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

> “There are two types of people: those who have suffered a catastrophic loss of data, and those who will.”

When I was a teenager, I was the reason for data loss for my dad, twice. Both times it was because I was re-partitioning a hard drive to install linux.

You would think that taught me a lesson about backups, instead it reminds me every now and again to be grateful for an awesome dad and aspire to handle situations with my kid similarly :)


>> “There are two types of people: those who have suffered a catastrophic loss of data, and those who will.”

Also "There are just two types of equipment; those which are already broken and those which will be broken".

I've found a good way to point out anyone thinking right direction not to trust their valuable data in any single entity, product, location, etc.

When I heard it decades ago IIRC 80's Nokia Data Unix courses I went. The distinction made Backups is just 1/3 of the triad Redundancy, Backups, Archives.

1) Redundancy is what you get using RAID, multiple network connectivity etc. ie. good for avoiding single point of failures and avoiding loss service or product availability.

2) Backups are for recovering lost data needed returning lost running known state right before fault or some time state before what backup schedule and used rotation cycle can provide.

3) Archives are meant to saving valuable data not expected to change or active use and but there is need saving much longer periods.

Not seeing and understanding usefulness of difference between these seem hard some people I met over decades. Which then led to confusion, not knowing what they are up to with their data and also often later disappointment when they found out that for example backup programs are not great if you expected archiving instead.


I had a similar situation. As a kid I used to poke around on my families windows 3.1 PC and break it all the time.

One day I found an interesting new command called DriveSpace, and it looked exciting. I ran it on the C: drive and then got cold feet and cancelled the operation half way through. Needless to say this was a disk compression application, and I had just unknowingly compressed half my hard disk. Took a long time to figure that one out and I was in trouble with my Dad for bit, but we called a few experts we knew for advice and he included me along the journey to fix it. Something I always try to remember when my kids do something similar.


Reminds me of a story: I was sitting at a restaurant waiting for my food. I casually notice two young children in the next booth playing with a phone, but pay little attention.

Moments later their dad (presumably) comes back and asks for his phone back and sits down with their food. The kids are eating and the dad is fumbling with his phone with odd looks and I can see his frustration growing.

Then out I hear something like "What did you do to my phone?" repeated loudly over and over. "You erased my phone, it's gone."

The small children (guessing) had figured out how to factory reset his phone.

My thought at the time was something like : How many times did I do something as a toddler I don't remember to piss of my dad like that and that he never got mad or brought it up later (Lots of times knowing myself).


and of course, it doesnt matter that he is their dad, or even that they are small children.

The wise man sees that when a fool has broken his system, its no use getting angry at the fool. Make the system better.


In this instance, the system worked as designed. Phone got wiped after too many incorrect PIN inputs.

Same! I decided to reinstall Windows and MBR to GPT conversion (surprisingly!) wiped the whole disk. 10 years of family photos gone. Good thing we had all important ones printed.

I love an e-ink display project!

The one thing that always trips me up in projects like this is power delivery in a way that I'm happy with. I always end up having a USB cable looking awkward somewhere or being limited in where I put my project


LFS prepared me for Gentoo :)

And then another sub agent that argues for the whole system to be re-written in another language


If that's your goal, then yes. Invoking sub agents (with a fresh context) corrects most of these problems. Ask your harness to create a commit gate.


But why stop at rewriting in another language. Get another sub agent to invent a new language, create a database, query language and maybe another few DSLs. Then you've got an ecosystem!

You can now re-position your initial solution and sell the client access to some agents that will implement & configure the ecosystem to suit their initial needs!

And don't forget the agents that you'll need to train the customer to use the whole thing!


I know you're trying to be funny - but I'm offering a real fix for his problem.

If you don't want a million agents arguing about things, you simply don't ask for that. One agent is sufficient to solve most issues.


Sorry, I wasn't implying your advice doesn't carry weight. Was more just thinking about the things that (used to) happen when you introduce more parties to process of creating software.


I wonder if I would need a non-openai agent to enforce it.. I have tried so far with skills and agents.md and code stills end up over engineered to the moon.

Will ask OpenAI to write me that agent! Hope the agent is not over engineered or else unsure how to solve the bootstrap puzzle :D


There's a misconception that a mistake one instance of a model makes will be repeated by other instances. In my experience most mistakes are just sampling noise, and having the same model (with empty context) check the work usually fixes it.

It's super easy - just ask your agent to set up a code review commit gate.


The voices in my head argue about the direction of the project enough already


Would you be able to taper by stretching out dosages, take a pill every 25 hours instead of 24?


Just don't put it in charge of a company making paper clips


Would building an LLM from scratch imply writing code by hand?


> circular economy

I get what you mean, but in general circular economy means something different, positive in my opinion. Here is what wikipedia has to say:

> a model of resource production and consumption that involves sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing, and recycling materials and products, to extend product life cycle for as long as possible

In the EU it is a hot topic for a lot of non-profit and social innovation work


I think the term GP was looking for was "circular financing", which has far fewer positive connotations.


Right. Almost every economy is circular in some fashion. Every producer is also a consumer. Sometimes the circle is quite big, but many of the dollars (or other currency) that you spend, come back to you in the money you earn.


Many times I wonder if it's possible to collapse abstractions? The idea of making the whole stack simpler. I'm not overly optimistic of LLMs achieving this, but it they do, I will be paying more attention.


This immediately made me think of nand2tetris.org, but as a game. Is that what NANDGame is?


Yes, pretty much, but stopping at the cpu level (about the first half of the course).


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

Search: