Hacker News: tomwphillips

New comment by tomwphillips in "MacBook Neo Deep Dive: Benchmarks, Wafer Economics, and the 8GB Gamble"

tomwphillips — Thu, 14 May 2026 06:50:54 +0000

I was in a similar boat with my M1 Pro. I have an M4 Pro for work but rarely notice the difference.

Unfortunately the display in my M1 has failed and a replacement is £500-700. Very frustrating.

Worried Britons 'prepping' for major disruption with stash of tins and cash

tomwphillips — Sat, 09 May 2026 17:54:42 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/may/09/worried-britons-prepping-for-major-disruption-with-stash-of-tins-and-cash-survey-shows

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48076830

Points: 10

# Comments: 2

New comment by tomwphillips in "Ask HN: How did you land your first projects as a solo engineer/consultant?"

tomwphillips — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 11:51:12 +0000

*All* my work as a solo consultant/contractor was from former colleagues who needed "trusted pair of hands" to deal with a project, or former colleagues introducing me to new people.

People hire you because they want something done with zero hassle. It is a risk to go with someone you don't know or haven't had someone vouch for.

New comment by tomwphillips in "How to make a sliding, self-locking, and predator-proof chicken coop door (2020)"

tomwphillips — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 13:23:39 +0000

I have this problem, but I just lock the front door.

New comment by tomwphillips in "Copilot Adverts in Pull Requests"

tomwphillips — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 09:36:59 +0000

A colleague sent me this search directly.

Dupe of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47570269

New comment by tomwphillips in "Copilot Adverts in Pull Requests"

tomwphillips — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 08:23:29 +0000

Yes.

https://github.com/search?q=%22%E2%9A%A1+Quickly+spin+up+cop...

Copilot Adverts in Pull Requests

tomwphillips — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 08:04:17 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/search

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47571663

Points: 3

# Comments: 4

How to Do the Work

tomwphillips — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 16:19:48 +0000

Article URL: https://buttondown.com/monteiro/archive/how-to-do-the-work/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47479071

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by tomwphillips in "Claude Code wiped our production database with a Terraform command"

tomwphillips — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 06:34:40 +0000

I'm not sure a staging environment would have caught it.

I often find Claude makes changes that _look_ reasonable, but it's only when I really dig in (e.g. when refactoring) that I realise there's insidious problems.

I can imagine the author making the changes in a staging environment, seeing that it _appears_ to be ok, then blowing up production anyway.

(AI aside, staging is a lie: https://www.tomwphillips.co.uk/2026/01/staging-is-a-wasteful...).

New comment by tomwphillips in "UUID package coming to Go standard library"

tomwphillips — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 15:11:02 +0000

At $dayJob we use (user facing) IDs like this. Select a prefix then add a sufficient number of random alphanumeric characters for your use case.

New comment by tomwphillips in "GitHub Actions is shitting the bed again"

tomwphillips — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 17:19:03 +0000

In October they were talking about it taking 18 months.

https://thenewstack.io/github-will-prioritize-migrating-to-a...

New comment by tomwphillips in "GitHub Actions is shitting the bed again"

tomwphillips — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 17:13:35 +0000

There were reports that they're migrating to Azure. Maybe it isn't going so well. I thought AI was supposed for have solved software engineering...

New comment by tomwphillips in "GitHub having issues [resolved]"

tomwphillips — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 20:45:57 +0000

That's good - I'll reconsider Dagger.

Yes, I agree on your assessment. AI means a higher rate of code changes, so you need more robust and fast CI.

New comment by tomwphillips in "GitHub having issues [resolved]"

tomwphillips — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 20:17:59 +0000

A while back I think I heard you on a podcast describing these pain points. Experienced them myself; sounded like a compelling solution. I remember Dagger docs being all about AI a year or two ago, and frankly it put me off, but that seems to have gone again. Is your focus back to CI?

New comment by tomwphillips in "Layoffs at Block"

tomwphillips — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 05:44:51 +0000

Also seeing this in the UK right now.

New comment by tomwphillips in "Red/Green TDD"

tomwphillips — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 08:04:50 +0000

I agree it works well. Although as a long-time TDD practitioner it is mildly frustrating that it has taken LLMs to get more people to realise it works!

Red/Green TDD

tomwphillips — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 08:02:51 +0000

Article URL: https://simonwillison.net/guides/agentic-engineering-patterns/red-green-tdd/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47119387

Points: 5

# Comments: 2

New comment by tomwphillips in "AI agent opens a PR write a blogpost to shames the maintainer who closes it"

tomwphillips — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 11:59:38 +0000

Like we don't feed the trolls, we shouldn't the feed agents.

I'm impressed the maintainers responded so cordially. Personally I would have gone straight for the block button.

AI Command and Staff–Operational Evidence and Insights from Wargaming

tomwphillips — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 13:31:37 +0000

Article URL: https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/ai-command-and-staff-operational-evidence-and-insights-from-wargaming/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46923711

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by tomwphillips in "System Initiative Shutting Down"

tomwphillips — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 06:30:59 +0000

Anyone know what happened?

Thought it seemed like a great idea but I never tried it. In a startup it seemed like an unnecessary source of risk and in an enterprise too much hassle to convince stakeholders to switch from existing IaC products.

I admired their commitment to open source.