HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

r0s

1,021 karma · joined July 21, 2009

Founder: BarSign https://barsign.app Mobile point of sale with unique user experience.

Founder: Test from the Top https://testfromthetop.com/ Better software testing through leadership.

submissionscomments
r0s··on AI has access to a vastly larger working memory than the human brain
So does the cheapest calculator?
r0s··on Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?
Almost zero readers buy a book based on the title or content alone. They buy Dr.Phil because they saw him on TV and know a bit about who he is. On the other end of the spectrum, there's people buying books because they respect and admire the author's other work.

AI can never touch the human interest angle of authors, the best it can do is hope to trick people temporarily, and that doesn't last long.

Ask yourself, how many "self-help" books are published by Anonymous?

r0s··on Do variable names matter for AI code completion? (2025)
The scope of the cognitive effort is the total context of the system. Yes it matters.
r0s··on Do variable names matter for AI code completion? (2025)
The purpose of code is for humans to read.

Until AI is compiling straight to machine language, code needs to be readable.

r0s··on Malevolent Indoctrination Engine of Enthusiastic Friendshipping
Redditor breaks down an ambitious guide to building positive social connections in multiplayer games.
r0s··on My AI skeptic friends are all nuts
Weird to claim the llm does all the boring learning and boilerplate for you as a selling point, but then also insist we still need to responsibly read all the output, and if you can't understand it's a "skill issue".

Also the emphasis on greenfield projects? Starting is by FAR the easiest part. That's not impressive to me. When do we get to code greenfield for important systems? Reminds me of the equally absurd example of language choice. You think you get to choose? What?

Imagine all the code these agents are going to pump out that can never be reviewed in a reasonable time frame. The noise generated at the whim of bike-shedding vibe coders is going to drown all the senior reviewers soon enough. I'll call that Cowboy Coders on Steroids. Anyone with skills will be buried in reviews, won't have time for anything else, and I predict stricter code gen policies to compensate.

r0s··on The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine
AI is going to 10x the amount of bullshit, fully automating the process.

NONE of the bullshit jobs are going away, there will simply be bigger, more numerous bullshit.

r0s··on An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip
"use" vs. sell is the problem here. Or do you think they are the same?
r0s··on An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip
It's not baffling in the least.

No matter the extent you believe in the freedom of information, few believe anyone should then be free to profit from someone else's work without attribution.

You seem to think it would be okay for disney to market and charge for my own personal original characters and art, claiming them as their own original idea. Why is that?

r0s··on Making your own hot sauce
Hot take about fermentation in these recipes.

> Lacto-ferment chillis with your choice of veg and/or fruit in a brine solution for a couple of weeks at room temperature.

Room temperature is no kind of standard. Optimal fermentation is up to about 75f max. I live in the south and most of the year room temp for me is at least 76. I've ruined several batches of lacto-fermented experiments before making that connection.

Don't get me started on vague salt measurements like "seawater" taste.

r0s··on Startup Finance for Founders – Part I, Accounting (2016)
You certainly can in the US too, they "pre-authorize" some token amount to be sure you have the funds and off you go.
r0s··on The price of gold – how bad do you want it? (2016)
Someone who complains is for sure a pass.

That applies to any interview test though, you don't need to contrive an absurd scenario to do it.

r0s··on The price of gold – how bad do you want it? (2016)
> as your hiring manager, I don't have the time to tell you you won't have access to most of the ones you're familiar with

You don't have time to explain the job requirements or stack?

r0s··on The Right Kind of Stubborn
Totally agree about NFTs, but any artist gets a full pass from me.

Artists have it rough and I don't blame them for being charmed by con artists.

r0s··on Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win
Oh, I thought you were making a non-sequitur semantic context shift, my mistake.
r0s··on Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win
Is any word a number?
r0s··on Internet Archive forced to remove 500k books after publishers' court win
Many many authors publish work freely, now more than ever. Without monetary reward.

Here's a tiny tip of the massive iceberg https://independentbookreview.com/2020/07/30/10-free-literar...

r0s··on The problem with lying is keeping track of all the lies
I choose to believe that I never do this.
r0s··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (June 2024)
Ross Radford - Lead Software Engineer, DevOps, QA automation specialist, seasoned enterprise veteran and former founder looking to lead a team to create world-class software.

My mobile app BarSign: https://www.barsign.app/ I help managers get up to speed on testing: https://testfromthetop.com/

Location: Austin, TX, US Remote: Yes Relocate: No Tech: Web, LAMP, Java, Flutter Mobile, AWS, QA Automation, DevOps CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ross-radford/ email: ross@rossradford.com

r0s··on Study found corporate recruiters have a bias against ex-entrepreneurs
Confirmed. I took a year off for my startup attempt, currently looking for another 9-5 and they really don't know what to do with me.

I think the bias is merely confusion. In recruiter land anything uncertain is a pass.

The primary problem I suspect is I seem overqualified. Having a diverse skill set in all things software such as product development and engineering AND management AND devops (etc.) is just too much to process for a recruiter. Also for hiring managers in general. It's great if you're applying to say a director level position but if you NEED A JOB and try for an IC role it's a tough sell. Proficiency in multiple tech stacks is the same negative signal.

Secondary is perceived or real attitude misalignment. The problems most corporate tech companies are solving are boring and they know it. They must never admit it, and candidates especially need to demonstrate complete obliviousness. Candidates need to walk the line, simultaneously signaling technical ultra-competence and naive enough to consider yet another CRUD legacy app maintenance task challenging and interesting.

I personally don't have a problem working on boring problems, and I'm less inclined to create unnecessary challenges by using bleeding edge tech to pad my resume. Both qualities I can never admit to a recruiter. To actually get interviews, I severely cut down my resume to fit each open role. Recruiters can intuit my experience somehow anyway, and just about every senior IC role I've interviewed for lately came with a big disclaimer that this role will NEVER include management responsibilities. I guess to hedge against senior ICs expecting compensation for the management tasks they absolutely will be doing.

r0s··on Leaked deck reveals how OpenAI is pitching publisher partnerships
Ah yes the Alexa model. They should ask Amazon how that's working out.
r0s··on Coding interviews are stupid (ish)
Everyone seems to agree live code interviews are both terrible and necessary.

I'm a self-taught coder without a degree. I guess it may be extra frustrating for graduated candidates where your hard-earned degree buys you no credibility for skill.

Kinda similar, after ten years of lead development coding every day in the enterprise on huge projects I still don't get a pass on the code interviews.

I will say, if you're trying to career pivot and apply for a management or product or sales engineering role etc., lots of technical experience does carry weight in interviews.

r0s··on No one buys books
> Is anyone else alarmed that the top tier is book sales of 75,000 units and up? One post on Substack could get more views than that…..

I guarantee any book-length post on substack will get substantially LESS views than that.

This person discovered what any aspiring writer who cares already knows: Publishing like music runs on proven revenue generating content and gambles on the next big hit. Same as it ever was, and Amazon changes nothing about that fact.

Maybe publishing consolidates and changes, companies boom or bust but the business itself has always been like this.

r0s··on Ask HN: How to secure website for public launch
This is on point.

One other thing is to limit input frequency, only allow a certain amount of posts over some period of time. Enforce this on both the front and back-end.

A little more complex, you can set a lifetime limit per user by IP address, which won't stop a truly dedicated attacker but will definitely block most of the random web crawler scripts that find your site.

r0s··on How fuzz testing was invented (2008)
According to these reports, the effectiveness of fuzzing decreased over that time period.

The majority of bugs reported are explained as poorly designed code, which could then be tested without fuzzing.

For example: A primary class of bugs is unbound inputs, which could easily be found with static analysis. There's no reason to toss random strings at it until it breaks, you can know it will break simply because that input is unbound.

The lack of adequate traditional testing for each utility is specifically mentioned as a limitation of the studies. All fuzzing proves here, is the value of traditional testing. Of course fuzzing is going to find bugs where there are inadequate tests, but there really should be tests.

r0s··on How fuzz testing was invented (2008)
Fuzzing is guesswork. I see this attitude: because an unknown bug could possibly exist, therefore it could be a high severity bug and is then worthy of expending a lot of time and effort to discover.

To beat all odds and discover something you can't predict, you don't even know what it could be. Some effort should be done to reduce the problem space.

In the given example, I don't see why you need to test input at the cli level when access control and input sanitation should be verified already using known parameters that reject all unpredictable input. Obviously, certain combinations of input are more dangerous than others, and at the very least, those individual systems should have focused parameterized tests, and that set reduced from the random fuzz possibilities.

Exploratory testing on highly secure, safety prioritized systems is one thing. Sure, chaotic testing like this has a place, in a very specific, hopefully highly structured system. Even then I would use it only after every other type of testing.

When someone wants to test every input possibility with random noise I roll my eyes. Test what you know is a threat first, achieve solid coverage, run tests at every stage of development and then maybe we can talk about fuzzing. Is the system actually functioning as it's intended? Are all the happy path use cases tested? Are you sure about that? Boring, I know.

r0s··on The Virtue of Slow Writers
Appreciated, thank you.
r0s··on The Virtue of Slow Writers
My first book deal went through recently and I'm about to finally get published. Any advice for a first timer?

I'd like my technical non-fiction to lead to a novel deal later. What do you think?

r0s··on Weak rules allow ultra-processed foods like Lunchables on school menus (2023)
Preventative care starts with education. What you're describing is nutritional ignorance, which I agree is part of the problem.

There is a culture of crisis management in the US when it comes to all health issues. This is the direct result, along with all the inefficiency you mention, of private for-profit health insurance.

r0s··on Weak rules allow ultra-processed foods like Lunchables on school menus (2023)
It's actually the health insurance industry. But thank you for your concern.
Page 1 of 21Next →