Hacker News: xeckr

New comment by xeckr in "Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?"

xeckr — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 04:36:42 +0000

Literally the first time I used ChatGPT, within days of release. It wasn't so much panic as amazement.

It took HN a surprisingly long time to come to terms with the fact that professional SWE as we knew it was coming to an end.

In 2023/2024 we saw a demo of "denial" being a stage of grief live on this site.

New comment by xeckr in "If every OS was open source, you could run vista"

xeckr — Wed, 27 May 2026 07:52:03 +0000

time to vibecode vista from scratch Ig

New comment by xeckr in "Hand Drawn QR Codes (2025)"

xeckr — Tue, 05 May 2026 10:03:38 +0000

I remember retracing QR codes on graph paper to pass time in grade 12 physics, this was back in 2013/2014.

New comment by xeckr in "Afroman found not liable in defamation case"

xeckr — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 17:19:36 +0000

Cops bust in searching for his drugs, then accuse him of invasion of privacy and humiliation...

New comment by xeckr in "Shall I implement it? No"

xeckr — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 23:19:09 +0000

"NOT approved!"

"The user said the exact word 'approved'. Implementing plan."

New comment by xeckr in "Ireland shuts last coal plant, becomes 15th coal-free country in Europe (2025)"

xeckr — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 19:59:00 +0000

Bad timing.

New comment by xeckr in "TikTok will not introduce end-to-end encryption, saying it makes users less safe"

xeckr — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 04:25:22 +0000

Brilliant. They're repackaging the argument governments have long made about E2EE being dangerous to children.

New comment by xeckr in "Show HN: uBlock filter list to blur all Instagram Reels"

xeckr — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 20:30:10 +0000

Too bad that would hurt their bottom line.

New comment by xeckr in "Layoffs at Block"

xeckr — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 05:11:52 +0000

How do you square (heh) this with Jack Dorsey axing nearly half of Block's headcount?

New comment by xeckr in "This time is different"

xeckr — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 00:53:53 +0000

Blatant strawman.

New comment by xeckr in "Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War"

xeckr — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 00:47:09 +0000

I think the part about China is just about projecting alignment with the USG in hopes that this will result in Anthropic being treated more favourably by the current administration.

New comment by xeckr in "Layoffs at Block"

xeckr — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 23:20:05 +0000

Now imagine you run a mowing service with 4 employees. Suddenly an unbounded number of people appear on the job market who are ready to work for your company at a 5% the cost of your previous employees. Best of all, they become more competent and less expensive over time. You can't yet fire your entire original roster all at once since they need to teach the new hires the specifics of the job, but after that's done, what do you need them for?

New comment by xeckr in "New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes"

xeckr — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 06:37:36 +0000

Show HN: A RL suite that teaches LLMs to introduce typos at just the right frequency for the output to appear more human.

New comment by xeckr in "New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes"

xeckr — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 06:34:21 +0000

Wow a human in 2040, very optimistic take.

New comment by xeckr in "Something Big Is (Not) Happening"

xeckr — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 23:10:24 +0000

The strawberry/seahorse emoji meme is like a century old in AI-time.

New comment by xeckr in "TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe"

xeckr — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 19:18:55 +0000

True, though stochastic gradient descent replaces all that human guesswork with predictable scaling laws. The hyperstimuli of the tomorrow will be nothing like what we recognize today as entertainment.

New comment by xeckr in "TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe"

xeckr — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 18:33:29 +0000

>I think it reveals that comparisons to heroin use in arguments against TikTok are hyperbolic and disconnected from reality, by empirical data.

I don't think that follows from your premises. Who is overstating the evils of heroin? Plenty of people argue that viewing TikTok (or AI-optimized short-form feeds) has bad side effects, mostly in the direction of eroding your ability to pay attention to anything less stimulating.

One thing that makes heroin more benign is that it's "finished" in some sense. The drug trade will find more addictive substances (e.g. fentanyl), but a vial of pure heroin isn't going to gradually become more addictive over time in ways that are imperceptible to the user but visible on the backend because the loss function trends downward.

New comment by xeckr in "TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe"

xeckr — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 06:26:07 +0000

There's an AI behind the video feed optimized for keeping your attention for as long as possible. That is quite different from making your media more engaging.

The logical endpoint of optimizing AI for viewer retention is something that you literally cannot look away from.

New comment by xeckr in "TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe"

xeckr — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 06:21:11 +0000

>only 23%–38% become addicted

Wow, only Russian roulette with 2 bullets odds?

New comment by xeckr in "Synth Town"

xeckr — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 18:44:58 +0000

It freezes sometimes, but I love it.