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calt

587 karma · joined December 23, 2012

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calt··on Netflix Open Content
Why buy Japanese bootlegs when webrips are on popular torrent sites?
calt··on Datadog's $65M/year customer mystery solved
On the other hand, customers can become frustrated at being unable to trade when they need during an outage to and go to a competitor.
calt··on WhatsApp introduces ads in its app
Thing is, it already was getting that adoption, and network effect can largely take care of the rest. Also, some it’s tied to a real phone number, geographic price differentiation is trivial to implement.
calt··on The Way of Code: The Timeless Art of Vibe Coding
And now it’s flagged. This is why we can’t have anything fun. Hacker News doesn’t do humor. I could go on for a while about how brilliant the satire and self deprecating humor on Anthropic’s part is in this piece. But all people seem to see is “ewww gross vibe coding“
calt··on The Way of Code: The Timeless Art of Vibe Coding
> it is poorly done at best.

And that’s the point. It’s satire.

He’s saying, “Use silly toys to make bad art, and while you’re at it claim it leads to enlightenment, like the vibe coding evangelists say it does.”

calt··on The Way of Code: The Timeless Art of Vibe Coding
Because it’s a joke. It’s satire, and it hits the nail on the head of so-called vibe coding enlightenment.
calt··on The Way of Code: The Timeless Art of Vibe Coding
I spent a good 5 minutes trying to figure out if this was _actually_ THE Rick Ruben, and then another 5 wondering why the f he was writing about vibe coding.

For those who don't know, Rick Ruben is one of the most influential record producers of all time. His specialty is prompting people to help them make their art. So I suppose it follows that he's taken an interest in doodling with vibe coding.

I find that this lives right on the lines of inside joke and satire and insightful and serious. I can't stop chuckling to myself as I read them.

calt··on AR Computers to Terminate Eyestrain and Myopia
Thank you! The link is amazing.

I figured it was something like this. I went to go demo it specifically because I had a fantasy of using Apple Vision Pro as a monitor replacement. The demo quickly changed my mind and got me to consider all of the crazy home/office/mobile workspace upgrades I could do with a $3500 budget.

calt··on AR Computers to Terminate Eyestrain and Myopia
One aspect of computer screen eye strain is the extra-ocular muscles not exploring using their full range on motion and instead being focused on the center of their field of vision non-stop. I went for a demo of the Apple Vision Pro hoping to have my whole field of view be one giant screen. Instead, the center is sharp and the periphery is extremely blurry. I was told this is to save on video processing resources. To make something sharp you have to move my whole head to look face it directly. It didn't even come close to having as much useful field of view as a nice setup with a couple of monitors. It was really not what I was hoping for.

The article promises that AR glasses will "keep the visual field broad and wide." Maybe products will fix this in future iterations, but I'm not too hopeful for the near future.

calt··on Infosec 101 for Activists
This advice is unhelpful. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Cell phones are a useful tool for coordinating and communicating.
calt··on New Features in Fedora Asahi Remix
But it got flagged and deleted. Yay moderation!
calt··on Privacy is priceless, but Signal is expensive
I really, really, want to go into a bunch of detail on exactly why this calculation is so incredibly naive. More as a personal thought exercise than for internet fame (since this will be buried under a buried comment).

Maybe I'll find the time...

But, like everyone else is saying, putting things in a datacenter in a resilient way for a high profile, high bandwidth, multi-national app is not the same as buying some ssd, or even running a hetzner instance.

calt··on Create a shortcut for even lower phone brightness
Yeah I was really perplexed by that line. I had to stop and scratch my head.

Maybe they mean, "brighter than daylight ambient light levels indoors"?

calt··on Mathematicians Found 12,000 Solutions to the Notoriously Hard Three-Body Problem
I've been getting the itch to go deeper into KSP after a scratching the surface of the first one (simple landing on Mun). I was considering buying 2. What's your review against playing KSP 2?
calt··on Tearing down Klamath dams: The largest dam demolition
I wasn't aware of Intel's practice of using their home state's natural places for code names. I shouldn't be surprised that Apple wasn't first the that game.
calt··on Weight-based motor vehicle tax
18-wheelers already pay taxes very differently than consumer cars. I don't know how much higher they actually are. Maybe someone with knowledge can weigh in here.
calt··on Ego Death
IMHO it's to add clarity. The white space gives extra separation to statements.

It's how I write most of my communication, like statements are lines of code.

calt··on Rhino Linux is a rolling release Ubuntu-based distribution
Especially since Debian has a testing release, which is a rolling release.

Maybe this distro is based on Debian testing, but has some of the Ubuntu defaults?

calt··on Why Is the U.S. So Good at Killing Pedestrians?
This is victim blaming, plain and simple. Why are people ever forced to be close to high speed traffic? The likelihood of dying goes up very quickly as vehicle speed goes up. It is possible to design livable cities where screwing up doesn’t cost you your life.
calt··on Why Is the U.S. So Good at Killing Pedestrians?
I would find the deaths per miles walked to be even more interesting.

We drive a lot so that number would be low, but if we’re dying quite a lot for how little we walk, that would be extremely telling of how bad the problem is.

calt··on Why Is the U.S. So Good at Killing Pedestrians?
One thing I've been noticing more and more since Not Just Bikes pointed it out is the shape of truck hoods.

I've gone over the hood of a Honda Odyssey minivan. It wasn't fun, but I walked away because I rolled over the sloped shape and off the side. I look at the big flat intimidating front grills of modern trucks as I ride my bike around town everyday, and it's very terrifying.

There's legislation around the shape of car hoods that make such things illegal, but trucks are exempt because they were viewed as "working vehicles" at the time the laws were written. Your personal truck is not a working vehicle. You think it's sexy and strong looking. I think it's terrorism. Stop making and buying these monstrosities.

calt··on I'm a paid user of Threads[.com] – No trademark?
I don't understand this post.

What point is the headline making?

calt··on How my children (n=2) acquired absolute pitch
> digging music through forces coming out of your own soul

Agree. Art is art, and why do we make art? Well...?

Technical skill helps with the nuance of the creation, but not with the "why."

calt··on Apple Announces New MacBook Air with 15.3-Inch Display and M2 Chip
I agree. I really don't understand obsessing about thinness.

Being a few millimeters thinner doesn't actually help it fit into a small backpack any better.

calt··on The greatest risk of AI is from the people who control it, not the tech itself
Obligatory relevant xkcd from 2018

https://xkcd.com/1968/

calt··on How can we stop the CO2 that plants store from leaking back into the air?
> 1 hour of a gas-powered leaf blower was the equivalent of taking a Camry from LA to Denver

Maybe in terms of particulate pollution, but in terms of CO2 that's absolutely unimaginable.

calt··on The Unix process API is unreliable and unsafe (2021)
I think it's quite a bit more descriptive and objective than "considered harmful."
calt··on Pedestrian Traffic Fatalities by State: 2022 Preliminary Data
I was thinking the same thing about the state that I grew up in. It has a fairly low rate.

I once lived in one of the most obese cities in the country. When this made the news on reddit, commenters looked at the google street view and noted that there was no one walking.

calt··on Nalanda University flourished for more than seven centuries
What is the meaning of University, and why don't these old "universities" meet the criteria?
calt··on Banning words won’t make the world more just
It can often depend on the purpose you're writing for. Do you want to be bland, professional, and as inoffensive as possible? Great.

In contrast, I think the highlighted excerpt really summed up the article well.

> Good writing—vivid imagery, strong statements—will hurt, because it’s bound to convey painful truths.

Writing poetry, songs, fiction, and impactfull writing with equity language will always feel hollow.

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