It was an intentional, near-archaic throwback even at the time HN was founded. Paul Graham has written about it, you can probably still find his blog written about it 20 years ago.
1) When I used ChatGPT for the very first time. I still remember, I asked it: “Write an advertisement to convince people to visit the North Pole.” It rapidly returned a witty, accurate, multi-paragraph text of exactly what I wanted and exceed my expectations. ChatGPT was the beginning of the modern AI boom and I remember being immediately impressed.
2) When I was working at GitHub, the copilot team gave the engineering team early access to copilot in VS Code. I can distinctly remember seeing the chat window in the code editor for the first time. I was probably one of the first people ever to see it. I remember playing with it a bit and asking simple Python questions. I knew that day that StackOverflow was dead and my mind was blown.
3) Big oh shit moment earlier this year that I believe for me started with the Opus 4.6 model + Cursor. The results were noticeably better, hallucinated much less, could solve complex problems with much less intervention. Early 2026 was a turning point for me as an engineer with AI. Throughout 2025, I was still writing the vast majority of my code by hand like I’ve always done- that is not that case in 2026.
Curious if Meta will ever recoup its investment into VR/AR? A quick Google search indicates Meta has invested north of $100 billion into this tech. The public just doesn't seem that interested in VR/AR. A very small percentage of my family and friends even own a VR headset. Most people are busy and don't have time to strap on a headset when they get home. If gaming / "the metaverse" is the cornerstone of VR, why are almost all gamers playing on a PC or console? And on the AR front, has anyone actually seen anyone out-and-about wearing those Meta AR glasses? Anyone remember Google glass? What happened to Magic Leap?
It's unsual, if you would have asked me 15 years ago- I would have told you _absolutely_ VR/AR would be huge. It just hasn't been the case. People don't want to wear headsets and there's nothing that the AR glasses can do that my phone can't. The whole thing has become a money blackhole.
I bought a zfold 7 about a month ago, it has been without a doubt the coolest new device I have purchased in many years. It's unbelievably thin, if you use it in normal phone mode you can't even tell that it's a fold. I have installed so many fun apps. I downloaded Mihon which is a manga/comic reader and I've read the first 10 volumes of Berserk, it's such a great experience reading manga on the fold screen. I also got NetherSX2 which is a PS2 emulator, it's insane to me that a phone can emulate PS2 games perfectly, I played thru a good bit of Kingdom Hearts one night with a Switch controller connected via bluetooth. I also downloaded ReadEra and have read some of the Malazan fantasy series on the device. I can play Oldschool Runescape while watching YouTube videos at the same time. I have RVNC viewer and have used it to connect to a Linux system downstairs to manage one of my systems. The split keyboard on fold mode is super easy and fast to type on, I'm using it right now to send this message. The web browsing experience is great because unlike iPhone, I can have uBlock origin and desktop mode websites look great on the fold screen.
Having both a phone and tablet in your pocket is phenomenal. I don't think I can go back at this point. Apple knows this, which is imo why the rumor is the new iPhone 17 will have a fold option for a higher price. If you think it's gimmicky, you haven't tried it yet.
I was using urxvt for about 10 years and then I switched to alacritty about 5 years ago. Have had the best experience with alacritty- runs on all my systems, super fast, config is great. That being said, I’m gonna give ghostty a well-deserved test drive. I like it a lot so far. Love seeing more zig apps!
I imagine most of us here likely follow well-known conventional kitchen wisdom: don’t use metal utensils on non-stick pans, wash your hands after handling raw meat, etc. And I suppose I can add, generally avoid black plastic kitchen gear to my list. However, how much does it even matter at this point?
Does the kitchen of the restaurant I’m eating at care about that? Am I still going to drink 2 whiskeys tonight? Anyone got any tiny individually wrapped shitty Halloween candy? How do those synthetic made-in-x-country gym clothes feel against your skin? Wanna have a cigar? Are you breathing recycled air during an airline flight? When was the last time you stretched your legs? When’s the next time you’ll drink a plastic bottle of water? Got a k-cup? What’s the inner workings of that coffee machine do with the near boiling hot water? When was the last time it was cleaned? What chemical was used on your toilet that your buttcheeks are now sitting on? Want some bacon? How bout a hot dog? Been outside recently without sun screen?
So many things are actively killing us or giving us cancer. I’ll try to remember the black plastic thing, but I honestly think I just might forget and continue living in my blip of existence.
I also quit Spotify about 6 months ago and went back to Pandora. I’ve been super happy with that decision. Spotify kept me in a weird bubble of sorts always playing the same songs and artists. When I went back to Pandora I rediscovered that their music recommendation engine is amazing! I’m now listening to more new artists than ever and have found way more new music.
You’d be surprised. Repo mirroring systems, continual cloud backups, sysadmins/engineers cloning every repo of an org, 3rd party tools regularly inspecting repos, etc.
The best option is for the organization themselves to monitor their gh/ghes logs, exclude this sort of activity, and then detect it themselves. There’s no way gh can monitor all orgs for mass repo clones without a mess of false positives.
I'm personally agnostic on whether or not we're in a simulation. However, some say the "Double-slit experiment" is perhaps proof we are in some sort of simulation. Particularly the part where particles/waves behave differently only when they are directly being observed.
I think fear-mongering about nuclear power risks is really unfortunate. The rewards far outweigh the risks. Sure, we could live in a world where we could tell everyone to stop using so much damn energy- but that's not our reality. There's some really good data and charts here (especially the "What is the safest and cleanest source of energy?" diagram at the top) - https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth
In the USA we've poured an incredible amount of money into wind energy and it simply hasn't been very effective relative to the cost.
It's clear that nuclear power is superior to gas, coal, wind, solar, etc. However... nuclear power plants are expensive build, they take a very long time to build, and many countries are in the process of retiring their infrastructure [0].
The vast majority of active nuclear power plants in the USA were built in the late 60s to late 70s and typically took 10 years from the initial construction before they became operational [1]. Which means that almost all of our nuclear power infrastructure in the United States is ~35 to 50 years old. Optimistically, we can only hope that most of these plants will operate until ~2040.
Given how long it takes to build a nuclear power plant we really should have been building them all throughout the 80s, 90s, and 2000s- but we stopped building them in the late 70s. The only nuclear power plant that I'm aware that's been built since 1978 is Plant Vogtle which started in 2013 and is expected to be finished sometime this year.
Still, there is some hope for nuclear energy into the future with the Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP) [2] and the recent advancements in fusion power [3].
Very fun, although I don't really feel like it takes much skill. Seems to be a chill puzzle experience and doesn't scratch the same brain itch as something like a Rubik's cube or Loopover (https://loopover.xyz/).
I did the 20x20 in 32:31.596 and now feel like I can close this tab :P