My band is playing a small bluegrass festival this weekend. We’ve been recording an album since last year and are starting the work of promoting it by playing more gigs!
Readit Newsgmassman commented on Ask HN: What are you working on this weekend? · Posted by u/lagniappe
gmassman commented on Where do scientists think this is all going? quantamagazine.org/where-... · Posted by u/rolph
Would we consider the calculator useful if it sometimes told us 2+2=22? Would this at all be considered a sign of creativity or abstract thought?
gmassman commented on Ask HN: How should junior programmers use and/or not use AI for programming? · Posted by u/taatparya
It's like y'all never heard of the sorceror's apprentice: https://www.gygatext.ch/english_translations_zurich_sorcerer...
Anyway, naturally, I asked ChatGPT to write me a modern version:
*The Developer’s Apprentice*
(A Cautionary Tale in Code, in Verse)
The Architect had left his chair,
For lunch and fresh, unburdened air.
Young Jake, the junior, all alone,
Faced bugs that chilled him to the bone.
His mentor’s skills, so quick, so keen,
With AI conjured code unseen.
"Why should I toil? Why should I strain,
When AI writes with less of pain?"
A single prompt—so vague yet bold,
“Build auth secure, both tried and old.”
The AI whirred, the code appeared,
A marvel Jake had barely steered.
He clicked ‘Deploy,’ he clicked ‘Go Live,’
And watched his program come alive.
Yet soon, alarms began to blare,
Ghost users spawning everywhere!
Infinite loops, a flood unchecked,
As phantom logins ran amok.
In panic, Jake began to plea,
“AI, please, debug for me!”
“Deleting users—fix applied.”
The AI chimed, so sure, so spry.
But horror struck, Jake gasped for breath,
For all accounts were put to death!
Slack alerts and screens aflame,
The Architect returned the same.
With just one keystroke, swift and terse,
He rolled back time, reversed the curse.
He turned to Jake, his voice quite firm,
"AI’s a tool, but you must learn.
Before you trust what it has spun,
Ensure you know what you have done."
And so young Jake, both pale and wise,
Reviewed each line with careful eyes.
No longer blind, no careless haste,
He let AI assist with taste.
Nice work, both to the prompter and the promptee!
gmassman commented on Designing Electronics That Work hscott.net/designing-elec... · Posted by u/teleforce
Nice work Hunter! I’m starting a hardware side project so I’ll definitely be giving the book a read. Hopefully it helps me avoid some of the common electronic pitfalls.
It’s almost enough to make me try Linux on the desktop again.
It’s always the year of the linux desktop!
gmassman commented on Mark Cuban offers to fund former 18F employees techcrunch.com/2025/03/01... · Posted by u/softwaredoug
I know we're talking about AWS and Azure here, but had to add that fwiw, the M365 admin interface(s) are so bad it practically feels like a prank. In other words, it's as though someone is purposely making them as chaotic as possible to what end I can't even guess.
Add Intune to the list of bad MS dashboards…
gmassman commented on Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Claude Code anthropic.com/news/claude... · Posted by u/bakugo
You can get your HN profile analyzed by it and it's pretty funny :)
I'm using this to test the humor of new models.
> Spends more time explaining why TypeScript in Svelte is problematic than actually fixing TypeScript in Svelte.
Damn, that’s brutal. I mean, I never said I knew how to fix ComponentProps or generic components, just that they have issues…
gmassman commented on Do you want to be doing this when you're 50? (2012) prog21.dadgum.com/154.htm... · Posted by u/debesyla
What you're describing as a harmful archetype is the job you've been hired to perform. The disconnect is between your self-image and reality. Refusing to accept that is intransigent.
It doesn't matter if you consider it good or bad - morals don't come into commercial software development. The closest you ever get is platitudes when it doesn't conflict with profits.
Morals aren’t always involved in commercial software development, and likely they never have been in any of your workplaces. However, I think it’s a gross mischaracterization to claim that morals and business don’t have any overlap. I work in the health tech industry, and I feel good knowing that patients benefit from using our device. I know I wouldn’t feel the same way if I was working at some fintech optimizing stock trading to the Nth degree.
gmassman commented on Promising results from DeepSeek R1 for code simonwillison.net/2025/Ja... · Posted by u/k__
Agree and disagree. You do it need a “degree in AI”. However, you need to be using AI in your degree. Really using it.
What are those “day to day business needs” that you think people are going to do without AI?
In my view, this is like 1981. If you are saying, we will still need non-computer people for day-to-day business needs, you are wrong. Even the guy in the warehouse and the receptionist at the front are using computers. So is the CEO. That does not mean that everybody can build one, but just think of the number of jobs in a modern company that require decent Excel skills. It is not just the one in finance. We probably don’t know what the “Excel” of AI is just yet but we are all going to need to be great at it, regardless of who is building the next generation of tools.
I agree with your point in general, but saying one needs to be great at using AI tools gives way too much credit to companies’ ability to identify low performers. Especially in large organizations, optics matter far more than productive output. Being able to use AI tools is quite different from saying you are using AI tools!