Hacker News: taurath

New comment by taurath in "Claude Opus 4.8"

taurath — Fri, 29 May 2026 02:10:48 +0000

> I'll never again perceive model progress

If the hype train keeps going for another year, Sam and co will have to resort to direct gaslighting like saying the model is improving but nobody can feel it anymore, oh and I need 10 trillion dollars

New comment by taurath in "Where are the economies of scale in homebuilding?"

taurath — Fri, 29 May 2026 02:08:25 +0000

I wonder how much it’s due to the fact that homes are such an incredibly expensive endeavor compared to other things. I could see significant economies of scale in most of the materials and parts, but perhaps there has been a steady increase in quantity in those materials?

New comment by taurath in "The just-say-no engineer was a ZIRP phenomenon"

taurath — Wed, 27 May 2026 05:58:11 +0000

I reject the typology. Engineers are expected to do a lot of things, those things are different in different environments, and judgement is usually a key consideration. Pidgeonholing someone as a “type” of engineer can help with shallow comparisons but can’t predict behavior in all situations.

New comment by taurath in "The just-say-no engineer was a ZIRP phenomenon"

taurath — Wed, 27 May 2026 05:24:43 +0000

> Tech companies are now more focused than at any time in the past two decades

Citation needed. In fact, I find the utter opposite - the pivots are happening hard and fast, planning is taking a major back seat, and it’s a ship with speed and look good and be visible at all costs mentality.

The truth is the guardrails are being ignored in the frenzy. Style is winning over substance. I think if you revisit this hot take in a year it’ll have aged so poorly it will seem like a parody.

New comment by taurath in "Ask HN: How do you prepare to tech interview? Any tip and tricks?"

taurath — Tue, 26 May 2026 05:58:53 +0000

Some people's brains don't work the way that people who set up interviews think. If they require memorizing, they don't end up hiring those people (except strangely in upper management, where utterly different signals are looked for).

New comment by taurath in "Magnifica Humanitas"

taurath — Tue, 26 May 2026 05:53:31 +0000

> what it means to live a virtuous life and about ethics and morality and so forth

> I don't have any answers (and I'm not looking for them, really, just musing)

I'm not sure why, but even in my general pessimism it hadn't occured to me that there are people out there who are uninterested in what living a virtuous life means. I truly just assumed that just about everyone had some sort of convoluted self-justification. That you say you don't even try, and want to read about it from "those whose job it is to think about", blows my mind. Do you think of yourself as an ameoba without free will or something?

New comment by taurath in "Ask HN: Is $300/HR too low these days for custom full stack?"

taurath — Sat, 23 May 2026 21:41:21 +0000

Plenty of places for whom the solution is worth far and away more money than the hourly to build it.

New comment by taurath in "Ask HN: How much AI is in your writing?"

taurath — Fri, 22 May 2026 16:56:41 +0000

The best thing to convince you to not use AI for writing is to watch a friend who used to be a writer utterly lose their voice while having no idea how they come across. They have started losing longtime friends and relationships because they are so engaged with AI they keep shoving their genAI output in everyone’s faces and feeling insulted when they balk.

It does not help that their work gave them a major promotion for being so pro-AI adoption.

There’s a sickness that AI brings, and the cost to everyone is under appreciated. There’s benefits too, but the validation loop is like a poison, and it seems especially potent for management types.

New comment by taurath in "Anna's Archive hit with $19.5M default judgment and global domain takedown order"

taurath — Thu, 21 May 2026 03:31:22 +0000

And you'll have your nice library and can read whenever you want from the comfort of your own home, and while most people will pirate shit libraries can be great for making things accessible without a $60/month mobile charge, especially when people can't afford shelter.

> Literacy was only interesting for most people as a means to pass the time until they could get their hands on AI slop Tiktok feeds.

Its funny to me how the people who so readily declare certainty about the future constantly demonstrate their utter ignorance of the human spirit. Whats the whole basis for this country again?

New comment by taurath in "Gemini 3.5 Flash"

taurath — Wed, 20 May 2026 00:40:38 +0000

I can’t help but think that what AI is best at is convincing management that things it creates are full featured which reads to their brains as mature

New comment by taurath in "I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis"

taurath — Sat, 16 May 2026 01:44:53 +0000

We already know them but everyone is busy throwing them in the trash. It’s all gas and no breaks or handling right now.

New comment by taurath in "Ask HN: Will low quality AI customer support be the new normal?"

taurath — Fri, 15 May 2026 01:22:37 +0000

“For free”. Truly no point in helping you understand a point of view so far removed from your own.

New comment by taurath in "Ask HN: Will low quality AI customer support be the new normal?"

taurath — Wed, 13 May 2026 23:10:10 +0000

> There's always a viable alternative

Tell that to my insurance provider, the only insurance provider I am allowed to choose by my employer.

Or my doctor's office, the only doctors office that treats my ailment that my insurance provider calls in their network. They use AI customer support. They just fired 80% of their receptionists and replaced them with kiosks.

Or my pharmacy, where I get a choice of 3 whole local/mail-in pharmacies I can go to, but each one of them uses AI customer support.

I would consider anyone who's more expensive, if I were allowed to pay for it. Most of the time there is no options. I'm seeking a new employer in the hopes that some other insurance network will be better, but this seems to be the direction that all things are going: full corporate cartels squeezing the life out of everyone.

New comment by taurath in "A consistent pattern of lying': trial exposes what insiders think of Sam Altman"

taurath — Wed, 13 May 2026 19:02:58 +0000

He has functionally nobody to stop him whatever he decides to do now, minus maybe Trump only because he has a bigger megaphone.

Corporate “governance” is the biggest joke ever - this is middle school logic.

New comment by taurath in "A consistent pattern of lying': trial exposes what insiders think of Sam Altman"

taurath — Tue, 12 May 2026 05:58:49 +0000

Both “sides” of the billionaire coin are what’s wrong with the world more than just about anything else.

New comment by taurath in "I let AI build a tool to help me figure out what was waking me up at night"

taurath — Tue, 12 May 2026 04:22:46 +0000

I find my mind goes straight to settled if my phone and all configurable electronics are in a completely separate room. Its like I give up seeking more stimulation.

An off topic addendum - those are 2 very nice places to be. Maybe someday.

New comment by taurath in "GitLab announces workforce reduction and end of their CREDIT values"

taurath — Mon, 11 May 2026 22:23:46 +0000

Do you really think that upper management wants feedback that the stupid fucking ideas they have are boneheaded? The point of middle management is to absorb it so it doesn't reach the children at the top and make them feel bad

New comment by taurath in "Ask HN: Do you know the ethics of Developers?"

taurath — Mon, 11 May 2026 22:19:08 +0000

This seems utterly delusional regarding the state of software engineering. In fact, you could almost build a mapping of billion dollar companies who's entire business model actively works against each one of them.

New comment by taurath in "Software engineering may no longer be a lifetime career"

taurath — Mon, 11 May 2026 20:18:33 +0000

Equal? No, no no no. Upper management is making PoCs that promise to solve longstanding multi year learnings of tradeoffs and solution balancing, and setting goals based on that. We are heading to a cliff and everyone is going to learn what happens when you replace already vulnerable foundation pillars with pig iron.

New comment by taurath in "Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler"

taurath — Mon, 11 May 2026 17:13:01 +0000

For people who are just technology consumers they don’t see what could be offered, only what is. This is so frustrating when one understands how railroaded everyone is into maximizing platform ad revenue while holding the reasons people go on the platforms out as a carrot on a stick that gets further and further away. It’s 300 PHD psychologists vs someone just trying to keep up with their family.