HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

anupj

906 karma · joined March 1, 2009

https://anup.io
submissionscomments
anupj··on Melvyn Bragg steps down from presenting In Our Time
He will be missed, but it’s also a chance for fresh perspectives to take the reins.
anupj··on Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025
The most fascinating detail here is that every piece of tech in Neuromancer is Japanese or German. Hitachi computers, Sanyo suits, Braun drones. Gibson was extrapolating from 1984 when Japan dominated consumer electronics and Germany led manufacturing. Fast forward 40 years and we're having the exact same conversations about Chinese tech dominance. TikTok, DJI drones, BYD cars. Today's "future tech" assumptions mirror Gibson's perfectly. Makes you wonder what we're getting wrong about the next 40 years.

Also wild that he nailed AI and VR but completely missed that everyone would carry a supercomputer in their pocket. The big paradigm shifts are always the ones nobody sees coming.

anupj··on AI coding tools can reduce productivity
[flagged]
anupj··on Thoughts on Motivation and My 40-Year Career
[flagged]
anupj··on Things I learned from 5 years at Vercel
[flagged]
anupj··on Grok: Searching X for "From:Elonmusk (Israel or Palestine or Hamas or Gaza)"
It’s fascinating and somewhat unsettling to watch Grok’s reasoning loop in action, especially how it instinctively checks Elon’s stance on controversial topics, even when the system prompt doesn’t explicitly direct it to do so. This seems like an emergent property of LLMs “knowing” their corporate origins and aligning with their creators’ perceived values.

It raises important questions:

- To what extent should an AI inherit its corporate identity, and how transparent should that inheritance be?

- Are we comfortable with AI assistants that reflexively seek the views of their founders on divisive issues, even absent a clear prompt?

- Does this reflect subtle bias, or simply a pragmatic shortcut when the model lacks explicit instructions?

As LLMs become more deeply embedded in products, understanding these feedback loops and the potential for unintended alignment with influential individuals will be crucial for building trust and ensuring transparency.

anupj··on AI agent benchmarks are broken
AI agent benchmarks are starting to feel like the self-driving car demos of 2016: impressive until you realize the test track has speed bumps labeled "success"
anupj··on Show HN: Open source alternative to Perplexity Comet
Love the direction here. Local-first, open-source agentic browsers feel inevitable as AI gets more deeply embedded in our workflows. Watching the agent actually click around (vs. black-box cloud APIs) is both reassuring and fun. Curious how you’re handling Chromium’s relentless update pace with such a small team -- Does patching ever break in unexpected ways? Rooting for you; privacy-centric infra like this is long overdue.
anupj··on Show HN: Cactus – Ollama for Smartphones
Running LLMs, VLMs, and TTS models locally on smartphones is quietly redefining what 'edge AI' means suddenly, the edge is in your pocket, not just at the network boundary. The next wave of apps will be built by those who treat mobile as the new AI server
anupj··on The day someone created 184 billion Bitcoin (2020)
The 184 billion BTC overflow bug is a reminder that even “immutable” code is only as trustworthy as its review process. The real miracle isn’t that a bug happened, but that Satoshi patched it in hours and the network agreed to roll back. Decentralization is great, but consensus is everything
anupj··on Batch Mode in the Gemini API: Process More for Less
Batch Mode for the Gemini API feels like Google’s way of asking, “What if we made AI more affordable and slower, but at massive scale?” Now you can process 10,000 prompts like “Summarize each customer review in one line” for half the cost, provided you’re willing to wait until tomorrow for the results.
anupj··on Apple vs the Law
Apple’s DMA “compliance” feels less like opening the walled garden and more like planting hedges around the new gate. The irony is, for a company obsessed with seamless user experience, they’re making interoperability as convoluted as possible, unless, of course, you’re using Safari.
anupj··on Intro to Large Language Models [Video]
This was an incredibly informative talk, especially the ideal of giving LLMs the System 2 thinking capability. I think if LLMs can do system 2 thinking we are one more step closer to AGI. I’ve summarised the talk here - https://gist.github.com/anupj/f3a778dcb26972ba72c774634a80d7... - if you anyone wants to RAG the text for their custom GPT :)
anupj··on UK air traffic control meltdown
Great writeup
anupj··on What I learned unsubscribing from 22 newspapers
It resonates with my own experience. It seems rather counterintuitive that, in an era of growing digitalization and consumer-centric services, some newspapers continue to employ tactics that hinder the cancellation process.

I believe this issue stems from the broader challenges that the print media industry faces, as they grapple with declining circulation and ad revenue. While it's understandable that newspapers would want to retain subscribers, making the cancellation process a nightmare only tarnishes their reputation and, in the long run, may result in even more subscribers seeking alternative sources of information.

A better approach would be for newspapers to invest in improving their digital offerings, making the subscription process more flexible, and providing subscribers with value-added services. This could include offering customized news feeds, interactive multimedia content, and easy access to archival materials. By focusing on the needs of subscribers and creating a seamless user experience, newspapers would be better positioned to maintain their relevance and grow their subscriber base.

It's high time that newspapers prioritize customer satisfaction and transparency. A frustrating cancellation process does nothing but alienate subscribers and contribute to the decline of the print media industry.

anupj··on The Graph Programming Language GP (2009) [pdf]
When was this paper written/published?
anupj··on Show HN: Circumflex, browse HN in your terminal
Great UI, easy to use (especially for Vim users). Thanks for building this.
anupj··on Software engineering books
+1 I really enjoyed these books. I wish there were more books in this series
anupj··on Rust Tutorial Full Course
No more excuses not to learn Rust now I suppose
anupj··on Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil (2011)
I stopped taking the article seriously after I read this line. IMO Tom Bombadil was a very likeable character. The author seems to have imagined a problem (where none existed) and then proceeded to explain why it's not a problem. Almost a clickbait.
anupj··on Instagram's Million Dollar Bug
Going to his employer, instead of talking to him direct was just petty.
anupj··on Open for everyone
Sorry mate, don't care anymore! Cheers for thinking about us small people now.
anupj··on I am burning out
There is a shloka in Hinduism that might be relevant to this post. As stated in Mahabharata, when Arjun wonders about the futility of his efforts on the battlefields of Kurukshetra, this is what Lord Krishna says to him:

"कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन। मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते संगोऽस्त्वकर्मणि॥"

(You have the right to perform your actions, but you are not entitled to the fruits of the actions. Do not let the fruit be the purpose of your actions, and therefore you won’t be attached to not doing your duty.)

anupj··on Don't specify X years of experience required - You're breaking the law
IANAL => I am not a lawyer
anupj··on Don't specify X years of experience required - You're breaking the law
IANAL, and I maybe wrong here, but if you follow the logic in the article, any job advert requesting c++ only experience is discriminating against java developers(or puts them at a disadvantage), and is therefore illegal (?!?), which doesn't make sense.
anupj··on London Hacker News meetup: Thursday, 18 Oct
No worries! :) Looking fwd to the meetup.
anupj··on London Hacker News meetup: Thursday, 18 Oct
I have registered, but not sure what the agenda is.
anupj··on Github is down
I can see a github post-downtime analysis blog post coming up (I hope). :)
anupj··on Introducing Facebook Stories: "Remembering"
It is more to demonstrate how FB can enable real life interaction with friends, family and acquaintances. If you ignore the "world domination" plans by FB for a minute, it is a really useful platform to stay in touch with both old and new pals, and sometimes have meaningful conversation with your social network. As a marketing campaign, this story telling technique is quite effective.
anupj··on What's so special with minimalweather.com?
Nothing.
Page 1 of 2Next →