subsection1h

I've edited Bash scripts almost every day (including weekends) for decades and I'll continue doing so. Bash is the language I use to communicate with computers. I don't differentiate between writing Bash scripts and using Bash interactively. It's all the same. For me, using AI for Bash scripting would be like using AI to write emails.

In my experience, very few people who don't write shell scripts (Bash, Zsh, POSIX, etc.) know how to use a Unix shell effectively. For example, if a person never writes loops when using a Unix shell interactively, they have not yet achieved personhood.

> I just don't get the TUI obsession

TUIs can be run on minimal VMs that lack window systems. Using minimal VMs rather than heavyweight VMs allows a dev to run more VMs.

Do you not sandbox agents on VMs?

The fact that this discussion was flagged might be the final nail in the coffin for me. The huge increase in AI generated comments and posts at HN is a topic that has been discussed on other forums for months now. Complaints include "Orange Reddit", "Orange LinkedIn", etc. But when the topic comes up at HN, it gets flagged. Fuck this.

I've been using HN since 2008 when I created my first account[1] and I use HN differently than most people. I have a group of bookmarked searches that I visit almost daily that relate to technologies that interest me, such as Emacs.

In the past year, the searches I perform that relate to web development show a horrifying increase in the amount of Show HN posts that are posted by new accounts, include AI generated descriptions and point to AI generated projects on GitHub.

In 2024, there were 17,661 Show HN posts.[2] In the past year, there were 448,880 Show HN posts![3] And of course, most of these posts are AI generated.

Also, if you check the new accounts posting all this AI slop, you'll see that they also post AI generated comments, which is the main problem.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=zartan

[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?type=story&sort=byDate&dateRange=cus...

[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?type=story&sort=byDate&dateRange=pas...

There are plenty of tech forums that don't discuss AI. I think your confusion might be the result of you equating tech with "writing code for employers."

By the way, have you seriously never written[1] so much as a single backup script to back up a personal system? You only use GUI backup software?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46634535#:~:text=As%20f...

> Never thought this would be something people actually take seriously

The author of the article has a bachelor's degree in economics[1], worked as a product manager (not a dev) and only started using GitHub[2] in 2025 when they were laid off[3].

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/in/benshoemaker000/

[2] https://github.com/benjaminshoemaker

[3] https://www.benshoemaker.us/about

> Because no one should ever write Bash under any circumstances.

You've written 2,438 comments at HN and only two of those messages include "Linux". Two! And the most recent of those two comments includes this gem:

"fighting my way through a Linux CLI is exactly the kind of thing I use Chatgpt for professionally."

Maybe you shouldn't be telling more capable technologists what languages they should avoid.

Wow, 120 comments and not one person who uses mpg123[1] or ffplay[2] with shell scripts for playlists.

[1] The most minimal media player I know of. Written in assembly. Supports only MP3.

[2] The most minimal media player I know of that supports more formats than MP3.

All of the comments posted by the HN account named jaynamburi were written using an AI. Gemini confirms this: "Based on an analysis of the comments on the profile you linked, it is highly likely that they are written by an AI (or a human heavily using an LLM to generate responses)."

> broke their workflows because of vague technical reasons

> I switched to Vivaldi

You refer to important security improvements as "vague technical reasons" and you switched to Vivaldi, a browser that is based[1] on extended stable Chromium, which is not "recommended for any team where security is a primary concern"[2].

It seems you don't care about security.

[1] https://help.vivaldi.com/android/android-privacy/security-fa...

[2] https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/HEAD/docs/p...

WTF. I have a separate computer solely for personal finance, domain registration, DNS management, and the associated email account. If I didn't use multiple computers this way, I'd go back to using Qubes OS.

The folks at the Qubes OS forum care about security, unlike the vast majority of HN users nowadays:

https://forum.qubes-os.org/

> Privacy has long since been dead, but at least for myself opsec for personal work is too.

Hacker News in 2026.

Containers aren't a sandbox:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46405993

> I don’t even want to think about any of that stuff.

Hacker News: Where the hackers don't want to think about any of this command-line nonsense because there is important webshit to build.

> the portability is very poor. I need most of my notes to be at least readable on my mobile devices.

Why didn't you set up an automatic recurring export of your Org files to HTML files that are uploaded somewhere? That's what I did.

Here's another implementation:

  news.ycombinator.com##.default:has(a[href="user?id=dpifke"]) .comment

> I'm both a Conservative _and_ a practicing Christian

But unlike most HN users who label themselves conservative Christians, you've never suggested that climate change is a hoax:

https://hn.algolia.com/?type=all&query=author:swat535+climat...

I don't ever want to consume information from people who are so illiterate that they believe that scientists all over the world, in fields ranging from geoscience to statistics, are participating in some kind of global conspiracy, regardless of how respectful these commenters are. I block these people immediately after they reveal themselves.

> doing meaningless work will destroy your soul

You think commercial software is meaningful? You think web apps, mobile apps, etc. are meaningful? If so, you are very lucky!

> Librefox on the linux device.

Librefox hasn't been updated since 2019:

https://github.com/intika/Librefox/commits/master

A larger percentage of HN users were pass users when HN was less mainstream. Late adopters (of forums, technologies, etc.) tend to be GUI lovers because late adoption and a preference for GUIs are both linked to uninquisitiveness.

Hi, yakattak. Like you, I also created my HN account in 2010.

Browsing HN stopped making me happy years ago.

Searching HN for individual comments that include jargon that is indicative of knowledge relating to my interests does make me happy. I search HN multiple times per day using a search shortcut that uses the following URL:

https://hn.algolia.com/?type=comment&sort=byDate&query=%s

Exactly. Also, it's not clear to me if some of these people think that containers are a sandbox or they simply don't care about security.

For anyone out there who thinks that containers are a sandbox...

There's a reason why gVisor exists:

https://github.com/google/gvisor#why-does-gvisor-exist

There's a reason why secureblue doesn't use containers:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45045190

There's a reason why Qubes OS doesn't use containers.

> we've already crossed the Rubicon with tools like Claude Code

I install all dev tools and project dependencies on VMs and have done so since 2003.

> Adding browser automation via an extension is actually less risky than what we're already doing with terminal access.

I won't even integrate my password manager (pass) into a browser.

Do you use Auto Tab Discard?

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/auto-tab-disc...

Anger contributed directly to the start of the free software movement:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt

I can't decide if the account that created this post is a bot or a teenager in a developing nation:

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=author:jerawaj740&type=all&sor...

> Infrastructure should aim to be bland

Can you provide examples of sources of information that MAGA considers neutral? The MAGA in my extended family who live in rural America think that scientists promote evolution solely because they're God-hating atheists who are trying to convince Christian children that God doesn't exist.

> I personally don’t think I care if a blog post is AI generated or not.

0% of your HN comments include URLs for sources that support the positions and arguments you've expressed at HN.[1] Do you generally not care about the sources of ideas? For example, when you study public policy issues, do you not differentiate between research papers published in the most prestigious journals and 500-word news articles written at the 8th-grade level by nonspecialist nobodies?

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?type=comment&query=author:alyxya+htt...

> When I was a fresh engineer I used a pretty vanilla shell environment. When I got a year or two of experience, I wrote tons of scripts

Does this mean that you learned to code to earn a paycheck? I'm asking because I had written hundreds of scripts and Emacs Lisp functions to optimize my PC before I got my first job.