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daleswanson

65 karma · joined August 18, 2012

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daleswanson··on Why I'm still bearish on LLMs after Navier-Stokes
FWIW, I too found it harder to read without capitalization. Came here, read through comments, saw this comment, thought "Oh I didn't see a toggle, did they just add it literally while I was reading?". Went back to the site and realized the toggle was the "orthography mode: based|cringe" bit, which I would have never realized would do that.
daleswanson··on Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO
DNS blocking just isn't as good as a browser extension, because it can only block based on domain names. Pihole helps block ads on non-browser apps, but a real ad blocker extension in a browser is much better. I run pihole on my network, but I still run uBlock Origin on Firefox.
daleswanson··on How Bluesky draws its logo on screenshots
I use KeepassXC and Syncthing. It's not a single password manager doing both the managing and syncing, but it works very well, and I sync between phone/laptop/desktop without any third parties.
daleswanson··on Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%
> As someone who did have 15 direct reports for a while, it’s a joke.

> You basically are their manager in name only. Your time is so split you can’t give any one direct reports the attention they deserve. Quarterly and annual reviews are a farce because you genuinely don’t really know how people are doing except the signals you can receive when you’re not in a meeting with one of your 15 reports.

Don't forget "No pure managers". So, it's 15+ direct reports while also being "a strong and active individual contributor".

daleswanson··on F-15E jet shot down over Iran
An AI prompt in June 2025.
daleswanson··on Sam Altman responds to Anthropic's "Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude" ads
Do you think Google suffered any consequences for ignoring their "Don't be evil" motto?
daleswanson··on RFK Jr.: HHS moves to restore public trust in vaccines
RFK Jr believes:

1. That Wifi causes cancer.

2. That there is no vaccine which is "safe and effective".

3. It's unknown if the Polio vaccine prevented more deaths than it caused.

This quote from him seems to summarize his view on vaccines: "I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby and I say to him, 'Better not get him vaccinated.'"

daleswanson··on My quest to make motorcycle riding that tad bit safer
That's a regional difference in terms. I would generally call a limited access highway, a "highway".

https://brilliantmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/big-fast-road.j...

daleswanson··on Annotated Unix Magic Poster
I literally just had this printed, following that same blog post. Would recommend Whitewalls, it was a very high quality print. I got the 12x18 size, kind of regret not getting it bigger, but I didn't have the wall space.
daleswanson··on Some terminal frustrations
That's how shutdown works on Linux too.
daleswanson··on Why does everyone run ancient Postgres versions?
What do you mean? You can manually run Heroku database maintenance. We just did this recently at work.

https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-postgres-mainte...

daleswanson··on Nine US states are teaming up to accelerate the adoption of heat pumps
Heat pumps are air conditioners that are run in reverse, ie, you are air conditioning the outside. Another way to think of any AC/heat pump/refrigerator is as a heat mover, you can move (or pump) heat from one place to another. So in the summer you move heat from inside to outside, and in the winter you move heat from outside to inside.

ACs/heat pumps are over 100% efficient (in terms of joules of heat energy moved/joules of electrical energy consumed), because they aren't turning electrical energy into heat, but rather using electrical energy to move existing heat.

So, a heat pump should always be more efficient than normal resistive electrical heating, because that is just converting just about 100% of the electrical energy into heat energy. Heat pumps may or may not be cheaper than gas/oil/whatever fossil fuel based heat, depending on fuel and electric prices in your area, and that will likely change over time.

The reason that AC is seen as wasteful/inefficient, I think, is just because historically most places people live, you can get away with just opening windows and being a bit uncomfortable during the warmest parts of the year. The opposite isn't really true, it's not really feasible to live without heat in most places people live. Additionally, heating or cooling in any form is just very energy intensive. So, any "optional" form of that can be seen as a luxury.

To be clear, I'm a big fan of AC, and am not suggesting people should go without it if they need it, just trying to answer the question of why it was seen as inefficient when it is technically very efficient.

daleswanson··on Rite Aid banned from using AI facial recognition for five years
How did you notice? Don't they just look like normal cameras with the AI facial recognition running on the backend?
daleswanson··on Mazda slaps developer with cease-and-desist for DIY smart home integration
> It would also just randomly forget the resume point, and revert to playing the "first" file on the disk.

Is there any hack that fixes this? It's my number 1 annoyance with my Mazda.

daleswanson··on Experian is a pile of dark pattern garbage
Freezing is always what you want, that's what they are required by law to provide. There is no law that says they can't also provide something similar and encourage people to pay for that, and that's what locking is.

I recently applied for a credit card and temporarily unfroze (thawed) my credit with all 3 bureaus a few minutes before I submitted the application and was approved.

daleswanson··on Engineered ‘Superplant’ Cleans Indoor Air Like 30 Regular Plants
If you're ok with a bit of DIY, I recently got some Qwiic I2C sensors combined with an ESP32 running ESPHome. The Qwiic connectors made the hardware part really plug and play.

I have SGP40 for VOC - https://www.adafruit.com/product/4829 For True CO2 I have a SCD40 - https://www.adafruit.com/product/5187 For dust I have a PMSA003I - https://www.adafruit.com/product/4632

You can buy 1 of these, and add the other if/when you want to measure something else.

This is an ESP32, although I don't have this exact one - https://www.adafruit.com/product/5337

And then ESPHome - https://esphome.io/

ESPHome publishes the data on MQTT, which I then read in Home Assistant.

daleswanson··on Ask HN: What is your password management solution?
I recently did a bunch of research into password managers, and went with Keepassxc as well. I'm using Syncthing to sync the password archive across Linux, Mac, Android, and Windows devices. The whole setup is working very well and is all open source.
daleswanson··on Tesla’s Model S Gets “Ludicrous” Mode, Will Do 0-60 in 2.8 Seconds
What watchdog do you mean? I've ssh'd into my Mazda3 and was planning on doing it again soon, but I don't know what you mean by that.
daleswanson··on Sherlock Holmes Is in the Public Domain, American Judge Rules
See for example, the Star Trek TNG episode that used Sherlock Holmes. At the time, the studio assumed Sherlock Holmes was in the public domain, but were contacted by the estate and told they would have to license the character if they wanted to use him again. This almost prevented a follow up episode, and probably did prevent other follow ups to what was considered a good story line.

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Elementary,_Dear_Data

daleswanson··on A map of the epic struggle of FOSS against the Empire of Microsoft.
It's almost as if it was meant as a joke.