HN user

lostsock

498 karma

Web developer from Melbourne, Australia

Posts2
Comments198
View on HN

I’m honestly kind of amazed that more people aren’t seeing the value, because my experience has been almost the opposite of what you’re describing.

I agree with a lot of your instincts. Shipping unreviewed code is wrong. “Validate behavior not architecture” as a blanket rule is reckless. Tests passing is not the same thing as having a system you can reason about six months later. On that we’re aligned.

Where I diverge is the conclusion that agentic coding doesn’t produce net-positive results. For me it very clearly does, but perhaps it's very situation or condition dependent?

For me, I don’t treat the agent as a junior engineer I can hand work to and walk away from. I treat it more like an extremely fast, extremely literal staff member who will happily do exactly what you asked, including the wrong thing, unless you actively steer it. I sit there and watch it work (usually have 2-3 agents working at the same time, ideally on different codebases but sometimes they overlap). I interrupt it. I redirect it. I tell it when it is about to do something dumb. I almost never write code anymore, but I am constantly making architectural calls.

Second, tooling and context quality matter enormously. I’m using Claude Code. The MCP tools I have installed make a huge different: laravel-boost, context7, and figma (which in particular feels borderline magical at converting designs into code!).

I often have to tell the agent to visit GitHub READMEs and official docs instead of letting it hallucinate “best practices”, the agent will oftentimes guess and get stack, so if it's doing that, you’ve already lost.

Third, I wonder if perhaps starting from scratch is actually harder than migrating something real. Right now I’m migrating a backend from Java to Laravel and rebuilding native apps into KMP and Compose Multiplatform. So the domain and data is real and I can validate against a previous (if buggy) implimentation). In that environment, the agent is phenomenal. It understands patterns, ports logic faithfully, flags inconsistencies, and does a frankly ridiculous amount of correct work per hour.

Does it make mistakes? Of course. But they’re few and far between, and they’re usually obvious at the architectural or semantic level, not subtle landmines buried in the code. When something is wrong, it’s wrong in a way that’s easy to spot if you’re paying attention.

That’s the part I think gets missed. If you ask the agent to design, implement, review, and validate itself, then yes, you’re going to get spaghetti with a test suite that lies to you. If instead you keep architecture and taste firmly in human hands and use the agent as an execution engine, the leverage is enormous.

My strong suspicion is that a lot of the negative experiences come from a mismatch between expectations and operating model. If you expect the agent to be autonomous, it will disappoint you. If you expect it to be an amplifier for someone who already knows what “good” looks like, it’s transformative.

So while I guess plenty of hype exists, for me at least, they hype is justified. I’m shipping way (WAY!) more, with better consistency, and with less cognitive exhaustion than ever before in my 20+ years of doing dev work.

Grok Code Fast 1 11 months ago

Trying this out now via OpenCode. Seems to be pretty good so far, certainly quick! Free for the next week as well which is a bonus

DJI Mavic 3 Pro 3 years ago

Pretty sure this comes with it's own standalone DJI remote (which is really just running android underneath). No need to sideload or connect to your phone in any way.

I don't think this works very well. I tested with a pretty popular reddit userMrPennywhistle, aka Destin from Smarter every day:

"write a reddit post about monitors in the style of reddit user MrPennywhistle"

and the response it gave me was incredibly generic and didn't sound like Destin at all:

"Hey there fellow Redditors!

I've been in the market for a new monitor lately and I have to say, it's been a real trip. There are so many options out there and it's hard to know what to choose. But after doing some research and going to a few stores to check out the options in person, I've come to a conclusion: monitors are awesome!

There are all sorts of sizes, shapes, and features to choose from, and each one has its own unique benefits. For example, some monitors are great for gaming, while others are perfect for watching movies or working on creative projects. And if you're really looking to up your setup, you can even get a curved monitor for an immersive experience.

But the most important thing to consider when buying a monitor is the resolution. A higher resolution means more pixels, which means a sharper and more detailed image. So if you're looking to upgrade your monitor, make sure to get one with a high resolution.

Overall, I'm really excited about my new monitor and I can't wait to see what it can do. Have any of you guys recently gotten a new monitor? Let me know in the comments!

-MrPennywhistle"

The people you've linked to were all banned on twitter for impersonation, in contravention of a rule that predated Musk's acquisition. They were banned for pretending to be someone they are not, not for making fun

Twitter started more aggressively enforcing the rule after the rollout of paid verification.

There are plenty of people on twitter who make fun of and/or disagree with Musk... including the engineers that publically disagree(d) with him

Very impressive reaction from the guy in the video, but I don't think he's using this to tell the heading. It looks like he also has a compass on his watch band as you can see at 1:03.

Meta Quest Pro 4 years ago

37% greater pixels-per-inch. And 1.3x larger color gamut

Is referring to the display resolution inside the headset

Full-color mixed reality, with resolution 4X higher compared to Quest 2

Is referring to the camera resolution on the outside of the headset

slimmed down the optical stack by over 40% compared to Quest 2

The are using a new technology, pancake lens, giving effectively the same (or better?) performance but taking less space to do so.

Real-time expression tracking

You can turn it on or off as a user. I don't know if they've optimised it to only "run" when the software you're interacting with is setup to use it or not.

Excellent list and resonates strongly with me as the father of a 6 year old girl.

I especially love the "re-discovering the world" part. Watching my kid learn concepts, coming from a totally different starting point and putting her own spin on it has been wonderful.

That said, it is HARD to be a good parent. It's super rewarding but it's not easy.

No need to speculate:

"We will happily ship a Starlink kit to any customer that purchases one. With Starlink kits all over the world, we don't have much control over what users do to them. History shows us that it's hard (and maybe impossible) to make devices completely resilient to persistent attackers with unrestricted physical access – the attacker just has too much power when they have infinite time to modify the hardware. In the limit they could always just build their own user device from scratch, though we know from experience that it's pretty hard to do so. Ultimately, the only way for us to build a secure system is to assume that attackers will eventually get into the Starlink kit, and add additional layers of defense-in-depth to protect our network and the other users within it. Other parts of the Starlink network, like satellites, might be more difficult for a consumer to get their hands on, but similarly are built with layers of defense. To provide these additional layers of protection, there are a number of security properties that we believe are important both in the Starlink kit and in the rest of the system"

From https://api.starlink.com/public-files/StarlinkWelcomesSecuri...

While there are obviously cases that FSD beta can't currently handle well, there are countless YouTube videos where FSD Beta is able to do 20+ minute commutes with zero disengagements.

100 times more capable would be 2,000 minutes, or 33 hours. Do you really think the beta, which is an opt in closed program that you have to qualify for and has caveats and warnings, needs to be 100 times more capable before it's released?

The copy on the website is pretty damn clear[1]:

-------

Full Self-Driving Capability

All new Tesla cars have the hardware needed in the future for full self-driving in almost all circumstances. The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat.

The future use of these features without supervision is dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human drivers as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience, as well as regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions. As these self-driving capabilities are introduced, your car will be continuously upgraded through over-the-air software updates.

-------

It never once says or implies Full Self Driving is available now. Tesla intends it to really be "full self driving", when it's ready and has regulatory approval.

[1] https://www.tesla.com/autopilot

I love how when you copy something onto the clipboard, it silently and transparently outputs different things depending on where you paste.

For example, copying from Excel can output:

- to a table (when copied into word)

- to rich text when copied into Wordpad

- to plain text when copied into Notepad

- and even an image when copied into Paint.

All without having to select the desired type at the source.

Thanks for letting me know, I'm not sure why the numbers for the one I happened to click on are so far above the norm but I've now made an edit with a screenshot of more average numbers.