tompark

เมื่อวานซืนdiscuss

Most developers I know don't seem to care about the "right way" to run agents. They either yolo it on their primary dev machine, or setup a separate box (VM, VPS, Rpi, Mac mini) and let it run there with minimal protection. You could simply do the same, running Hermes or Pi on a VPS (e.g. Digital Ocean). Note that Pi has no protections so you probably ought to take extra steps. Hermes uses a container.

My setup took a long time to build and I don't know any devs personally who go thru the trouble.

* I use a custom harness in a podman container run by a non-sudoer system account. File access is limited to specific ZFS datasets. I don't use Anthropic models for agentic work.

* You can find an open-source network proxy that injects credentials into the network requests, I made a custom one.

   https://github.com/onecli/onecli
   https://github.com/smart-mcp-proxy/mcpproxy-go
   https://github.com/mcpharbour/mcpharbour
   https://github.com/bglusman/calciforge

* I made a custom shell (nearly posix-compliant) and don't give it access to regular bash, thus no need to filter its shell commands. You could use an open-source one if you care about this: `https://github.com/search?q=agent+bash+shell&type=repositori...`

* Same story for agent memory, context management and token reduction/compression, but this requires a lot of constant tweaking. Again, there are a lot of open-source repos addressing these aspects. Just search github, hn.algolia.com, and/or look at subreddits like /r/agentsofai /r/ai_agents

* Also the agent must be able to run/test the generated code, so if you're targeting another platform you need a MCP or deployment tool that'll allow testing.

tompark

26 วันที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

Huh. I thought it the opposite of AI writing. A smart-and-bored human writer who assumed the reader already knew what the writer did, and cleverly avoided conveying any direct points, forcing the reader to try to read between the lines. Very frustrating.

tompark

28 วันที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

A few years ago I wrote an exif parser too, solely for reading/editing text comments, which is much simpler than what you did. Even then, yes, it's not pretty, very frustrating. There are multiple places to put text in exif, and it took a while to find most (all?) the edge cases.

But now it's quite different with LLMs. I recently updated my code and Claude had useful recommendations.

tompark

4 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

It's possible that mainframe Oracle DBAs working on glass house HP 9000s looked at PC databases as toys, but within the PC industry these tools were considered powerful. Any growth of PC usage was a rising tide that lifted all the boats in the PC industry. If you had some experience programming in C, it was pretty easy to get a job. There weren't 100's (or 1000's) of job applicants for each position. If it was a niche segment, you could even know all the other candidates for an opening, as in "No Other Choice". (I was in a niche like that, developing architectural and facilities mgmt PC CAD software, then later cartography, for Microstation.)

I think the production shift from agriculture to manufacturing, or manufacturing to services, is probably a better way to understand what's happening now.

tompark

5 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

sigh American car culture.

I have the same problem and I'm only 5'11" (177 cm). Size "Small" might fit at the neck/shoulders but with lots of extra fabric around my midsection, but most retailers don't carry much inventory for Small, and almost never have Extra Small. In the SF Bay Area, the small items are always out of stock.

At one point I found that clothing boutiques in the Castro tended to stock clothes for skinny guys, but those stores disappeared during the pandemic.

Now I have to go shopping in Seoul or Tokyo or NYC, but if the pants fit in the waist, they're usually too short.

tompark

5 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

Nice, was kind of curious about these after seeing them recently in "Perfect Days" (2023, Wim Wenders).

tompark

7 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

I'm guessing I'm over twice your age but my situation is similar to yours in a couple aspects. What I decided to do is focus on exploring the new capabilities that AI will allow individuals to do (especially those of us who can code). There are a lot of ppl who are justifiably frustrated with the current state of the tools. But don't get discouraged by that. I've seen A LOT of tech waves. It's still early in the AI era. I won't suggest any particular approach but recommend giving it some thought.

BTW, being an old timer, I also hated the leetcode thing when it became a widespread thing after Google adopted the practice in the wake of The Joel (Spolsky) Test. But you know, years later when I had to go through some interviews, I did spend a few months studying it and it turned out to be pretty fun. But passing technical screenings didn't help me land a job... only connecting via my network seemed to make any difference.

tompark

7 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

https://archive.ph/ZLA4y

tompark

7 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

After Coursera/Udacity/EdX discontinued courses that I wanted to take, or removed access to ones I only partially completed, I switched to buying classes on Udemy. I completed only a handful of many purchases, and the quality level was okay-to-mediocre but better than nothing, so I got more value out of Udemy than Coursera.

I also found that Youtube videos are just as informative as Udemy classes, but they're not always as well structured.

The MOOCs had some pretty cool/interesting university classes that don't exist anywhere else. It's a shame those videos weren't preserved where we can access/purchase them without attending the college.

tompark

7 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

tompark

9 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

The REAL ID Act, effective 2025. https://www.uspassporthelpguide.com/passport-required-domest...

But OTOH there's a chart on this page that shows a longer term trend of nearly linear growth in US passport holder percentage from the 1990's: https://lindynewsletter.beehiiv.com/p/japan-gets-there-first...

tompark

10 เดือนที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

I agree, some of the worst employees I've seen were hired that way.

I haven't hired anyone recently but btwn 10-20 years ago I did hire a lot. Of course we reached out via our network of connections but that gets tapped out fast, so you have to rely on job postings. It was always hundreds of applicants per opening. Back then it wasn't 1000's but it might as well have been because I didn't have enough time to sift through them all. That's ok, you can just approach it like "the dowry problem" (also known as the secretary problem [1]).

But the job market and hiring is way worse now, and it's pretty horrible for job seekers atm.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem

tompark

ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

"Why is AI so popular when nobody wants it?"

This sounds like that Yogi Berra-ism, "No one comes here anymore, it's too crowded."

I suppose well over half of the people who read HN are too young to remember the dotcom craze. Everyone had every scrap of money tied up in tech stocks. IMO, the hype over AI is relatively small compared to other hype cycles. The goofiest part was the endless predictions about the singularity, and "you don't know what exponential growth looks like, man!". I mean, it can still happen, but for a while that's what AI was all about.

Submissions

AI Data Center Gold Rush Driven by Newcomers

Why Nvidia maintains its moat and Gemini won't kill OpenAI

OpenAI report reveals 6x productivity gap btwn AI power users and everyone else

comments