I don't think frontier model providers are going to be incentivized to invest in this much, yet. Once inference gets more competitive, sure. I haven't looked lately, but won't be surprised if tools like OpenCode do do what you're suggesting, though. Third-party coding harnesses ARE aligned to deliver this type of feature and optimization.

Did everyone like this Stephensen in this thread? I read Cryptonomicon and Seveneves, mostly. They slogged for me a bit. But I love what he writes about, so willing to try another one (even if he doesn't have an editor). It sounds like this could be topical 2027 read. I have a long summer ahead of me.

Stephenson's writing is great if you like lengthy asides that add to the world and to your understanding of the characters, but add nothing to the plot.

If you want to read six pages of detailed musings on how the character learned ballroom dance and their design for a special milk-dispensing spoon for eating cereal without it getting soggy, establishing the character is the kind of person who designs spoons in their mind as they eat breakfast, then Stephenson is for you.

If you want the character to get to the damn ball and get told the secret coordinates so we can get moving with the plot already, Stephenson might not be for you.

I agree except for REAMDE that was very fast paced and barely explained

REAMDE's description of MMO economics is farcically bad. It undermines the whole book.

REAMDE read like he got way too carried away with a side trip action beat and accidentally made it the whole book. Fun read.

I actually think Snow Crash is iconic for what it was conceptually, I don't know how I would actually stack the writing up now that I've gotten older and would probably pick something else.

I can see it feeling tropey now despite being an originator of many of the tropes. It's been a decade(s)+? since I read it last though, still highly recommend.

Give Fall: Dodge In Hell a try. It has a few characters from Reamde but nothing to do with it so you don't need to read that one. Its an amazing idea about realistically what building the singularity could look like. Starting with one digitized mind.

Thanks. I've added

Big fan of Snow Crash. For background I liked Cryptonomicon a lot but also found Seveneves to be a bit of a slog.

I would check out The Diamond Age as well if you’re generally taking Stephenson book recommendations.

I much preferred Diamond Age to Snow Crash. It's been a while though, so can't fully remember why - but I think Snow Crash tried to be too cute or something and kinda seemed disjointed.

I loved Cryptonomicon and most of his early work. I didn't care too much for his Baroque Cycle.

I need the equivalent of Claude Code, but for hardware projects, so I can actually do all the projects I envision with the EPS32s.

Something that combines: 3d printing; auto procurement of parts; custom software writing; maybe a robot arms or something, all in a nice box on my desk that I feed parts into like a mail slot. PROFIT.

Tbh, we're pretty close to that. This would essentially be the following set of work cells:

- PCB etching/engraving

- Solder placement

- component placement

- solder oven

This gets you one layer populated PCBs out the other side. Commercial systems like this exist in various forms, and open source projects for all of these also exist. It would be up to you to integrate them together.

As it stands, the frontier models are actually pretty ok at firmware dev at a high level. If you need max performance, they won't be any good at all (learning from the dregs of the internet isn't exactly helpful here). You'll also need to bring at least a willingness to learn about what is involved so you can debug the machine's mistakes.

For firmware dev, Claude is amazing. Just plug the dev board and tell him what you need. Great learning tool too!

At least part of what you describe is already being built: https://www.schematik.io/

How is the OS Free? It's part of what you pay for.

I have a 11 year old PC -- running Cosmos now, and it's still faster than my hobbled M4 PRO with 48 GB, work mac with all it's corp spyware cruft on it.

We should expect more than 7 years out of all our tech hardware.

EDIT: I say this as a person who spent a couple weekends trying to get various forms of Linux running on a 2017 Macbook Pro, because it was stuck on VEntura.

In the bad (good?) old days Mac OS X cost money each upgrade.

Once every 2 years or so.

I bought one: I was hesitant about the 8 GB of memory at first. But I'm happily running Chrome with like 20 tabs and some other apps, and performance isn't an issue.

It's mostly a couch laptop.

I run Obsidean, messaging apps, writing tools. I use some CLI toolings...

I really wanted a Framework 12, but I got $180 credit on a ipad AIR 4, and sold a 2017 Macbook Pro for $150 (US), so that effectively made this a 280 upgrade, and reduced the risk in me going for it.

I love this thing.

* love the keyboard, it’s such an improvement over the older laptops. Worth getting rid of that old Macbook Pro for this alone

* Keyboard isn’t backlit. Thought that would be annoying, but i’m good enough touch typist that in the dark, i can still navigate around no problem.

* Lack of touch sensor. I just turned off most security prompting, like passwords when filling in websites, etc. and just rely on typing my password in once when logging on. On my todo is to turn on authentication from my Apple Watch, might make not having a touchid a non-issue.

* The screen!

Did I say I love the form factor?

I still wish it was shaped like my former favorite computer: the 11" Macbook Air, with the tapered edges and such.

I'm optimistic that the next version of Framework 12 will have better screen and be a nice aluminum body...but until then.....

Way too much keyboard backlight discourse around this laptop. Just learn to type folks, it takes 2-3 weeks.

As long as you're able to quickly feel out the homing bars, you should know where all your keys are. First thing I do on every laptop is turn off keyboard backlighting.

Ram wise, I agree that for light use, with mostly note-taking, writing, and browser use; 8GB shouldn't cause any serious problems. But those of you who know you regularly go over 8GB should really consider something else. There are plenty of used M2 and M3 airs with 16GB out there for reasonable prices. Of course if you're hard-capped at $600, then the Neo is pretty dang nice.

are you sure the demand is gone? The whole point of this article is that Apple had to double production because demand was so high.

EDIT: i just looked up how many ipads apple shipped in 2025: 60M, so yeah, no shortage of demand in iPads. Most people are consumptioners, though, so that kind of makes sense.

I'm curious what industries are you going to switch to, and it is just to get like healthcare, or soemthing...

I've been contemplating the same. Saved my whole life. But I still don't feel like I have enough saved for a long retirement (i'm in US, and not planning on moving abroad for cost of living improvements, like you hear so many people around here tout).

>and not planning on moving abroad for cost of living improvements

How about quality of life improvements? Or life in general?

how much have you been saving so far? I talk to a lot of people that saved 10M$ and still feel this is not even close to enough.

Ha, if I had $10M, i'd be way gone. Pretty sure I could live my lifestyle for the next 30 years on that. I could live it on $5M, pretty easily. But where I'm at, I'm at the fringe, even if I have to move to Canada for healthcare when I'm old. And I'm saying this from having a house paid-off (where the taxes went up something like 40% last year -- and I'm guessing will keep going up?).

I'm not convinced living in the US that all the financial planning algs that big finance institutions are using and going to hold up in the future, and curious how it works for a whole generation. But time will tell. So far the cycle always corrects itself. I'm especially curious how it works when there's going to be a lot more early to mid-50s employees being forced into retirement, who are going to be living a long time, yet.

I'm especially paranoid about my prospects of retirement if the market dives 50%. It's happened in the past, and plenty of old hacker news articles about how it really screwed up people's retirement plans. Look back at Stock market returns for some tech companies from 2000 - 2014. That's a big span to fill.... ( I think I read somewhere that the market return for 2000 - 2010 was just over 1% year, someone should fact check that, though).

If $10M or, hell, even $2M doesn't seem close to enough then there is no amount to satiate one's thirst for more money.

A lot of people wouldn't know what to do without a job. Always going for more $$ is a way to save yourself from having to discover what you really want to do with your life.

And catch up on chores during work hours

What else would you do when i̶t̶'s̶ c̶o̶m̶p̶i̶l̶i̶n̶g̶ claude is generating?

I'm fascinated by all the underachievers downvoting me.

Do y'all really not read Hacker News while board sitting on the couch? Discover a new programming language that looks interesting? Play with some new database technology? Read a reddit sub related to technogoly, etc. after the hours of 9 to 5? Vibe some fun looking idea, even if you just throw it away?

I'm kind of doubtful the people who are actually spending time learning something on Hacker News fall really into the category that they're not working on their career growth outside of work hours....

Are any of you good at your job?

Says who?

pass

This is such a curious POV for me - I'd genuinely like to hear your thoughts on this. Who owns your career growth if not.. you?

(If you don't desire to grow your career, that's a viewpoint I can entirely understand.)

some people see 'career growth' as going to seminars and networking with manager types.

some people see 'career growth' as opening up a new technical manual and acquainting themselves with new stuff.

I think it's import to differentiate; networking with managers and going to industry-specific (or even company specific) seminars offers next to zero enticement for me, but I usually always have the time to read about a new language or tech.

In other words: If a growth opportunity arises, i'd rather it be personal growth.

I don't think it matters how you define it. Engineering career growth is almost always going to be about understanding the new technologies, gaining communication skills in navigating an org. etc....

What you're calling personal growth is 100% related to career growth. And you sound like someone who does do things outside the hours of 9 to 5 that intellectually you find interesting, and likely makes you better at what you do 9 to 5...

You're going to show up at that meeting someday, there's going to be a problem to solve, and you're going to have some ideas for things to try that are answers, because you read about that new tech. And someone's going to tap you on the shoulders to lead that or what not....

I'm with you on this. I think the market bubble can stay alive and well a lot longer than you can survive an open short position.

I think we're still a ways away from CEOs admitting that AI actually can't cut the cost of human capital in half.

> I think we're still a ways away from CEOs admitting that AI actually can't cut the cost of human capital in half

On the contrary, I think it certainly can. In the sense that productivity per person can be doubled. You could fire half your workforce and do nearly the same output.

Trouble is, everyone who does that will get outcompeted by everyone who didn't fore their workforce, and instead doubled their output.

We've seen it before with factories and computerization.

> can stay alive and well a lot longer than you can survive an open short position.

I mean let's look at bitcoin/crypto.

i've tried getting linux to run on a 2018 MB Pro (intel/nvidia based). Even after a ton of research and installing a couple "compatible-ish" distros, I couldn't get it to work, and gave up. And then further reading suggested I was always going to live with a semi-bricked machine. I just wanted a simple writing and couch surfing laptop. But the version of MacOs running on that old hardware is so slugish, it's painful.

A Fedora live USB should just boot on an Intel MBP (maybe you have to hold Alt? Don't remember). Then you can install it to disk. I was happily running Linux on a 2015 model until recently, still a good machine for most things.

I'll give this a try, both sound and wifi will work? (I'll check it out.)

You may have more luck with Omarchy - apparently they test against most Intel Mac based models.

Interesting, I do have an omarchy install already on a USB. I didn't try that one on the old Macbook pro, though. Thanks for the suggestions.

it's Nevermind. ;)