alentred (u/alentred)

alentred commented on AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks arstechnica.com/ai/2025/0... · Posted by u/jonbaer

littlecranky67 · a month ago

Here is the experience when clicking a link on mobile:

* Page loads, immediately when I start scrolling and reading a popup trying to get tracking consent

* If I am lucky, there is a "necessary only". When unlucky I need to click "manage options" and first see how to reject all tracking

* There is a sticky banner on top/bottom taking 20-30% of my screen upselling me a subscription or asking me to install their app. Upon pressing the tiny X in the corner it takes 1-2 seconds to close or multiple presses as I am either missing the x or because there is a network roundtrip

* I scroll down a screen and get a popup overlay asking me to signup for their service or newsleter, again messing with the x to close

* video or other flashy adds in the content keep bugging me

This is btw. usually all before I even established if the content is what I was looking for, or is at any way useful to me (often it is not).

If you use AI or Kagi summarizr, you get ad-free, well-formatted content without any annoyance.

alentred · a month ago

My big hope is that somehow magically we avoid bringing this experience back to AI summaries and chats. Realistically, though, I will be on the lookout for the next generation of uBlock, NextDNS and the like.

alentred commented on AI coding agents are removing programming language barriers railsatscale.com/2025-07-... · Posted by u/Bogdanp

alentred · a month ago

I wonder, are some programming languages more suitable for AI coding agents (or, rather LLMs) than the others? For example, are heavy on syntax languages at disadvantage? Is being verbose a good thing or a bad thing?

P.S. Maybe we will finally see M-expressions for Lisp developed some day? :)

alentred commented on CERN gears up to ship antimatter across Europe arstechnica.com/science/2... · Posted by u/ben_w

_ph_ · 3 months ago

Reading this makes me so happy! Even if it by itself might not be the biggest science news, we know about antimatter for a long time and we are still talking about a few atoms only, but the news that people are actually handling antimatter to the point of transporting it with a truck, just feels a bit like sci-fi actually happening.

alentred · 3 months ago

Exactly! This is just a prerequisite step before shipping it to a warp drive factory. Or, some similar sci-fi in my mind right now.

I agree, news like this make me optimistic too!

alentred commented on Show HN: AnydocAI – Every file exists as all file types anydocai.com/... · Posted by u/grandslammer

gus_massa · 3 months ago

I think calling it a "drive" will confuse a lot of people. I expected a device driver, and not technical people have no idea of drives, they just have documents and photos.

I tried with a text file

  X Y
  1 2
  3 4

and for some reason the convert version has 1 2 3 4 in the same row.

alentred · 3 months ago

Hm, I don't know, I am OK with "drive". Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, iCloud Drive.

alentred commented on Side projects I've built since 2009 naeemnur.com/side-project... · Posted by u/naeemnur

jonplackett · 3 months ago

I should make a page of ‘Every Side Project I haven’t quite finished building since 2009’

But it would be so huge I can’t afford the hosting bill.

alentred · 3 months ago

Preach. Sign me up when you finish this side project, I will list mine there too :)

alentred commented on Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf? · Posted by u/skarat

welder · 4 months ago

Neither? I'm surprised nobody has said it yet. I turned off AI autocomplete, and sometimes use the chat to debug or generate simple code but only when I prompt it to. Continuous autocomplete is just annoying and slows me down.

alentred · 4 months ago

To be fair, I think the most value is added by Agent modes, not autocomplete. And I agree that AI-autocomplete is really quite annoying, personally I disable it too.

But coding agents can indeed save some time writing well-defined code and be of great help when debugging. But then again, when they don't work on a first prompt, I would likely just write the thing in Vim myself instead of trying to convince the agent.

My point being: I find agent coding quite helpful really, if you don't go overzealous with it.

alentred commented on Ask HN: Cursor or Windsurf? · Posted by u/skarat

alentred · 4 months ago

Recently, Augment Code. But more generally, the "leader" switches so frequently at this point, I don't commit to use either and switch more or less freely from one to another. It helps to have monthly subscriptions and free cancellation policy.

I expect, or hope for, more stability in the future, but so far, from aider to Copilot, to Claude Code, to Cursor/Windsurf/Augment, almost all of them improve (or at least change) fast and seem to borrow ideas from each other too, so any leader is temporary.