cpeterso

Good PR for Anthropic: the DoD already has contracts with OpenAI and xAI, but is still so eager to use Claude that they must threaten Anthropic.

> Version two: hide foes?

That's a good idea.

Here's my bad idea: the extension auto downvotes foes and auto upvotes friends. :)

If you haven't already, check out Microsoft's "The Windows® 95 User Interface: A Case Study in Usability Engineering" report summarizing some of the Windows 95 designers' user research:

https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/238386.238611

Can the app run on smart glasses, warning you of other smart glasses users nearby? You might not see the notification on your phone.

There are a few tools to compile COBOL code to .NET without needing to rewrite in a different programming language.

GitHub recently added new repository settings to turn off pull requests or limit them to approved contributors. The announcement doesn't mention AI agents, but that's certain relevant.

https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/187038

Or they could write native client apps using Qt to handle that “last 10%” of native app polish.

> So I gave up.

Try your mobile browser’s reader view mode.

No shift key needed for square brackets!

Curl was a proprietary Lisp that {curly brackets} and was designed in the 1990s to build web applications.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curl_(programming_language)

> The first release of NT is planned as a workstation product that will provide a strong competitor to UN*X based workstations.

UN*X spelling for trademark reasons or a joke that UNIX is verboten at Microsoft?

Link to discussion of the matplotlib PR: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46987559

And Google and Microsoft have huge distribution advantages that OpenAI doesn’t. Google and Microsoft can add AI to their operating systems, browsers, and office apps that users are already using. OpenAI just has a website and a niche browser. To Google and Microsoft, AI is a feature, not a product.

I like Basecamp’s framing of software development time as management’s “appetite” for a new feature, how much time they are willing to spend on a project, as opposed to an estimate. This helps time box development and control project scope.

https://basecamp.com/shapeup/4.5-appendix-06

> using u8 prefixes would obligate us to insert casts everywhere.

Unfortunately, casting a char8_t* to char* (and then accessing the data through the char* pointer) is undefined behavior.

I don’t have a specific recommendation, but a quick search found threads on Reddit and the Line 6 forums about generating patches with ChatGPT.

My guitar teacher has a Line 6 HX Stomp multieffects pedal. In addition to programming effects patches use Line 6’s HX Edit desktop application, he also uses ChatGPT to generate patch files (they’re just JSON) by describing the effect or referencing a specific artist or song by name.

Similar: here is a YouTube video of an amusing reverse Turing test with four LLMs and a human. To make the test more interesting, the players pose as famous historical characters (Aristotle, Mozart, da Vinci, Cleopatra, and Genghis Khan) on a train in Unity 3D.

https://youtu.be/MxTWLm9vT_o

I see what you mean, though I think “these models” refers to Apple’s Foundation Models, which “will be based on Google's Gemini models and cloud technology.” I guess it depends on wrist “based” means.

Neither Apple's nor Google's announcement says Siri will use Gemini models. Both announcements say, word for word, "Google’s technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models". I don't know what that means, but Apple and Google's marketing teams must have crafted that awkward wording carefully to satisfy some contractual nuance.

If a new programming language doesn’t need to be written by humans (though should ideally still be readable for auditing), I hope people research languages that support formal methods and model checking tools. Formal methods have a reputation for being too hard or not scaling, but now we have LLMs that can write that code.

https://martin.kleppmann.com/2025/12/08/ai-formal-verificati...

The website doesn’t scroll in Safari on iOS.

Is there an advantage for trb code to use colons for type annotations like:

  def greet(name: String): String

Instead of arrows like rbs files? Why diverge from precedent?

  def greet: (name: String) -> String

Chromium uses the BSD license. Google could take Chromium closed source tomorrow without needing to change the license.

I used Notational Velocity for years. I loved its free form approach to note taking and searching, but I needed a cross platform solution with files that could be shared using Dropbox.

https://notational.net/

I now just use three text files open in Sublime Text: todo-today.txt, todo-this-week.txt, and todo-later.txt. I review them daily and promote todos to the next file when appropriate.

Do you mean the ‘register’ keyword?

Yep, we write "the Internet". When was the last time someone wrote "an internet"? :)

Check out typed assembly languages like TALx86.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typed_assembly_language

Decadollars

100 dollars = 10 decadollars

Just search online for tinnitus tone generator tests.

There are expensive apps and devices to create notched music or white noise. Fortunately, there are also free YouTube videos with noise notched for different frequencies. Identify your tinnitus frequency using one of the web-based tone generator tests, then find and bookmark the video notched for your frequency.

I like “tinnitusreliever610”. TBH, I haven’t found the notched noise to be any more relief than full spectrum white or pink noise.

https://youtube.com/@tinnitusreliever610