wasmainiac (u/wasmainiac)

wasmainiac commented on The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else washingtonpost.com/techno... · Posted by u/1vuio0pswjnm7

wasmainiac · 9 hours ago

Wait how? Show your work. I still see at least a $600bn gap.

> Something they find as indispensable as a cell phone or internet bill.

Source?

wasmainiac · 6 hours ago

Why not reply than just downvote? Seems cowardly.

wasmainiac commented on The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else washingtonpost.com/techno... · Posted by u/1vuio0pswjnm7

josephg · 19 hours ago

Yeah I’m having a similar experience. I’ve been wanting a standard test suite for JMAP email servers, so we can make sure all created jmap servers implement the (somewhat complex) spec in a consistent manner. I spent a single day prompting Claude code on Friday, and walked away with about 9000 lines of code, containing 300 unit tests for jmap servers. And a web interface showing the results. It would have taken me at least a week or two to make something similar by hand.

There’s some quality issues - I think some of the tests are slightly wrong. We went back and forth on some ambiguities Claude found in the spec, and how we should actually interpret what the jmap spec is asking. But after just a day, it’s nearly there. And it’s already very useful to see where existing implementations diverge on their output, even if the tests are sometimes not correctly identifying which implementation is wrong. Some of the test failures are 100% correct - it found real bugs in production implementations.

Using an AI to do weeks of work in a single day is the biggest change in what software development looks like that I’ve seen in my 30+ year career. I don’t know why I would hire a junior developer to write code any more. (But I would hire someone who was smart enough to wrangle the AI). I just don’t know how long “ai prompter” will remain a valuable skill. The AIs are getting much better at operating independently. It won’t be long before us humans aren’t needed to babysit them.

wasmainiac · 9 hours ago

Was this written by llm?

wasmainiac commented on The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else washingtonpost.com/techno... · Posted by u/1vuio0pswjnm7

Kon5ole · 20 hours ago

I have to admit I'm flip-flopping on the topic, back and forth from skeptic to scared enthusiast.

I just made a LLM recreate a decent approximation of the file system browser from the movie Hackers (similar to the SGI one from Jurassic park) in about 10 minutes. At work I've had it do useful features and bug fixes daily for a solid week.

Something happened around newyears 2026. The clients, the skills, the mcps, the tools and models reached some new level of usefulness. Or maybe I've been lucky for a week.

If it can do things like what I saw last week reliably, then every tool, widget, utility and library currently making money for a single dev or small team of devs is about to get eaten. Maybe even applications like jira, slack, or even salesforce or SAP can be made in-house by even small companies. "Make me a basic CRM".

Just a few months ago I found it mostly frustrating to use LLM's and I thought the whole thing was little more than a slight improvement over googling info for myself. But the past week has been mind-blowing.

Is it the beginning of the star trek ship computer? If so, it is as big as the smartphone, the internet, or even the invention of the microchip. And then the investments make sense in a way.

The problem might end up being that the value created by LLMs will have no customers when everyone is unemployed.

wasmainiac · 9 hours ago

I have not had the success you mention with programming… I still feel like I have to hold its hand all the way.

Regardless..

> The problem might end up being that the value created by LLMs will have no customers when everyone is unemployed.

This mentality is why investors are scrambling right now. It’s a scare tactic.

wasmainiac commented on The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else washingtonpost.com/techno... · Posted by u/1vuio0pswjnm7

WarmWash · 14 hours ago

It tells you that 500 million people will be paying $60-$80/mo for AI. Something they find as indispensable as a cell phone or internet bill.

The numbers actually work really well, (un)fortunately.

wasmainiac · 9 hours ago

Wait how? Show your work. I still see at least a $600bn gap.

> Something they find as indispensable as a cell phone or internet bill.

Source?

wasmainiac commented on Start all of your commands with a comma (2009) rhodesmill.org/brandon/20... · Posted by u/theblazehen

mathfailure · 20 hours ago

No, in fact he is correct: system scripts won't pick up your overrides configured via your shell's rc scripts.

wasmainiac · 18 hours ago

I said he was right, but in your case you are wrong. Your shell loads thr profile script for login shells, but will load your bashrc regardless of login or not

Excluding this argument, overloading system commands is still bad practice lol. Have you ever logged into an embedded device and had a busy box environment? the behaviour of some utilities can be different from what you expect for utilities of the same name.

wasmainiac commented on Start all of your commands with a comma (2009) rhodesmill.org/brandon/20... · Posted by u/theblazehen

RadiozRadioz · 21 hours ago

Why are those scripts running in interactive login shells? If they are influenced by the configuration of profile, then the scripts are bad.

wasmainiac · 21 hours ago

That’s true, but I would still call overloading system binaries bad practice. Your making yourself foot gun.

wasmainiac commented on Start all of your commands with a comma (2009) rhodesmill.org/brandon/20... · Posted by u/theblazehen

mathfailure · a day ago

I didn't like the idea. I prefer the alternative approach: _I_ decide the order of dirs in the PATH env. If I introduce an executable with a name, that overrides a system one - I probably do that intentionally.

If I introduce an alias (like `grep='grep --binary-files=without-match --ignore-case --color=auto`) that matches the name of a system binary - I probably do that intentionally.

And if I EVER need to call grep without my alias - I just prefix it with a backslash: \grep will search with case sensitivity and no color and will scan binaries.

wasmainiac · a day ago

I would recommend against overriding standard system binaries, you could break compatibility on your system with scripts that depend on those binaries. I just use an abbreviation like rg=“grep -RE”

wasmainiac commented on I now assume that all ads on Apple news are scams kirkville.com/i-now-assum... · Posted by u/cdrnsf

MaxBarraclough · a day ago

> I’ve been here for a years under different usernames

The guidelines ask that you don't do this. From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html :

> Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information, but please don't create accounts routinely. HN is a community—users should have an identity that others can relate to.

wasmainiac · a day ago

I’m not hoarding a library of accounts to abuse the ToS. My last account is on a dead iPhone somewhere.

Things break or transfer ownership. HN accounts are quick to make, and I’m not one to collect internet points.

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wasmainiac commented on TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe nytimes.com/2026/02/06/bu... · Posted by u/thm

D-Machine · a day ago

    > I don’t get it, is this some kind of gotcha?

Only for people who think comparing TikTok to heroin is some kind of gotcha.

    >Have you walked down the skid row of any large city? Heroin and well other drugs now are a problem, saying otherwise is delusional. Those people need help.

For sure. Two minutes from where I live, at a main intersection, they hang emergency Naloxone injection kits, in public, where anyone can grab them, on the trees and walls of buildings. I presume so addicts can save each other in cases of accidental overdoses.

Of what relevance was this all to TikTok again? And why are we comparing scrolling a phone app to literal actual heroin? Even when, empirically and factually, heroin is in fact not addictive for the majority of people?

Comparisons between TikTok and heroin are deranged and simplistic, but this is made all the more embarrassing when you realize that a dance with heroin is in fact more likely than not to just be... not the thing everyone is afraid of?

wasmainiac · a day ago

> Only for people who think comparing TikTok to heroin is some kind of gotcha.

Do you have family? My cousins, aunts, even my mom is on it. And they all watch the most brain dead garbage. Even when they come to visit me out in the middle of no where, they still do it. The only explanation I have is that it is addictive, to not to all, but some (like you pointed out with H). Now based on how much time they spend on it I think it is harmful for them and society at large. It’s worth regulating like some non physical drug, afaik I think that is the comparison people here are making.