caprock
caprock on Hacker News
Few things are all or nothing in life. There are many forms of retrieval and many conditions for their use. In some scenarios it is helpful to have retrieval with LLMs and other times less so.
It's interesting how one AI approach is to do similar amounts of work with less intensity and energy. Glad it has improved your mental health.
Posted by
caprock on Friday July 03, 2026 @01:10PM
from the ask-hn dept.
For software engineers and related fields, I know what procrastination has traditionally looked like, and how it manifests.Now, things like codex, cursor, claude code can remove some kinds of friction but also change workflows.So are you procrastinating less? More? Differently?What does it look like?
Having a strong internal locus of control, balanced with prayer centered around gratitude.
Same. The ability to investigate a topic from almost any angle or starting point has been really fun and helpful.
Agreed that it's an underserved market (personal genome sequencing).
Do you own or have access to a sequencing platform / machine? Or do you just buy and prepare kits, and then send the prepared sample out for sequencing?
Roughly agreed. I'm a bit baffled when it seems like someone is having long conversations with multiple tasks and loads of add-ons. I generally have one or two iterations and then a new session.
I'm using another tool, not claude code, but I don't think that matters much.
In many many ways our technology is not working on our behalf. Even though it seems possible.
You might look into applying RL in the domain of low cost robotics and drones. That would draw on some of your past experience but applied to a domain (robotics) which I perceive is seeing renewed interest.
I find value in learning some things deeply but not all things.
The ability to be more selective about where I attend deeply, while leveraging fast shallow learning to complete other tasks... That seems like a potential benefit and a nice choice to have in the toolbox.
It's technically quite feasible with modern search and language model technology.
The challenge is in acquiring all the book text, meaningful cost to implement, and minimal paths to revenue generation.
For various reasons, the organizations that have the text aren't incentivized to deliver best recs for a user, as tim noted.
Basic index etfs for Nasdaq and SP500.
It's intriguing how book recs aren't really that good anywhere. I mean they are ok, but rarely great. Google and Amazon have most of the text but still don't solve this so well.
In any event, I sometimes use GoodReads. You can go to the page for a representative book and then start browsing the "readers also enjoyed" list.
I also use LibraryThing in a similar way.
Significant chunks of the software engineer community self select into minimizing time spent with customers or even any non-engineers. It's understandable but unfortunate too.
I would suggest looking for people that were initially hands on but converted to sales engineer or professional services roles. Some switch because they don't like the programming. Some will quietly be very good engineers that have seen a lot of scenarios.
You'll have to pay a premium for travel if you want to get experienced people that have families at home.
- Invest money from each paycheck.
- Make a practice of walking daily.
- Casually lift a few times a week.
- Pray daily. Focus on gratitude.
Yes, very realistic.
Search for the engineering / manager pendulum online to see various discussions on the topic.
There are lots of differences between management in a startup vs a larger or more mature company too.
Agreed. You should be able to set the waf to just drop the packets and not even bother with the overhead of a response. I think cloud flare waf calls this "block".
Where do you get the data?
Working in ISP and Managed Hosting environments made me a better engineer. Lots of unix/linux, networking, DNS, etc. Lots of support and problem solving. It all led to both a breadth and depth of experience. It's been a useful foundation for my career even after moving into other areas like swe and ml.
The X-Files was right all along
Several ideas off the cuff:
* More work semesters like Waterloo
* A class on career planning
* A class on financial planning
* Philosophy of science and engineering course
I've found a lot of value in the habits of politeness, especially in written communication. It's disappointing when it's not a first class citizen in a company culture for things like code review. There are plenty of rationalizations for how it might not be needed, but that just feels like laziness.
Agreed! I have enjoyed how the constraints will prod me to refine and distill an initial thought into more crisp phrasing.
Possibly, but I doubt age is a primary cause. Openness to experience is a well identified personality trait which is unevenly distributed. Check out the "big five" concept from psychology for more info.
Dns gateway to redis is a fun idea
You can pay a small fee to have a "registered agent" service and that can include an address you can use.
Are you going to open source this? Is anyone else (ex: Modal) doing this?
Posted by
caprock on Saturday April 19, 2025 @03:31PM
from the ask-hn dept.
What's happening with AI assisted programming inside each of the FAANG companies (or large unicorn startups)? Are they just using cursor et al? Do they have custom applications for vertical integration? Custom plugins?Please feel free to share your insights from inside the larger tech companies and cultures.
You're better off avoiding all the second hand articles around definitions and value, and do two things:
1. Try and explore using AI for various parts of the programming processes.
2. Find interesting engineers that write about the same explorations and observe.