Hacker News: thenoblesunfish

New comment by thenoblesunfish in "Coding expertise is going to collapse from AI reliance"

thenoblesunfish — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 18:00:48 +0000

I hope that this will expose the true value of education. It's a new scale perhaps, but not a new problem. We sit in classrooms even though books and YouTube videos make available the teachings of far more illustrious teachers than the one in front of us. We watch things written out agonizingly slowly in chalk. We learned to do algebra and calculus even though we had our TI-86s and Mathematica. We learn in Haskell and Scheme even though those are rarely used later. We write toy compilers and write essays and repeat experiments with known outcomes in labs. We do it to learn how to think, how to build. We just have to be even more deliberate about it now.

New comment by thenoblesunfish in "Being ambitious and being a dad"

thenoblesunfish — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 11:25:05 +0000

My point is that nihilism and egotism are coming for you with or without children.

(And I, like many more than will admit, didn't want children, but my partner did)

New comment by thenoblesunfish in "Being ambitious and being a dad"

thenoblesunfish — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 11:17:22 +0000

Yup. Several of these people I know left it too late and went through a lot with IVF or adoption of just not having the kids they wanted.

New comment by thenoblesunfish in "Being ambitious and being a dad"

thenoblesunfish — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 11:15:57 +0000

True - ultimately I will have to, as that is the only escape from suffering.

New comment by thenoblesunfish in "Being ambitious and being a dad"

thenoblesunfish — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 11:14:15 +0000

You are probably right! But you might be assuming I wanted kids before I realized it wasn't all I'd hoped. I never really wanted them but said ok to my partner. I figured that most of the nicer and more fulfilled older people I knew had kids. Then again now I wonder if that's because there are plenty of older fulfilled people without kids off doing their thing and not interacting with the likes of me.

New comment by thenoblesunfish in "Being ambitious and being a dad"

thenoblesunfish — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 10:54:48 +0000

One is 6 years, the other is 6 months.

New comment by thenoblesunfish in "Being ambitious and being a dad"

thenoblesunfish — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 10:42:03 +0000

Once you have kids you quickly discover that you get forced into it. You have to engage. If you don't, they scream. They get in trouble at school. They are unhappy and it breaks your heart. Once you have no choice but to do something, you will find it's better to find meaning in it. Meaning is ultimately something you create for yourself.

New comment by thenoblesunfish in "Being ambitious and being a dad"

thenoblesunfish — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 10:38:30 +0000

I feel a lot of regret having had children. Not 100%, but it's always going to be more than 0%. I adore my kids but it's too much for my brain and it makes me miserable a lot of the time. I don't bring it up except to counsellors (or anonymous internet bros, apparently) because (a) it's not actionable - there is no going back (b) it's a bummer and no one has anything to say about it.

New comment by thenoblesunfish in "Being ambitious and being a dad"

thenoblesunfish — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 10:32:59 +0000

I think it's social pressure in some cultures, but even in those (sub)cultures which don't have the explicit pressure to have kids, people have a drive to procreate. I cannot tell you how many couples I know who decided they would not have kids, or would only have one, and at a certain point one partner (usually a woman in their late 30s or early 40s if I am being honest) decided this was the most important thing and no amount of money or career setbacks or relationship turmoil wouldn stand in the way.

New comment by thenoblesunfish in "Being ambitious and being a dad"

thenoblesunfish — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 10:26:26 +0000

If we are talking about points people don't make, how about this: your life is going to get harder and worse as you get older. Your dreams will very likely die. Having kids will make that more clear, but honestly I know plenty of people with and without kids and they all struggle with the not fulfilling their ambitions (or realizing those ambitions and finding they weren't what they imagined), the fading of youth, disenchantment with their jobs, etc. Kids are all the horrible things you have heard, but it is a way to grow, it is a very concrete reason to live, at least until they move out. I very much feel the author of this post and I hope that they (and I) keep the fire that drives ambition, but grow enough to enjoy the fire itself, not care quite so much about being productive or scoring points in whatever game.

New comment by thenoblesunfish in "2027 memory capacity is reportedly sold out"

thenoblesunfish — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 18:03:36 +0000

I got a new MacBook Pro recently. Sure seemed expensive to get more RAM. But actually I don't know enough about the chip - it's an M5 system on a chip - is Apple ultimately buying the RAM parts of that from the suppliers AI is overwhelming, or do they "make the RAM with the rest of the chip" in some way?

New comment by thenoblesunfish in "How to Exist"

thenoblesunfish — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 06:27:54 +0000

"Just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that statement! Many people struggle greatly with falling asleep. Personally, while I agree with you, if you are the type of person who struggles with clearing the mind, it's hardest to do when exhausted (hence common advice to practice mediation early in the day)

New comment by thenoblesunfish in "How to Exist"

thenoblesunfish — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 06:24:14 +0000

It's a catchy but, yes, inaccurate term. Then again, this is an area which ultimately wants to escape terms (enter infuriatingly meaningless other terms like "ineffable"), so consider letting go of linguistic pedantry part of the exercise. Maybe a better framing for you is to think of your brain as a computer (which it is) and try and let it run the programs it's going to run when the "user" stops launching processes (or practically most of the time when meditating, runs a script which runs ps and then kills threads). The idea is that like clearing your desk or letting your system run some background tasks, you'll end up with a better system if you periodically practice making space in this way.

New comment by thenoblesunfish in "Elevators"

thenoblesunfish — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 06:08:35 +0000

Fun! I hate those new kiosk style elevators, because I can't reconfirm that I actually pressed the button, remember which one I am supposed to wait for or press the button again while I'm waiting to make sure I really pressed it. Also don't like that I can't change my mind inside the elevator. All in theory not problems if you were a rational person and the system WAI but I am not and things like elevators rarely do. The up/down buttons are more brainless and I like that. Interesting to hear that they might not even be more efficient!

New comment by thenoblesunfish in "Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again"

thenoblesunfish — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 21:32:49 +0000

Agreed, and (especially if you are a nerd who is good at tests) the description of the levels always seemed to me to imply more ability than what you really need to pass the test. OP, just study for the test and pass it. You can, and you will be proud of yourself and happier in your new home country.

New comment by thenoblesunfish in "Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again"

thenoblesunfish — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 21:29:08 +0000

What are the numbers for context? How many people come? How many leave? In what jobs do they work? How does that compare to other countries?

New comment by thenoblesunfish in "Streaming services' obnoxiously loud ads become illegal on July 1 in California"

thenoblesunfish — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 18:07:49 +0000

What's the technical definition of loudness that applies here? Is it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LUFS ?

New comment by thenoblesunfish in "Never talk to the police"

thenoblesunfish — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 17:17:49 +0000

Never frobnicate without a flangleharp, says the flangleharp salesman. He could be right, but you would probably want to ask someone else.

New comment by thenoblesunfish in "Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?"

thenoblesunfish — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 04:39:59 +0000

You are going to be asked to do your job, faster, and you are going to have a massive headache managing a bunch of machines mostly doing your job.

New comment by thenoblesunfish in "Ask HN: Why is the HN crowd so anti-AI?"

thenoblesunfish — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 04:37:05 +0000

Because a lot of us are engineers. It's our mindset and our job to question hype and broad strokes and easy solutions, to go a few levels deeper and ask "okay but does it really work?". I don't think most people are anti AI more than they are anti any tool.