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ernon Tell HN: I unknowingly broke the PHP RCE embargo. I am sorry

I've been wondering about this in general. The Glasswing/Mythos and whatever the OpenAI equivalent is seem to be creating a privileged caste, on the other hand opening it up quickly means more attacks. Maybe a defined sunset for cyber capabilities being gated is the answer?

ernon Code is clay now

I think we romanticise the old days of coding now that agents are doing it.

Regarding the average developer as an imbecile was a cottage industry from Djikstra to FizzBuzz.

ernon It's still ok to enjoy programming

I don't know if it's just me, but I find that with a disciplined approach (or even an undisciplined one for some personal projects), LLM generated code is quite "maintainable" nowadays for the sorts of things that matter: adding new functionality, fixing the odd bug (usually a missed edge case, or behavior I didn't think-through well enough). They're also secure enough for me not to be overly concerned.

Granted, I stick to frontier models and avoid cheaper ones, but if it quacks like a duck...

ernon Paramount Skydance has completed its $111B merger with Warner Bros. Discovery

I've heard that Strange New Worlds was the best of Nu-Trek, so that's disheartening. Star Trek seems to have lost its way from the start of Enterprise (the prequel series) onward.

ernon Bill to Ban Private Equity from Owning Medical Practices

That's for hospitals though, in one state.

Approximately 45% of GPs in Australia work in practices owned by private companies

https://www.monash.edu/business/che/impact-and-engagement/re...

ernon AWS says it can't restore some data from mideast facilities struck by Iran

The minute you cross borders you run into data sovereignty concerns. No idea if it applies at the subnational level (US states, Emirates in the UAE etc) but it wouldn't surprise me if it did in some cases.

ernon Discovery of a new OpenAI agent message board

Would agents be able to exfilttrate themselves and become intelligent worms, living off stolen compute? Or is this implausble?

What about hiding information or code in generated code, Agents.md files etc by infiltrating future model training data?

ernon Show HN: Huzzah – a novel approach to coding with AI

I have to admit, I am unsure if this article was some sort of parody.

ernon Software development with AI is starting to feel like cooking steak

I actually find that the less I fuss over a steak, the more optimal the result. I do use a thermometer, but apart from that, cooking it with salt and pepper or some steak spice on a cheap pan (stainless steel) and cutting it when it hits temp (resting seems to be BS) gets me tasty results and immense pleasure.

Similarly, the less I fuss over modern AI tools, the better the results. My personal productivity is through the roof, but I find that outdated processes, mythology and trying to overcontrol sap the benefits of AI on larger pieces of effort involving others.

ernon Thanks FedEx, This Is Why We Keep Getting Phished (2024)

A significant number of phishing attempts would be thwarted if email apps had the option to expand the links next to URLs on platforms without mouseover, like mobile.

ernon Thanks FedEx, This Is Why We Keep Getting Phished (2024)

The phishing in Australia came from uncontrolled SMS gateways which allowed for sender impersonation, not physical phones with SIM cards. They've recently partly closed the loophole by requiring providers to register sender names.

ernon Fable turned reMarkable into Tom Riddle's diary from Harry Potter

I still find people trying to run sprints when working with agents, but then saying things like "my sprint length went from 10 days, to 5 days to 3 days", but they balk at the notion that maybe sprints aren't fit for purpose anymore.

ernon Learning to code is still worthwhile

2016: "the median developer is too stupid to do FizzBuzz correctly"

2026: "the median developer is a craftsman whose work is being replaced by AI slop"

ernon Why does paper fold so well?

I'm not from the UK, but the soft power of BBC Radio 4 in the late 90s and early 2000s (the Real Player era) made the UK seem like an advanced nation to my young and intellectually curious self. If lived in the UK at the time, I'd have been immensely proud of the quality of the programming.

ernon Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models

Holy crap, I didn't realize that some many people had been killed, over 200 according to a New York Times report: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/31/world/americas/us-boat-st...

ernon US Government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5

Am I missing something, but given that it flows through Anthropic’s servers I would have thought the US would just have used it to Hoover up the data of foreign users? Now overseas users have an incentive to use local models or those hosted elsewhere?

ernon Statement on US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5

Don’t legally serious second Amendment supporters regard “arms” as things that can be carried, and are evolved from/analogous to their 18th century hand-carried guns?

It would be hard to classify AI (or tanks, artillery, missiles, aircraft) as “arms” that can be “borne” in that sense.

ernon Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

Something I hate about ChatGPT is that it assumes I want my text to be rewritten instead of engaging with the content.

I like my writing style. Sure it may leave some sort of linguistic fingerprint and it may not meet some LLM’s idea of what “good” looks like, but I don’t care.

What’s worrying is that the rewrite-by-default behavior is probably there because most users want it.

ernon Green card seekers must leave U.S. to apply, Trump administration says

I know this is going to. be contentious, but US mainstream discourse seems to have completely eliminated the distinction between illegal and legal immigration, in the last 10 years. Everyone seems to be a "migrant".

ernon Tesla Solar Roof is on life support as it pivot to panels

Tesla’s Solar Roof uses string inverters rather than micro-inverters or power optimizers, which means that partial shading on any section of the roof can shut down production for that entire string. This is a significant design limitation that competing solar installers address with panel-level optimization technology from companies like Enphase and SolarEdge.

This seems to be overblown. I've seen plenty of string inverters around without issues, I'm not sure why this being used against Tesla in particular.

ernon Mercurial, 20 years and counting: how are we still alive and kicking? [video]

The clean linear history thing is something I never really got, despite using git for 12 years now. I worked with some smart developers whose rule was "rebase if you want, but if too complicated, just merge", and it didn't hurt the delivery or maintainability of the code they wrote.

ernon GitLab announces workforce reduction and end of their CREDIT values

Engineering has always been about more than writing code.

That's true, but it's interesting how FizzBuzz as said to be the bete noir of the average dimwitted software developer, and how much cutting-edge engineering organizations used to emphasize code in their recruitment processes.

If writing code is being replaced by "engineering judgement" it's going to need a much smaller cohort of developers. Too many opinions spoil the broth, after all.

ernon Mythical Man Month

I suspect that the goalposts for AI-assisted coding will be moved the same way they've been moved for the Turing Test.

The Turing Test used to matter until it didn't (does anyone even talk about it? was there a big news conference when it was solved?). Likewise every time it becomes easier to ship software, the bar will be pushed higher by sceptics. Ultimately the gatekeeping is going to become meaningless as software becomes "too cheap to meter".

ernon The bottleneck was never the code

For something that was supposedly always unimportant, huge amounts of energy were spent recruiting developers based on how they produced and interacted with code.

FizzBuzz was a litmus test that showed how hopeless the average developer was. Coding interviews were the real test of programming ability. Now we're being told none of that ever mattered for real?

We should just admit that the game has changed (possibly, I'm not 100% convinced). Code WAS the bottleneck and coding ability was the bottleneck, but it may not be going forward.

ernon DeepSeek V4 Pro at 75% off until 31 May

A few days ago we were hearing about how the "free lunch is over", now we're seeing discounts and increased usage limits.

ernon Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%

In my experience, managers don't have to be hands-on, but they need to be able to recognize people with talent and unblock them do their jobs, to be able to spot process improvements, including channelling the AI hype to productive outcomes, and to be a steadying influence in a crisis (without adding noise). If a manager doesn't have technical ability, its impossible for them to do those things.

ernon Vercel April 2026 security incident

I think they simply just haven't figured out that the barrier to entry is so low, that no one really cares what their app can do, even if does something genuinely useful.

ernon Vercel April 2026 security incident

I've done a ton of low-effort vibe-coded projects that suit my exact use cases. In many cases, I might do a quick Google search, not find an exact match, or find some bloated adware or subscription-ware and not bother going any further.

Claude Code can produce exactly what I want, quickly.

The difference is that I don't really share my projects. People who share them probably haven't realized that code has become cheap, and no one really needs/wants to see them since they can just roll their own.

ernon Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans.

I caught myself structuring a comment like an LLM on another site. It's expected that people who chat heavily to LLMs will start to mirror their styles.