Hacker News: tarkin2

New comment by tarkin2 in "English: A vs. An"

tarkin2 — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 05:42:38 +0000

He says he should have used an LLM to write his one-off code

I guess this is a common idea now

Yet since a lot of our coding is for one-offs then we are allowing LLMs to blunt our skills

New comment by tarkin2 in "A graphical desktop for the ZX Spectrum"

tarkin2 — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 15:45:39 +0000

Their labour didn’t involve coding. When we equate labour to creating a load of prompts then it feels hollow to me.

Was this, then, done to impress others rather than enrich the coders skills and experience?

The futuristic equivalent of pressing the “demo” button on old electronic keyboard and pretending to play

New comment by tarkin2 in "google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update"

tarkin2 — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 04:29:58 +0000

Yeah, that's the thing for me: filtering out the SEO crap that Google happily serves up.

Google's actual search results are a waste of time visiting, both for the mindless CEO content and the ad-laden, analytics-happy, javascript-heavy websites.

So I tend to use the AI overview. But plugging myself into the all-seeing corporate oracle, that grew on all the web's content, and now seeks to supplant it seems unseemly.

It's just sad that kagi will likely only be a fringe thing, and google will continue to promote these foul, foul, mindless websites and then supplant them with its AI.

New comment by tarkin2 in "google.com/goto: Google's anti-scraping update"

tarkin2 — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 04:10:44 +0000

They are forcing my further and further towards kagi. I do hope the fawning on here is at least partly justified.

New comment by tarkin2 in "How the Chorleywood Bread Process transformed British bread"

tarkin2 — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 06:13:40 +0000

I at least appreciate he was up front about advertising his book.

But, yes, after about seven paragraphs I could no longer read on, and I had completely lost any interest in his book.

This should be given as an example how marketing can actively damage your product.

I can't believe how high this is on hackernews. It feels odd.

New comment by tarkin2 in "The Chauffeur Problem"

tarkin2 — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 13:36:54 +0000

I guess by practising the lower level things less and less we become less able to understand and maintain them, whereas any profession that required continued practice kept you sharp enough to learn things like networking.

New comment by tarkin2 in "The Chauffeur Problem"

tarkin2 — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 11:50:51 +0000

If the chauffeurs' power came from the inability for the driven to maintain and drive their cars, and that power was reduced when cars become more reliable and understandable, then I'm not sure how that is applied to modern developments: computer and software are as complex as ever, and we're understanding them less and less in favour of letting the computers themselves understand themselves. Are we not then creating a new chauffeur problem, and this time those who control the LLMs and the infrastructure for the LLMs hold the power after we intentionally cede it?

New comment by tarkin2 in "AI is removing the middle class of software engineering?"

tarkin2 — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 17:00:13 +0000

The main thing it's removing is the skills you gain through actual practice, and replacing those with the demand that you subscribe to OpenAI etc to do your job.

But, moreover, the demand your company subscribes. But not your company anymore, because you'll probably be replaced by one engineer (and an AI subscription) who's now trying to do your job and about four or five other jobs.

And this one engineer will become more and more reliant on AI companies, AI companies that'll go for the throat once they've hollowed out all the skills that used to exist in the engineering market.

New comment by tarkin2 in "How I use LLMs to learn complex topics"

tarkin2 — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 03:40:30 +0000

Not good at subjects you have no previously learnt knowledge.

They tell you have "hit the nail on the head" when you really haven't.

They tell you have had a "great insight" when you are really haven't.

They give you the illusion of learning and progress but essentially give you faulty preconceptions will trip you up further down the road.

You can ask the LLM to be more critical and less sycophantic but that only gets you so far:

They want you to continue using, being dependent on and feeding data into the LLM--your independence isn't a priority.

New comment by tarkin2 in "I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux"

tarkin2 — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 05:24:32 +0000

Perfect is the enemy of good.

Also, you can use the bank's website for most tasks.

I think most non-techies could happily do this.

New comment by tarkin2 in "Don't be a meat proxy"

tarkin2 — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 10:29:57 +0000

Arguably we already have, if you concentrate on intelligence rates since 1975: the reverse Flynn affect. Those who grew up about that time no longer had to generate their own entertainment through storytelling, make their own music, calculate things mentally: everyday they had music, entertainment pumped into their homes, a way to avoid athematic, etc. And now we're evening thinking a lot less in our jobs, not even practicing the skills we learnt. Intelligence is only going to decrease.

New comment by tarkin2 in "Google fixed more Chrome bugs in June than over the past two years, thanks to AI"

tarkin2 — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 10:32:35 +0000

If people are handing off the coding to AI more and more then they'll be less skilled at spotting potential bugs in the first place. AI, course of, could be run to find potential bugs in the AI-coded features before commit. But then you're getting further and further towards a world where code, and code that runs infrastructure, is incomprehensible. We'll have to start sacrificing the first-born to the silicon in the hopes of a good build for code that controls your electrical sub-station.

New comment by tarkin2 in "Ron Gilbert started production on Thimbleweed Park 2"

tarkin2 — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 19:01:51 +0000

The link given elsewhere here about the multi-layered aspect of the stories from 1, 2 and RMI gives it a bit more depth. Obviously if you take it on the surface level only it's low effort.

New comment by tarkin2 in "Ron Gilbert started production on Thimbleweed Park 2"

tarkin2 — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 18:05:23 +0000

That link was amazing.

I felt that Return to Monkey Island was a bit of a cop-out.

But the multi-layer, Mulholland Drive-esq, storytelling is a real eye-opener.

It appears that his multi-layered storytelling found its way into Thimbleweed Park and surface-level understanding probably won't get you far.

New comment by tarkin2 in "Ron Gilbert started production on Thimbleweed Park 2"

tarkin2 — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 12:31:36 +0000

I wonder did you enjoy the Monkey Island games. I really loved Delores and Ransome particularly in TWP.

New comment by tarkin2 in "Ron Gilbert started production on Thimbleweed Park 2"

tarkin2 — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 12:27:47 +0000

I pretty much saw the ending an effort to put the story to end and move on after all the years of speculation.

New comment by tarkin2 in "Ron Gilbert started production on Thimbleweed Park 2"

tarkin2 — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 12:24:05 +0000

If you every played the first two Monkey Island games, and understand the lore behind that, then the ending is pretty good. Thimbleweed park, in many way, was a spiritual successor to Monkey Island 2 that Gilbert couldn't make for IP reasons back in the day. With at in mind, I enjoyed the ending. That said, Monkey Island 2 got a lot of criticism for its ending too...

New comment by tarkin2 in "Return of the Nigerian Prince Redux: Beware Book Club and Book Review Scams (2025)"

tarkin2 — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 06:32:27 +0000

Is it me or are those emails clearly understood to be AI generated?

The grammatical usage and structures are a huge tell. Perfect and soulless.

New comment by tarkin2 in "When I reject AI code even if it works"

tarkin2 — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 10:35:00 +0000

Code that kills your project is code that works, and is either misunderstood or unmaintainable

And the industry is rushing towards it, whilst failing to train people who are able to fix it

New comment by tarkin2 in "Norway imposes near ban on AI in elementary school"

tarkin2 — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 05:10:25 +0000

The number of people--adults included--who, when don't know something they could easily think about, resort to some AI bot rather than thinking, and developing their mind and intelligence, is staggering. Giving kids a reason not to think and develop their intelligence seems a pathway to even further declines in intelligence. Seems a quick route to dementia in old age too: if you fail to exercise and maintain something it eventually stops working.