5mv2

Deepseek open sourced their harness and it's interesting. Replacing code/toolcalls with configuration/skills drastically increases token consumptions, but it removes limitations I forgot existed.

For example, you can ask deepseek to add a button that displays the weather and update itself on click, and it does just that, without needing the classic compile + deployment cycle.

Is that a gimmick? I'm not sure - I can't help but feel like I'm a fish who forgot what water is. I never had this new option so I'm not sure what to use it for, but I have the feeling it opens new doors that will make software feel more organic. Any idea? Would be curious to hear opinions about this.

My friend got banned 3x from Claude Code when using OpenCode indeed. Gave up and moved to Codex. So it does sound like a dangerous approach indeed.

Context summarization will be natively added soon.

It's already the case on tools like block.github.io/goose:

```

Summarize Conversation This will summarize your conversation history to save context space.

Previous messages will remain visible but only the summary will be included in the active context for Goose. This is useful for long conversations that are approaching the context limit.

```

The point I was trying to express is that Mistral is arguably far superior to the giants if you care about speed! So I wished they communicated this more clearly.

The featured accuracy benchmarks exclude every model that matter except DeepSeek, which is quite telling about this new model's performance.

This makes it yet another example of European companies building great products but fumbling marketing.

Mistral's edge is speed. It's a real pleasure to use because it answers in ~1s what takes other models 5-8s, which makes for a much better experience. But instead of focusing on it, they bury it far down the post.

Try it and see if you like the speed! Note that the speed advantage only applies to queries that don't require web-search, as Mistral is significantly slower on this one, leading to a ~5 seconds advantage over 2 minutes of research for the queries I benchmarked with Grok.

That's definitely true, but you also see how some settings make it easier to be virtuous than others right?

Also, the success apps like tiktok and instagram does suggest addiction is more the norm than the exception.

It's a while back, but I think it's because you have to be a resident for at least 6 months to be eligible to getting a driver's license in a given country.

And getting the driving experience is not cheap if you don't know people who have a car you can borrow!

Hong Kong food is rice-based and rice is cheap!

Here's some famous advice from Hong Kong's richest man:

--

A daily breakfast of vermicelli, an egg and a cup of milk.

For lunch just have a simple set lunch, a snack and a fruit.

For dinner go to your kitchen and cook your own meals that consist of two vegetables dishes and a glass of milk before bedtime.

For one month the food cost is probably $500-$600. When you are young, the body will not have too many problems for a few years with this way of living.

--

Note he's talking HKD, and HKD 550 translates into about USD 70.

Thank you!

1. That would have been a great option had there been one close to the university! Proximity was a top criteria because commute is expensive money-wise and time-wise. Also, weirdly enough I think I was much safer in this illegal spot than in a regular camping where traffic makes robberies more likely.

2. I like how you think because I happen to have befriended a research student who did just that! I didn't envy him one bit thought because he had no windows while my tent view was magnificent. And then summer came and I would have given anything to have his AC!

You're both right. It was 10 years ago and my living requirements definitely were low

Another reason is that Hong Kong has a lot more affordable housing in the outskirts, like in the village of Tai Po Tsai that borders this university.

You're right that this situation was very privileged. But there's not such thing as a "real homeless", it's a continuum. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44215698

Also, virtually all the "real homeless" I met went to the gym to shower.

For the grades, it's true you could always spend more time in the library out of sheer willpower. It was nice just to be nudged into it by this lifestyle, and definitely helped as willpower is limited.

People's places: have you heard of people doing this? I'm genuinely curious because I could never bring myself to be a nuisance if I didn't absolutely need it, meaning the blocker is definitely real yet fully in my head here.

Material freedom: I guess I haven't seen enough to agree with this one yet. The only intellectual pursuit I know that would genuinely get you closer to not caring about life so much as to reduce your fear in homelessness is the study of physics!

Severals reasons: I don't think you could live 2 weeks in a car before getting controlled by the Police, at least in Hong Kong, tents are cheaper than cars, and I didn't have a driver's license!

Love the actionable advice like "I rent a PO Box for about $200 per year."

Thankfully it's clarified here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

But I think it's best to let the people vote if they value a story on how lifestyle hacking can help you go straight to building startups instead of having to first save up in a job.

Author here. I get this view, I just think it's worth underlining how biased it is to the SF Bay area dystopian situation.

I've actually gone out of my way to meet homeless in the Bay. You'd be surprised how much of a continuum homelessness is. Most are definitely living hell on earth, but many I personally met have both fallbacks and money. Could be they're too attached to their family's image of them. Or that they weirdly enough have a better life now - I met a guy who led a small community and made quite some money from crime, he could have afforded to live anywhere, but this would mean taking a menial job like he had in the past, and he didn't want that.

Of course, the disclaimer is that many homeless care a lot about their self-image and will create stories to justify their current situation so it's hard to judge. But the point still stands that, even in hell of earth for the homeless, you'll find it's a continuum. And the world is much broader than SF - I've met people at every point of the spectrum, the most extreme being a multi-millionaire who lived Swiss forests for fun!

To summarize, there is no "actual homelessness", it's not a boolean but a spectrum, and I fail to see how gatekeeping the use of the most adequate word in this situation helps anyone.

If the problem is that it using the word comes across as disrespectful to people who mainly know homelessness through the prism of the Bay Area, maybe another avenue could be to add a link at the end of the article to promote a relevant NGO, which I'm definitely open to adding if people suggest a good one.

That’s another huge plus yes! I made a point of never bringing my laptop and turning off data on my phone before going every night.

Hard to quantify how much of a difference this made, but it definitely translated in higher drive and propensity to being present.

You're right that I was arguably irrationally attached to not ending uni with too much debt.

For the rest, I'm with you it might be hard to replicate beyond this n = 1 sample, but I'm convinced this experiment's ROI is actually much more positive than suggested in the post.

Not only did I get better grades that semester from being forced to spend more time in the library, but I learned a lot living at people's places afterwards, and, most importantly, the feeling of freedom from materials matters allowed me to make bolder bets that paid back multiple times over.

You can even go further: even if my grades had gone down, I still would have been more employable for many types of companies, starting with early stage startups.

Glad you liked this! It was so great I've been meaning to do this again for years but never made the leap by fear of being a nuisance.

I honestly think everyone would be much happier and less lonely if sleep-overs didn't stop being a thing as we reach adult age.

Yes exactly! It’s UST. Beautiful view :)

So sorry you had to spend time changing the title! Learning the lesson for next time.

Makes sense. Thanks for sharing!

Looks like it might have to do with the title, or at least the title was changed before it got unflagged. Good learning!

Agree. I tried to describe the step by step approach to show how you can try this gradually and mitigate the risks, but if you don't have access to a community and cheap student healthcare it's definitely quite dangerous. I'll add word about this at the bottom.

Edit: added! thanks for the feedback again

Appreciate the feedback!

100%. It's a lot easier when you live next to a Google campus. And it sorts all the menial matters that make a huge difference, like access to washing machines.

About the flagging, you seem to have been here for a while, any hint? I get the word usage can comes across as disrespectful now that people mention it, but didn't think a link would get flagged for that.

"I first try putting a friend 3 meters away from the tent and asking him to find it. Vegetation is so thick he can't. No need to spray camouflage!"

You're safe! No one found me, and I took it away a decade ago.

let me know if you try the sailboat thing in san francisco!

yeah. wouldnt have been fun if it was out of necessity

Makes sense. I guess it depends on the location, since in my case there were no animals as long as I didn't bring food in the tent. And another pro is you can pitch tents in places no one would ever go, while it's harder for vehicles. So less chances of getting busted.

I get that it's super hard to replicate this and have a good time outside of the HK jungle, but to be honest it made me a lot more optimistic . You see people's real colors when you ask them to host you in their home, and in my case the support was overwhelming.