Hacker News: topherPedersen

New comment by topherPedersen in "Google Hates You"

topherPedersen — Thu, 28 May 2026 19:23:15 +0000

Don't be evil. Drop the don't; it's cleaner.

New comment by topherPedersen in "Anthropic raises $65B in Series H funding at $965B post-money valuation"

topherPedersen — Thu, 28 May 2026 19:16:45 +0000

Anthropic has a great product, but what's going on in the stock market is astonishing. Companies waiting to be valued at a trillion dollars before going public? (I'm writing this comment with the assumption that they will go public soon and the valuation will be higher than this $965 billion dollar private valuation) The stock market used to be a place for companies to raise money from investors. But that isn't what it is anymore, it's a dumping ground. Venture capitalists & private investors are sucking all of the possible growth and future upside from these companies and then dumping them on retail investors when there's nothing left. There is no growth or upside left by the time these companies go public. If you invest in these IPOs you are buying the absolute peak with all potential future profits baked into the price, with nowhere left to go but down.

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

topherPedersen — Fri, 15 May 2026 22:49:03 +0000

Hype & greed are a hell of a drug

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

topherPedersen — Mon, 11 May 2026 19:50:24 +0000

It's been absolutely astonishing to see software developers pick software development as the first profession to attempt to automate away. Couldn't you geniuses have picked any other profession to start with? And it's not just the developers at Anthropic & OpenAI, even at my own company, the rockstar developers were the first to try and automate away all of the software development jobs at our company.

New comment by topherPedersen in "The map that keeps Burning Man honest"

topherPedersen — Thu, 07 May 2026 15:49:06 +0000

From my experience, people are pretty good about cleaning up. The first year I went I camped solo, so I theoretically could have left a bunch of crap, but I didn't. The second year I camped with a camp, and they were really thorough with check out and break down. We had a formal clean up of certain areas that I participated in where I remember people finding the tiniest things, like little pieces of thread and what not. And then when I personally went to leave, we had someone come and inspect my area and whatnot. So in my opinion, I think people do a pretty good job. And even if people didn't do a good job... we are not talking about a beautiful national park here, it is a desolate wasteland where literally no life can survive. I saw maybe ONE bug while I was out there. Not even bugs can survive out there. It's like the surface of the moon.

New comment by topherPedersen in "SpaceX says it has agreement to acquire Cursor for $60B"

topherPedersen — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 02:02:08 +0000

$60 billion with a B???

Amazon data center in Bahrain attacked by Iranian Revolutionary Guards

topherPedersen — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 21:27:25 +0000

Article URL: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/amazons-cloud-business-bahrain-damaged-iran-strike-ft-reports-2026-04-01/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47620426

Points: 28

# Comments: 5

Iran attacks Oracle data center in Dubai

topherPedersen — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 21:24:41 +0000

Article URL: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-891951

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47620400

Points: 13

# Comments: 5

New comment by topherPedersen in "AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice"

topherPedersen — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:00:18 +0000

You're exactly right

New comment by topherPedersen in "Goodbye to Sora"

topherPedersen — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 01:57:27 +0000

I never used Sora to watch content, but there was a guy on TikTok that used to post these great Sora generated videos that I really liked. Honestly, I was kind of surprised to hear that they were shutting this app down today.

New comment by topherPedersen in "Meta will shut down VR Horizon Worlds access June 15"

topherPedersen — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 18:06:35 +0000

I bought my son a Meta Quest headset and a second one for me to use while playing with him. Honestly, it kind of makes me sick when I use it. Will have to see if it gets any better the next time we play. I'm kind of lazy and just want to lie down when using it, but the last time I tried using it I had to stand up to be able to do whatever it was we were doing.

New comment by topherPedersen in "Waymo exec reveals company uses remote workers in the Philippines"

topherPedersen — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 22:59:39 +0000

I don't have any problem with Waymos having a human in the loop for assistance, but sending all of our jobs to other countries is destroying the United States.

New comment by topherPedersen in "New YC homepage"

topherPedersen — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 04:22:56 +0000

I noticed a photo of the Kalshi founders on the new homepage. I remember when Kalshi launched I thought it was so bad, and that those founders must be the very bottom of their class... they're billionaires now!

New comment by topherPedersen in "Aldous Huxley predicts Adderall and champions alternative therapies"

topherPedersen — Tue, 18 Nov 2025 00:11:38 +0000

There's a schizophrenic vandal here in Austin that spray paints SOMA© all up and down Riverside Drive.

New comment by topherPedersen in "Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance"

topherPedersen — Sat, 08 Nov 2025 05:09:21 +0000

Rename it Snapp

New comment by topherPedersen in "Valdi – A cross-platform UI framework that delivers native performance"

topherPedersen — Sat, 08 Nov 2025 05:05:35 +0000

This is so cool! I'm a React-Native developer, and I'm glad to see more options like this coming into existence.

New comment by topherPedersen in "The AI coding trap"

topherPedersen — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 02:00:15 +0000

I agree with this. My bosses boss thinks that AI is going to end up doing 95% of our work for us. From my experience (so far) AI coding follows the 80/20 rule, it can get you 80% of what you want for 20% of the time/effort. And the ratio might be more like, it'll get you 80% of what you want IMMEDIATELY, but it can't get you the last 20%, it needs a human to get it over the finish line.

It's super impressive in my opinion, but if you think it's going to straight up replace humans right now, I think you probably aren't a software developer in the trenches cranking out features.

I'm sort of a Neanderthal when it comes to understanding AI, but I don't think AI in it's current form works like a human. Right now, it kind of just cranks out all the code in one fell swoop. A human on the other hand works more iteratively. You write a little bit of code then you run it and look at an iPhone simulator, look at Figma designs, and see if you're getting closer to what you want. AI doesn't appear to know how to iterate, run code, look at designs, and debug things. I imagine in 100 years it will know how to do all that stuff though. And who knows, maybe in 1 year it will be able to do that. But as of right now, September 28th, 2025 it can't do that yet.

New comment by topherPedersen in "Why does a fire truck cost $2m"

topherPedersen — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 01:29:09 +0000

As a consumer (even a corporate or government consumer), you have to watch out for this in a capitalist system. My ex's family asked me to take my son to this specific water park this weekend. When I went to buy the tickets this morning, it was going to be $250 to go to the swimming pool! I live in Austin, TX and we have the coolest pool in the world and it's $5 ($8 or something like that if I take my son).

Businesses will try and trick people into thinking $250 is an acceptable price to charge to visit a swimming pool. They'll do the same shit with firetrucks if nobody is paying attention.

Excellent article, and great to see someone pointing this out. Prices will climb out of control if people are suckers and believe the lie of "you get what you pay for." It's more like businesses will keep ratcheting up prices indefinitely as long as there are suckers around who are easily parted with their money.

Extended rant... my ex once wanted to pay $500 for a f*cking vacuum cleaner. People are stupid. Had we listened to Henry Ford they'd still be making some version of the Model T and you could buy a new car for $6,008.85 (inflation adjusted price of a Model T).

New comment by topherPedersen in "Congratulations on creating the one billionth repository on GitHub"

topherPedersen — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 01:50:08 +0000

You solved the mystery!

New comment by topherPedersen in "The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine"

topherPedersen — Sat, 31 May 2025 04:48:45 +0000

I could be wrong, but I think us software developers are going to become even more powerful, in demand, and valuable.