Hacker News: uberman

New comment by uberman in "AI Killed Stack Overflow (and why that sucks)"

uberman — Wed, 27 May 2026 14:38:29 +0000

Knowing how to ask for help is an important skill. Honestly, I admit what SO was demanding was the really the foundation of debugging and I am sure that many people are now better developers because SO having taught them how to approach a problem and how to ask for help.

That said, while the core objective may have been sound, that approach and delivery of the SO "way" was often socially wanting.

That is of course, just my observation.

New comment by uberman in "Am I Supposed to Feel Happy?"

uberman — Tue, 26 May 2026 14:26:47 +0000

Perhaps they are from Iran? Just a wild guess.

New comment by uberman in "AI Killed Stack Overflow (and why that sucks)"

uberman — Tue, 26 May 2026 14:21:44 +0000

StackOverflow killed itself.

I'm the first to admit, I got a lot of search results that pointed to answers I found valuable on SO. I answered questions the best I could and always tried to be helpful.

I have no actual SO "questions asked", 1000 "answered" and 15k in "rep". I tried my best. I would never have actually asked a question and open myself up to the abuse fire hose.

SO killed itself in my opinion with overzealous power users with 10s of thousands of rep points to burn and an axe to grind. I know it is a dead horse at this point, but the new user experience was terrible and still is unless you choose "advice" rather than a traditional question.

AI was just the euthanasia. I am sure there are lots of people, not just me with the opinion that AI has never been rude to me when I ask for help.

New comment by uberman in "Ask HN: Are these videos from hacked IoT devices?"

uberman — Sat, 23 May 2026 18:21:30 +0000

Many videos now contain everyday video backdrops. I saw one the other day that was just chickens wandering around. I'm sure they are there to prevent copywrite bots from discovering IP theft. That is just my best guess though.

New comment by uberman in "Data centers could be good for your hometown"

uberman — Sat, 23 May 2026 16:44:13 +0000

Except they almost certainly dont actually pay taxes. At best they make PILOT payments.

New comment by uberman in "Ask HN: Does anyone what a "RiotCache.dat" file was doing in my EFI partition?"

uberman — Sat, 23 May 2026 16:38:40 +0000

Riot Games client data? Aka anticheat root kit? Did your old laptop have a riot game on it?

New comment by uberman in "Tell HN: I'm tired of AI-generated answers"

uberman — Thu, 21 May 2026 23:48:07 +0000

You're absolutely right! I'm here to help. Tell me more about .

Joking aside. I do hate when teammates forward me screenshots of chatgpt conversations as if that was somehow going to be helpful and as if they were so smart for thinking to ask an llm to some a problem we were discussing.

New comment by uberman in "$40K for an $8 knob? The case for a military right to repair"

uberman — Wed, 20 May 2026 20:54:53 +0000

I know at first blush these 10k for a hammer and 40k for a knob charges seem outrageous but what you don't see if you just look at these charges is the other side of the equation where you fix bid a project and then the three letter agency you are working with changes the requirements mid-project.

You have to make the change and they are bound by funds appropriated and you have to deliver. The way this works out a good number of times is on the back end when you work together in a next phase to bill a 10k custom hammer as part of a maintenance and support contract . The reality is not that the hammer costs 10k but as a contractor you are being compensated for 10k of out of scope work you had to do in a prior phase.

Again this is almost certainly not about right to repair and more about fix the way these projects are budgeted and scoped.

Just my two cents here.

New comment by uberman in "Ask HN: What would you expect from an app launcher as a developer?"

uberman — Wed, 20 May 2026 19:59:59 +0000

Why would I use such an app launcher rather than say google search?

New comment by uberman in "Bipartisan Bill Would Impose New Annual Fee on Electric Vehicles"

uberman — Tue, 19 May 2026 18:20:20 +0000

Of course it is about double the current ICE fuel tax. No good deed goes un-punished as they say.

New comment by uberman in "The down fall of bug bounties"

uberman — Mon, 18 May 2026 16:13:00 +0000

Perhaps I voiced this incorrectly. My real point is that bug bounties are valuable and that an increased velocity of bug identification and resolution is a good thing and AI should not diminish that objective.

New comment by uberman in "The down fall of bug bounties"

uberman — Mon, 18 May 2026 13:57:46 +0000

I see this quite a bit. The notion that increased bugs identified or increased PRs are inherently bad and that AI assistance is "slop". Is it really?

Bug Bounties might be dead but that is just as likely because institutions can't/wont pay for all the problems being identified.

A bug is a bug in my opinion and it is not diminished because it was identified and patched with AI assistance. Maybe those kinds of bugs are even more valuable as if Mythos can find them and humans can't then it is not like we will be able to say "Hackers, please don't exploit these kinds of bugs".

New comment by uberman in "If a machine can think, why can it not also feel?"

uberman — Fri, 15 May 2026 17:10:04 +0000

Don't get distracted by anthropomorphic terms used to describe how LLMs function.

New comment by uberman in "Ask HN: Do you need to look at the code?"

uberman — Tue, 12 May 2026 15:52:54 +0000

I always look at the suggested changes. Always. Not infrequently, LLMs want to put new methods in what I consider the wrong place. Not infrequently, the LLM requires pushback and admits it was over engineering something. Finally, if you can't understand how or where something is implemented then when it comes time to fix it you will likely have a hard time finding what to fix. Just my perspective.

New comment by uberman in "Ask HN: Why do people hate using AI so much?"

uberman — Tue, 12 May 2026 12:54:25 +0000

Sure, I get it.

On the other hand it is not like we (as people) never personify our tools. Take boats as the iconic example. Many languages place genders on nouns. I'll also say that it sure looks like a conversation to me when I use Claude the tool.

New comment by uberman in "Ask HN: Why do people hate using AI so much?"

uberman — Mon, 11 May 2026 18:39:00 +0000

I'm not sure most people do hate llm use as users. I am very impressed, well more like stunned at where we have come in the last few year. I use Claude almost every day and I love the productivity gains it affords.

What i will say though is that (for me anyways) working with an llm like Claude can be mentally taxing because of how fast we can move together. I also refuse to vibe code so i am always proofing the work and maintaining a context of what we are working on

Perhaps this increased cognitive load is what others are talking about if they say they dont like using an llm

New comment by uberman in "I keep tripping over "true, false, true""

uberman — Mon, 11 May 2026 13:06:44 +0000

Perhaps, jsdocs might help here.

New comment by uberman in "AI Is Forcing CEOs to Make a Stark Choice: Lay Off Workers or Make Them Do More"

uberman — Sun, 10 May 2026 13:54:59 +0000

I thought most CEOs had come to the conclusion last week that AI was not increasing productivity.

New comment by uberman in "Ask HN: What is your go-to solution for a personal wiki in 2026?"

uberman — Thu, 07 May 2026 18:45:09 +0000

For a personal wiki I would use wikijs

New comment by uberman in "I bought an analog watch and I love it"

uberman — Thu, 07 May 2026 17:19:49 +0000

I have a nice (nice to look at but not expensive) skeleton watch and I love it. I would never use a "smart" watch myself.