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alanwreath

1,056 karma · joined January 22, 2019

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alanwreath··on Podman v6.0.0
I mean I should probably also say it’s good enough that Bazzite ships with it enabled (not something I’d have expected)
alanwreath··on Podman v6.0.0
I mean for local dev I like that I can just press one button and have Kubernetes available. Podman Desktop had something approaching that simplicity but I have found Docker Desktop more stable in my limited experience with it.
alanwreath··on Podman v6.0.0
Good for the most part, I appreciate them being pretty much a drop in replacement (mostly so tools that reference docker can just work usually).

Regardless it works enough for me to run local Kubernetes and Tilt

alanwreath··on Trump made more than $1B on crypto deals, part of 2025 windfall
Well said! I guess I’d overlooked that aspect of corruption.

Especially poignant in my home where leaders make corruption===outwitting laws===smart. Perception can lead to widespread adoption.

But I guess if our laws actually held up corruption wouldn’t outwit the laws in the first place.

alanwreath··on Solid and Clean Code never felt solid or clean to me
Uncle Bob is awesome, maybe some of his ideas aren’t iron clad but he embodies a great engineer and person. Every time I’ve listened to (https://youtu.be/UBXXw2JSloo) or (now) read interviews the guy is humble, listening, and it would seem extremely genuine.

A definite Uncle!

alanwreath··on Trump made more than $1B on crypto deals, part of 2025 windfall
Corruption is ever present. No counter to it is what kills countries.

The US has been security by obscurity in so many ways, this latest abuse is just further evidence that counting on it would only ever delay abuse for [checks calendar] about 250 years.

And really is has been in free fall for decades, the fact that so many recent examples are so flagrant (along with this) is what is upsetting (mainly because no one with any power is moving to stop it in any meaningful way).

alanwreath··on Open Source Low Tech
Reminds me of https://www.opensourceecology.org/ but I’m not sure if they are still active
alanwreath··on U.S. allows Anthropic to release Mythos AI to ‘trusted’ US organizations
I’m not sure what the US government is trying to do. At first it seems like they are just trying to stifle some company that said no. Now they are just doing free publicity. It’s like never before have I wanted to try something out as much as this.

They’re in effect saying “nothing else is as powerful as what Anthropic put out”. Even though that might not really be the case it’s what it sounds like.

alanwreath··on Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
I mean that and the effects of multiple LLM vendors affecting supply and demand.
alanwreath··on Ford AI hiccups push carmaker to rehire ‘gray beard’ inspectors
https://archive.is/DI4Cq

And the verge is covering it too:

https://www.theverge.com/transportation/956316/ford-quality-...

alanwreath··on If you are asking for human attention, demonstrate human effort
This reminds me of a Pre-LLM-slop era issue I had with a process that a co-worker had created via a shared script that would automate combining many dependabot PR’s into one consolidated PR.

The script was excellent because it simplified the review process for a single repo (that had many competing dependsbot PR’s) and it also happened to do this across increasingly many many different repo’s simultaneously.

Funny thing is, however, that it also created a team dynamic where who ran the script became almost a race because the effort in creating x pr’s didn’t correspond at all to the effort required to review x pr’s.

The optics were also lopsided since the script would operate on the runner’s local machine and so it would have seemed as if the person who made all these PR’s was highly efficient at producing when in fact it was the reviewer doing the majority of the work.

Also reviewing represented a chunk of a developer’s day so it would affect other actual work the developer was tasked to do anyways.

In an agile workplace points (correctly or not) completed are attributed only to the code creator with no points at all being shared by those who reviewed the work, and rightfully so I’d argue because tangentially reviewers can also tend to just click “approve” (or slap a LGTM) without much effort into critiquing a piece or giving a thoughtful review. Why? It slows down the introduction of the feature (the PM won’t like that, why would you slow down the process eh? You grumpy goose), it messes with team dynamic (you may end up offending those who you review, who also happen to be the one who you need to review your work, who then may be petty or worse, mud slow to review your own PR’s), it takes additional time to provide reviews that seem as if you even read the PR or don’t come off as flippant (did you provide examples or a suggested refactor or detailed reasons), and it takes context because you may be working currently on a totally different project (regardless of your experience/authority in the PR’ed repo), so giving an honest review may sacrifice even more time to first review the purpose of the PR and how that lands in the context of the target repo(s) and then sacrifice the time necessary to reorient yourself to the task you previously had in process. With all this…that “approve” button becomes sooooo tempting.

It’s funny because fast forward some of the ways I battle increasingly prolific AI generated material is through GitHub’s CoPilot bot. I ask it to do the review first and when it gives the review there is none of that dynamic because it wasn’t me who levied the criticism and also it’s not me who is trying to block code integration (so no grumpy goose or team dynamics problems). Having a bot do preliminary checks almost does what git hooks did for team dynamics way back when automation of linting, testing, style, etc was introduced as a common part of the review process. And I say “almost” because a)sometimes the critiques from the bot are wrong and b) the critiques aren’t necessarily deterministic, so just because they are there or not doesn’t mean you are truly relieved of that portion of the review process (for better or worse).

alanwreath··on Conventional Commits encourages focus on the wrong things
It’s very helpful to know the motivation for the commit and if that motivation was tied to a client contract/feature. Especially in cases where a commit affects multiple files or even just one file so that all commits can be grouped into a feature/contract.
alanwreath··on We replaced Zendesk
Nada - he’s my bud
alanwreath··on We replaced Zendesk
> [Your job is] going to be taken by someone using AI

Too true!

> if the business owner is disciplined and prompts it with thought

That’s a big “if”. For now, at least I wonder if conversations change from “I have an idea for an app…” to “I have an app that is having problems…”

Case in point, I had to help him fix an issue where the state was being persisted _in the link_. Not something I expected.

alanwreath··on We replaced Zendesk
I have a friend who’s doing this for himself. He owns an AC business. He has need for tools but does not like plunking down money for a feature set that moves him in a direction he doesn’t wish to go. Solution? Create a bespoke internal system of one off apps for his OWN business using an LLM.

He’s not a software developer, he has no concept of software maintenance or security.

I’ve been watching and it’s interesting to me because I would not be surprised that he’s not alone as a small family business. Many probably feel liberated from company’s that would enforce a certain cookie cutter shape.

Does this mean AI is shifting towards contractor jobs more? Does it mean a huge security issue brewing? Both? Maybe business owners turned SWVibers like him will swing back to an off the shelf option once pouring more effort into 3am-my-stuff-is-broke scenarios becomes more of a chore than it’s worth.

I feel like there are a million billion green field projects brewing that will soon turn brown for one reason or another.

alanwreath··on Where does next-token prediction leave us?
It’s a cliff we’re all being push to. Don’t know about you, I’m just struggling to put on my parachute !!!
alanwreath··on Opaque Types in Python
Let it out co-internet programmer. It’s ok. The pain is real. We both love and hate our languages. It’s natural and healthy.
alanwreath··on Opaque Types in Python
Are you ever supposed to inherit from the protocol though(unless you’re defining another protocol)? One of the great things about protocols is that your class doesn’t even have to know about the protocol explicitly. What this code looks closer to doing (style wise) is an abstract base class
alanwreath··on Don't just paste the AI at me
lmgtfy -> hwcs
alanwreath··on Eric Schmidt booed at University of Arizona after praising AI
I’m not sure if you were expecting the boo’s to totally drown out the speaker. The audio system for orators in those types of venues are made to focus on the orators voice, not that of the audience. The fact that they were audible at all (they WERE) is to say they were substantial. The fact Schmidt recognized hearing them and from time to time had to pause to make a point means he was speaking through the crowds discontent.

It was a good watch - I appreciated hearing the audible boos. I’m not the only one in the room who is concerned about the adoption of AI being overly cavalier without clear evidence it’s even worth it / or that you go to school and are told great now you MUST learn this, your degree choice (your dream) is moot - the message has been “deal with it”. That’s not to say there isn’t already plenty evidence online that supports the thought, but hearing it from a college campus audience makes me think about what my son is going into right now, that my concern is real.

I’m torn really because I am already benefitting from the tools provided. I can see their utility. And, though, I actually agree with Schmidt’s overall message - it was truthful and felt genuine, it’s an unfortunate reality. Who’s going to cheer that? So good on him for being naive to that fact or willing to endure an obvious boo fest.

AI’s fun but life is more fun. Speed is fun, but so is sitting down for a sec to chat with friends. Maybe the backlash against AI is because we’re still grappling with the onslaught of the internet and smart phones. The unintended negative effects we have yet to solve today (Schmidt even starts his speech referring to them before he brings up AI almost as if to say, “look how well these blunders went, now hold my beer”). Youth and people in general feel robbed, they have become a cog in someone else’s machine and AI doesn’t free you from it - it’s not like businesses are saying “oh excellent! we can get the work done faster, let’s decrease the amount of hours we make people work to get their wage. Let’s let them benefit from this boon of productivity.” No! The opposite, “We will kick you and if you want to stay, be happy you’re here and willing to run in this fever pitch rat race that has just introduced a rapidly increasing devourer that runs behind you.” … “Want weekends!? AI doesn’t, hmm is that the way you ‘demonstrate what it means to be human’?”

My mind keeps on thinking that what I am really being told is it’s time to start my own business because I will only ever be the person to give me a weekend off.

alanwreath··on Kraftwerk's radical 1976 track
Only related in awesomeness but whenever I see VLC’s icon I think of Kraftwerk.

Kraftwerk sounds novel even today, I can’t imagine how it must have sounded 50 years ago.

alanwreath··on PyInfra 3.8.0 Is Out
Yes - that’s got to be it.
alanwreath··on PyInfra 3.8.0
This is spam - btw this is the first spam I have ever come across on hacker news
alanwreath··on PyInfra 3.8.0
Same here, my home lab is all pyinfra. I’m not sure if it’s my previous experience with ansible that made it simple for me or just the relative size of my home lab compared to larger companies where I’ve used ansible - but it seemed much easier to me and easier to follow.
alanwreath··on Super ZSNES – GPU Powered SNES Emulator
I wonder is there any way to use this or rather get games to play on the emulator legally????

It really is the only thing that keeps me from them. I’d pay to play quality retro games. Heck it would almost be educational for my kids.

alanwreath··on Parallel agents in Zed
I wonder if you could use something like vLLM and have these subagents max out your local gpu. I’ve been looking for using a local model because I’m tired of rate limits of the cloud and also would really like to make use of my local gpu when I’m working (5090h even if it’s not on my computer I’m typing on.
alanwreath··on Homeland Security is making "smart glasses" to collect intelligence on Americans
Odd that they would choose the form factor represented in the article - I am going to assume this is just some picture filler picture.

It would seem one of the few occupations where it would not be off putting to have a bigger HMD, especially in the case that you’d probably want the device to have dual purpose. One being that of a dystopian tool, and the other of being protective face covering that you know… you kind of need when you commit your heinous atrocities.

Heck I figure they could go all the way to DaftPunk style masks and it would seem on brand.

alanwreath··on John Ternus to become Apple CEO
Johnny Apple Seed references incoming…
alanwreath··on John Ternus to become Apple CEO
It’s not novel to critique or idolize anyone, especially given the roll undergoing the changing of the guard. It’s not like hundreds of managers are changing.

They are all still there.

But here’s to hoping that change comes. Apple is already a rich company. But isn’t that boring?

alanwreath··on [dead]
It’s petty and sad at the same time.
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