Hacker News: tehnub

New comment by tehnub in "Googlebook"

tehnub — Wed, 13 May 2026 01:04:34 +0000

It's a common rhetorical technique that never convinces me. I'm not convinced this guy's anecdote is an exception to some rule.

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

tehnub — Mon, 11 May 2026 16:55:06 +0000

>If the models are good enough, you will simply get outcompeted by engineers willing to trade their long-term cognitive ability for a short-term lucrative career

> (2) AI-users thus become less effective engineers over time, as their technical skills atrophy

Wouldn't (2) imply that if everyone just used AI there eventually would come a time when there aren't engineers who will outcompete you (because their skills are so atrophied)?

New comment by tehnub in "I built a Game Boy emulator in F#"

tehnub — Fri, 01 May 2026 05:58:10 +0000

Interesting, enjoyable post. Like the bit about data modeling. I've been dabbling in some OCaml and that kind of modeling is the best part. Also interesting to learn of CAMLBOY. Feedback to the author: Skip the AI edit step. I'd have preferred grammar errors or inelegance to what we have here, which is a bit stale.

How to Build an Agent Or: The Emperor Has No Clothes (2025)

tehnub — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 16:40:58 +0000

Article URL: https://ampcode.com/notes/how-to-build-an-agent

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47817255

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Books I Like: SICP

tehnub — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 19:15:24 +0000

Article URL: https://users.cms.caltech.edu/~mvanier/blog/sicp/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47809508

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by tehnub in "Neanderthals survived on a knife's edge for 350k years"

tehnub — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 06:26:22 +0000

I just read this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cajamarca

It seems like the Incans were overconfident and didn't expect a surprise attack (didn't have their weapons, only a small retinue around the rule in ceremonial garb instead of armor), and then the 8000 warriors were outside and didn't even attempt to fight the Spaniards because they were so demoralized.

New comment by tehnub in "Slop is not necessarily the future"

tehnub — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 23:51:53 +0000

Brilliant

>Sure, if you mess up and one of the houses collapses then that'll manifest as an outcome that impacts the home owner negatively.

lol

New comment by tehnub in "Slop is not necessarily the future"

tehnub — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 23:36:35 +0000

There are plenty of furniture makers that use all hardwood construction. It's just that they charge like $10K USD for a cabinet

New comment by tehnub in "OkCupid gave 3M dating-app photos to facial recognition firm, FTC says"

tehnub — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 22:57:13 +0000

This incident was from 2014. I wonder how many OKCupid employees and shareholders from then are still at/invested in the company. What do corporate punishments do if the people who made the mistake aren't even there to receive them?

New comment by tehnub in "A Faster Alternative to Jq"

tehnub — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 14:47:36 +0000

I've been using jj, which apparently is also faster than jq https://github.com/tidwall/jj

New comment by tehnub in "Rob Pike’s Rules of Programming (1989)"

tehnub — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 15:43:08 +0000

There's probably tons of stuff people use that is way slower than it needs to be but speed isn't one of their self-reported burning problems because they don't even realize it could be faster. pip vs uv?

New comment by tehnub in "Rendezvous with Rama"

tehnub — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 23:11:35 +0000

Nah we're not doing prequel hate in 2026

New comment by tehnub in "Why Go Can't Try"

tehnub — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 18:57:46 +0000

Why Article By AI?

New comment by tehnub in "Ladybird adopts Rust, with help from AI"

tehnub — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 17:40:50 +0000

I wouldn’t because idiomatic Haskell is way slower than idiomatic Rust.

New comment by tehnub in "Brookhaven Lab's RHIC concludes 25-year run with final collisions"

tehnub — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 00:48:50 +0000

They’re using big things to do experiments. Maybe they discover some new physical effect. How do you know that that effect couldn’t be demonstrated in some smaller scale experiment after it’s understood better?

New comment by tehnub in "Brookhaven Lab's RHIC concludes 25-year run with final collisions"

tehnub — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 22:44:17 +0000

I don't think that argument holds up. See quantum mechanics.

New comment by tehnub in "My AI Adoption Journey"

tehnub — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 00:13:29 +0000

How can people still make such mistaken analogies when ChatGPT was released over three years ago?

New comment by tehnub in "My AI Adoption Journey"

tehnub — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 23:16:34 +0000

Totally on point, except I'm pretty sure Jobs was not like that. From what I've read he'd be more of a hands on "agentic engineer". Baby-sitting his engineers and designers and steering them.

New comment by tehnub in "Review of 1984 by Isaac Asimov (1980)"

tehnub — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 07:05:12 +0000

I think Asimov is right that 1984 was not intended as a forecast but rather a depiction of Stalinism with British characteristics, so to speak.

>In short, if 1984 must be considered science fiction, then it is very bad science fiction.

Based on this quote and others, it seems Asimov didn't believe that Orwell intended the novel as science fiction, although others categorize it that way. I would say he's attacking the interpretation of it as science fiction, but it veers into an attack on Orwell, which is unfortunate.

You write

>Science fiction does not _forecast_.

Not to be overly pedantic but to be fair to Asimov, he didn't exactly say science fiction _necessarily_ does that, but rather it's a knack related to science fiction.

Sublime Merge

tehnub — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 19:05:38 +0000

Article URL: https://www.sublimemerge.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46890167

Points: 1

# Comments: 0