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bambax

25,659 karma · joined June 4, 2008

Hello from Paris, France.

Billard: a "random" physics sequencer -- https://billard.medusis.com

Babeloop: a webapp to learn music sight reading -- www.babeloop.com

Fligenstein: various attempts at stochastic music and EDM -- https://open.spotify.com/artist/5WHf35J0rrVKA8a20ANZUp

L'archevêque de Cologne: a novel set during WW2 (in French) -- https://www.amazon.fr/dp/295155933X/

hnmail [at] medusis.com

22a25c

meet.hn/city/fr-Paris

submissionscomments
bambax··on Canada will match US tariffs 'dollar for dollar' as trade talks break down
Absolutely agree; but it's never too late to react. Europe could impose tariffs on US tech or forbid it altogether to bid on government contracts. Etc.

What are we waiting for.

bambax··on Canada will match US tariffs 'dollar for dollar' as trade talks break down
Negotiating with the Trump administration is completely pointless, and can even result in your own government buildings being bombed while negotiations are still going on.

The only argument bullies understand is being punched in the face.

I wish more countries wiuld have the courage of cutting off ties with the US.

bambax··on There's no reason for software to be slow anymore
UI blocking can make sense in some situations; otherwise things "happen" suddenly that are unexpected.

I'm making a simple plugin for Gimp that sends the active layer to a model with a prompt; on Macs by default the UI waits for the request to come back or timeout; on PCs it doesn't, so the modified layer appears unexpectedly. The Mac experience is better IMHO and I will replicate it in the PC version rather than the other way around.

bambax··on Three important steps in my maturation process
> If you were asked: “Would it be good if this 0day was used to apprehend a terrorist?” you would probably say “this is good”. If you were asked “would it be good if this 0day is used to arrest someone and then torture and waterboard him 183 times?”, you would probably say “this is bad”. So if your 0day was used to capture KSM, it is probably good? Or bad? Things get very complicated very quickly.

This is a version of the very classic problems "does the end justify the means" (should one torture a terrorist to prevent other terrorist acts). Much to the chagrin of utilitarians everywhere, the answer to that question is NO, because answering yes leads to a bottomless hole of infinite evil.

bambax··on I'm becoming AI-blind
OT, but I feel the title is wrong, or at least ambiguous. For the author, "AI blind" means they can't process text produced with AI. For me, "AI blind" rather means one can't see when something has been AI-generated.
bambax··on I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers
Yes. I really liked and enjoyed reading this post, but was a bit frustrated by the focus on "thickness". Great art is not great just because it has many layers that take some time and effort to discover, like great cooking doesn't need a large number of different ingredients.

Great art, as you say, has something true, profound, and original to tell us about the human experience, and it touches us deeply in a way that not-so-great art doesn't. It "stops you in your tracks" as other comments here mention. It hits you on the head and makes you a different person, at least a little.

And, there's a magic component to it too. Great art is greater, I think, if you can't guess how it could possibly have been made by a mere mortal. That's where trade comes in. Great art is made by great artisans with a touch of genius, but genius alone isn't enough.

bambax··on Israel creates fake think tank in likely attempt to dupe AI chatbots
Although comments below point out that this has been going on for a long time, I too think it will be geetting infinitely worse in the near future. Everyone will want their own poisoning factory.

One consequence is that one should be extra-wary when asking AI about current, controversial topics.

But another consequence is maybe that there will be a demand for models with an older cutoff, before generalized poisoning and slop?

bambax··on Firefox is now the last major browser that still supports uBlock Origin
Firefox on Android is excellent.
bambax··on Firefox is now the last major browser that still supports uBlock Origin
> I want my browser to prevent random extensions from directly reading web page data.

I don't want that! I want to be able to install any extension whatsoever (as we still can, more or less, install programs). And if I'm clueless enough to install "random" extensions that'll harm me, then shame on me! How often has it happened for the whole existence of Manifest V2 anyway?

Maybe we could have tolerated a well-hidden, well-protected "advanced" flag to open that possibility. But removing Manifest V2 altogether is unforgivable.

Also, security is a very very very weak argument, as many ads are much more dangerous and toxic than any popular extension will ever be.

bambax··on Firefox is now the last major browser that still supports uBlock Origin
There's a mystery here. People hate ads. Firefox is the only major browser (save Brave?) that properly blocks ads. Yet people don't use Firefox (indeed its popularity is in free-fall).

Why? Is it because they don't know about it? Or they won't go to the trouble of using any browser that isn't the one provided by default by the OS?

I'm not sure. I just don't get it.

bambax··on The other Sean Byrne doesn't exist
The reason Apple or Google or Microsoft don't care one way or the other is their directors rarely if ever suffer from their policies. We should try to make them.

The way to retaliate against those stupid lists and the stupid way they are enforced by US companies could be to register a fake company with principals named Tim Cook, Satya Nadella, Donald Trump, etc. (and many other people with less well-known names, but high up in various organizations) and somehow get that company and all its employees' names on a sanctions list?

Not sure what it would take to work, but it would probably be fun.

bambax··on Hello, me. It's been a while
Earplugs work very well for me. I can't hear anything with them on.
bambax··on Hello, me. It's been a while
> Recently, as I reached for the play button out of habit, I stopped. I thought: what if I just do this chore in silence today?

It seems most people today have headphones on all the time. I don't understand it. I'm not sure, but it would seem people hate their own voice?

I just love silence.

I can't work in anything but complete silence. In open spaces I wear earplugs. (If I'm not wearing earplugs it means I'm not doing much of anything ;-) That's one of the main benefits of remote work: at my home there is complete silence most of the time.

I need silence for many other activities too. Cooking, reading (of course), even driving.

In fact, I think my problem is the opposite: I just can't do two things at once. If I'm listening to something, then I can't be doing anything else.

bambax··on Show HN: Scroll through all 43252003274489856000 Rubik's Cube states
Excellent! Thanks for the info!
bambax··on Microsoft Responds to Outcry After Quiet Enterprise Install of Beta 'Photos' App
But grandma doesn't use an Entreprise version now does she?
bambax··on Microsoft Responds to Outcry After Quiet Enterprise Install of Beta 'Photos' App
Why Windows Entreprise PCs have 'Images', 'Videos' and 'Music' folders that can't be deleted is beyond me. If I want to store music on my work PC I can create a folder for that, but why force it on me??
bambax··on Show HN: Scroll through all 43252003274489856000 Rubik's Cube states
True! How did you spot this though? Did you look at every possible position?!?
bambax··on Show HN: Scroll through all 43252003274489856000 Rubik's Cube states
When I was a kid (many, many moons ago) I found a solved Rubik's Cube in a house where we were staying. I played with it and soon enough couldn't put it back in its solved state.

So I took it apart and rebuilt it 'properly', which didn't take long and wasn't too hard. I wonder how many people did the same.

bambax··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)
I've been looking for a plugin for "AI inpainting" for Gimp3 but couldn't find any that really works? Which seems weird? Anyway, I decided to make my own. Functionally it's pretty simple: you manage prompts and image model (on Openrouter), and then send a layer with instructions for modifications by the model. But it turns out fine-tuning the UI to make it as simple as possible takes some time.

Will release it on ShowHN when ready!

bambax··on The Shape of Things to Come
I used to like Steve's posts. They were all way too long, but a fun and interesting read nonetheless. He started to lose me when at Sourcegraph where he oversell Cody which didn't do anything useful (I even had a commercial meeting with Sourcegraph people who weren't of much help); then he completely lost me with his GasTown business where AI meets crypto (what could possibly go wrong with that). Now I can't read anything from him anymore ;-(
bambax··on More German than many Germans
The first time I was in Berlin I had to take a bus. It was just leaving the stop as I was getting there, but stopped at the next red light. So I ran to the bus and knocked on the door. The driver looked at me with a concerned look to see if something was wrong, and once he understood I was just asking to come onboard outside of the regular stop, he laughed. Not ironically or in a mean way: it was a genuine laugh like I was doing something so weird and out of this world that it had to be a prank. And when the light turned green, he just left.

I could not believe it; but when I told the story to my German friends they too didn't quite understand why anyone would try to board a bus outside of a stop.

Being French, I have a hard time understanding why you wouldn't.

bambax··on The coolest use for the Vision Pro
This is wonderful and amazing, but isn't there a risk to over promise? Reality can never be as perfect as a 3D rendering...?
bambax··on Solving Fermat: Andrew Wiles
> NOVA: So Fermat's original proof is still out there somewhere.

> AW: I don't believe Fermat had a proof. I think he fooled himself into thinking he had a proof. But what has made this problem special for amateurs is that there's a tiny possibility that there does exist an elegant 17th-century proof.

Yes, it's generally accepted that Fermat didn't in fact have a proof, with the tools available to him at the time. But wouldn't it be cool to send some AI on this chase and see what comes back? Is anyone attempting this?

bambax··on Our position on open-weights models
> We don't have to value one more than the other.

Yes we do. We should evaluate threats and choose our allies carefully.

bambax··on US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search
Yes, I will probably never go back to the US. But I find it sad that my kids for example, will have to think twice before visiting, if they do.
bambax··on I wanted a clock that never needed setting. Things escalated
Those kinds of projects are super fun, and the writing here is good, so congrats to the author.

That said, why do people need clocks? I usually know the time, day or night, within 30 minutes or so, and if I need to know the exact time (which happens rarely if ever), I look at my watch. There are zero clocks in my home. I would find it quite aggressive to have a big display that tells me exactly what time it is.

Come to think of it there is one clock in the kitchen, on the oven. It's usually never correct because it resets after any power flicker and nobody takes the time to set it back properly. This is a recent oven; it's surprising kitchen appliances still are so dumb.

bambax··on Ghost Cut – Or why Cut and Paste is broken everywhere
Well, in fact a good principle is to limit side effects as much as possible. Copy or cut inside the same document should probably not involve the system clipboard at all. The system clipboard could be triggered/populated when the app goes out of focus for example.
bambax··on Hannah Fry Wins the Leelavati Prize in 2026 for Mathematics Outreach
She's really nice, fun and engaging. She has a recent video about AI agents selling mugshots that's well made and clear.
bambax··on Ghost Cut – Or why Cut and Paste is broken everywhere
I agree with TFA on all points and therefore strongly disagree with all that is said in this post. "Cut'n paste" should be one atomic operation. If you want to do multiple pastes (why? what's the context?) then copy to the clipboard and paste to your heart's content.

It's also a fundamental flaw that undoing cut doesn't undo its side effects. Undo should always mean: restore the state of the world (/of the system) to where it was before. Not just "back up a few steps depending on this or that".

bambax··on Advertise in ChatGPT
At least in this configuration ads are separate from answers. I fear there will come a time where ads will be intermingled in the response tokens. In fact SEO people on SEO forums have been talking about how to inject products into training for many months; but at some point the model operators will offer this directly.
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