously? Has the bar changed from "Google it" to "Read through several research papers and books" for someone to comment on how true something is generally accepted to be? And you're saying that the person who looked something up on Wikipedia is the problem?