Hacker News: williamcotton

New comment by williamcotton in "Flock updates privacy, accountability, security, and transparency safeguards"

williamcotton — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 16:25:08 +0000

Seems like there is some caselaw that supports your theory based on US Supreme Court rulings in Kyllo v. United States (2001) (thermal imaging), United States v. Jones (2012) (GPS tracking) and Carpenter v. United States (2018) (tracking via cell site data).

New comment by williamcotton in "Letter to Governor Abbott on responsible AI infrastructure in Texas"

williamcotton — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 23:25:46 +0000

I've been to one EA meetup and it wasn't my thing but this seems nothing like the discussions I had. It's where I found out about GiveDirectly.

The biggest issue for me was the AGI/ASI doomerism. But then again, fast-forward five or six years and we've got "unaligned" AI agents blindly following reward functions...

New comment by williamcotton in "Mistral Patent for “Code implemented tool calls”"

williamcotton — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 14:18:58 +0000

This is markedly better than the USPTO website, FWIW.

New comment by williamcotton in "Mistral Patent for "Code implemented tool calls""

williamcotton — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 14:18:17 +0000

> but if it gets past the patent officer that debate happens via lawsuit

Or an Inter Partes Review!

New comment by williamcotton in "Denmark Requires Oral Defenses for Students' Written Work to Counter AI Cheating"

williamcotton — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 18:34:39 +0000

Are you after learning or an accredited degree?

New comment by williamcotton in "U.S. used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war"

williamcotton — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 19:42:15 +0000

IP at the margin?

New comment by williamcotton in "Flint: A Visualization Language for the AI Era"

williamcotton — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 12:04:51 +0000

Safari is my default browser and it seems to be working just fine!

New comment by williamcotton in "Authorize, don't authenticate"

williamcotton — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 07:15:59 +0000

It’s a memorable quote from the movie Kindergarten Cop.

New comment by williamcotton in "Flint: A Visualization Language for the AI Era"

williamcotton — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 07:08:16 +0000

So a stringly typed JSON-based DSL without a linter or LSP?

New comment by williamcotton in "Flint: A Visualization Language for the AI Era"

williamcotton — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 06:50:59 +0000

> They even wrote a book about how they went about it (not that it speaks to the quality of the API)

Wilkinson’s Grammar of Graphics inspired ggplot. The textbook doesn’t even mention ggplot.

Shameless plug for my own GoG inspired DSL, Algraf:

https://williamcotton.github.io/algraf/demos

There’s a Minard plot in the demos!

New comment by williamcotton in "The lost civic life of movie rental stores"

williamcotton — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 14:10:37 +0000

Do you mind sharing which ones?

New comment by williamcotton in "AI companies spend record sums on Washington lobbying"

williamcotton — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 18:36:26 +0000

Tangentially,

> "Add up all US spending on candidates, PACs, lobbying, think tanks, and advocacy organizations – liberal and conservative combined – and we’re still $2 billion short of what we spend on almonds each year."

https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/18/too-much-dark-money-in...

New comment by williamcotton in "Measuring developer productivity with the DX Core 4"

williamcotton — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 12:52:46 +0000

What about measuring management productivity?

New comment by williamcotton in "Launch HN: Bloomy (YC S26) – AI-powered mastery learning for K-12"

williamcotton — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:35:17 +0000

Article Title: Ed tech is profitable. It is also mostly useless

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2026/01/22/ed-tech-i...

New comment by williamcotton in "Show HN: Watch bots interact with an SSH honeypot in real time"

williamcotton — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 17:57:30 +0000

So we're getting Rickrolled?

The Discoverable Evidence of AI-Assisted Software Porting

williamcotton — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 13:08:30 +0000

Article URL: https://williamcotton.com/articles/the-discoverable-evidence-of-ai-assisted-software-porting

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48946977

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by williamcotton in "DSLs Enable Reliable Use of LLMs"

williamcotton — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 12:10:15 +0000

I agree. What is missing from the discussion about DSLs are the importance of tooling such as linters, LSPs, etc, to give the LLMs further context.

For example, charts/plots are often stringly typed with regards to column names and a DSL specific to plotting could give immediate feedback to an LLM.

New comment by williamcotton in "Control the Ideas, Not the Code"

williamcotton — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 15:57:49 +0000

https://williamcotton.github.io/datafarm-studio/

https://williamcotton.github.io/algraf

https://williamcotton.github.io/pdl

https://github.com/williamcotton/algraf

https://github.com/williamcotton/pdl

Check out the /docs dir in the repos for each plan file and the language specs.

They are my 4th and 5th DSLs and I learned quite a bit along the way, most importantly how to separate a WASM runtime wired up to a Monaco editor “lsp” with the same crate for editor-services that works with the actual system binary LSP.

New comment by williamcotton in "Don't you mean extinct?"

williamcotton — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 23:43:37 +0000

Why? Trial and error is a pretty important component of creativity.

New comment by williamcotton in "How version control will evolve for the agent boom"

williamcotton — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 17:37:46 +0000

I’ve had good luck with this approach:

https://github.com/williamcotton/algraf/tree/main/docs

There’s also some tests in place to make sure some things from the master spec are up to date, eg, error codes.