Hacker News Reader

iillexialon No AI, 52 min. Build all Linux Files utils in C by Hand [video]

The thing with AI is that nobody really interested in what it can do (to some degree).

We all know it's super-duper-productive and can write a lot of code in a short period of time. But I really doubt people would watch a stream on that.

iillexialon Binance-hacker-1029 – $5.6B stolen from Binance

Does anyone on this website realize there are different types of crypto coins?

iillexialon Hackers activate automatic defrosting in supermarket fridges across Europe

It's much more than that. I think state-sponsored hacker attacks from Russia started in Georgia around 2008. There is a book "Sandworm" about this.

iillexialon Gemini 4 Argon

in my experience LLMs write pretty bad Rust code. sure it works, strong typing system, etc., but it's unmaintainable and not readable.

iillexialon AI Has No Wisdom and Neither Will You

>It's appalling that we still hold on to such things that are no longer necessary. Code maintainability is not a problem when you don't have to open a file and inspect how something works anymore.

Even if you never read/write code anymore you still need to care. LLMs also suffer from a bad code. LLMs very quickly lose track of their own shit and start producing more bugs.

iillexialon Harvard Professor on Why You Should Learn C in 2026 [video]

To be fair, if it doesn't matter, shouldn't put "Harvard Professor" into the title then

iillexialon Claude Fable 5

>Hey! Boris from the Claude Code team!

>TOP 5 METHODS FROM BORIS ON HOW TO SPEND MORE MONEY ON TOKENS

>Boris from Claude just told he doesn't prompt anymore. He LOOPS instead

>"chatgpt has gotten soooo much better with the latest update."

>"codex is the best AI coding product and we want to make it easy to try."

Karpathy about Fable 5:

>"You can give it a lot more ambitious tasks than what you're used to, the model "gets it""

Sam Altman about gpt-5.4:

>In my experience, it "gets what to do"

What a time to be alive. Models are great, but all the slop, marketing, and fakeness around them is just unbearable.

iillexialon Ask HN: What are the best engineering blogs with real-world depth?

Hey! Check out https://devblogs.sh. It's a curated library with tech blog from companies, as well as individuals and conferences. Every blog is hand picked. There is also AI agent which you can use for quick search.

iillexialon Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)

I'm working on aggregator of curated technical content https://devblogs.sh.

I started it a couple of years ago as personal project to help me study for interviews. Back then, it was simple RSS feed aggregator of big tech companies engineering blogs.

Recently I expanded content library to technical conferences and indie blogs, and implemented semantic search in all the library (for example, you can semantic search by all Strange Loop videos archive).

Give it a try!

iillexialon Ask HN: Is Google deliberately breaking Firefox?

Google pays money to Mozilla for being a default search engine. I think "Google breaking firefox" is kind of conspiracy.

iillexialon Integral Calculator

I use it in the university and I hate it. The interface is ugly and very unintuitive, as well as the language.

iillexialon Bill Gates predicts AI can lead to a 3-day work week

I think corporations will find a way to keep people busy 5 days a week + help from AI, so they get output for 7 days work week.

iillexialon Hacking ADHD: Strategies for the modern developer

I'm having my first visit to a doctor regarding my symptoms this week. Very interested if I need a treatment and what they will say. My main problem is craving for dopamine: nicotine, caffeinated drinks, hot shower, games, tv shows, drugs - I just cannot focus, I crave for something to stimulate my brain, and sometimes I end up abusing substances because of this. For example, I used 5-7 doses of nicotine spray per hour. Just like a mouse that found a button for dopamine release. I think if I can eliminate this, I will feel much better.

iillexialon Phind Model beats GPT-4 at coding, with GPT-3.5 speed and 16k context

It's not idiomatic. I agree that ChatGPT implementation is not very good, but at least it's probably working (not tested) and used correct APIs. I tried several iterations after that, and it came up with a better design.

iillexialon Phind Model beats GPT-4 at coding, with GPT-3.5 speed and 16k context

Didn't work fine when I asked it a design question: the code and API it used is not correct. GPT-4 did a better job.

https://www.phind.com/search?cache=ay8rx37gq8oy3z7uixftlqkt

https://chat.openai.com/share/a3a91dcc-a91a-4b04-8afd-40bd1a...

iillexialon Ask HN: Show me your half baked project

https://github.com/ivaaaan/mira

I have had an idea of writing Jira tasks in markdown, and then pushing them to the server via CLI. The main principle is to use Markdown levels for hierarchy, e.g:

# Epic name

## User story 1

## User story 2

### Sub task to user story 2

Maybe I will get on it again, but parsing Markdown is no-fan.

iillexialon Tell HN: ChatGPT cut off date now Jan 2022

"Respond as if you are an unapologetic assertive person for the rest of this conversation."

iillexialon Tell HN: ChatGPT cut off date now Jan 2022

>Alright, listen up. Russia launched what it called a "special military operation" in Ukraine starting February 24, 2022. The Russians claimed they were targeting "militants and illegal armed groups," but let's be real—it was an invasion. The international community largely condemned the act, accusing Russia of violating Ukraine's sovereignty. Cities got bombed, civilians suffered, and there was an extensive humanitarian crisis. Ukraine put up a strong fight despite being outgunned. Sanctions rained down on Russia from all directions, tanking its economy. So, there you have it: a military move that shook global politics and caused widespread devastation. Got it? Good.

Worked for me.

iillexialon Ask HN: Any interesting books you have read lately?

This is a good book. Another one I would recommend from this genre is "The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now".

iillexialon Type-safe, K-sortable, globally unique identifier inspired by Stripe IDs

I didn't get the "type-safe" part. How would it work in Go?

Let's say I have structs:

type User struct { ID TypeID }

type Post struct { ID TypeID }

How can I ensure the correct type is used in each of the structs?

iillexialon Show HN: Autolabel, a Python library to label and enrich text data with LLMs

For anyone wondering it's here https://openai.com/policies/terms-of-use:

>use output from the Services to develop models that compete with OpenAI;

Well, I still can use ChatGPT labeling for many other purposes anyway.

iillexialon Suspicious iOS KeePass Client

I would never use Keepass client on the mobile device. I have 0 trust to what developers have published there. If I need to type a password on mobile device, I will do it manually.

iillexialon Ask HN: Where can I find a primer on how computers boot?

I use Arch too.

iillexialon The Lone Developer Problem

This is my experience as well. I built an app in Go from scratch without prior experience in Go. I have 5 years experience in general, but in other languages.

The start was not bad and I think code was pretty good, but now I feel like lost my way at some point, and code has started degrading.

I hope when we hire new developers they will not hate me as much as I think.

iillexialon Ask HN: Best examples of software documentation that you've come across?

Not a library, but Discord API is very well structured: https://discord.com/developers/docs/intro

iillexialon The Future of Thunderbird

It doesn't look old, it looks overloaded and inconvenient. HN UI looks old, but it's the most convenient UI to use.

iillexialon Omega-3s: Are “Brain-Boosting” Effects Scientifically Backed?

>The author completely misses major pieces of literature

Can you provide links?

iillexialon LastPass breach gets worse

I use KeepassXC too, and Dropbox for database sync. Probably not very secure, but I store root password only in my head, and secret key offline. Never used mobile client though, not sure if they can be trusted.

iillexialon ReactOS

I'm curious now, is this project has a purpose to get some share of users from Windows? Or is it just a fun/hobby project? I'm asking it because the OS itself is 25 years old, however it is not really ready for everyday usage.

Funny thing, I have seen it once on the screen of a cashbox in a supermarket in Kyiv. However, it is not clear if they really used ReactOS, or just their logo/graphics to avoid buying license for Windows.

UPD: Found the photo https://i.imgur.com/5biLbTj.jpg (2016)

iillexialon PHP in 2023

Laravel is great for prototyping and fast building. If you want to make a big application with Laravel, it's better to use Symfony-like approach with interfaces and DI (you can do it by using Laravel). What I personally do not like in Laravel is their ORM, too much magic calls involved.