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jcadamon Astra can read and write weights to improve Qwen

Stochastic, yes. Parrot? No.

jcadamon Validation Drone-Based, Glaciogenic Cloud Seeding in the Kenai Peninsula

Unacceptable. I live on the Kenai Peninsula and I take exception to my home being used as a laboratory. I'll be writing my state reps over this.

jcadamon Show HN: Prose or Con, can you detect AI writing?

I've had to stop using em-dashes in my own writing :'(

jcadamon Open source AI must win

Well, the crazy thing I'm working on (100% self-funded thus far): https://trivyn.io. The main idea is moving most of the reasoning to the symbolic layer so the "neuro" piece can be a small model able to be self-hosted on reasonable hardware.

jcadamon Don't Wait for Claude

True. Sometimes I'll run front-end and backend work in two different claude instances, but always on the same project/product. I'll have "reviewer" instances in opencode using a different (non-Claude) model doing reviews, that's about as much as I can handle. You've got to supervise it while it works. I do have to stop claude from time to time when I catch it doing something naive or unnecessarily complex.

jcadamon Opus 4.5 is not the normal AI agent experience that I have had thus far

Yea, my issue with Opus 4.5 is it's the first model that's good enough that I'm starting to feel myself slip into laziness. I catch myself reviewing its output less rigorously than I had with previous AI coding assistants.

As a side project / experiment, I designed a language spec and am using (mostly) Opus 4.5 to write a transpiler (language transpiles to C) for it. Parser was no problem (I used s-expressions for a reason). The type checker and transpiler itself have been a slog - I think I'm finding the limits of Opus :D. It particularly struggles with multi-module support. Though, some of this is probably mistakes made by me while playing architect and iterating with Claude - I haven't written a compiler since my senior year compiler design course 20+ years ago. Someone who does this for a living would probably have an easier time of it.

But for the CRUD stuff my day job has me doing? Pffttt... it's great.

jcadamon Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)

https://trivyn.io

Trivyn: Ontology-first knowledge platform. Runs on a single machine, via a single executable. I wanted a simpler alternative to the large complicated enterprise products that tend to dominate this space.

I'm really trying to get a private beta out the door by Christmas. I do plan to have a free version for academic/personal use.

Backend is written in Rust, uses oxigraph for its triple store.

jcadamon 100k TPS over a billion rows: the unreasonable effectiveness of SQLite

I've been getting some good results from sqlite-vec on my current project. I need to look at geospatial extensions next.

jcadamon Advent of Code 2025

I tried to do it in emacs lisp one year. Made it about halfway :)

jcadamon Typed languages are better suited for vibecoding

I've found most LLMs I've tried generate better code in typed, procedural languages than they do in something like Clojure.

From the perspective of a primarily backend dev who knows just enough React/ts to be dangerous, Claude is generating pretty decent frontend code, letting me spend more time on the Rust backend of my current side project.

jcadamon Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage

Yea, my house is on Starlink... so at the moment I'm working in the back room of my wife's restaurant (she has cable internet). At least I get free coffee here.

jcadamon Ask HN: How did Soham Parekh get so many jobs?

Most US citizens applying for software engineering jobs can't even get a response to their resume, and then I read stories like this.

jcadamon I got a remote job for a EU company, I'd find it hard to go back to a US-based

I worked in defense contracting for most of my ~20 year career up until a few months ago. So I'm experiencing this culture shock the other way around. Being the oldest person on a team is... strange.

Still have my clearance for a couple years I suppose - perhaps all this anti-remote madness will be over before then.

jcadamon Java at 30: Interview with James Gosling

Been coding on the JVM for a good chunk of my career. Though the last several years has been in languages other than Java - Scala, Clojure (my personal favorite), and Kotlin.

Finally managed to get a job offer (after being unemployed for a bit) doing Python. It's starting to look like demand for JVM experience is beginning to wane. Might be time to move on anyway :shrug:

I'm old... as long as there's a steady paycheck involved, I'll code in whatever language you say.

Though, currently working on a little personal project in Scala. :)

jcadamon The world could run on older hardware if software optimization was a priority

It's not just software -- My wife owns a restaurant. Operating a restaurant you quickly learn the sad fact that quality is just not that important to your success.

We're still trying to figure out the marketing. I'm convinced the high failure rate of restaurants is due largely to founders who know how to make good food and think their culinary skills plus word-of-mouth will get them sales.

jcadamon Ask HN: Do You Prepare for Job Interviews? If So, How?

I actually had Grok throw a bunch of practice interview questions at me.

jcadamon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2025)

I simply can't get interviews now (I've had two so far over the last 6 weeks). A few years ago I would be getting absolutely slammed with interview requests to the point I'd have to be selective. Now, I'll talk to anyone with a job.

I've never seen the job market for engineers this bad. I was unemployed in 2008; this is worse.

jcadamon Microsoft researchers developed a hyper-efficient AI model that can run on CPUs

So Microsoft is about to do to Nvidia what Nvidia did to SGI.

jcadamon Why I Program in Lisp

Never used monads with Clojure (the only Lisp I've done "serious" work in). Haskell introduced them to me, but I've never done anything large with Haskell (no jobs!). Scala, however, has monads via the cats or (more recently) the ZIO library and they work just fine there.

The main problem with Monads is you're almost always the only programmer on a team who even knows what a Monad is.

jcadamon Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (April 2025)

    Location: Soldotna, AK
    Remote: Yes
    Willing to relocate: No
    Technologies: Clojure, Scala, Java, Python, Ada, RabbitMQ, Postgresql, Docker
    Resume/CV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Bz7ucVofUvXsWLtY3tZ7cbELxxYQLWnm/view?usp=sharing
    Email: jcadam.sm@use.startmail.com

I'm a senior engineer with 19 years experience across a broad spectrum of domains and technologies. My most recent role was leading development of a knowledge graph platform using a polyglot microservices architecture.

Open to FTE or 1099 work.

jcadamon Career Development: What It Means to Be a Manager, Director, or VP (2015)

Never experienced the dive-and-save myself. Usually a wince and a sigh, followed by "oh... when's your last day?" Your first line supervisor is upset, but resigned that he's powerless to do anything substantive that might retain you. The MBAs at corporate HQ couldn't care less, and it'll take them weeks/months to get around to approving a new job req.

jcadamon ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Officially Erased From Canon

Jason Isaacs was doing the best he could to hold the show together, but once he left it was all downhill.

jcadamon How good are American roads?

Studs added about $150 (for the set) vs the price for the studless version of the same tire. Truck tires are definitely more expensive than those for passenger cars, though.

jcadamon How good are American roads?

Absolutely. I was stationed in Germany for 3 years while I was in the Army. You could be in the left lane of the Autobahn, doing 90+ passing a truck, and suddenly a Ferrari that wasn't there 5 seconds ago is right behind you, flashing its headlights demanding you get out of the way (apparently you're supposed to merge into the side of a semi).

jcadamon How good are American roads?

Winter tires are not cheap. I'm in Alaska and recently paid $1400 for a new set of studded winter tires for my F-150. And the tires I chose were one of the lower cost options available.

So I totally understand why folks who can barely afford to put gas in their car are driving around on all-seasons year round (and ending up in the ditch frequently).

jcadamon Thomas E. Kurtz has died

First programming language for me was Apple Integer Basic on the ][e. Got me hooked on coding.

jcadamon Trump wins presidency for second time

A raise would be nice, I'm making exactly what I made in 2021. Wage growth for software engineers is stagnant because demand for senior software engineers has fallen off a cliff the last few years.

jcadamon Sam's Club CTO to Exit Due to Walmart Relocation Policy

All you did was say you like Little Rock. What is this place becoming, Reddit?

jcadamon Sam's Club CTO to Exit Due to Walmart Relocation Policy

Oh, everyone has a number....

jcadamon How French Drains Work

Up here in Alaska, I tend to get a little water seeping into my basement at the cove joint (walls are ICF) after heavy rain and/or the spring thaw. Now, the floor in the basement is concrete, and whoever built the house had the baseboards and drywall over an inch off the floor, so towels and a de-humidifier tend to dry it out and nothing gets ruined since we learned to keep things off the floor. Trying to think of a way to address it without digging around the foundation to put in more/better drainage. Maybe just add a sump pump... I know, kind of a band-aid solution.