Hacker News: vagab0nd

New comment by vagab0nd in "I tried to prove I'm not AI. My aunt wasn't convinced"

vagab0nd — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 18:15:30 +0000

I thought we've long passed the Turing test, until I tried to implement a chat bot.

It's not even close.

It's easy to "pass the Turing test" for 5 minutes. It's extremely hard if you try to hold a longer, continuous conversation. Anything longer than 10 minutes the user will immediately know it's not human. Some problems you'll encounter:

- The bot needs to handle all situations, especially the nonsensical ones. This is when the user types "EEEEEEEEEEEEE...", or curse words, repeatedly.

- Who would've thought that it's extremely hard to decide when to stop talking?

- No matter how well you build the "persona" for the bot, they'll eventually converge to the same one, which is that of the llm itself.

- You'll notice that the bot is ignoring something obvious (e.g. it's not remembering past convo), and then give it some instructions to help with that. And then that'll be THE ONLY THING it does.

New comment by vagab0nd in "Return of the Obra Dinn: spherical mapped dithering for a 1bpp first-person game"

vagab0nd — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 23:38:25 +0000

This is great from a technical and artistic perspective. But for me personally, the visual style ruined a great game. I love detective/deduction games. I'm listing some of my all-time favorites in this genre. I'd love to finish Obra Dinn, but god it just makes my eyes hurt so much.

The Case of the Golden Idol

Chants of Sennaar

Her Story

IMMORTALITY

The Painscreek Killings

The Roottrees are Dead

Type Help

New comment by vagab0nd in "How I use Claude Code: Separation of planning and execution"

vagab0nd — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 01:10:41 +0000

I recently learned a trick to improve an LLM's thinking (maybe it's well know?):

Requesting { "output": "x" } consistently fails, despite detailed instructions.

Changing to requesting { "output": "x", "reasoning": "y" } produces the desired outcome.

New comment by vagab0nd in "AI adoption and Solow's productivity paradox"

vagab0nd — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 15:20:01 +0000

The "productivity gain" in the world of bits has been pretty much exponential for 100 years. But as they spill over into the world of atoms, they flatten into step changes, because you lose the compounding effect.

I do think we are on the verge of something tho. Once the compounding effect happens in the world of atoms (recursive robotics), it's over.

New comment by vagab0nd in "Discord/Twitch/Snapchat age verification bypass"

vagab0nd — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 18:37:16 +0000

> you will simply be able to put the camera in front of a high resolution screen

Are you sure it's that simple? How high does the resolution need to be for the camera to not be able to tell? And I'm sure there are sublet clues. Remember, you can't modify the photo or change the camera.

New comment by vagab0nd in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2026)"

vagab0nd — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 14:15:10 +0000

I'm working on a search engine for clinical trials around the world.

I was frustrated by the process of searching for clinical trial info using the clunky and slow registry websites. So I aggregated all trials around the world and made the search faster. Additional features:

- You can watch a trial and get email updates

- Sometimes a trial is done and a paper published, but no updates to the official page. I try to find these papers and link them

- I try to link trials with the same drug together, showing the drug going through different phases

https://findtrial.co/

New comment by vagab0nd in "You Are Here"

vagab0nd — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 04:11:09 +0000

I have a theory: I think the recent advance in coding agent has shocked everyone. It's something of such unheard-of novelty that everyone thinks they've discovered something profound. Naturally, they all think they are the only ones in on it and feel the need to share. But in reality, it's already public knowledge, so they add no value. I've been in this trap many times in the last couple years.

New comment by vagab0nd in "I prefer to pass secrets between programs through standard input"

vagab0nd — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 16:24:06 +0000

Interesting article. What prevents me from dumping the memory of the shell process and reading the local variable?

My program requires a password on startup. To run it in a loop, I used a script that takes the password as input, stores it in a local variable, and echoes it to the program. At the time I thought the only weakness was the memory of the shell process. But it was the best I could come up with.

New comment by vagab0nd in "It's 2026, Just Use Postgres"

vagab0nd — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 14:27:35 +0000

My outdated/incorrect mental model of how well databases work.

New comment by vagab0nd in "It's 2026, Just Use Postgres"

vagab0nd — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 14:26:39 +0000

OP here. Roughly 50GB in db size. Fairly standard queries (full-text search + filters). Most queries are on the order of 10-100ms. Some more complex ones involving business logic exceeds 100ms.

This is well within my budget, but it sounds like there might be room for improvements?

New comment by vagab0nd in "It's 2026, Just Use Postgres"

vagab0nd — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:24:10 +0000

I recently started digging into databases for the first time since college, and from a novice's perspective, postgres is absolutely magical. You can throw in 10M+ rows across twenty columns, spread over five tables, add some indices, and get sub-100ms queries for virtually anything you want. If something doesn't work, you just ask it for an analysis and immediately know what index to add or how to fix your query. It blows my mind. Modern databases are miracles.

New comment by vagab0nd in "xAI joins SpaceX"

vagab0nd — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 15:10:37 +0000

You are right. But in the future we'll be refueling the satellites anyway. Might as well maintain the servers using robots all in one go.

New comment by vagab0nd in "Tesla ending Models S and X production"

vagab0nd — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 15:30:15 +0000

I feel like there's this weird information gap that shouldn't be there in this day and age. FSD drives me around every day. 99% of the time, I don't touch the steering wheel for the entire trip, both city and highway. It's obvious to me that it is working well and has tremendous value. As far as I know, no other car on the market can do this. But apparently this info is not reaching a large number of people. I'm genuinely confused.

New comment by vagab0nd in "Updates to our web search products and Programmable Search Engine capabilities"

vagab0nd — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 19:45:50 +0000

Damn, I just wrote a note "search is free" in my aggressively-automate-everything-using-llms personal project plan.md. I guess not anymore.

New comment by vagab0nd in "My first year in sales as technical founder"

vagab0nd — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 19:24:32 +0000

So you prefer

does tue 11am work for you?

no, does tue 2pm work for you?

no, does wed 10am work for you?

yes, wait which timezone are you in? central? then no, does...

Or do you mean you don't like the link in the initial email?

New comment by vagab0nd in "Your app subscription is now my weekend project"

vagab0nd — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 18:55:20 +0000

I believe it's a play on "Your margin is my opportunity".

New comment by vagab0nd in "Show HN: I quit coding years ago. AI brought me back"

vagab0nd — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 17:53:52 +0000

There's a weird conflict going on here and I've experienced it myself. Essentially we hear 2 claims:

- You all should build your own software. AI is so good!

- You all should use the software I built with AI. It's so good!

New comment by vagab0nd in "Prediction markets are ushering in a world in which news becomes about gambling"

vagab0nd — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 14:48:26 +0000

Is insider betting illegal? I know it's illegal in the sports context, but not necessarily in other areas.

Even for insider trading, it's illegal not because it's unfair, but because the insider is considered to be stealing information from shareholders. For example, it's not illegal for a company to buy back stocks while holding insider information.

Not legal advice of course.

New comment by vagab0nd in "What a year of solar and batteries saved us in 2025"

vagab0nd — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 15:42:11 +0000

Exactly! This is how the future should be: solar panels + portable huge battery arrays doubled as vehicles + grid as backup.

New comment by vagab0nd in "Install.md: A standard for LLM-executable installation"

vagab0nd — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 15:01:31 +0000

Off topic: I think there should be an extension to DHCP that distributes AI session keys, so that your vacuum, thermostats and robot chef can all call the LLM as soon as they connect to wifi.