News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

nate

Re:"I'm Embarrassed on Behalf of the Tech Industry" on Monday October 05, 2026 @12:03PM (#49966669)
My 86 year old dad broke his leg a few weeks ago. The tech involved with the hospitals, nursing homes, insurance, etc. is another level of this :( There's this "hilarious" situation I'm in now, where I have a nursing home admissions person nagging me to fill out some contract. But the contract is like 38 pages long, and not delivered through docusign or a pdf. its some custom website app. and the app is broken 5 different ways. one section was 503ing, So i have to message the admissions person. she finds a way to send me just that section as a pdf. but then the login session expired. and there's no way for me to automatically request a new login myself. the admissions person has to generate it each time. guys, i'm like 10 new manual login requests in :) every time i try and even review a thing I'm signing, bam, timed out session, manual messages to get new login. and the app starts most of the process of filling it out over again.

sorry. only you guys can understand.

if chatgpt is so good at breaking into hugging face, i wonder if astra can just break into this place and sign these documents for me :) (fbi: i'm joking!!!!)

I came here looking for this :) like someone has to be making this joke right. Or another direction of making the connection that there must be some life growing from the filth in a motel room
Re:Tell the speakers that you liked their talks on Wednesday September 16, 2026 @12:14PM (#49729230)
On the flip of this. For those getting started at their first speaking things, don't freak out when you look over the audience and feel like zero people are registering that you are even speaking English. I've been on stage a lot: speaking, improv, plays, stuff. And there are countless times you'll actually be able to make some eye contact with the audiecnce if there aren't too bright of a stage light, and you will just see stone cold expressions staring back at you. And you will wonder if words are still coming out of your mouth. :) It happens. The human connection you get with a one on one encounter that your body kind of expects when you talk. Them nodding, or any expression whatsoever often goes completely absent in a speakers setting.

That's why "open with a joke" is so useful. It's not really for them! It's for you!. If you can hear a laugh from your audience, YOU start to chill out. Your body is like "ah. the mic is actually on, and I'm not having a stroke".

Another useful tip, if the scenario allows, try to hang out by the front row before your talk and chat someone up. That's who you want to then make eye contact with often during your talk. There expression will be or at least seem to be warmer to you. And you'll feel some more calm looking at them than the random heads everywhere else.

I've installed multiple of these skills. but it seems to quickly revert to crappy writing. i've tried the adhd. the brain fried at the end of day. the "Concise" output from the harness itself. the most useful fix to me has been yelling at it "Speak English!! No jargon!!!" it goes back to more concise talking for a little while.

Fable 5.1 is better at this so far though. :(

Anyone have a theory why this even made it to this point? the switch was such obviously a bad idea. just corporate weirdness that no one there bothered to raise their hand and be like "uh, are we really doing this?" or was there a story here that anyone knows about?
Of course I echo the universal: Opus 5 sucks. But what also sucks is still using 4.8. Are you all seeing this? It's like the older models got dumber just before Fable and Opus 5 were coming out? I've heard the theory that it's because 4.8 is getting put on older hardware? And I imagine that just ratchets down reasoning time then possibly?

Sometimes I'm just trying to sus out if I'm truly seeing things these days or going a little nuts :)

Re:Five Indie Platforms You Might Not Have Heard Of on Thursday August 06, 2026 @12:46PM (#49199149)
right? i need more of these things in my life. the weird. not-claude designed sites.

Show HN: PageForth - An on-device AI news reader that summarizes any site

https://pageforth.com/

I was missing the old RSS readers like NewsFire, but also realized I gave up on those too because reading RSS was a pain in the ass. I just want a ton of summaries to skim, and algorithmically go through. So I built a Mac version that uses the Apple local model to do all that. One thing I think a lot of folks might dig here is the Sleeper Hits mode to help find articles from sites you like but...

( Read More... | no comments | 2 points | on HN )
"is not marketing. It is evidence". ugh.

I'm so confused how to feel about these articles. this one is clearly AI written. But blessed by a lawyer so we think the stuff in here is accurate with facts?

I've accidentally posted an AI article before that seemed just as this was, and the community flagged that to oblivion. Rightfully so I think?

Does Hacker News need a "report AI" and we can then hide the AI articles as a filter?

Re:A Deep Logo Study on Tuesday July 28, 2026 @12:06PM (#49085978)
Yeah, the AI percentage usage thing is even a badge on the article which was a neat design touch too.
Re:Stolen Buttons on Saturday July 25, 2026 @02:04PM (#49049998)
for sure. every day i come here hoping for something like this. something like the old milliondollarhomepage kind of things. i miss that stuff :)
Re:Video Rental Shop Revival on Saturday July 11, 2026 @01:24PM (#48873856)
I realize so much stuff comes and goes and comes and goes again. Sony's getting rid of physical media we just read this week. But I also think there's a new bubbling up trend of folks craving real stuff that's been curated. Especially in a real place that they can see other people at.

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