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sema4hacker

798 karma · joined April 28, 2020

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sema4hacker··on The Nova Programming Language
Yes, after wandering through a few pages trying to find an example that actually did something, I gave up and moved on.
sema4hacker··on FBI Paid $851K in Overtime for Epstein 'Transparency Project' Redactions
Maybe a lot of the budget is already going to a second level of workers checking the redacting workers' work.
sema4hacker··on Earth needs more energy. Atlanta's Super Soaker creator may have a solution
TL,DR: A device that inputs waste heat to force pressure differences in hydrogen, outputting electricity.
sema4hacker··on FBI Paid $851K in Overtime for Epstein 'Transparency Project' Redactions
Don't only names, addresses, email addresses, account/phone numbers, and illustrations need to be redacted? Couldn't an LLM do at least most of that fast and cheap?
sema4hacker··on How this secret data company is powering the AI revolution [video]
Any time "secret" is in the title, it's not.
sema4hacker··on Ask HN: Posted AI book on algorithms–5.3K views, zero sales. What now?
Seems like you already received plenty of good advice. It's time for you to move on.
sema4hacker··on What's the "best" way to version your product?
I developed and shipped one product with monthly releases for decades and always simply bumped the version by one: 1, 2, 3..

Anything fancier doesn't really tell you exactly what features changed when, so a table in the documentation spelled that out for each version.

sema4hacker··on I need advice for this AI Assistant Im Building
The only assistant I want is one I can interact with solely by voice. In other words, a replacement for a human secretary.
sema4hacker··on The metaverse is cooked, and Wall Street couldn't be happier
I have to believe that before starting implementation, they never put mockups in front of focus groups. Otherwise they would have immediately learned no one wanted it.
sema4hacker··on F-35 Fighter Jet's C++ Coding Standards [pdf]
Before you read this, read "The Elements of Programming Style" by Brian Kernighan and P. J. Plauger.
sema4hacker··on Dollar-stores overcharge customers while promising low prices
Has private equity ever done anything good for anyone outside of the investors?
sema4hacker··on Scala 3 slowed us down?
> I was refreshing one of our services. Part of this process was to migrate codebase from Scala 2.13 to Scala 3.

My first question was: why?

sema4hacker··on I failed to recreate the 1996 Space Jam website with Claude
> The total payload is under 200KB.

Just out of curiosity, how big was what you considered Claude's best attempt to be?

sema4hacker··on Estimates are difficult for developers and product owners
In the 70's a Brazilian programmer told me his method was to make his best guess how long something would take, double it, then promise that amount plus-or-minus 50%.
sema4hacker··on Ask HN: Why does every B2B SaaS have to look like Linear/Stripe?
Evoking a vibe is what artists try to do. Visually enticing buyers of your product is what graphic designers do. Either use a designer or copy from the millions of expertly designed sites that already exist. You'll have to change it all anyway in a decade or two when styles and fashions change.
sema4hacker··on The Case That A.I. Is Thinking
"Splitting the universe of intellectual tasks" would be a gigantic job. Various AI implementations already fail at so many tasks it seems reasonable for skeptics to claim the AI is not yet thinking, and the burden is on the implementers to fix that.
sema4hacker··on Yadea is coming to the Western market
This is two-wheelers, not cars.
sema4hacker··on Cloudflare outage on December 5, 2025
If HN, Reddit, email, Slack and everything else is down for a day, I think my productivity would actually go up, not down.
sema4hacker··on Apple's new Font Book icon is upsetting designers
A number of the new icons were recently critiqued at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45838372
sema4hacker··on VA staff flag dangerous errors in Oracle-built electronic health record
Any time you hear a vendor is being selected "without competitive bidding", you're probably not getting the best solution.
sema4hacker··on VA staff flag dangerous errors in Oracle-built electronic health record
I'm amazed that city, county, state, and federal tech projects never want to clone best-of-show systems instead of starting from scratch. City needs a web site? Clone the best one you can find amongst the tens of thousands of cities already doing that. County jail needs tracking of inmate transports? Clone the best one you can find amongst the thousands of counties already doing that. State needs a sales tax system? Clone whatever other state system is the best. VA needs a system for hospital records? Don't develop from scratch, start by cloning the best system you can find amongst the thousands of existing hospital networks, and customize from there.
sema4hacker··on Francis Ford Coppola, Who Says He's 'Broke,' Is Selling a $1M Watch
In that thread, someone suggested "Would have been better investing $5M each in 20 new promising directors [instead of Megalopolis]".

I think $10k each in 10k promising screenwriters would be even better.

sema4hacker··on Young Ants Beg for Death When Sick, New Study Reveals
I wouldn't call "release a smell" equivalent to "beg for death".
sema4hacker··on Ask HN: Why is everyone in tech so performative/two faced
You're suggesting mixing with the right-brainers, who can drive the left-brainers crazy, and vice versa.
sema4hacker··on A Visual Guide to How the Hong Kong Fire Spread
They're visual, but disconnected pieces, not a "guide to how the fire spread".
sema4hacker··on Why do most new languages fail? (2012)
This 13-year-old article lists problems after a language has been implemented. Well before that happens, a big red flag would be the creator created the language more for the challenge of designing and implementing a language, rather than filling some real need for a new language. Also, even if a language doesn't have the flaws the article lists, a decent language is still doomed if it doesn't have the necessary critical mass of actual users.

To quote an AI lookup: Sources like The Historical Encyclopedia of Programming Languages list thousands, with some estimates reaching close to 9,000. The TIOBE Programming Community Index tracks over 100 actively used languages based on popularity.

That's a lot of competition.

sema4hacker··on IPv4 Internet Map
What good is zooming if you can't pan or scroll?
sema4hacker··on MIT Report Claims 11.7% of U.S. Labor Can Be Replaced with Existing AI
Not 11.6%, not 11.8%, but 11.7%.
sema4hacker··on Best Free Headshot Generator 2026: 9 AI Tools Tested and Compared
I think we're quickly getting to the point where for any task you need done there will be at least 9 different AI tools online to do that task.
sema4hacker··on A Visual Guide to How the Hong Kong Fire Spread
> The fire began in Block F, known as Wang Cheong House. It then spread to six more surrounding towers.

Not that much of a "visual guide".

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