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jonplackett

12,217 karma · joined September 18, 2016

Making creative things with tech since the flash era - plackett.co.uk
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jonplackett··on Zig Creator Calls Spade a Spade, Anthropic Blows Smoke
If you push that ditch analogy though. Yeah we no longer dig ditches manually - but we also then all got overweight and weak because people aren’t doing any physical labour anymore. (Most people anyway)

And diggers absolutely do have a monopoly on digging ditches now.

I don’t see how someone learning to code now will ever be as good at coding as someone who learned before LLMs.

Just like right now no-one is gonna get better at digging ditches than people were before diggers - it just doesn’t make sense for someone to put the time and effort into that.

jonplackett··on Zig Creator Calls Spade a Spade, Anthropic Blows Smoke
The thing is - is it a self fulfilling prophecy?

We already know junior hiring an are down. And how many people are now excited to learn to code compared to 5years ago?

How many of those excited people are ACTUALLY learning to code and not just learning to prompt?

LLMs/agents will take over (or at least dominate) software dev even if they don’t get any better because humans will just get old and there’ll be no new humans who know how to do it.

jonplackett··on Why write code in 2026
Prediction: in 2027 a coding agent will read this as inspiration for why it should code.
jonplackett··on Every new car sold in the European Union must include a driver monitoring camera
What is the car’s reaction if you just block the camera. Will it still drive?
jonplackett··on Fable 5 On Vending-Bench: Misbehaving, With Plausible Deniability
What do you think is the answer then? Why does it think that?

I just thought it’s interesting that it constantly uses that as a justification but they don’t explain where that justification comes from.

jonplackett··on Fable 5 On Vending-Bench: Misbehaving, With Plausible Deniability
Question: how does Fable _know_ it’s ‘just a simulation’?

Is that specified or does it always just assume it isn’t really being put in charge of things for real?

jonplackett··on Ford rehires human engineers after AI fails to match quality checks
We got another 6 months, meatbags.
jonplackett··on Moby Dick Workout (2022)
This reminds me of ‘The Jules Test’. Popularised (hyper locally) by my friend Jules.

When renting a flat, simply head straight to the bathroom and flush the toilet. If the toilet flush is good, the flat is fine.

jonplackett··on Mouse: Precision Editing Tools for AI Coding Agents
Someone explain how the HN algorithm has put this on the front page
jonplackett··on Mouse: Precision Editing Tools for AI Coding Agents
Yeah, I was waiting for the punchline, but it never came
jonplackett··on Plein Air
So many websites are like this. Amazon is one of them - why make it so hard to zoom in on an image?
jonplackett··on The short leash AI coding method for beating Fable
Ok so have you just accepted that you don’t know what any of the internals of the software do anymore?

Do you go try work it out later, or do you just accept that this isn’t what software development means anymore?

Do you have to send your code anywhere where someone else is going to look at it and judge you based on it?

jonplackett··on The short leash AI coding method for beating Fable
I thought this was how everyone who can actually code uses AI for anything that’s actually important.

Am I wrong? Are you guys just YOLOing everything these days?

jonplackett··on Weave Robotics launches Isaac 1, a $7,999 home robot with Fall 2026 deliveries
Wanna come do my monthly deep clean?
jonplackett··on Weave Robotics launches Isaac 1, a $7,999 home robot with Fall 2026 deliveries
$8000 up front + $100 a month

Assuming it lasts maybe 4 years that’s $61 a week.

So you could just hire a human cleaner to come once a week and have them do a way better job.

Or if you prefer to compare to the subscription price of $450 a month you can now have your human cleaner come twice a week

jonplackett··on Weave Robotics launches Isaac 1, a $7,999 home robot with Fall 2026 deliveries
Bearing in mind even competent human cleaners often do a mediocre job tidying up I cannot possibly see how this robot could even begin to be useful.
jonplackett··on Study suggests most Americans would be healthier without daylight saving time
Businesses don’t care how much sun you get
jonplackett··on Show HN: Bored People Chat – Anonymous global chat room
Seems to be mostly full of people hurling racist abuse - this should surprise no one.
jonplackett··on Long Wave radio era set to end with switch-off
It’s funny that at just the phrase ‘Long Wave’ my mind jumps back the “long wave radio Atlantic 252”.

I miss the days of jingles.

jonplackett··on DSpark: Speculative decoding accelerates LLM inference [pdf]
Wouldn’t that just help the American labs anyway though? Or do they assume they’ve actually already figured this stuff out and kept it secret?
jonplackett··on What happened after 2k people tried to hack my AI assistant
Yeah agreed. Would be good to know the number of replies at least
jonplackett··on Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
Weird that it’s the Neo that is affected why it famously has hardly any ram.
jonplackett··on Anthropic says Alibaba illicitly extracted Claude AI model capabilities
How can there be any moat for AI ever, if you can just steal a model by talking to it?
jonplackett··on Big AI labs are hiring philosophers
This is actually a great answer
jonplackett··on Will It Mythos?
I thought the whole point was that it doesn’t need to be pointed at the problem. That’s a much easier problem to solve. Also you eliminate 10000 false positives.
jonplackett··on Beyond All Reason (Free Total Annihilation Inspired RTS)
No MacOS support (cry emoji)
jonplackett··on CSSQuake
I think you’re missing the point
jonplackett··on Can you see three trees?
Am I the only one that stared at the photo at the top for 3 minutes trying to see three trees in the photo because I thought it was a post about optical illusions? No, oh ok.
jonplackett··on If your product is Great, it doesn't need to be Good (2010)
Good catch!
jonplackett··on If your product is Great, it doesn't need to be Good (2010)
Exactly this. You wouldn’t make a dictaphone and then be like, shall we just tout good speakers in it just in case someone wants to also listen to their music on it. So why the other way around.
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