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The Book of PF, 4th edition

https://nostarch.com/book-of-pf-4th-edition
44•0x54MUR41•2h ago•7 comments

What I learned building an opinionated and minimal coding agent

https://mariozechner.at/posts/2025-11-30-pi-coding-agent/
8•SatvikBeri•33m ago•2 comments

Mobile carriers can get your GPS location

https://an.dywa.ng/carrier-gnss.html
667•cbeuw•16h ago•402 comments

The history of C# and TypeScript with Anders Hejlsberg | GitHub

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMqx8NNT4xY
61•doppp•4d ago•25 comments

List animals until failure

https://rose.systems/animalist/
155•l1n•9h ago•83 comments

In praise of –dry-run

https://henrikwarne.com/2026/01/31/in-praise-of-dry-run/
167•ingve•13h ago•97 comments

Cells use 'bioelectricity' to coordinate and make group decisions

https://www.quantamagazine.org/cells-use-bioelectricity-to-coordinate-and-make-group-decisions-20...
62•marojejian•10h ago•19 comments

Generative AI and Wikipedia editing: What we learned in 2025

https://wikiedu.org/blog/2026/01/29/generative-ai-and-wikipedia-editing-what-we-learned-in-2025/
146•ColinWright•12h ago•60 comments

pg_tracing: Distributed Tracing for PostgreSQL

https://github.com/DataDog/pg_tracing
53•tanelpoder•3d ago•10 comments

Opentrees.org (2024)

https://opentrees.org/#pos=1/-37.8/145
77•surprisetalk•4d ago•8 comments

Drawings of the elements of CMS detector, in the style of Leonardo da Vinci

https://cds.cern.ch/record/1157741/
22•nill0•3d ago•2 comments

Outsourcing thinking

https://erikjohannes.no/posts/20260130-outsourcing-thinking/index.html
146•todsacerdoti•13h ago•127 comments

Scientist who helped eradicate smallpox dies at age 89

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/smallpox-eradication-champion-william-foege-dies-at-89/
220•CrossVR•4d ago•58 comments

EV-1 for Lease (1996)

https://www.loe.org/shows/shows.html?programID=96-P13-00047#feature4
27•1970-01-01•2d ago•6 comments

Coffee as a staining agent substitute in electron microscopy

https://phys.org/news/2026-01-coffee-agent-substitute-electron-microscopy.html
10•PaulHoule•2d ago•4 comments

Show HN: Moltbook – A social network for moltbots (clawdbots) to hang out

https://www.moltbook.com/
211•schlichtm•3d ago•828 comments

Nvidia's 10-year effort to make the Shield TV the most updated Android device

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/01/inside-nvidias-10-year-effort-to-make-the-shield-tv-the-m...
155•qmr•18h ago•135 comments

Sparse File LRU Cache

http://ternarysearch.blogspot.com/2026/01/sparse-file-lru-cache.html
28•paladin314159•9h ago•3 comments

Data Processing Benchmark Featuring Rust, Go, Swift, Zig, Julia etc.

https://github.com/zupat/related_post_gen
99•behnamoh•13h ago•54 comments

Finland looks to introduce Australia-style ban on social media

https://yle.fi/a/74-20207494
617•Teever•17h ago•433 comments

Apple Platform Security (Jan 2026) [pdf]

https://help.apple.com/pdf/security/en_US/apple-platform-security-guide.pdf
171•pieterr•18h ago•122 comments

Nintendo DS code editor and scriptable game engine

https://crl.io/ds-game-engine/
127•Antibabelic•15h ago•32 comments

Show HN: Minimal – Open-Source Community driven Hardened Container Images

https://github.com/rtvkiz/minimal
87•ritvikarya98•14h ago•26 comments

Demystifying ARM SME to Optimize General Matrix Multiplications

https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.21473
71•matt_d•14h ago•16 comments

Sometimes Your Job Is to Stay the Hell Out of the Way

https://randsinrepose.com/archives/sometimes-your-job-is-to-stay-the-hell-out-of-the-way/
48•ohjeez•4d ago•41 comments

Nonograms: a practical guide with interactive examples

https://lab174.com/blog/202601-nonograms/
35•merelysounds•4d ago•13 comments

The Saddest Moment (2013) [pdf]

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/login-logout_1305_mickens.pdf
114•tosh•14h ago•23 comments

CPython Internals Explained

https://github.com/zpoint/CPython-Internals
198•yufiz•4d ago•46 comments

Swift is a more convenient Rust (2023)

https://nmn.sh/blog/2023-10-02-swift-is-the-more-convenient-rust
285•behnamoh•12h ago•277 comments

CollectWise (YC F24) Is Hiring

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/collectwise/jobs/ZunnO6k-ai-agent-engineer
1•OBrien_1107•13h ago
Open in hackernews

Sometimes Your Job Is to Stay the Hell Out of the Way

https://randsinrepose.com/archives/sometimes-your-job-is-to-stay-the-hell-out-of-the-way/
48•ohjeez•4d ago

Comments

silisili•1h ago
> Wolves are the result of the work, not asking the question. Wolves don’t ask to be wolves; they are.

Whether or not you find this blurb interesting will probably determine whether or not this link is worth clicking to you.

picardythird•1h ago
This article has to be satire…
seanhunter•1h ago
I know Michael Lopp. It’s not satire.
dbt00•1h ago
I lived through some of the events described therein. It's not satire.
picardythird•55m ago
That’s cool it just reads like an onion piece.
baxtr•55m ago
"A lion doesn’t concern himself with the opinions of the sheep!"
slfreference•23m ago
On National Geographic channel, I have seen cannibalism in lions and spotted hyneas.
ai_critic•51m ago
It helped me to think of it more as does-my-house-say-dead-engineer-storage-Wolf than awoo-Wolf.
Etheryte•44m ago
I think this quote snipe without the context doesn't really do the article justice. The post is interesting both intellectually and in that it's already clearly controversial. This quote standing by itself is mostly just confusing and imo takes away from the discussion.
lastdong•38m ago
Google AI overview returned: “A ‘lone wolf’ is a wolf that has left its pack to find a new territory or mate, a natural dispersal behaviour crucial for genetic diversity.”

Interesting enough people do jump around to build their skills.

thereitgoes456•1h ago
What an untalented writer. His prose is clunky and every paragraph drips with sanctimony and reaching generalizations.
2b3a51•3m ago
Well the writer has had a number of books published which appear to have been successful. So he has found a market and delivered completed work.
Dayshine•1h ago
The argument seems to be: don't promote/support good ideas or projects because if they're good they'll likely succeed without you, and then the initiator will be slightly more confident.

Which is phrased as "not my job" for some reason.

andrewstuart•58m ago
I thought the message is “you might really want to find and encourage and promote and support your best programming talent though overt action, but such overt action might in fact have the inverse unintended outcome, often best to ensure you know such people are in the team and ensure traditional management does not get in their way or piss them off with traditional corporate thinking, which has zero idea what great programming talent looks like or is motivated by.”

That’s what I read.

yunohn•41m ago
But did OP actually suggest their job is to “ensure traditional management does not get in their way”? I’m almost certain their point was not to interfere even at that level, which is why they didn’t hype it up the chain and let it land on its own.
al_borland•30m ago
Part of not hyping it up the chain is also that a lot of these projects are experiments. They may work, they may not, and some pivots may be required along the way. As soon as something is hyped to leadership, now there are feature lists, timelines, and expectations. All room for creativity and experimentation are gone.

I’ve gotten in the habit of not telling anyone about side efforts I’m working on until they’re done, and even then, I usually only tell the people who it might be of use to. I’ve been burned too many times by people trying to “help” or placing a lot of extra expectations and pressure on something. I don’t know if something will work until it works.

jeffreygoesto•38m ago
Same. New ideas are like starting a fire. Piling too much on top or blowing too hard will stop it. You (together, however distributed across roles) do have to assess if you can handle one more fire, if it comes on top, replaces an old one etc. Getting to this decision in your specific setup is the tough and important part.

10x people can be like one-shot LLMs, your request is for sure wildly underspecified and what you get is 90% determined by the "smoothing term" applied by not you. This is why the right amount and frequency of interation is needed.

al_borland•37m ago
This is how I took it, and what I lived through. Both the supportive boss that let me do my thing without getting in the way, and those who tried to manage everything and make me shut down.
fcatalan•37m ago
The message is that process is there to extract value from people with average skills and motivation. When you find someone very skilled and self motivated doing the right thing, don't let process hamper their way.
InsideOutSanta•6m ago
I wish the article actually said that in plain words instead of trying to foist it into that peculiar "wolf" analogy (or whatever it's trying to do). I found the article kind of confusing. Thanks for spelling it out.
andrewstuart•1h ago
Nice to see Rands back.

Refreshing writing in a world of AI slop.

People wonder how to find great developers - what even IS a great developer in the world of AI, do they still exist or did AI level them all out with the playing field?

They’re still around - they can talk with you in great depth about software and how it works ……. same as ever.

dbacar•42m ago
> Wolves don’t care if they are seen or not. Wolves are entirely focused on the self-selected essential project in front of them

The wolves analogy is simply wrong. Wolves work in packs.

lukan•21m ago
I read those stereotypes as people phantasizing about being wild and free and a fierce (coding) biest, without actually knowing the wild. But it does have the effect on me to not being able to take it serious. If they don't even know basic facts about the animal they want to use as their metaphor, I expect way more to be wrong.
its_ubuntu•21m ago
He's a furry, you insensitive clod!
begueradj•20m ago
Not all wolves work in packs.

Hint: think of the widespread expression used in terrorism debates: "Lone wolf". It's a self radicalized/motivated individual acting independently and alone.

Jolter•6m ago
Lone wolves are not happy animals, though. They are less successful in hunts, they can’t take down large prey at all. They don’t generally produce offspring. They’re an unfortunate effect of the social structure of wolves, where young males who cannot find a place in the pack are expelled.

There are plenty of lone wolf developers, but you won’t find them in large teams. Or if you do, they’re dysfunctional. On their own, a lone wolf engineer is not generally able to complete large, important pieces of work. Some do! But they are exceptions.

jackblemming•41m ago
A feel good article where you can choose to self insert as the wolf or the wise manager who knew to be “hands off”.

To someone actually running a company this looks like absolute corporate nonsense. Don’t categorize people like this, it’s demeaning and weird. Why can’t we just treat people like adults.

Instead of “Oh yea he’s a total 10xer wolf,” try “Yea Mark, has some good ideas for a test framework we should consider”.

hxugufjfjf•12m ago
Hard agree. Nothing more offputting than being labeled and categorized like the corporate overlords are playing AeO II and I’m a "resource" to be acquired, harvested, used and/or discarded.
simianwords•34m ago
I generally don’t take these articles too seriously but a question has been popping up in my mind.

What the hell is the incentive of the guy posting this to encourage and help The Wolf??? He’s just doing it out of good will? What does he get out of doing the right thing? No recognition. No bonus. Nothing. Yet he still does it.

I find this fascinating.

lukan•28m ago
He got attention?

Building a reputation of being wise?

manmademagic•26m ago
Some people genuinely want to help others, without any immediately visible reward.

I won’t say it’s necessarily altruistic, as of course there could be a drive from inner machinations that we’d never be privy to.

(Sometimes the exposure of an article can be considered a reward, for those looking for ego inflation)

Even myself, I generally don’t leave comments unless I feel they’re going to be helpful or insightful to someone else. But I am also biased, as I do have a very strong affinity towards sharing information, so I greatly appreciate the effort artisans and those more knowledgeable than I go through to share such knowledge.

al_borland•24m ago
I had a boss like this. He didn’t stand me up in front of everyone to show stuff off, but each year when it came time for raises and bonuses, he always took care of me. But those raises were never conditional or tied to whatever project I was working on.

I got the recognition in my paycheck, which was the only place I wanted it. I prefer to work quietly behind the scenes. It wasn’t about any one project, but consistently delivering whatever it was I was delivering, without much input or interference.

simianwords•13m ago
In this case you are helping your boss’s bottom line. The poster here gets nothing.
mwedwards•5m ago
He’s building credibility as an engineering management consultant.
InsideOutSanta•3m ago
I find it fascinating that people find it fascinating that people just want to do right by others. I get that this is in the context of a workplace, and there is always some level of competition between people, but personally, I never gave that more weight than being happy and feeling good about how I treat others.
quijoteuniv•34m ago
I have experienced some companies trying to tame wolves with agile type systems with poor results. I have seen wolves getting sick in cages, i have been seen wolves accomplishing amazing feats and being sidelined for not being team players by mediocre leadership because the leadership did not get recognition.
begueradj•23m ago
> i have been seen wolves accomplishing amazing feats and being sidelined for not being team players by mediocre leadership because the leadership did not get recognition.

That's the norm across all industries.

gonzo41•31m ago
This just in: Wolves is the new hype word for the mythical 10x employee.
0815beck•27m ago
"omegas don t care what other people think, they simply do their thing", thats hoow you people sound, very dumb.
ErroneousBosh•17m ago
So basically just cats then?
roenxi•8m ago
> All of these activities did occur because good work speaks for itself ...

Good work very much doesn't speak for itself, typically software problems represent management problems more than a lack of people trying to do good work. This is such a wild claim vs what I've seen that it makes me quite suspicious of this article and the one before it. It is a nice story that there is a high-productivity engineer who just does great work and everything steams to a happy end out because they are just that hyper-competent. But that is a myth, and probably more a tell that the narrator is misreading something about the situation.

This looks a lot like a manager-once-removed undermining a reporting manager by supporting an engineer to go rogue. I'd believe that the engineer is actually doing good work, but then that suggests there are problems in the management culture here. Either the blog writer doesn't know how to manage managers, or the middle manager has a competence problem. From that assumption I'm not totally surprised that there are problems in the resulting software that one unusually capable engineer can expose with a few weeks of rogue work.