Hacker News: trentnix

New comment by trentnix in "Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse"

trentnix — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 15:41:38 +0000

That's not been my experience at all. I only view the "Follow" list because I don't care about the "algorithm". I keep my follow list pretty tight and am pretty aggressive about removing people that post too frequently or without focus. It works just fine for me, but I'm very casual in my usage.

New comment by trentnix in "Boy I was wrong about the Fediverse"

trentnix — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 15:37:23 +0000

Another example of "everything before the word but is horse ****".

New comment by trentnix in "Technical Excellence Is Not Enough"

trentnix — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 19:43:44 +0000

I've also played both roles myself at times. I've been the wise consultant. And I've been the Cassandra that nobody would listen to. My wisdom was never as good as presumed when I was the consultant. And my wisdom was far better than was assumed when I as the Cassandra.

New comment by trentnix in "Technical Excellence Is Not Enough"

trentnix — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 14:08:11 +0000

“Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown."

- Luke 4:24

It's why people often trust consultants over the people inside the organization. It's why people often want to elect new leaders even if the current leaders are doing a decent job.

The baby almost always gets thrown out with the bath water.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_throw_the_baby_out_with_...

New comment by trentnix in "How to stop being boring"

trentnix — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 15:11:19 +0000

I've become quite comfortable with being boring. Fact is, it's a great life.

When I see "interesting" people doing "interesting" things they look fake, exhausting, or both.

New comment by trentnix in "The path to ubiquitous AI (17k tokens/sec)"

trentnix — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 12:08:39 +0000

The speed of the chatbot's response is startling when you're used to the simulated fast typing of ChatGPT and others. But the Llama 3.1 8B model Taalas uses predictably results in incorrect answers, hallucinations, poor reliability as a chatbot.

What type of latency-sensitive applications are appropriate for a small-model, high-throughput solution like this? I presume this type of specialization is necessary for robotics, drones, or industrial automation. What else?

New comment by trentnix in "The Future of AI Software Development"

trentnix — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 20:21:20 +0000

Most execs I've worked with couldn't tell their engineering team what they wanted with any specificity. That won't magically get any better when they talk to an LLM.

If you can't write requirements an engineering team can use, you won't be able to write requirements for the robots either.

New comment by trentnix in "OpenClaw is changing my life"

trentnix — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 14:52:46 +0000

Midwits love this kind of stuff. Movie critics heap praise on forgettable movies to get their names and quotes on the movie poster. Robert Scoble made an entire career in tech bloviation hyping the current thing and got invited to the coolest parties. LinkedIn is a word salad conveyor belt of this kind of useless nonsense.

It's a racket never ends.

New comment by trentnix in "Hackers (1995) Animated Experience"

trentnix — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 17:06:37 +0000

It's the guy in the tank that breaks it. Pretty sure it's just a dummy.

New comment by trentnix in "Hackers (1995) Animated Experience"

trentnix — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 16:31:06 +0000

That's true on there being lots of terrible practical effects out there. The parent lauded Raiders of the Lost Ark for its practical effects. In contrast, Last Crusade was a great movie that had a few practical effects that were terrible. The scene with the tank going over the edge of the cliff is so bad and so fake that I could help rewind and pause to laugh at it when I was a kid.

New comment by trentnix in "Hackers (1995) Animated Experience"

trentnix — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 16:24:01 +0000

Yep that's Explorers!

I was a bit too young for Stand By Me. The subject matter was just too serious for me at that age. But I also grew up in a small town in the country where exploring was a normal thing.

I would meet kids from college that were from much larger towns and they'd complain "I grew up in so-and-so and there's NOTHING for kids to do there!"

I'd think to myself, "you have no idea what you're talking about. I used to go to your town to do stuff!"

New comment by trentnix in "Hackers (1995) Animated Experience"

trentnix — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 15:11:45 +0000

The animation is cool, but I just wanted to note for Hackers fans and movie nerds that the scenes inside the "Gibson" that this animates were actually done via practical effects.

New comment by trentnix in "Hackers (1995) Animated Experience"

trentnix — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 15:08:55 +0000

It's my favorite movie of all time, even though it's one of those movies that I don't expect anyone else to like. It's just a shot of joyful nostalgia right into my veins every time I watch it.

Explorers, the Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix movie from the mid-80s, is my #2 for the same reasons.

New comment by trentnix in "Fined $48k for using a jammer to keep commuters from using phones while driving"

trentnix — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 15:19:31 +0000

> What was this person thinking?

He was thinking he wasn't going to get caught.

New comment by trentnix in "How Jeff Bezos Brought Down the Washington Post"

trentnix — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 20:47:40 +0000

Reduce the power of government if you want to reduce the power certain individuals have over society. Because government is such a single, extremely powerful lever it becomes a singular target of influence and corruption by the rich and influential. Why do you think so many of the rich and powerful move to DC or keep residences there?

The insistence of so many to take away power from Jeff Bezos, who won’t send armed goons to my house if I choose not to buy stuff from Amazon, and giving more power to the government that sent goons to Matt Taibbi’s house the same day he was giving Congressional testimony is an egregious case of missing the plot.

New comment by trentnix in "Doing the thing is doing the thing"

trentnix — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 12:15:43 +0000

Thanks for this. It is timely.

New comment by trentnix in "Is It Time for a Nordic Nuke?"

trentnix — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 17:23:28 +0000

"permitted"

What exactly do you think their response to attempted forcible disarmament would be?

New comment by trentnix in "Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee"

trentnix — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 21:23:07 +0000

Is this a precursor to Tesla offering autopilot in vehicles from other manufacturers? Sure, other manufactuers would have to adopt the hardware and integrate with the autopilot interface, but self-driving is inevitable and Tesla autopilot is the best.

New comment by trentnix in "Internet voting is insecure and should not be used in public elections"

trentnix — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 02:51:43 +0000

Citations aren’t necessary when the incentives for fraud are so great and the means of executing fraud so easy. It’s not demonstrably problematic, it’s inevitably problematic.

New comment by trentnix in "Amazon is ending all inventory commingling as of March 31, 2026"

trentnix — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 14:01:20 +0000

Now that they’ve effectively destroyed their competition through predatory pricing and services, the ensh*ttification can accelerate.