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blindriver

3,633 karma · joined October 30, 2022

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blindriver··on Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks
My friend at Google says they have a "ai-usage" dashboard that tracks everyone's ai token usage as well as aggregated per team, per org, etc. There's a sign on it that says "don't use this for perf reviews!" but I think everyone knows that that's exactly what they're going to use it for.
blindriver··on Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks
This is what I do. I tell AI to go through every file in my project, identify up to 10 bugs per file, and then write the markdown with the name of the file plus "bugfix". This takes about 2 hours. Then I delete all the files with the suffix "bugfix" and then do it again.
blindriver··on GitLab announces workforce reduction and end of their CREDIT values
I never used the word "Biden" once in my post. You should correct your biases.

Whether or not you are left or right, the objective truth is that a Democrat added DEI mandates and Republican removed the DEI mandates. I didn't say anything about whether or not that is right or wrong, but the fact that companies seemingly embraced DEI and then once a Republican removed it, then they abandoned it so quickly means they really didn't care about DEI at all and it was all phony. It just goes to show you that when they start praising themselves for being "moral" it's not because they actually care, it's because they are forced to and they don't give a shit about anyone.

blindriver··on GitLab announces workforce reduction and end of their CREDIT values
I don't understand why companies are abandoning DEI so quickly and so decisively. What happens if/when a Democrat president is elected that mandates DEI and ESG all over again, are they going to add them back into their core values as swiftly as they abandoned them?

At least companies like Coinbase made principled stances against forced DEI and employee activism earlier than everyone else. Doing it now seems weird because if it does become mandated again, they're going to look so phony.

blindriver··on Why modern parents feel more sleep deprived than our ancestors did
MFW you believe torches and lanterns are as bright and ubiquitous as electric lights today.
blindriver··on Why modern parents feel more sleep deprived than our ancestors did
Is this a real question?

Until the advent of electricity, when it was nighttime, it was mostly pitch black dark, and there was nothing you can really do except go to sleep. These days you're up a lot longer and there are more distractions like work and social media to keep you up well into the night. If you ever go camping with no cell phone signal, you'll go to sleep much earlier as well and get a lot more sleep than modern living.

blindriver··on Wi is Fi: Understanding Wi-Fi 4/5/6/6E/7/8 (802.11 n/AC/ax/be/bn)
Band steering doesn't work great. Neither does minimum RSSI. It's completely client-dependent and it's a headache. The best solution is to always minimize the number of APs you have with as little overlap as possible because of how unpredictable client behavior is. Like I said I have a very bad problem with line of sight APs are ignored for further away APs, and no amount of fiddling is helping.
blindriver··on Wi is Fi: Understanding Wi-Fi 4/5/6/6E/7/8 (802.11 n/AC/ax/be/bn)
One thing that wasn't mentioned is that the more APs you have, the worst off your life gets. That's because the way clients connect to a particular AP is done client-side and you have no control over it or visibility. So, no matter how you fiddle with it, your client may connect to the AP that is 40 feet away and on another floor rather than the one that is 10 feet away with a perfect line of sight. And you won't know why. This is the problem I had with my house and had to decrease the number of APs to get over better reliability and performance.
blindriver··on NetHack 5.0.0
I've been playing this game since the mid 1980s since it was called Hack. I've only ascended twice, the last time being last year, and it required a heavy amount of cheating/saving.

I guess the rest of this weekend is already accounted for.

blindriver··on [dead]
So, if I'm reading this properly the honor killings predicated by Muslims is the fault of white people?
blindriver··on Many African families spend fortunes burying their dead
Same thing with engagement rings, it's just a stupid fake tradition created by DeBoers in the 1950s that costs an inordinate amount of money for nothing.

I really hope that lab grown diamonds puts that entire industry out of business.

blindriver··on US cities are axing Flock Safety surveillance technology
Don't tell this to Trayvon Martin, who was gunned down by a neighborhood watch zealot, because he looked "suspicious" because he was wearing a hoodie.
blindriver··on Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? My quest to unmask Bitcoin's creator
Anyone who has access to Satoshi's account is worth $100B. If Satoshi were still alive some of the BTC would have been moved at least a little but they haven't.

Whoever Satoshi was is now dead.

blindriver··on Microsoft terminates VeraCrypt account, halting Windows updates
It's okay. I'm pretty sure after 40+ years of using Microsoft products I'm going to switch fully to Linux and MacOS. I'm tired of fighting against Microsoft even though I am a long time (and mostly happy) user of Windows. But whatever is going on in the last few years, especially Recall, has made it dangerous in my opinion to keeping Windows. So as they become and more draconian it only makes my decision easier and easier. I've had Macs and Macbooks for a while now but I bought the latest Macbook Pro and I'm very very happy with it, despite Glass (I barely notice any differences from the previous version).
blindriver··on USD Purchasing Power in Real Time Since 2000
What is the calculation? And how can you calculate it 10 decimal points?
blindriver··on Ask HN: How do you handle marketing as a solo technical founder?
> Every single one followed the same pattern: build, post, get 12 likes from friends, a bit of organic traction, then nothing.

> I know I need marketing help but giving equity to someone I met online feels like a huge risk.

No offense, but your equity, from your own admission, is literally worthless. If someone decides to help you out for your equity, you should be jumping for joy. Most likely you need to pay out of your pocket, but if you're not willing to risk your own capital, then how can you expect others to risk theirs?

blindriver··on The cult of vibe coding is dogfooding run amok
Yes I'm exactly like you as well. I've been coding for 30+ years, I still love coding and system building etc, but sometimes the level of frustration to find the information and then get something working is simply too high.

Over a weekend, I used ChatGPT to set up Prometheus and Grafana and added node exporters to everything I could think of. I even told ChatGPT to create NOC-style dashboards for me, given the metrics I gave it. This is something that would have painstakingly take several weeks if not more to figure out, and it's something I've been wanting to do but the cognitive load and anticipatory frustration was too high for me to start. I love how it enables me to just do things.

My next step is to integrate some programs that I wrote that I still use every day to collect data and then show it on the dashboards as well.

On a side note, I don't know why Grafana hasn't more deeply integrated with AI. Having to sift through all the ridiculous metrics that different node exporters advertise with no hint of naming convention makes using Grafana so much harder. I cut and pasted all the metrics and dumped it into ChatGPT and told it to make the panels I wanted (ex. "Give me a dashboard that shows the status of all my servers" and it's able to pick and choose the correct metrics across my Windows server, Macbooks and studio, my Linux machines, etc), but Grafana should have this integrated themselves directly into themselves.

blindriver··on Codex pricing to align with API token usage, instead of per-message
I'm confused as to how pricing works.

For home projects, I almost exclusively use the web chat interface to code. I haven't done anything large yet so I will iterate and get the web chat to update code, print out the code that I copy and paste.

How does this differ in terms of pricing than Codex?

blindriver··on Going Founder Mode on Cancer
You're probably not old enough to remember when Magic Johnson was diagnosed with AIDS. I was in college and I remember the moment when I heard like a flashbulb memory. I was in my dorm cafeteria near the windows eating dinner with my friends. It was an extremely significant event because AIDS was a huge deal at the time and the fact someone like Magic Johnson got it was utterly shocking. Everyone thought the same thing, that he was going to die soon. There was even a controversy later on about him playing basketball where he could get a cut and potentially pass it along to others. The fact he was still alive after many years and then his HIV count went down to zero is a miracle of modern science.
blindriver··on Should QA exist?
As someone who believed firmly that QA is a dying/dead profession, after moving over to AI coding over the last 6 months, I think coding is dead and QA and code reviews are what will remain after the aftermath of AI coding. Being able to test the output of AI to make sure it is doing what you want it to do is most of my job now.
blindriver··on Olympic Committee bars transgender athletes from women’s events
> There is a logical flaw in suggesting that something that occurs with a small percentage of a population such as “detransitioning” implies anything about every member of a population.

> Child abuse exists, but doesn’t imply anything about every parent.

This is funny because that's the exact argument that transphobic opponents say about trans people themselves and the argument as to why gender fluidity or gender outside of sex doesn't exist. "Just because an extremely small number of people believe they are a different gender than their biological sex doesn't mean that gender is different from biological sex" is almost exactly the argument that transphobes use.

blindriver··on Goodbye to Sora
Sora was good but Gemini is so, so much better. And Seedance is on another dimension. But to be honest I'm shocked that they gave up on AI video. I wonder what the cause of that was?
blindriver··on OpenAI fires an employee for prediction market insider trading
I find it absurd that someone can create an unregulated market like Kalshi, and then all of us need to be beholden to it, even though the idea is stupid. How is it possible that someone can create a product that none of us agree on, and now everyone else has to conform to the rules around it because of the problems that it creates. I would rather Kalshi get shut down than the precedent of allowing this to control employees or people.
blindriver··on Nano Banana 2: Google's latest AI image generation model
It won't have any emotional significance to those that remember how the world was before. But there's billions of kids that are going to be born that won't know anything except AI-generated content. They will find emotional significance to it.

My kids don't know what a dial tone is. They don't know dialing 7 digits instead of 10 or 11. They don't say "bye" when we get off the phone and none of their friends do either, they just hang up. They don't sit through movies because their expectation is that they can start it back up whenever they want. The world is changing and just because we experienced something doesn't mean that the next generation will value it.

blindriver··on Nano Banana 2: Google's latest AI image generation model
What does advocacy have any relevance to what I was saying? That's completely orthogonal.
blindriver··on Nano Banana 2: Google's latest AI image generation model
> images are commoditized and lose their emotional appeal.

No, ALL CONTENT is asymptotically approaching 0. This includes photos, videos, stories, app features, even code. Code is now worthless. If you want better security from generated code, wait 2 months and it will be better. If you want a photo, you just prompt and it will generate it on the fly.

AI will be generating movies and videos on the fly, either legally or illegally infringing on IP. Do you want a movie where Deadpool fights The Hulk? Easy. And just like how ad technology knows your preferences, each movie will be individually tailored to YOUR liking just so that your engagement will increase. Do you like happy endings? Deadpool and Hulk will join forces and defeat Thanos. Do you prefer dark endings? Deadpool and Hulk fight until they float off into the Sun and get atomized but keep regenerating for eternity.

If you want to see a photo of you and your family from 15 years ago, it will generate slightly better versions of yourself and your wife and maximize how cute your kids look. This is the world we are facing now, where authenticity is meaningless. And while YOU may not prefer it, think about the kids who aren't born yet and will grow up in a world where this exists.

blindriver··on The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
over 10 years ago, I had an intern from Harvard CS tell me that privacy is irrelevant unless you're doing something that you want to hide. I was gobsmacked that someone would not cherish their privacy but since then I've realized many don't care at all and have the same attitude that "I don't have anything to hide."
blindriver··on The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
Especially if they are older, like 8+ years old. They are resourceful, sneaky and relentless.
blindriver··on The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
You must not have kids if you think it's easy to keep children off things that are bad for them.
blindriver··on How did Joann Fabrics die while Best Buy survived? It wasn't Amazon
> Amazon is very good at bits but has repeatedly failed at atoms.

This idea of bits vs atoms was stolen straight from the CEO of Uber, Travis Kalanick. During the infamous Silicon-Valley-TV-Show-esque Las Vegas company offsite, one of his big talks was about how Uber had to not only deal with bits, ie. the virtual world, but also atoms, ie. the real world. That made it a bigger challenge than all the other companies like Google, Facebook, etc where they could dictate their own rules since they controlled everything, but Uber didn't have that luxury.

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