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ironmagma

3,493 karma · joined September 25, 2013

Software Engineer, currently pursuing a bachelors in EE at University of Alaska. http://twitter.com/_PhilipPeterson
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ironmagma··on Mark Zuckerberg says social media is over
Even then, they can be scraped and fed into a neural net by any actor.
ironmagma··on Ask HN: My CEO wants to go hard on AI. What do I do?
> What recent technology has gotten more expensive over time?

Cloud. And AI is not very different from the fundamentals of Cloud; there's vendor lock-in, meaning the vendors can raise prices at will, representing a liability to whoever tries to depend on them.

ironmagma··on Mark Zuckerberg says social media is over
> nobody will say "hey stop, it's not supposed to be like that".

Is that not exactly what drew people from Myspace to Facebook in the first place? There was a lack of appetite for the flashiness and gaudiness, and an appeal to how classy FB was.

ironmagma··on Mark Zuckerberg says social media is over
At this point, why would you trust anything? I certainly don't. Any platform that exists could get bought up by another company that just uses all the content to train AI.
ironmagma··on Mark Zuckerberg says social media is over
The interest rate "right now" is only relevant if you are playing a short-term game.
ironmagma··on Notion Mail is out
Hacker News will hate this, but if they told me the stack (e.g. Typescript or Rust) it would actually provide more information.
ironmagma··on France's new high-speed train has Americans asking: Why can't we have that?
If there's one thing we're good at in America, it's inventing cope. There are many dense corridors in the USA including the northeast and west coast. None of them have high speed rail, and most don't even have dense housing, nor do they have the desire to get them.
ironmagma··on Ask HN: What's the worst thing that could happen if I click on an unknown link
Well, the front could fall off. [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM

ironmagma··on The Pain That Is GitHub Actions
The non-solution solution, to simply downplay the issues instead of fixing them. You can solve almost anything this way, but also isn't it nice when things around you aren't universally slightly broken?
ironmagma··on Internet shutdowns at record high in Africa as access 'weaponised'
> stable

I wouldn't be too certain about that.

ironmagma··on Is the job market for software devs starting to improve?
You can see HN posting trend lines here: https://hnhiring.com/trends
ironmagma··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (March 2025)

  Location: Seattle, USA but looking for opportunities abroad in Canada or the EU including Ireland, Denmark, The Netherlands. Location flexible :)
  Remote: 4 years (out of 8) of remote experience
  Willing to relocate: Yes, seeking relocation!
  Technologies: 7+ years of experience with React / JavaScript Frontend & recently made an effort to round out my skillset by working for last 3 years as a Backend Engineer writing Go. Other technologies include: Kubernetes, NixOS, Unreal Engine (C++), C#, Certified C Programmer, Python (Tornado, Twisted, Django), Rust, Bash, and many others[1].
  Résumé/CV: https://philippeterson.com/resume.pdf
  Github: https://github.com/philip-peterson
  Email: peterson@sent.com
  About Me: Experienced full-stack developer with a background from Silicon Valley and Bachelor in CS. I've worked at numerous startups as well as now a Fortune 500 company and other profitable enterprises; past startups include Amplitude and Commure joining early (Series A) to help build out the core frameworks of the product. I am passionate about building strong user experiences that matter to the business and instill a sense of trust and unshakable reliability to the customer. I have also proven my chops through contributions to the open source world including original Go libraries, fixes for bugs in Git LFS, and new features in Gitea/Forgejo (which are Github-like tools). I absolutely love building customer loyalty and solving real pain with like-minded individuals.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XPn1iw1Pp8
ironmagma··on A 10x Faster TypeScript
That’s an interesting idea. It’s amazing how far we’ve come without essentially any objective data on how much these various methodologies (e.g. using a scripting language) improve or worsen development time.

The adoption of AI Code Assistance I am sure will be driven similarly anecdotally, because who has the time or money to actually measure productivity techniques when you can just build a personal set of superstitions that work for you (personally) and sell it? Or put another way, what manager actually would spend money on basic science?

ironmagma··on A 10x Faster TypeScript
Inevitably? Well, the promise of using something less efficient in terms of performance is that it will be more efficient in terms of development. Many times projects fail because they optimize too early and never built the features they needed to or couldn’t iterate fast enough to prove value and die. So if the native version is better but failed, it’s not so inevitable that it will get to that stage.
ironmagma··on NCSC, GCHQ, UK Gov't expunge advice to "use Apple encryption"
Regular courts already do that.
ironmagma··on Should managers still code?
You haven’t provided enough information to say for sure. If all your reports are happy, then probably nothing, but that’s a big “if.”

Language barrier can be quite high between JS, COBOL, and Haskell depending on what the situation is. With 25 years of experience, how have you not found the time to learn basically every language used in industry today?

ironmagma··on Should managers still code?
Can you measure the performance and accurately separate it from things like how well Tiktok as a platform is doing, the general economy, and public sentiment about your company?

Of course not, unless you were also an expert on making Tiktok content for the same audience and could definitively say what should and shouldn’t work.

ironmagma··on Should managers still code?
This really calls into question your meaning of the word "understand."
ironmagma··on DOGE Exposes Once-Secret Government Networks, Making Cyber-Espionage Easier Than
I don’t see one immediately, it doesn’t appear only after you click the submit button, does it?
ironmagma··on US and UK refuse to sign AI safety declaration at summit
But the whole reason video evidence exists is because cameras are cheap and everyone has one as a result.
ironmagma··on The FAA’s Hiring Scandal
Autism...
ironmagma··on Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down through in-app ads
There are flaws to their methodology. For half the companies, to change your number from A to B, you first must verify a NONCE with A, then verify a NONCE with B. This just means you have to possess two phone numbers for a period of time — Weeks, or in reality, months — while you change the long list of services over to the new phone number.

There is a simpler/better way and that is to verify you have your email address before allowing you to do a NONCE with B.

ironmagma··on Everyone knows your location: tracking myself down through in-app ads
How? Most of the services I use, from Walgreens to banks to retirement accounts, require a phone number either for 2FA or just to verify that you’re you when signing up. After changing my phone number this year and having to go through the rigamarole for each service, I decided never again.
ironmagma··on What Is Quine?
Just like a quine ;-)

Slightly more contentful posts here, although I don’t know what my audience wants yet so am taking requests and suggestions. https://blog.quineglobal.com/

ironmagma··on US newspapers are deleting old crime stories, offering subjects a 'clean slate'
I know someone who was (in my opinion, clearly) taken in to the witness protection program. That’s the only time I’ve seen every trace of a person disappear. Yes, there are a few stray dangling references to that person in a few documents I found. But if their life is legitimately threatened by an adversary, I can be sympathetic to having the records expunged.
ironmagma··on Public Companies Considered Harmful
For a sufficiently advanced shareholder, the two are equivalent. Unfortunately too many shareholders are short-sighted.
ironmagma··on Elon Musk Is a National Security Risk
A billion is a big number. Add a billion of anything to your life and you have a big problem. Not laughable at all.
ironmagma··on Ask HN: Why does news.Y Combinator.com use a DNS TTL of 1s?
I'm legitimately curious what environment you're in where you notice/care about the extra DNS lookup?
ironmagma··on Show HN: A crate that breaks docs.rs
Author's note: If you click "click here" and follow the prompts, docs.rs will be rendered unusable for you. Clear cookies to restore access.
ironmagma··on Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction
That quote is one that calls attention to the limits of things that seem like they would lead to "equal opportunity." Maybe it's illegal for a rich person to sleep under a bridge, but then again, why would they want or need to?

A rule applying across the board to everyone doesn't really imply that it provides equal opportunity.

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