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kostyal

69 karma · joined February 19, 2020

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kostyal··on Kimi-K3 Technical Report [pdf]
MSL or SpaceXAI open sourcing one of their coming big models is pretty likely, both are fans of open source and there’s gonna be competition to be the American Kimi
kostyal··on Grok 4.5
Tencent Hy3 looks like it may be slightly better than v4 flash at same price point. Though not a US lab ofc
kostyal··on Chronic lower back pain linked to atrophy in pain-related brain regions
My back pain is significantly better now, but it comes back any time I take psychedelics. Have often wondered the same.
kostyal··on Tell HN: There needs to be a “right to speak with a human”
Scaling a customer support organisation is difficult. You need to find people to do a low-status job with unpredictable hours, in a tight labour market.

Also, you probably don't just want to speak to any human. You probably want to speak to an intelligent, skilled human who can fix your problems. That pushes cost up further.

If great support is a priority to you, I recommend being an early adopter of startup products. These companies get their edge from being customer-focused and will be happy to speak to you for whatever reason.

Of course, there are tradeoffs to that approach too. As customers, we want it all: we want cheap products that add tons of value to our lives and never break. In reality it's necessary to make some tradeoffs

kostyal··on Ask HN: Any weird tips for weight loss?
Use nicotine gum and black coffee to suppress your appetite
kostyal··on Ask HN: State of PHP at Facebook?
Has anyone used both Hack and the modern React workflow of Typescript and a mixture of client and server-side rendering? Interested to know how they compare
kostyal··on Almost all of the top subreddits are moderated by the same people
We live in a power law universe
kostyal··on Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling
it's a joke you pedant
kostyal··on Big tech face EU blow in national data watchdogs ruling
The world's countries at a party, tech edition:

US: We'll bring the software!

China: We'll bring the hardware!

EU: We'll bring the regulation!

kostyal··on The Duct Tape Programmer (2009)
I always liked this quote by Jamie Zawinski, from Coders at Work

"I know it’s kind of a cliché but it comes back to worse is better. If you spend the time to build the perfect framework…release 1.0 is going to take you three years to ship and your competitor is going to ship their 1.0 in six months and now you’re out of the game. You never shipped your 1.0 because someone else ate your lunch. Your competitor’s six-month 1.0 has crap code and they’re going to have to rewrite it in two years but, guess what: they can rewrite it because you don’t have a job anymore."

kostyal··on Lambda School is the biggest mistake I made this year
I went to Lambda School. The cohort based ISA model is groundbreaking. Lambda's execution of it is nowhere near a fraction of its potential
kostyal··on Lambda School’s Misleading Promises
I'm a current student at Lambda School. It's a pretty stressful time at the moment - I don't have any loyalty to Lambda, but the recent string of damaging stories about the quality of teaching and average graduates is concerning.

It's true that Lambda is incredibly disorganised and the build weeks etc are chaotic. Equally true that they don't do a good enough job of ensuring we have something to show for ourselves on our portfolio.

It's also true that their admission standards are seemingly incredibly lax. About 40% of my cohort struggle to code at a fundamental level - I don't mean that harshly, it's Lambda's fault

With that said, I've really enjoyed my time at Lambda overall and it saddens me to see it fail like this. The atmosphere and internal culture that they cultivated is second to none and I have enjoyed my time there a lot.

As with many people at Lambda, I joined them at a difficult time of my life, when I was suffering from pretty severe depression. I knew I loved coding but barely spent any time doing it and struggled with impostor syndrome, etc.

While at Lambda I benefitted hugely from the daily structure and discipline, and from having a community of people in the same position as me. I've made some great friends, and met some very smart and talented people.

What pains me is the embarrassment of appearing like some clueless fool who got caught up in some get-rich-quick scheme. I love programming, and I just wanted a structured curriculum to train as a professional.