mactavish88

6 ms·

1.
by mactavish88 2mo ago
Not "open" as such, but Kobo sells this title.
2.
by mactavish88 3mo ago
> I still have one pillar standing, though: code quality and software architecture - what's now being reduced to being called "taste". Genuine question: what exactly is "quality"? It's something I've be
3.
by mactavish88 3mo ago
Recursive self-improvement towards what exactly? Living organisms evolve towards some notion of "better", and "better" is an incredibly multifaceted notion (many facets of which we simply cannot even capture in language)
4.
by mactavish88 4mo ago
Have you read Cory Doctorow's "Enshittification" yet? He describes the process quite well. Not sure how to address it though. I suspect keeping companies small and focused on quality, sustainability, and free of VC influence
5.
by mactavish88 4mo ago
The absolute last thing I want in the filing of my taxes is non-determinism.
6.
by mactavish88 4mo ago
I don't think we're going to be able to have rational conversations about this with C-level folks for quite some time. They mostly seem too wrapped up in copying each other to think clearly, and it's only when the bottom line
7.
by mactavish88 4mo ago
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
8.
by mactavish88 5mo ago
Isn't one of the core problems here a lack of "healthier" alternatives? (Not only in terms of tech, but also in terms of ways of living popularized by celebrities, thought leaders, etc.)
9.
by mactavish88 5mo ago
Great example of how to set boundaries. The open source community is slowly healing.
10.
by mactavish88 6mo ago
> Their whole skill set This is the fundamental problem with how so many people think about LLMs. By the time you get to Principal, you've usually developed a range of skills where actual coding represents like 10% of what you need
11.
by mactavish88 7mo ago
Can't they just leave it alone?
12.
by mactavish88 7mo ago
I hear this perspective a lot in relation to open source projects. What it fails to recognize is the reality that life changes. Shit happens. There's no way to predict the future when you start out building an open source project. (Com
13.
by mactavish88 7mo ago
Pizza parties and "unlimited" vacations?
14.
by mactavish88 8mo ago
What you're asking is the equivalent of going to a company whose equity you've bought and asking them: what's the price going to be in 6 months' time?
15.
by mactavish88 8mo ago
The exact same way you'd treat any other investment decision. In the real world, if you've got $100k, you could choose to invest all of it into project A, or all into project B, or perhaps start both and kill whichever one isn&#x2
16.
by mactavish88 8mo ago
The only approach that genuinely works for software development is to treat it as a "bet". There are never any guarantees in software development. 1. Think about what product/system you want built. 2. Think about how much you
17.
by mactavish88 8mo ago
In my experience, it really depends on what you're building _and_ how you prompt the LLM. For some things, LLMs are great. For others, they're absolute dog shit. It's still early days. Anyone who claims to know what they&#x27
18.
by mactavish88 10mo ago
There's something both beautiful/enchanting and deeply tragic about the story. If anyone's interested in an analysis of Saint-Exupéry's psychology via the symbolism of The Little Prince, the book "The Problem of the
19.
Ask HN: What would your top local-first apps be?
2 points by mactavish88 11mo ago|2 comments
20.
by mactavish88 11mo ago
Yeah I've gone through bouts of "anything but tech" several times in my career, and each time ended up stuck in software development because it pays the bills. I'm possibly somewhat burnt out - not entirely sure - but th
21.
Ask HN: Anyone pivoted from SWE/mgmt to a different career in your 30/40s+?
3 points by mactavish88 11mo ago|2 comments
22.
by mactavish88 11mo ago
Neat! For this to be long-term sustainable though, it needs to be implemented in such a way that non-tech-savvy folks can also participate very easily, without needing to learn anything about P2P, relays, decentralized or edge computing, et
23.
by mactavish88 11mo ago
The open social web's decentralization is just as dependent on relevant protocols and communities as it is on the hosting services on which they depend. It's way easier to censor a decentralized social network if the majority of i
24.
by mactavish88 1y ago
Even if they fill a real need, their go-to-market strategy will determine whether the masses even know about them, or give a damn about trying them out in the first place.
25.
by mactavish88 1y ago
For those of us who've been around for some time and still value privacy, this sort of paradigm is obvious. The trouble isn't a lack of the right technologies - I'd argue it's a problem in the go-to-market strategy of th
26.
by mactavish88 1y ago
> A lot of engineers design by trying to think of the “ideal” system: something well-factored, near-infinitely scalable, elegantly distributed, and so on. > Instead, spend that time understanding the current system deeply, then do the
27.
by mactavish88 1y ago
It's always odd to me how people tend to think that human-created ecosystems are "freakish" or "unnatural". Humans evolved in the same environment as the ecosystems we're modifying. The buildings and cars and r
28.
by mactavish88 1y ago
A secondary "travel" smart phone, not connected to any of your cloud/social accounts, sounds like a reasonable option in your case.
29.
by mactavish88 1y ago
What's a good "dumb phone" these days to travel with?
30.
by mactavish88 2y ago
I’m about to hit 40, and I’ve had this exact same experience. Even a single beer, shot of whiskey or glass of wine will leave me feeling depressed for at least a day afterwards. For me it seems to correlate with having had COVID back in 202

More ›