Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | TYPE_FASTER's commentslogin

I was working with Claude on a Chrome extension. The extension was getting a 429 "Too many requests" error on one website. Claude suggested a bunch of things to try, none of which really solved the problem and were kind of one-off attempts (hardcoded string compares, etc.).

Eventually I asked it "hey, are you sending two requests when you could send one?" Claude thought about it for a minute and said, "you're right! Let me fix that." The 429 errors stopped.

I've found it really is more like pair programming than having another fully independent developer. For Jenkins pipelines, I don't care about hardcoded string compares as much. For the core capability of the software, details are important.


For what is worth, Codex would be able to fix that. Claude is pretty bad at backend / architecture.

Current state by state status (not my site): https://pluginsolarusa.com

Yeah, and clicking on the page opens the Discord channel that is linked in this Twitter profile: https://x.com/M1Astra

> Biesma has asked himself why he was vulnerable to what came next. He was nearing 50. His adult daughter had left home, his wife went out to work and, in his field, the shift since Covid to working from home had left him feeling “a little isolated”.

I think social isolation can be a factor here.


> He smoked a bit of cannabis some evenings to “chill”, but had done so for years with no ill effects.

Long term cannabis use might be a bigger factor.


This leapt out at me as well. Given the quote "some evenings", I'd put some money on him actually doing this near enough every day. And given the man was still doing this approaching 50, I'd put a bit more money on him having been doing this for, like, 25+ years.

If you want to maximize the chances of your weed habit causing you problems, this is exactly the sort of weed habit you should develop.


eh, that's a leap of faith assumption without knowing one's own dosage and personal effects.

someone who has 5 drinks a week and 5 drinks a day are going to have radically different longterm health consequences. but here we do not have said info.

light or microdose cannabis is way safer than alcohol.


Yes. Federal law requires retailers of drugs containing pseudoephedrine, ephedrine, and phenlypropanolamine to record the buyer's name and address and keep the records for two years (https://www.fda.gov/drugs/information-drug-class/legal-requi...).

While there is no federal law restricting the sale of medications containing Dextromethorphan, a common cough suppressant, US states have started regulating sales of these medications (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dextromethorphan_regulation_by...). It looks like most of the time, it's an 18yrs and up age restriction.

My guess would be that it's easier for company policy to always scan the ID, even for age verification, instead of having different policies depending on what is being purchased.


In California, the pharmacy computer queries some state database to log the purchase and get approval. If you buy too much too quickly your purchase will be blocked.

My closest pharmacy “loses its connection to the system” frequently which results in them being unable to sell me the medicine. The computer will refuse to ring it up.


Plot twist, for employee safety the store policy is to always say "lost connection, sorry" when the system detects suspicious purchasing patterns.

Sure, a 60 year old is going to cook meth from a bottle of cough syrup.

There is a difference between somebody who has used an algorithm/component/framework/library, and somebody who knows how to solve a problem using an algorithm/component/framework/library.

In the beginning, you need the person who knows how to solve the problem. They are harder to find.

If you are pressured to grow quickly, you might be tempted to lower the bar. You can, as long as you understand that the person who knows how to solve the problem is still critically important, because they will be telling people which algo to use.

I think every company that uses tech needs at least one of these people to start with.


I bought another app to play Apple Music because that’s how much the Music app usability has decreased.

> You just have to stick with it for a few years.

Also see: SharePoint


> Rule 5. Data dominates. If you've chosen the right data structures and organized things well, the algorithms will almost always be self-evident. Data structures, not algorithms, are central to programming.

If I have learned one thing in my 30-40 years spent writing code, it is this.


I agree. The biggest lesson I try to drive home to newer programmers that join my projects is that its always best to transform the data into the structure you need at the very end of the chain, not at the beginning or middle. Keep the data in it's purest form and then transform it right before displaying it to the user, or right before providing it in the final api for others to consume.

You never know how requirements are going to change over the next 5 years, and pure structures are always the most flexible to work with.


Related: your business logic should work on metric units. It is a UI concern if the user wants to see some other measurement system. Convert to feet, chains, cubits... or whatever obscure measurement system the user wants at display time. (if you do get an embedded device that reports non-metric units convert when it comes in - you will get a different device in the future that reports different units anyway)

You still have to worry about someone using kg when you use g, but you avoid a large class of problems and make your logic easier.



Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: