Hacker News Reader

strobbyon Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2026)

Very cool!

strobbyon Tell HN: People laid off in my company due to IRS Section 174 changes

US product company with a portion of their engineering team based in India. Suddenly their India costs cannot be expensed in the same year and they can only deduct 1/15th of the costs. There’s no guarantee they would be in business for 15 years to realise the deferred tax benefits.

strobbyon New tax rules on R&D expenses may lead to layoffs for devs

VC portfolios are typically incredibly unprofitable so this would not matter today.

strobbyon Ruby on Jets: Like Rails but serverless

Sure its a layer of abstraction but super leaky if you want to do anything meaningful.

strobbyon Show HN: Recycle your old Spotify playlists into new ones

Do you delete the tracks from your servers after the playlist is generated? :)

Thanks, this works great!

strobbyon Ask HN: Have you stopped reading most news?

Used to be always on Twitter, YouTube news channels, Reddit and various online publications. But over time, I've cut everything out except HN & The Economist. The Economist has a free-market bias but gives a decent round of up what's going on in the world.