Hacker News: teucris

New comment by teucris in "Solar and batteries can power the world"

teucris — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 15:13:35 +0000

The article specifically notes the following:

>We can get far without worrying about the last 5-10%. The solutions for the last 5-10% could be fossil fuels in the short-term, long-duration storage as it matures, or easily storeable e-biofuels.

New comment by teucris in "LLMs work best when the user defines their acceptance criteria first"

teucris — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 14:39:51 +0000

This article hits on an important point not easily discerned from the title:

Sometimes good software is good due to a long history of hard-earned wins.

AI can help you get to an implementation faster. But it cannot magically summon up a battle-hardened solution. That requires going through some battles.

Great software takes time.

New comment by teucris in "After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand [video]"

teucris — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 17:50:52 +0000

> while eating ramens

For many, even cutting their budget isn’t enough to pursue what you’re describing. Modern careers in software are very hard to reach for people who can’t afford to wait for a real paycheck, and it drives away a massive group of potential talent.

New comment by teucris in "After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand [video]"

teucris — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 17:46:37 +0000

You may be right if AI truly can never replace devs. But history shows many examples of inadequate technologies getting hammered on by industry until they work due to distorted perceptions of economic gain. I’ve heard stories like this regarding mechanical looms, CNC, and cloud services. My understanding is those all work (decently) now not because they were obviously better, but because economic pressure pushed innovation to make them work, for better or worse.

New comment by teucris in "After two years of vibecoding, I'm back to writing by hand [video]"

teucris — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 16:59:32 +0000

Software developers should be worried about their jobs, not because these tools are capable of replacing them or reducing a company’s need for human developers, but rather because the _perception_ that they can/will replace developers is causing a major disruption in hiring practices.

I truly don’t know how this is going to play out. Will the software industry just be a total mess until agents can actually replace developers? Or will companies come to their senses and learn that they still need to hire humans - just humans that know how to use agents to augment their work?

New comment by teucris in "AI generated music barred from Bandcamp"

teucris — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 20:59:29 +0000

> All of the "discoverability" algorithms are specifically and fundamentally about sifting through the millions to find the few that are preferred.

They are fundamentally about finding the content that will generate the most revenue. That changes the dynamics quite a bit.

New comment by teucris in "Atlas Shrugged (2024)"

teucris — Sun, 30 Nov 2025 17:39:56 +0000

I agree that it was in her philosophical framework to accept social security - apologies if my comment seemed in bad faith due to that not being clearer. The irony does not lie with her, but rather those that use her philosophy to eliminate the safety net that she herself ended up using.

Sure, she could have used the money she had put into social security to invest, and maybe would have come out better off. But for those of us who see how public services can enrich an entire society, there is irony to how this all played out.

New comment by teucris in "Atlas Shrugged (2024)"

teucris — Sun, 30 Nov 2025 17:19:29 +0000

The hypocrisy lies in the fact that the philosophy of Ayn Rand - that an elite few held up society and the rest were pretty much just parasites - has been used at great length to justify the gutting of social programs.

New comment by teucris in "73% of AI startups are just prompt engineering"

teucris — Sun, 23 Nov 2025 17:06:49 +0000

I think of the foundational model like CPUs. They're the core of powerful, general-purpose computers, and will likely remain popular and common for most computing solutions. But we also have GPUs, microcontrollers, FPGAs, etc. that don't just act as the core of a wide variety of solutions, but are also paired alongside CPUs for specific use cases that need specialization.

Foundational models are not great for many specific tasks. Assuming that one architecture will eventually work for everything is like saying that x86/amd64/ARM will be all we ever need for processors.

New comment by teucris in "73% of AI startups are just prompt engineering"

teucris — Sun, 23 Nov 2025 16:59:27 +0000

Not to be too pedantic, but code is a kind of specification. I think making the blanket statement "Prompt is code" is inaccurate but there does exist a methodology of writing prompts as if they are specifications that can reliably converted to computational actions, and I believe we're heading toward that.

New comment by teucris in "Montana becomes first state to enshrine 'right to compute' into law"

teucris — Sun, 09 Nov 2025 18:44:56 +0000

I’m all for this movement provided it’s actually focusing on the rights of individuals rather than empowering corporations to own and operate massive amounts of computing power unchecked. When I first read the article, I frankly assumed this was meant to limit regulation on AI. From what I’ve read in the law that doesn’t seem to explicitly be the case, but given the organizations involved, I fully expect to see more in that vein.

New comment by teucris in "You are the scariest monster in the woods"

teucris — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 15:35:50 +0000

But this isn’t a suggestion to turn away from AI threats - it’s a matter of prioritization. There are more imminent threats that we know can turn apocalyptic that swaths of people in power are completely ignoring and instead fretting over AI.

New comment by teucris in "Ten Years of D3D12"

teucris — Fri, 12 Sep 2025 15:23:33 +0000

Really appreciate the detailed article! I was on the team that shipped D3D11 and helped with the start of D3D12. I went off to other things and lost touch - the API has come a long way! So many of these features were just little whispers of ideas exchanged in the hallways. So cool to see them come to life!

New comment by teucris in "E-paper display reaches the realm of LCD screens"

teucris — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 02:05:26 +0000

Yes! I work with the Modos team. You’re exactly right - ideally we want region-based refresh hinting. The SDK supports some region based features - we’d like to extend that functionality.

New comment by teucris in "E-paper display reaches the realm of LCD screens"

teucris — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 23:00:08 +0000

That requires the operating system to “hint” to the display that there’s no refresh necessary and for the display to shut down during those times. That’s currently not supported as these kits just take a video signal, but it’s something being worked on for a future version!

New comment by teucris in "E-paper display reaches the realm of LCD screens"

teucris — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 22:48:03 +0000

Response time is on par with LCDs - the trailing you’re seeing is ghosting, which in most situations is not common but does occur occasionally.

New comment by teucris in "I'm absolutely right"

teucris — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 19:47:54 +0000

This is more or less how I came to the mental model I have that I refer to above. It helps me tremendously in knowing what to expect from every model I’ve used.

New comment by teucris in "I'm absolutely right"

teucris — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 19:45:48 +0000

“All models are wrong, but some are useful.”

Agreed - I picked certain words to be intentionally ambiguous eg “most likely” since it provides an effective intuitive grasp of what’s going on, even if it’s more complicated than that.

New comment by teucris in "I'm absolutely right"

teucris — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 17:04:17 +0000

I think there’s a bit of parroting going around but LLMs are predictive and there’s a lot you can inuit a lot about how they behave just on that fact alone. Sure, calling it “token” prediction is oversimplifying things, but stating that, by their nature, LLMs are guessing at the next most likely thing in the scenario (next data structure needing to be coded up, next step in a process, next concept to cover in a paragraph, etc.) is a very useful mental model.

New comment by teucris in "Modos Paper Monitor – Open-hardware e-paper monitor and dev kit"

teucris — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 03:13:17 +0000

The screens included in these kits are glossy, however the board can support pretty much any screen up to 13”, including matte and flexible. On the ghosting - we’ve been thinking a lot about Wayland drivers and other software solutions. We’re working on an SDK that allows a compositor or other software to not just refresh portions of the screen but also change the display mode for certain portions as well.