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pkilgore

3,419 karma · joined June 5, 2017

I used to code for fun. Then I used to be a high-stakes patent litigator. But I hated that, so now I am an engineer. And I still code for fun.

hn_public_email@pck.email

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pkilgore··on IRS Tactics Against Meta Open a New Front in the Corporate Tax Fight
Because they know for some problems it's easier to pay for the service than take the CapEx.
pkilgore··on Zed editor switching graphics lib from blade to wgpu
As far as I can tell, no. I moved to zed from nvim for fast starts + better AI UX with edit prediction & agents than nvim without start time/RAM of cursor. It delivered on that, but now that I think about it my coding practices have changed so much since that decision (sitting in Claude / https://www.conductor.build) I should probably just go back to nvim!
pkilgore··on Claude Code is being dumbed down?
https://www.conductor.build/
pkilgore··on Claude Code is being dumbed down?
This is directly addressed in the article.
pkilgore··on Ask HN: Why are electronics still so unrecyclable?
Not to be glib, but the second law of thermodynamics.

You are attempting to filter out trace amounts valuable dopants and some small amounts of metals with value from, essentially, a pile of sand.

This is not energetically or chemically easy.

pkilgore··on Management as AI superpower: Thriving in a world of agentic AI
It's vibes all the way down now.
pkilgore··on X blames users for Grok-generated CSAM; no fixes announced
The victim is the person who's likeness was forced into becoming sexualized content without consent.
pkilgore··on X blames users for Grok-generated CSAM; no fixes announced
"You might fail so don't try" is certainly a take, I guess.
pkilgore··on Classical statues were not painted horribly
Strange article. Why didn't the author just try to talk to someone that does this work and ask?
pkilgore··on 1D Conway's Life glider found, 3.7B cells long
So it starts as a line, explodes into a huge 2D complex mess, and eventually, after many generation, returns to form the same 3.7B cells long line?

That's kind of amazing. I wish someone unpacked the units of abstraction/compilation that must surely exist here.

Surely they aren't developing this with 1 or 0 as the abstraction level!

pkilgore··on Trillions spent and big software projects are still failing
I think you're mistaking the funding and starting of companies with the execution of their vision through software engineering -- the entire point of the article, and the OP.
pkilgore··on Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy
You are correct. I've operated under many protective orders that require me to redact portions of reports clients paid for because they were not authorized to see those specific parts due to the order.
pkilgore··on Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy
If you do anything in America that results in a stored record it's possible it will be released in discovery and a lawyer will read it. This happens all the time, and has happened for hundreds years.

It's not like the NYT will be published this shit in the news. Their lawyers and experts will have access to make a legal case, under a protective order. I'm not going to lose my law license because I'm doing doc review and you asked it something naughty and I think it's funny.

Courts and lawyers deal with this stuff all the time. What's very very weird to me is how upset OpenAI is about it.

They look like they are hiding something.

pkilgore··on Valve is about to win the console generation
If it doesn't play GTA 6 or CoD or whatever sports games are cool these days it won't win, but it sure looks interesting.
pkilgore··on I Want You to Understand Chicago
You've never been to Chicago.
pkilgore··on I Want You to Understand Chicago
It gets it all right. We're being terrorized. If you don't care fuck you.
pkilgore··on Why I love OCaml (2023)
There's some other stuff, but I personally believe if the tooling was closer to Rust/Go than C, it would be a lot, lot more popular.

Nobody wants to effectively learn a lisp to configure a build system.

pkilgore··on FBI tries to unmask owner of archive.is
Hot take here, I know, but some of us believe the law should treat large corporations differently than it treats individuals when it comes to their rights and privileges.
pkilgore··on Reproducing the AWS Outage Race Condition with a Model Checker
One thing I've observed in my career is that if you take the extra time / are good enough / have the experience to ship something solid enough that nobody ever thinks about it, you never get nearly as much credit as the folks who quickly ship broken things or the folks that parachute in to fix those things.

I've changed my behavior to reflect the incentives but remain sad about it.

pkilgore··on 10M people watched a YouTuber shim a lock; the lock company sued him – bad idea
Within the limits of their knowledge/ability, yes. Some bosses make it clear they do not like being told no, however. YMMV if you continue to work for such people.

The bar there is very high. This case might be embarrassing but probably isn’t sanctionable. And the only lawyer that would get sanctioned would be the ones that signed the papers not the drone that hired them.

pkilgore··on Egg prices vs. Consumer Price Index since 1980
Are there big problems with Car flu in your part of the world?

I mean, my CPU had definitely run a virus or two but nothing causing long term damage.

pkilgore··on Chezmoi introduces ban on LLM-generated contributions
Ah fuck, not careful enough with red green colorblindness and misled by my existing knowledge of the old policy.

Fixed those replies, thanks for flagging.

pkilgore··on Chezmoi introduces ban on LLM-generated contributions
I don't think you realize how painfully obvious it is when people submit LLM generated crap. Most of the time, they literally admit it as soon as you ask, or, concurrently with the submission.

It's a one time tax you pay sure, but after the ban at least you know you'll never deal with that use again. And a lot of these contributions come from the same people.

pkilgore··on Chezmoi introduces ban on LLM-generated contributions
[I was wrong and posted a link to an earlier policy/discussion overridden by the OP]
pkilgore··on Chezmoi introduces ban on LLM-generated contributions
[I was wrong and posted a link to an earlier policy/discussion overridden by the OP]
pkilgore··on Chezmoi introduces ban on LLM-generated contributions
[I was wrong and posted a link to an earlier policy/discussion overridden by the OP]
pkilgore··on Chezmoi introduces ban on LLM-generated contributions
[I was wrong and posted a link to an earlier policy/discussion overridden by the OP]
pkilgore··on Chezmoi introduces ban on LLM-generated contributions
[I was wrong and posted a link to an earlier policy/discussion overridden by the OP]
pkilgore··on Chezmoi introduces ban on LLM-generated contributions
[I was wrong and wrote a defense of an earlier policy/discussion overridden by the OP]
pkilgore··on Bat v0.26.0
bat is part of my extended posix "Must Installs", nicely extensible, glad to see it get love.
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