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bkm

195 karma · joined August 31, 2013

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bkm··on Qwen 3.8
They did not want to get brutally weightmogged
bkm··on Imgpls – An extension to load Imgur images directly
It's still wild to me how "closed" iOS got browser extensions before Chrome on Android.
bkm··on Should Node.js be built with ClangCL under Windows?
How does it affect binary size? Node's SEA (embedding script+node into a single binary) is slowly maturing so smaller binary sizes would benefit distribution.
bkm··on Switch off bad TV settings
Just get a modern Sony TV and be done with it. They perfected Motionflow to the point where you no longer think about framerate (choppiness nor soap opera). It's clearly a priority, probably because they are the only manufacturer with their own studios (Columbia/Sony pictures). There is a reason people pay the $800+ Sony tax over any TV that has the same panel.
bkm··on NewPipe – Lightweight YouTube experience for Android
Newpipe is great for background listening and PIP (window can be resized/moved). For downloading, Seal reigns supreme. You can 'share' a video to the app and it downloads the video right away.

Link: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.junkfood.seal/

bkm··on Gene-Engineered Mouth Bacteria
Alternatively, a non-intrusive supplement with DIM has recently been found effective against the Streptococcus Mutans bacteria.

3,3′-Diindolylmethane (DIM) decreased the Streptococcus mutans biofilm, a leading contributor to plaque and cavities, by 90%.

Source: https://scitechdaily.com/90-reduction-scientists-discover-na...

bkm··on Another Atlassian increase in Pricing (+5-10%)
It makes sense from a business perspective. Get a 'brand' product instead of some obscure free PHP clone, so you can say you have assurances for business continuity through support/fixes/security patches. Price and the god awful performance aside.
bkm··on Data accidentally exposed by Microsoft AI researchers
Would be insane if the GPT4 model is in there somewhere (as its served by Azure).
bkm··on Europeans Take a Major Step Toward Regulating A.I
Concerning, as their lingo would say. According to the below article this will also screw over open-source developers and data scientists:

Open Source LLMs Not Exempt:

Open source foundational models are not exempt from the act. The programmers and distributors of the software have legal liability. For other forms of open source AI software, liability shifts to the group employing the software or bringing it to market.

Source: https://technomancers.ai/eu-ai-act-to-target-us-open-source-...

bkm··on Show HN: DB-GPT, an LLM tool for database
The GPT term clearly has prior art. As this doesnt use an OpenAI service, OpenAI has no leverage (e.g. terminating service).
bkm··on A brief history of LLaMA models
Homogenized hardware I assume, this is why iOS had so many photography Apps too.
bkm··on Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees
Sad to hear. In an alternate timeline they would have accepted the $4B+ Twitter offer and had a nice exit along the way.

https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/07/twitter-said-to-have-held-...

The hard truth is software can't be patented and Twitter could copy the concept verbatim without paying them a penny.

bkm··on HuggingChat
So far I am impressed. It rightly answered:

1. Name five pop songs made by german artists.

2. Write a PHP function that replaces newlines with dots in a file.

3. Name the movie about a bowler whose identity is mistaken.

bkm··on RedPajama: Reproduction of LLaMA with friendly license
Relevant: https://twitter.com/abacaj/status/1647999551964323844
bkm··on AirPods causing tinnitus?
Tinnitus is also a post-covid symptom. They could be looking at the wrong culprit.
bkm··on TimeMyMeeting
This will do well as a Teams/Zoom background for nonsense meetings.
bkm··on Japanese Knotweed: The alien shrub that can't be stopped
Dutch researchers claim the Japanese leaf flea, the natural enemy of the Japanese knotweed, can be used to combat it. The universe always rebalances itself.

https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2021/11/japanese-leaf-flea-may...

bkm··on Covid-19 vaccination and temporary increase in menstrual cycle length
Makes sense, as women supposedly synchronize menstrual cycles with each other (menstrual synchrony).
bkm··on [dead]
It's using a LinkedIn mechanism in a special way to make posted content stand out. Hacking sounds accurate, albeit a growth hack.

Might want to look into what the H of HN stands for.

bkm··on Contributing to WebSockets – Cryptocurrency Users
Not a cryptophobe, but his rule seems reasonable: 'use it, but you won't get support if you use it for things I don't like'. Certainly better than the 'you may only use this product if you support/disavow $x' emerging trend in 'OSS' README's.
bkm··on Keep the web free, say no to Web3 (2021)
Web 3.0 is more than trading (arguably speculative) coins.

Nader Dabit has done an excellent job describing the use cases: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/what-is-web3/

bkm··on Keep the web free, say no to Web3 (2021)
This person very clearly doesn't get Web 3.0.

Your kid enters a wrong birthdate on YouTube? Gmail account gone. File identified as DMCA material uploaded to Gdrive? Gmail account gone. Theorized about covid origin? Disinformation; Twitter account gone.

See the pattern? The key to a decentralized web is federated, decentralized identities. Sure, you can self-host videos, blogs and forums and let people create accounts for every website, but being able to log in with your wallet and pull graph data is THE non-financial killer app of Web 3.0. Log in with Metamask or Phantom on a few sites and you'll see what I am talking about.

bkm··on Modern JavaScript has made the web worse (2020)
This article is no longer correct as 'cache partitioning' in modern browsers stops CDN assets being reusable for different sites in cache.
bkm··on Messaging and chat control
Just like WhatsApp 'conveniently' integrated Google Drive backups by default. That is why it's funny to see the fake outrage of WhatsApp's team over this.
bkm··on Why you should NOT use NativeScript
NativeScript surely has its struggles (like all the other hybrid frameworks), but the concept is strong:

- It's multi-framework (Vue, Angular, React or Svelte); easy to pick up for web devs

- The per-framework implementations are fairly similar to the web-variants (except it uses NS component tags vs HTML tags)

- UI abstraction layer that maps the NS components to real native UI components for iOS/Android (instead of Flutter's gimmicky pixel-by-pixel OS element duplication ala Adobe Flex)

- Use of native UI elements lead to performant UI elements (recyclerviews, tabs etc). React Native plugin devs had to tediously re-create elements like the recyclerview with custom logic (see 'RecyclerListView'). The core team adds new UI elements fairly quickly after OS releases, as they only have to create the bridging code

- Out-of-the-box code bridging; access native methods/variables on iOS/Android from JS. E.g. accessing the Android notch API can be done with a few lines of JS

- Recognizable CSS elements for styling (margin, borders, gradients, box-shadow)

- Performant; fairly quick cold-boot and no iOS shader-cache jank like with Flutter. OP likely has a web-dev background and used too many nested views leading to jank (as it would with a native app).

The struggles:

- Inconsistent maintenance of (semi-)official plugins like background uploading and toasts. Hard agree with OP.

- Overuse of outdated, third-party Cocoapods/Gradle plugins for their plugins. Some Cocaopods they use don't even have iCloud support.

- Large backlog of Core issues/bugs

- No more Sidekick (The 'Expo' equivalent for NS), as it wasn't part of the acquisition. This tool was really handy for low-barrier deployments/boilerplate code rollout

But the real problem is adaptation. No large adaptation = no big sponsors = no full-time development. Earlier it was in hands of Progress which had a highly talented team from Bulgaria working on it full-time. Progress tried to use NativeScript as an on-boarding strategy to get people to use Kinvey. When Progress pulled the plug, a small development agency took over development and is struggling to find the manpower to maintain this colossal project. I hope they will manage to make it work as NativeScript does have unique qualities.

bkm··on Flutter 2
Relevant:

https://www.reddit.com/r/FlutterDev/comments/jwmepu/very_poo...

https://thomasmiddel.medium.com/flutter-its-poor-ios-perform...

bkm··on Google Outage due to “an internal storage quota issue”
Might be a disk space issue with the biggest impact ever.
bkm··on Video Vectorization
One overlooked usecase is RDP and VNC-like concepts. Right now Appetize (App streaming service) uses raster graphics. Vector would allow high-FPS streaming of Apps, making running Apps in the cloud a realistic option.
bkm··on Show HN: Browser-based PowerPoint alternative
The homepage looks really professional and slick. A link to a dummy presentation would be a valuable addition though, as not every person is confident signing up to try it.
bkm··on MySql fixes autoincrement bug after 14 years of users complaining about dataloss
I wonder when it was fixed in Percona's MySQL version, as the reporter of this bug founded Percona in the meantime.
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