News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

julianlam

Re:Ask HN: Which TV do you recommend for privacy? on Sunday November 01, 2026 @11:32PM (#50333140)
Not a problem, coming from a 1080p unit haha
Most voip providers should be able to do this, like voip.ms
Re:The AI cost of JavaScript frameworks on Sunday November 01, 2026 @11:09AM (#50326912)
> Frontends are rewritten because some framework or another is “better for agents.” (Did anyone think to ask the agents?) The resulting code is “faster,” the agents make “fewer mistakes,” etc.

Yes, of course they asked.

The agents responded with how this framework is X, not Y. How creating it was a sharp commentary on other frameworks. A couple honest caveats, and a succinct bottom line that adequately kissed the user's ass.

Re:AI Isn't Replacing SREs. It's Deskilling Them on Saturday October 31, 2026 @12:14AM (#50313153)
Tell me more... I'm also in the same boat, and part of me feels more prepared to do high-level open-ended exploration as opposed to code-based testing.

What kind of questions get asked?

Re:AI Isn't Replacing SREs. It's Deskilling Them on Saturday October 31, 2026 @12:08AM (#50313120)
This has not at all been the case for me. LLMs (even the more-capable local models) are exceedingly good at troubleshooting when given proper context (clues, hints, a decent system prompt/skill that provides even the barest hint of how things work)

What you're describing sounds more like what would happen if you gave a chatbot without access to the repo as little context as possible and asked it to come up with a solution, blind.

Re:Duet is the future of chatbot interaction on Thursday October 29, 2026 @09:29PM (#50298784)
Like the guy who put his SSN on the side of a truck and asked people to steal his identity?

I like it!

IIRC he had his identity stolen a bunch.

----

> In 2005, Davis and Robert Maynard Jr. cofounded LifeLock,[10] a personal fraud protection company.[11] Davis was CEO of LifeLock since its founding. As part of a marketing campaign to promote his company's credit monitoring services, Davis posted his own social security number[12] on billboards and commercials. As a result, he was a victim of at least 13 cases of identity theft between 2007 and 2008, belying LifeLock's claims that its services protect consumers against identity theft and fraud.[13] The Federal Trade Commission imposed a $12 million penalty on the company for deceptive advertising, likening Davis and LifeLock marketers to "con artists."[14]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Davis_(businessman)

Re:Zombie stats: Where the numbers AI quotes come from on Thursday October 29, 2026 @12:49PM (#50292083)
It just goes to show that when AIs are relied upon to recall information, they may hallucinate.

It lends credence to the theory that a smaller model without the ghost of information past, could do better with ability to search the web, although this is heavily reliant on the effectiveness of the search engine itself.

Re:StackOverflow now gets fewer than 1000 questions a month on Thursday October 29, 2026 @08:06AM (#50287669)
I bet on MooTools and lost. sigh

Now its legacy is that its prototype pollution is the reason we can't have `contains` and call `includes` instead.

By using Chinese research
That is the subtext of the linked post.
Re:Gemma-4-26B-A4B with 39-69% less thinking at same accuracy on Saturday October 24, 2026 @11:21PM (#50227965)
Base qwen 3.8 27B was so bad at over thinking that I couldn't work with it day to day. Swift solves that.

Perhaps I'll give bottlecap AI's fine tune a go.

Re:Facebook now charging to post more than 2 links a month on Tuesday October 20, 2026 @01:00PM (#50169356)
I know a few whose digital social lives revolve around Facebook as well.

It's hard to imagine because when you're out, and peek back in, your account no longer contains strong interest signals, and so your feed contains absolute junk (scams, engagement bait, etc.)

Whereas a heavy user would see tailored and targeted (and one can argue, useful) posts.

I've tried to watch Mr. Robot... twice, actually.

There's something about it... perhaps the pacing, or the overall bleakness of the show, that turns me off. I have the same aversion to watching The Office (both UK and US).

That can occur in a cloud-based, closed-weight model as well. So this argument makes no sense.

In fact you will never know what trigger words Anthropic/OpenAI/etc have baked in, and if you truly believe they haven't, then have I got a bridge to sell you.

This is as much a top-down issue (managers incentivising AI use and high velocity) as much as it is a bottom-up issue (devs knocking out issues faster than they can review)

It's a problem that requires a united approach from both sides.

A need to pace oneself, as it were.

Re:How employment is changing at Anthropic on Monday October 19, 2026 @06:42PM (#50159033)
Your hypothetical assumes that AI will suddenly vanish in its entirety, and we are left picking up the pieces.

Yet even without AI, humanity's most complex creations are not understandable by mere single humans, or even groups of them.

For example, the US Healthcare Insurance system runs on the collective power of humans (and likely an increasing bit of AI), but no one human can understand the system as a whole.

Re:MiniMax M3.1 Flash on Monday October 19, 2026 @03:17PM (#50156722)
You have to read between the lines (or wait for someone on HN to do it for you).

It's never "cheaper and faster and more intelligent", it's pick 2. Sometimes (as was the case this month), it was "cheaper per token, but reasons five times as much", so your costs go up.

Engineers outsourcing their writing is a strong signal they don't care nearly enough about their content.

You can make the argument that some eng aren't good at writing, to which I say — it's worthwhile to improve writing skills.

Re:My old job feels distant now on Saturday October 17, 2026 @07:05PM (#50135993)
Interesting. I've always thought that it was the inverse — that the ability to work for long periods against a problem in search of a solution was what made a good programmer.
Re:Hello Toronto – Waymo Is En Route on Friday October 16, 2026 @01:31PM (#50121564)
Last time I was in Vancouver I noticed more signs with translations in Sḵwx̱wú7mesh than French...

However that might be because I am an anglophone from Ontario and my mind filters out the French language on signs if an English equivalent is present.

Re:Amazon pushes up prices across the Internet on Wednesday October 14, 2026 @08:59AM (#50087062)
The way I see it, the premium you pay is for the convenience brought about by Amazon having your product sitting in a warehouse waiting for you to buy it.

vs. waiting two to four weeks to ship from China.

However at least in Canada, AliExpress has fulfillment centres locally, so AliExpress can often get their items in customers' hands within a week.

So where's the advantage? Most times I can wait a week.

Re:AI is a tool and using it well takes skill on Tuesday October 13, 2026 @11:50AM (#50073642)
Why, that's dangerously close to learning. /s
> [Humans] can be really bad about just trying things and seeing what works. If you’re not watching all the tool calls you may not see it, but it’s kind of scary to watch them just bump into wrong decisions and backtrack.
Worth it still. Next time print the ticket on dead trees?
Re:Social Reality in China on Saturday October 03, 2026 @04:32PM (#49947495)
I can imagine this can be hyper specific to the store itself, not as a generalization across an entire country.

To give more anecdata — Union Station in Toronto has trains that leave in all directions. The ones going East and West tend to form queues on the platform at rush hour. The train heading north-west to another city tends to form mobs that rush the door upon opening.

Lots of reasons why, but geography and SES may not factor as much. Could be something as simple as supply/demand of free seats.

Re:Plan Mode Is Dead on Sunday September 27, 2026 @02:08AM (#49863812)
I'd say maybe a different term would be better.
Re:Plan Mode Is Dead on Sunday September 27, 2026 @01:59AM (#49863754)
Then all the more reason to support open weights and the improvements going into them, currently state-sponsored but available to all.

If frontier AI is load-bearing, be thankful you're able to spin up comparable models (face it — 99% of us aren't writing novel software) for a fraction of the cost it would be for a third-party to come in and mop up the mess.

Re:One Month Without AI on Saturday September 26, 2026 @01:34PM (#49858737)
If you're tired of shenanigans pulled by these AI companies then you should host your models locally.

My model weights don't change unless I change them.

Re:Fable 5 – Median thinking declined in August on Monday September 21, 2026 @11:30PM (#49796509)
Whenever I see this comment I'd wish they'd preface it with their hardware.

Yeah, expecting the world when all you have is a 8GB graphics card? You're going to be disappointed.

16GB is table stakes (IQ3_XSS). 32 GB is better.

Ah, yes, the Brite Bootswatch skin.

No need to mess around further.

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