ktrnka

6 ms·

1.
by ktrnka 2mo ago
Ubuntu, because I don't want to think about the OS too much. I expect that I'll someday try out more distros either to get away from snap or to get faster updates for different fractional scaling on multiple monitors.
2.
by ktrnka 2mo ago
I struggle with terminology so I made a little Gnome utility for easier LLM-based terminology lookups from a highlighted word/term + contextual screenshot. So far it's working pretty well, kinda like a better version of the Mac OS
3.
by ktrnka 3mo ago
It traces back to accessibility. Think of folks with shaky hands. The screen helps to stabilize the tremors. A similar thing applies to typing on a bumpy bus or while walking. That said, it also depends on screen size. Back when Swype first
4.
by ktrnka 3mo ago
I don't have a lawn, but I could use some more software around native habitat restoration for Green Seattle work parties. I end up using Claude or ChatGPT for plant identification because iNaturalist isn't as good, then getting th
5.
by ktrnka 3mo ago
I like the formatting and readability of https://nesbitt.io/2026/05/28/protestware-for-coding-agents.... though I wish it loaded faster.
6.
by ktrnka 4mo ago
I found it was a slow read in parts, but it was time well spent. There are deep themes that run through the whole letter and provide much better context for the quotes I've seen in the news. I'd also add that while the letter does
7.
by ktrnka 5mo ago
Love the idea. The ability to PR a dashboard would've helped us in multiple companies. The two big areas that could use some docs/work: - Auth (one company was healthtech, so we needed auth even on VPN. The other didn't have
8.
by ktrnka 7mo ago
I'm a few years behind you. I got started on my uncle's handed down vic 20 in the late 80s. The culture change in tech has been the toughest part for me. I miss the combination of curiosity, optimism, creativity, and even the chao
9.
by ktrnka 1y ago
Looks good to me! The status bar did something weird on my codebase in which 2% was really 100% so it looked like it was gonna take hours but only took a minute or so. I'll try hooking it into my refactor/cleanup workflow with cop
10.
by ktrnka 2y ago
Yes. Earlier in careers, passion can lead to more time and energy towards growth, which is a strong contributor to becoming a great engineer. For more experienced engineers, I think about it as skill vs motivation. In theory one doesn'
11.
by ktrnka 2y ago
A couple fun ones I remember taking: - Recently: Given some basic intermediate output from LLM system, build out evaluation/quality tools, especially for dealing with hallucination - ~8 years ago: Given a database table of restaurants,
12.
by ktrnka 2y ago
I worked on a hackathon project to update readmes based on PRs, and it feels very doable. The developer experience is the hardest part... we did a Github Action that would open a PR for README changes, but it's a little slow to edit th
13.
by ktrnka 2y ago
I like to research companies that I'm interviewing with and I've been automating my process lately. It's also been a good opportunity to explore many of the challenges in LLM/RAG applications like user trust, dealing wit
14.
by ktrnka 2y ago
Please do! That sounds super interesting
15.
by ktrnka 2y ago
Looks good so far! If it helps, some of the challenges I had with take-homes as a hiring manager were: - We'd suggest to spend an afternoon on it, no more than 4 hours, but many candidates would go far beyond that - Senior candidates t
16.
by ktrnka 2y ago
Textgrad mainly optimizes the prompt but does not inject few shot examples. Dspy mainly optimizes the few shot examples. At least that's my understanding from reading the textgrad paper recently.
17.
by ktrnka 4y ago
I'm wrapping up my current sabbatical, and I took one before. In the first sabbatical, I left my job to work on a startup idea with friends, and I learned a ton from it, both technical and non technical. I did lots of side projects I&#
18.
by ktrnka 4y ago
If I remember right, my team's pipelines took about 40-60 min on average. We deployed machine learning models and code to lambda via cdk. The things that made it slow were having to deploy dev staging and prod with no resource sharing
19.
by ktrnka 4y ago
I made a similar change in my last role and it was a great experience. The big difference is that I took about 30 minutes and also asked a bit about work on their resume to check basic things like whether their work had actually been deploy
20.
by ktrnka 4y ago
Funny enough I was in this situation a few weeks ago. My old resume was in latex with moderncv and I decided to make the new resume with Creddle after seeing it recommended. Now I'm back to latex with moderncv. Creddle was just too slo
21.
by ktrnka 4y ago
Also I'm happy to help any way I can. I'm not sure the best practices of sharing contact info on HN but if you Google K Trnka language modeling I should be the only one
22.
by ktrnka 4y ago
I'd suggest starting with just building a high quality data set with text from a variety of domains, and starting off by publishing that. Maybe even developing some related tech like adding the dialect to language id packages. Another
23.
by ktrnka 4y ago
> What is tech debt, really? It's gotta meet two criteria for me: 1) code that's unusually hard to maintain or extend that 2) could've been designed much better initially. So "uses a weird library" wouldn't
24.
by ktrnka 4y ago
My experience in Seattle is that the majority of my coworkers have more free time and less stress as a result of WFH. I enjoy going to the office and having a feeling of community, but I'm in the minority, at least at my former employe
25.
by ktrnka 4y ago
Descript for podcast editing. I used it for an internal podcast last year and got to experience childlike glee once more. It was extra special because I work in nlp but so many nlp applications just don't excite me
26.
by ktrnka 4y ago
Thank you for this. It puts words to a situation I made worse with a report a few years ago and helped me see it another way
27.
by ktrnka 4y ago
Positive experiences - Patent lawyers at one company were just plain easy to work with, and took the time to explain why they were filing the patent a certain way. They didn't put too much burden on the inventors. Overall it wasn'
28.
by ktrnka 4y ago
I once froze a subset of the training data and used it in the test suite for the training pipeline. It was pretty handy as a quick test while refactoring. I don't think I got it integrated into our Jenkins pipeline so it wasn't us
29.
by ktrnka 4y ago
Causal inference, or any similar way of controlling for confounders, particularly for features that are launched at a point in time for the whole population rather than an AB test. Summarization of open ended feedback, or more generally jus
30.
by ktrnka 4y ago
I'm a big fan of having people discuss designs before implementation. That said, I'm not much more formal than nudging folks to have a discussion with their peers. It could be a meeting like you mention, or just an informal chat o

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