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donw

7,153 karma · joined April 17, 2008

hn@123mail.org
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donw··on The current balance of power in open models
... when are large companies on the hook for anything, ever?

I mean, hypothetically, yes, but class-action lawsuits get settled out-of-court, the lawyers get paid in Ferrari-multiples, the plaintiffs get paid in McDonalds coupons that expire in two weeks.

Slaps-on-the-wrist are written into the laws; a million-dollar fine is existential for a small company, and likely not even a line-item at Anthropic.

donw··on Building a Linux GPU Driver for the M4 Mac Mini in One Month
I'm sure Omarchy will appreciate the effort, even if you're snubbed by Asahi -- being able to run Linux flawlessly on Apple Silicon is going to be awesome.
donw··on Steam Frame starts at $1059
Ssssh, WeWork investors could be reading this thread!
donw··on Pixel Watch 5
What you want is a Garmin Instinct, or equivalent. Not sure if it does the pertinent-info bit -- mine has Bluetooth off almost all the time -- but it does the rest of what you want, and will run for over a month per charge.
donw··on Four simple rules behind Japan's most liveable cities
It's funny how these articles always conveniently skip over the most important point: you first have to fill your city with Japanese people.
donw··on I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux
"It looks like you're trying to bypass authorized firmware. I'm sorry, but I won't help you."
donw··on Atomic Physics in Pure Anglo-Saxon
We need to start teaching everything in Anglo-Saxon:

"Some of the higher samesteads are splitly. That is, when a neitherbit strikes the kernel of one, as for a showdeal ymirstuff-235, it bursts into lesser kernels and free neitherbits; the latter can then split more ymirstuff-235. When this happens, weight shifts into work. It is not much of the whole, but nevertheless it is awesome."

donw··on Why are US consumers so angry? It's not just high prices
With me on the older side of things, believe it when I tell you that things actually used to, for the most part, Just Work.

"Simple mistakes" and "process breakdowns" were uncommon, notable, and dealt with quickly. Even the cheap stuff tended to last for quite some time, and was often repairable when it failed.

Enshittification is not only real, it is accelerating.

donw··on Separating signal from noise in coding evaluations
A substantial portion of software engineering -- and the fundamental jobs of a proper Product Owner and UX Designer -- is to turn "vague ideas about what we need to do" into "this widget, on this page, it should work like this"

It's not a pipeline, it's an ongoing conversation within any functional team, but this requires buy-in from management, who is often selected for "line must go up this quarter no matter the cost" over "hey, wouldn't it be cool if this company was still a going concern in twenty years?"

donw··on We're extending access to Fable 5 on all paid plans through July 12
I'm really curious, what sort of work you were having it do such that you could execute multiple days of work with minimal supervision.
donw··on Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way
I also still don't understand why the author thought this was wrong?
donw··on Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way
Um... 話します is the correct conjugation for 話す, what am I missing here?
donw··on Curl will not accept vulnerability reports during July 2026
Honestly, that is just bad management. It can make sense if it's your company, but even then, the risk profile is just off the charts. What happens if your only developer leaves or gets sick?

Real engineers think about handling things when stuff goes wrong, not "everything will be on the happy path forever".

Yes, there are constraints, but to me this sounds like an unacceptable level of exposure.

donw··on Curl will not accept vulnerability reports during July 2026
As a manager, I will quite literally ding people for working when they are supposed to be off.

Work during work time, don't work during not-work time. Good practices mean that everyone is important, but nobody is irreplaceable, the team and the work will move along a little slower, but that's fine.

donw··on Curl will not accept vulnerability reports during July 2026
That was just a beautiful, period.
donw··on Starfish by Peter Watts (1999)
Have you tried contacting Google for customer service? I’ve found that to be a sure-fire cure for whenever I catch a case of optimism.
donw··on Ntsc-rs – open-source video emulation of analog TV and VHS artifacts
You’ve also had to flip the disk halfway through a movie, it couldn’t do two hours of continuous video, unlike a VHS tape.

The lack of recording was also a killer, if you went with VHS you could record and watch home movies if you had a camera, read videos at the video store, record from broadcast TV, it was much more versatile.

donw··on I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation
... I haven't seen an ad in years, thanks to Brave, which is as of the last time I checked Chromium-based.
donw··on M 7.4 earthquake – 100 km ENE of Miyako, Japan
This one was weird, too, like being on a boat in mildly choppy water, not a violent shake at all.
donw··on Layoff Thinking
My first job-job got hit by the dotcom crash, but was fortunately a real business with actual revenue, and the CEO was an absolute class act.

He reduced pay, the higher on the food chain you were, the bigger your cut. His cut was the biggest of all, and thanks to him, pretty much everybody at the company kept their jobs, and the company made it through while competitors folded.

That's what leadership looks like, and I can't tell you the kind of loyalty people had to him afterwards.

donw··on Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston
We collectively decided nothing.

Our political/ruling class wanted more of the pie for themselves, dropped the trade barriers protecting American industry, and gorged themselves on the arbitrage as manufacturing flowed to our chief geopolitcal rival, who was quite happy to accept such a generous gift.

donw··on CERN rebuilt the original browser from 1989 (2019)
Something that just occurred to me: RAGs are almost Gopher for AIs.
donw··on OpenCiv3: Open-source, cross-platform reimagining of Civilization III
Yeah, that's what Factorio is for.
donw··on Ask HN: Do you have any evidence that agentic coding works?
Same here. You have to slice things small enough for the agent to execute effectively, but beyond that, it’s magic.
donw··on Claude Chill: Fix Claude Code's flickering in terminal
I mentioned this to Claude and this was the response:

Ha! The irony is not lost on anyone.

"We've built the world's most advanced AI coding assistant. It can refactor entire codebases, debug complex issues, and ship production features autonomously. Anyway, here's a terminal bug that makes your screen look like a slot machine. We'll get to it eventually."

donw··on My Home Fibre Network Disintegrated
No heresy detected in this thread.
donw··on “Fluid gears” invention offers promise for improving mechanical devices
If it’s a hydramatic, be careful to only lubricate it with snake oil.
donw··on My Home Fibre Network Disintegrated
"Military-grade" has a very specific meaning: it's at least 10x overpriced and painted black.
donw··on How your high school affects your chances of UC Admission
Universities and basically every major company, including all the big tech companies, have been openly and publicly doing this for years.
donw··on Arcee Trinity Mini: US-Trained Moe Model
Meccha at present, but it may reach sugoi levels with fine-tuning.
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