Porting Xonotic, an open source arena FPS to the browser with full replicated multiplayer/P2P matchmaking. I did a HN post about it here:
Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
801–810 of 1001 posts
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#802I was working on a 3D CAD software called OpenSCAD, there is this quirk I hated, which is when it's rendering all UI stops responding, there is no cancel button too. So I asked it to "implement the renderer in a separate thread with feedback and the ability to cancel".
It's written in C++ / QT, and can't remember the threading model, I knew Codex ~ version 4 and generally coding agents were excellent at Web type stuff - so I didn't expect much, but it did an alright job.
It was able to build loops of write/compile/verify loops - in the end though, the app would crash, with more work I could probably ask it to debug what was happening.
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#803I could go on and on, but Claude recently decompiled the firmware of my camper van, documented all the CAN interfaces, then programmed an ESP32 module to talk to the van’s integrated systems (power, HVAC, lighting, tanks). That sort of embedded systems integration is completely out of my wheelhouse. I honestly don’t understand AI naysayers. I use Claude every day both professionally as a Solution Architect and person…
Any docs/suggestions on how to do this?
Would love to do it with my campervan as well :)
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#804[flagged]
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#805It was Claude Code this January for me. I had heard that it got really good last November but I was still using Kiro at that point.
It wasn't so much an "uh oh" but more of a "eureka!" moment for me. Been busy building ever since.
My reading has dropped off quite a bit in the evenings because sometimes it's more fun to build.
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#806Not sure, but I can tell you what my "oh s** astroturfing is so bad, it's even in Hacker News" moment. And if I learned GenAI was used to make some of the astroturf, that's more an "ah s* “ than an "oh s* “ thing. I mean, the prominence, ubiquity, and breathlessness. One out of three, sure. Two out of three, maybe. And some corpo shilling definitely happens here. But this is like, well, covering an entire area with a…
My "oh sh* moment" with GenAI is ongoing and is watching all the correlated financials unwind when TSMC said "we can only support so much"[1]. Very few things in life experience exponential growth and assembled systems don't often stay that way if they don't become sigmoidal. ie its exponential and end is nigh xor its exponential then sigmoidal xor linear. Also a bit hilarious to believe that a single 3 month cycle a…
Downvotes aside, there are real risks in the ability to meet demand.
Geopolitical and other risks exist here. The future isnt doom and gloom but it isnt exponentials and sunshine either.
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#807Two of them: 1. ChatGPT 3.5 wrote me a script to pull some data out of Shopify and write it to a Google Sheet. Nothing remotely impressive by today's standards, but I had just commanded a computer to write code in plain English and it worked! 2. I own a bunch of e-comm brands, and with every new image model I tried to get product photography. Nothing worked until Nano Banana Pro, when suddenly I gave it a crappy iPho…
How does it do for 360 degree photos/Gaussian splatting type stuff
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#808Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, those tools are extremely good at reverse engineering. With a bit of know how, it is now trivial to reverse engineer any protocol or crack any software, often in a matter of hours or less. A lot of people in the industry have vested interests in this not being discussed openly so you don't hear too much about it, but the implications are huge.
It wouldn't surprise me if reverse engineering is put on the "highly unsafe" list in the near future in the same category as bio because of these interests. Can't have the cattle classes be able to control their own property now can we?
This is pretty much a given anyway. Making reverse engineering tools is already likely to get you sued by someone so model makers are apt to slow down the ability of their tools to reverse engineer to avoid the lawsuits themselves.
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#809Recently I realized Claude can create working novel GameShark/cheat codes for retail N64 ROMs by pointing it at a decomp project and just requesting the cheat you want. Pretty cool!
Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
#810bought a bunch of shithole device for aliexpress that are color LED lights, some smart home stuff and etc.
I didn't really wanted any sketchy companies getting telemetry across my network.
Plugged them all in via USB-C and left codex (this was with gpt-5.3-codex) running a whole night just saying you can use decompile tools, installs whatever the hell you want, then for each device reverse out an API and write some good documentation about it.
left it on at night and just ditched it, didn't really expect much.
woke up the next morning and found out that I can use the terminal to control my 3$ color smart light bulb now and codex has proposed me to also completely rip out the manufacture's shitshow software with telemetry and replace it with our own which codex had a plan for.