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ericyd

962 karma · joined November 19, 2022

eric@ericyd.com
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ericyd··on My midlife crisis Corolla is fast, furious, and modded
I also dislike loud cars, but I've come to accept that the motivation of loud car owners is probably to gain kudos from other loud car lovers, rather than to inflict pain on us normies. One time I remember being on my bicycle and a kid car revved past me and another cyclist. In my head I though "what an asshole" but the cyclist next to me shouted "Sick!!!" I'm not really defending the loud noise, but I think it's useful to shift perspective a bit and understand it is probably not an act of intentional violence (though it may be unintentional violence).
ericyd··on The bread paradox: why convenience always wins, and why SaaS isn't doomed
Never hurts to have a reasonable, non-alarmist take on why the status quo is probably more durable than the hype men would have you believe. More of this please.
ericyd··on Zig Creator Calls Spade a Spade, Anthropic Blows Smoke
By far the most satisfying piece I've read in this saga. Favorite line:

> I’m not the one saying that their environment resulted in a buggy unmaintainable mess, Bun is the one saying that.

ericyd··on Write code like a human will maintain it
I have commit signing enabled by default. I run my harness in a sandbox which doesn't have access to my signing key, and I always tell it not to commit. When it ignores me, the commit fails because it can't access the signing key... so the agent commits without signing. Tragic.
ericyd··on 98% isn't much
What a useless observation. "Metrics are different when applied to different things."
ericyd··on Vite+ Beta
Its vite... plus a bunch of stuff. Plus can mean different things
ericyd··on Why problem statements aren't enough
If you're a staff software engineer of any type and you can't figure out the absolute basics of CSS in 2026 then I don't want your advice, period. I think you think I am not sure what I'm saying, but I'm quite assured in this stance.
ericyd··on Why problem statements aren't enough
Right, but their top level credential is as a staff software engineer. Glaring webpage styling issues don't bode well for such a credential.
ericyd··on Why problem statements aren't enough
The problem is they bill themselves as a staff software engineer. Such a glaring visual issue makes me question their core competency, which makes me question any advice they could offer. Of course they might still be amazing at professional coaching, but maybe don't bill yourself as a former engineer if the first visual impression is very clunky engineering.
ericyd··on Why problem statements aren't enough
[flagged]
ericyd··on Turning music into a chore is how I became a musician (2022)
One challenge I've always had with having many concurrent project tracks is how to name them so they are distinct in my head. I made instrumental music so there's no lyrical line to hook into. Using "created at" datestamps for filenames is not great, but neither is obscure codenames.
ericyd··on Previewing GPT‑5.6 Sol: a next-generation model
whoa, a new model that surpasses benchmarks of other models? wild.
ericyd··on Mistral OCR 4
Ah that is an interesting point!
ericyd··on Mistral OCR 4
I’m not totally sure what your point is, but my response is that most OCR technology is reading “automated” (i.e. computer-printed) documents such as PDFs and things like that. So I think parsing the numbers by “automated” vs “non-automated” is not a very helpful way to think about the success of USPS OCR technology; the gross percentage of manual reviews compared to total mail volume is a much better way at looking at the success of their OCR. That’s my perspective anyway, but maybe commercial OCR is really optimized for reading handwriting and I’m just not aware of it. I’m not an expert in the area.
ericyd··on Mistral OCR 4
haha this was great!
ericyd··on Mistral OCR 4
I’ve always thought the US Postal Service is such a technological marvel. They somehow manage to identify and route billions of pieces of mail and I have to imagine their tech is significantly more primitive than this. Not only that but US addresses are absurdly non-standardized, you can often write the same address multiple ways and have it deliver to the same location. I’m sure there’s plenty of published knowledge in this area, but whenever I see announcements about OCR it feels like this should be a solved problem if it’s been accomplished at the scale of USPS for many years.
ericyd··on In praise of memcached
oh yeah definitely glad we have no more microservices in prod anywhere, that would be a mess
ericyd··on Show HN: Are You in the Weights?
What in the world is that clicking sound on scroll???
ericyd··on Making 'food out of thin air' (2024)
> it’s always seemed odd that more libertarian-leaning states like Texas, Tennessee and Florida don’t seem to oppose the large state handouts they receive for beef, soy and field corn

Nothing odd about flagrant hypocrisy, it's part of the brand

ericyd··on Open source AI must win
I feel like this is similar to saying "open source cloud platforms must win". I'm not really sure what the concrete argument/proposal/strategy is here. Would open source AI be nice? Sure! Will the incentives of our capitalist economy change for this one specific product? Probably not!
ericyd··on Software is made between commits
Where are these developers who are willing to talk to you about your code and hash out ideas? Everyone I’ve ever worked with is always too busy, too many other priorities. Sounds nice though.

Unrelated: I started using Zed a few weeks ago and really love it, it is everything it promises to be.

ericyd··on Show HN: Gitdot – A better GitHub. Open-source, written in Rust
If you aren't willing to be ripped apart then posting isn't the right move, simple as that. Public critique is part of sharing your work in any space, HN included.
ericyd··on The OnlyFans Economy of American AI
One of the least satisfying posts I've read on here in a while
ericyd··on VoidZero Is Joining Cloudflare
What alternative ending do you prefer? Personally I think acquisition is preferable to dev burnout due to lack of funding and/or extractive practices from other companies.
ericyd··on MCP is dead?
> Restaurant analogy:

> You sit down and 10 menus (MCP tool definitions) are spread across the table

> There's no room left for actual food (your work)

> Every time you order, the menus have to be pulled out again

This is a bad analogy. Ordering repeatedly is uncommon except for tapas restaurants. You could easily put food on top of menus, but more commonly, menus are removed after ordering, thereby freeing the table (context??) for the food. If you're going to try to explain things by analogy, it's worth putting effort into making it more relevant.

ericyd··on FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
The drilling into oneself is not funny. The feeding an obviously seriously injured person soup to deduce the severity of their illness is funny as hell to me
ericyd··on FBI arrests CIA official with $40M in gold bars in his home
The first story could literally be a sketch on a comedy show, thanks for the laugh
ericyd··on Google employee charged with $1M Polymarket insider trading bet on search term
Interesting the federal government can't seem to find the resources to investigate their own internal insider trading related to war and foreign policy.
ericyd··on The worst job interview I ever had
I've heard stories like this and always wonder, at what point do you file a missing person's report?
ericyd··on Ferrari Luce
Best thing about the video was the song
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