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dfee

2,956 karma · joined June 14, 2017

Builder in the day. Astronaut at night. Lover of the great outdoors.

https://github.com/dfee

devin[@]devinfee.com

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dfee··on China sentences official to death for taking $325M in bribes
first, look beyond the top comment.

then, re-read my comment:

> the merits of the concept aren't discussed; the convo falls back to whataboutism.

…juxtaposed to your conclusion:

> In my own country (United States), for example, we have brazenly open corruption with no consequences.

fwiw, i too feel that the death penalty is wrong. but, that's answering an off topic survey question.

i should also note that you've gotten pushback on your comment above declaring that "Xi has shown repeatedly that he’s serious about corruption". my issue is that there's a narrative that forms based on up/downvotes and thus these political threads are gamed. kinda like how my concerns about legitimacy are being downvoted – that's to be expected.

dfee··on China sentences official to death for taking $325M in bribes
the reason i dislike seeing these articles on HN is that:

1. strong defensive positions float to the top... which could be astroturfing.

2. the merits of the concept aren't discussed; the convo falls back to whataboutism.

maybe it's all fair, but on a site where everyone's ~anonymous, it's hard to take the discussion at face value.

dfee··on Zig's new bitCast semantics and LLVM back end improvements
because i was responding to a comment about it.
dfee··on Marfa Public Radio Puts You to Sleep
agreed, it's a gem. wasn't familiar with Chianti, though!
dfee··on Zig's new bitCast semantics and LLVM back end improvements
i think it's perfect: AI allows you to go incredibly deep (you have unlimited access to context to make incredibly impactful surgical changes), or you can go incredibly broad (you have unlimited access to context to tie a mind numbing amount of components together). what shakes out is the middle layer: "infra" between "algorithms" and "product".

though, to be fair, the middle layer itself is composed of this same work. so it's fractal, or turtles all the way down.

dfee··on The Xteink X4 E-Ink Reader
i bought a pocketbook era lite recently, and it's a bit too locked down for my tastes - though usable. i kinda just want a dumb appliance. actually, i want a linux appliance. this probably sounds very "not productized" to a PM, but 99% of what's on there i don't want: a book store, games, etc.

i wish there was just an SDK for building apps (i'll vibe code towards a great epub experience, i'm fine with that). and, i'm fine plugging it in via USB or even SCPing files over wifi. but, it sends my reading progress to a server every time i use it which is highly annoying and concerning. however, the form factor is sufficient.

i guess i was hoping it'd be more aligned with steam's direction with their steam machine.

dfee··on White House delays US voting-machine vulnerability report
where am i?
dfee··on The Token Compression Illusion: Why I'm Skeptical of RTK
an agent harness built in rust with ratatui - checks out. i've built one myself. i don't maintain it, and continue to use opencode, but it was worth it to learn how agent harnesses work.

anyway, what's the real pitch on why i should move on from opencode to maki?

dfee··on Leaked financial docs show OpenAI is losing billions of dollars a year
> It wasn't like college students were calling cabs to go to bars in 2013.

well, in 2009, we did.

dfee··on But yak shaving is fun (2019)
the downside is mitigated by the amount of yak shaving you do. see?
dfee··on The history of butterfly swimming
butterfly is interesting because it's faster than breaststroke (mentioned) but slower than freestyle. it also consumes far more energy than any other stroke.

to that end, i'm not sure why it exists, except that it's truly a unique style.

* i also still hold my high school's butterfly record, 20 years on.

dfee··on Show HN: Nxui – Copy-paste animated UI components for Vue
this is on the front page, but the poster / author's comment is flagged / dead. i'm very confused.
dfee··on "Don't You Just Upload It to ChatGPT?"
agree. it's strange reading the loud voices that are counter to my lived experience. llms just have seemingly infinite depth - or can at least debug and execute without fatigue.
dfee··on Claude Fable is relentlessly proactive
admittedly, i've not really cracked FE dev with LLMs at this point (and it's probably my big weakness). but, i'd heard somewhere that FE just isn't there yet - though i was suspicious of that claim.

i'm torn about sending screenshots to an LLM for debugging - seems imprecise. seems lossy, especially compared to inspecting the dom. however, it's always proved good enough (e.g. when messing with ratatui.rs and tui-pantry). similarly for web, maybe it's about decomposing into storybook. hmm. the next grand adventure i need to hack.

anyway, fascinating investigation of fable just automating that entire process and what it didn't automate, too.

* disclaimer: these are actually my hyphens.

dfee··on 'Sloppenheimer:' Amazon employees mock the company's AI on Slack
the problem is scale. there's a tension between an individual developing technical skills (transfer cost is high, slow, expensive) and developing agent skills (transfer cost is low, instant, free).

so, just like a manager manages employees, or you consult a contractor, agents are a way of getting leverage over a system.

that said, if you want to learn to play saxophone, you're free to do so. just note your personal endeavors may begin to look more like hobbies than marketable skills.

dfee··on India's surprise baby bust
both points are fair, but operate at different levels. the former: willpower. the latter: constraints.

and, the latter is indeed dependent on the former. but, arguing that humans have no free will is an argument that should be tried independently of rebutting the former comment.

dfee··on Wind and solar generated more power than gas globally in April 2026
if you require a stable energy source, neither wind nor solar (nor both) provide a complete strategy. they can be a part of a composite strategy, though.

for both wind and solar, they're also quite taxing on the environment during manufacturing. the "true cost" is rarely reported.

nuclear energy has a different set of problems (including social / political ones). here's that industry's take on the economics of wind energy: https://www.ans.org/news/article-638/the-economics-of-wind-p...

dfee··on Flipper Zero Zig Template
downvoted to oblivion. huh. ok, let me give you a hint:

> A modern, production-ready template for developing Flipper Zero applications using the Zig programming language. This project provides a streamlined build system that integrates Zig with the Flipper Zero SDK, enabling developers to write type-safe, memory-safe applications for the Flipper Zero platform.

replace "Flipper Zero" (the seventh and eighth words) in the first line with:

  [Flipper Zero](https://flipper.net/)
dfee··on The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen
well, it seems to have transferred back to me (or at least i could login through another method). but, i can't reset the password right now ("Something went wrong, please try again"). though, it tells me that the password was last changed yesterday… hmm.
dfee··on Flipper Zero Zig Template
crazy that the readme doesn't link to the product.

https://flipper.net/products/flipper-zero

dfee··on The newest Instagram “exploit” is the goofiest I've seen
wtf. this prompted me to attempt to open the app on my phone, and then realize my account was likely compromised (i received a bunch of password reset prompts over the weekend and now my password doesn't work).

but, what now? how do i restore my account?

dfee··on Last.fm is now independent
Unfortunately, unable to create an account on my laptop (WiFi) or phone (Verizon) - even in incognito.

> Your request was blocked

> To protect our website, our security firewall has flagged this request as potentially unsafe.

> Please try clearing your cookies and refreshing the page. > If the problem persists, try again later or on a different computer network.

> Error 406

edit: maybe they saw my message or fixed a bug? signup now works everywhere for me.

dfee··on Google changes its search box
tried it out:

Search: "Hello world"

> AI Overview

> Hello! Wordle is the viral word-guessing game where you get 6 tries to uncover a mystery target word, using color-coded hints to guide your guesses.

dfee··on We let AIs run radio stations
i'm surprised how negative of a reception Andon is getting here on HN.

keep hacking, Andon!

dfee··on OpenAI is connecting ChatGPT to bank accounts via Plaid
What's the local version of this? What's the best way to pull in my finance data locally, without clicking through to each portal? (USA)
dfee··on Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid
[meta] this response was clearly not from an LLM. i wonder what sorts of distinctive styles could be telltales going forward.
dfee··on Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs
by design: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path

IMO, this is the argument for doing work in the first place.

dfee··on Do I belong in tech anymore?
i never got along with tickets, anyway.
dfee··on Brands got worse on purpose
the Robert Barakett shirt? i don't know – often on sale for $50. how are they worth $50? well… there's no logo on them and they fit well.
dfee··on ChatGPT Images 2.0
fair point, also "this raccoon does not exist"
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