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callc

1,029 karma · joined December 25, 2023

“In the face of madness, rationality was powerless.”
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callc··on Deno Desktop
Temporarily at a place with 10-15 mbps. 150 MB is around 1 minute.

I grew up on 30 mbps. >= 100 is all I need nowadays.

But 10 mbps and websites and downloads really start to take a while.

The more bits and bytes you save, the more people will be pleased with your stuff! Even if they don’t know what bits and bytes are, and just go based on impatience

callc··on Volkswagen started blocking GrapheneOS users
Because laws are (mostly) a reflection of what society wants.

People are growingly concerned with both the car manu and Apple/Google control over their car and related extra software goodies.

Laws are really needed when businesses don’t play nicely. I don’t know the legal specifics, but I’m sure glad I don’t need to buy $1000’s of specialty tools to maintain my vehicle, and sure glad that replacement parts are readily available (and will be for decades).

Just image how much worse society would be if car manus did the same thing as Apple and had ID-paired parts. Sorry! Your AC doesn’t work anymore, please install a genuine Honda oil filter at your nearest Authorized Honda Shop, available for a minimum of $500.

callc··on Apple decided not to roll out Siri in EU after denied request for exemption
Why make fun of freedom?

Have some dignity. We all deserve the right to fully own our general compute devices.

callc··on Stop the Apple Music app from launching
cough cough hey EU you hearing this shit?
callc··on Apple rejected my dictation app for using the accessibility API
Maybe more like “Learn how to replace an AC filter by yourself instead of calling an AC repair company”

I just installed PopOS on a laptop recently, and… it just worked. There’s an app store for noobs that I think installs flatpaks. GPU drivers just work. Whole disk encryption. Everything just works.

I don’t see what else my grandma that just uses Facebook would need. Maybe automatic updates?

callc··on On The <dl> (2021)
Shameless plug: you might be interested in https://calvinlc.com/p/2026/02/11/everything-is-a-div.html

I need to learn more about web accessibility, but if you completely ignore it (and other sane practices) HTML looks really simple.

I think the design of HTML is just too much. There’s so many tags that don’t do much. It’s like w3c decided that any common thing people use in websites needs a tag. The end result is more and more tags…

Can anyone convince me otherwise? It screams design red-flags to me.

PS: I love the web and think it’s the best platform and future platform we have at the moment. It’s just quirky and loves not breaking old websites!

callc··on Bun support is now limited and deprecated
Do you mind if I vibecode a fresh vehicle control software for your car?

Don’t worry, it’ll just be in a different language.

callc··on How Diamonds Are Made
As a fan of cool rocks and gems, and putting aside price and societal influences, diamonds are cool!

Especially compared to hard plastic “costume jewelry” (which I think you’re referring to), gems are hard, don’t scratch as easily as hard plastics, and have cool reflections.

callc··on Vibe coding and agentic engineering are getting closer than I'd like
Ah yes, we must force these obstinate engineers to the right path! Only after getting everyone to see the light will they understand and thank us for boundless productivity!! /s

Perhaps these “obstinate” engineers have good reason in their decision. And it should be their decision!

To be so confident in what is “the right way (TM)” and try to force it onto others is... revealing.

callc··on California to begin ticketing driverless cars that violate traffic laws
I am, in general, hoping AV will reduce road deaths in the future.

The last hurdle is regulatory. We can’t let AV manufacturers use “there’s no driver” as a way to escape responsibility, externalizing the harms AC cause onto society.

The question is how to achieve fairness. If a human driver commits vehicular manslaughter, they get the book. What about AV? $10 million? Executives go to jail? What if $10 million fine per X AV miles driven is an OK cost of doing business?

callc··on I bought Friendster for $30k – Here's what I'm doing with it
This argument falls apart since there is no real freedom of choice, and the importance of smartphones in our lives.

People are becoming more aware that they don’t want a corporation in control over this essential near ubiquitous technology.

I see no good reason to follow a “it’s a corporation they can do whatever they want” mindset

callc··on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (February 2026)

    Location: USA Central Time (no sponsorship needed)
    Remote: Yes, I prefer remote.
    Willing to relocate: Depends on specifics.
    Technologies: TypeScript, Go, Python, Rust, Bash, Java, C, C++, docker, k8s, Qemu, NoSQL
    Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/calvincramer/ you can find full resume here
    Email: calvincramer [at] the g one.
Hi, my name is Calvin. I'm a staff SWE with 6.5 years experience spanning from operating system development to cloud, full-stack to simulation solutions. I'm comfortable at every level of the stack, and enjoy teaching what I know. I have an eye for quality and performance, and love hard problems.
callc··on Please don't say mean things about the AI I just invested a billion dollars in
You can say the same thing as we invented the atomic bomb.

Cool science and engineering, no doubt.

Not paying any attention to societal effects is not cool.

Plus, presenting things as inevitabilities is just plain confidently trying to predict the future. Anyone can san “I understand one day this era will be history and X will have happened”. Nobody knows how the future will play out. Anyone who says they do is a liar. If they actually knew then go ahead and bet all your savings on it.

callc··on TikTok settles just before social media addiction trial to begin
Wow this is a bad take and a half.

Apply the argument to abusing drugs now, and see how this argument throws all nuance out the window.

callc··on When employees feel slighted, they work less
Sounds like you are extremely valuable in the product you built.

In your experience it’s not just the manager direct report relationship that’s adversarial, it’s you against the whole company for the mismatched value they place in you.

You should use that as leverage. This comes with an mindset of looking out for yourself and not any loyalty to the company (I really wish that we could all find companies loyal and nice to their employees, in reality they are few and far between).

Something along the lines of “Hey I built our product. We’re making X in profit. I deserve Y in comp. I’ll give you a week to decide. If you reject I quit and build my own product or join another company.” Obviously add some fluff to reduce harshness.

callc··on Dead Internet Theory
Recently I’ve been thinking about the text form of communication, and how it plays with our psychology. In no particular order here’s what I think:

1. Text is a very compressed / low information method of communication.

2. Text inherently has some “authority” and “validity”, because:

3. We’ve grown up to internalize that text is written by a human. Someone spend the effort to think and write down their thoughts, and probably put some effort into making sure what they said is not obviously incorrect.

Intimately this ties into LLMs on text being an easier problem to trick us into thinking that they are intelligent than an AI system in a physical robot that needs to speak and articulate physically. We give it the benefit of the doubt.

I’ve already had some odd phone calls recently where I have a really hard time distinguishing if I’m talking to a robot or a human…

callc··on Predicting OpenAI's ad strategy
Yes. Infinite low cost intelligence labor to replace those pesky humans!

Really reminds me of the economics of slavery. Best way for line to go up is the ultimate suppression and subjugation of labor!

Hypothetically can lead to society free to not waste their life on work, but pursue their passions. Most likely it’ll lead to plantation-style hungry-hungry-hippo ruling class taking the economy away from the rest of us

callc··on Cursor's latest “browser experiment” implied success without evidence
“I built a car from scratch”

…

“Nobody said it has brakes.”

Taken at face value, everyone assumes when you say statement #1 that you are not speaking like a lawyer.

callc··on Justice Dept. launches criminal investigation of Minnesota governor
There’s no point in looking into the logic or consistency of Donald’s words.

Just record his actions. Persecute him to the fullest extent of the law. Ignore everything he says.

He’s a broken person, the dictionary definition of a bully, and whose modus operandi is to inflict as much pain on his enemies as possible.

callc··on Cursor's latest “browser experiment” implied success without evidence
I’m dealing with similar issues.

It’s reasonable to come up with team rules like:

- “if the reviewer finds more than 5 issues the PR shall be rejected immediately for the submitter to rework”

- “if the reviewer needs to take more than 8 hours to thoroughly review the PR it must be rejected and sent back to split up into manageable change sets”

Etc etc. let’s not make externalizing work for others appropriate behavior.

callc··on Cursor's latest “browser experiment” implied success without evidence
Proposal to not tarnish the good name of actual engineers: slopgineers.

Maybe LLemgineers? Slopgrammers?

callc··on Cursor's latest “browser experiment” implied success without evidence
Welcome to HN, thanks for sharing. That’s a very sad story, I hope you aren’t traumatized still.

A reasonable framework does exist. Since the claim is “we made a web browser from scratch” the framework is:

1. Does it actually f*** work?

2. Is it actually from scratch?

It fails on both counts. Further, even when compiled successfully, as others have pointed out, it takes more than a minute to load some pages which is a fail for #1.

callc··on Cursor's latest “browser experiment” implied success without evidence
I’m happy that this shows that hard work, understanding your codebase, having performant software, having actually working software, rigorously measuring and proving proof of results still matters.

There’s a huge difference between using LLMs to offload any hard work and for LLMs to be of some assistance while you are in control and take ownership of the output.

Unfortunately, the general public probably didn’t try a git clone and cargo build, and took the article at face value.

callc··on Cursor's latest “browser experiment” implied success without evidence
“Lying is just the reality of the world” is a cop-out

Don’t give them, or anyone, a free pass for bad behavior.

callc··on Every country should set 16 as the minimum age for social media accounts
I wish.

In reality, a large enough group of people on the internet starts to turn sour. Especially with anonymity. Especially without a specific purpose like a book club. Especially without moderation.

Small groups where you know everyone is where it’s at. To avoid internet stalkers and bullies, and for general quality of the community。

Our brains are built for small communities, not billions.

callc··on US freezes visas for 75 nations
Thank you!
callc··on Ask HN: Share your personal website
https://calvinlc.com/
callc··on US freezes visas for 75 nations
I really wish there was more transparency. We can’t see flagged posts without a direct link.

How about a flagged section?

What about a feature to challenge the flag?

What about a justification for the flag? Do flagged posts need to be approved by a mod?

I love HN. Flagged posts are the worst part. I can’t tell if the community is being taken over by a subset of bad actors, or YC is asserting opaque editorial control. Feels bad.

callc··on Statement from Jerome Powell
It goes back before Donald was in charge of the Trump real estate business. It started with a really really shitty father who desired a “killer” business instinct in his children (read: cruelty) above all else.

Reading some of Mary Trump’s books will give some insight on the family that Donald grew up in. No love, all cruelty.

Donald is just a rich kid who inherited a big business and learned nothing but cruelty from his daddy.

callc··on Statement from Jerome Powell
It might be childish, but I think the “act like an adult” (or not) is a good way to frame the bad behavior that’s been so present lately.

It encapsulates so much of how I want to describe things.

Selfish behavior - this adult is just a child who didn’t learn to share.

Mean and vindictive behavior - didn’t learn to empathize as a kid

Lying? You’re still a child. Grow up and then join the adults.

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