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eCa

4,834 karma · joined November 4, 2011

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eCa··on My phone detects going on a run as “someone snatching my phone and running off”
Speaking of trains, that's another thing they don't do. The auto-snapping of current location consistently snaps to whatever road or goat track it can find nearby, while equally consistently refusing to snap to the railroad they have mapped.

Sure, there's not much need for navigation in that situation, but if you're trying to be smart regarding where I am, maybe take into account if I'm travelling at 200 kph before plonking me on a twisty gravel road.

eCa··on Are we offloading too much of our thinking to AI?
> most of us

*some of us. This is one of the differentiators (can’t find a better word right now). Some became software developers because they enjoy(ed) the process. Some became software developers because that was the way to make products that made money. Neither is more correct or genuine than the other, but neither can also claim to be a significant majority.

eCa··on Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country
I’ve only seen this snippet (on phone so no source access), but var + no fat arrow could also indicate someone who learned js a long time ago and use as what they’re used to.
eCa··on I moved my digital stack to Europe
> Rather than go to a FISA court for approval, we just hack your box and take your data.

You are equating illegal behavior with legal behavior. We do what we can to avoid the legal ways the US government can access our data.

eCa··on I'm going back to writing code by hand
That’s when you ask it to write tests to a good coverage, and then have it reimplement everything with the tests still passing…
eCa··on Google Chrome silently installs a 4 GB AI model on your device without consent
Couldn't the same argument be made for Chrome suddenly including a bitcoin miner? Seems like that would be a difference in degree rather than in kind.
eCa··on The Joy of Folding Bikes
I know it's not for everyone, but it is also a reasonable touring bike if done within its constraints. I've probably done closer to 40 days on my 16" Brompton, longest was a two-week 1000km ride. On the topic of leaving the bike out-of-sight: In those 40 days I've left it locked a total of 20 minutes, otherwise it comes with me into restaurants, supermarkets, public restrooms, hotel rooms..

The biggest downsides are speed and climbing ability. 80k or so has been a reasonable max distance on tour (I've done one 100k day, it was long) and I wouldn't take it to the Alps.

Like the OP, I run Schwalbe Marathon Plus which has been good. But I have had one catastrophic puncture after riding over a particularly nasty piece of glass that cut straight through the tire. After that I bring a folding backup tire.

eCa··on SpaceX says it has agreement to acquire Cursor for $60B
One obvious argument is what it was trained on.
eCa··on Copilot edited an ad into my PR
Vibe coding and copilot inserted the ad-code into that PR?

Is that the most charitable way?

eCa··on AI is not a coworker, it's an exoskeleton
> That's not augmentation, that's a completely different game

Not saying that this comment is ai written, but this phrasing is the em-dash of 2026.

eCa··on AWS European Sovereign Cloud
> still under the jurisdiction of the US regime

Exactly, this seem pointless for people serious about staying away from US owned data stores. I know first hand of EU based businesses that left AWS (and all other US owned services) before 2020 due to customer (B2B) demand which in turn was due to the Cloud Act[1], and for whom it today would be completely untenable to return.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act

eCa··on AI Police Reports: Year in Review
Just this weekend it (Gemini) has produced two detailed sets of instructions on how to connect different devices over bluetooth, including a video (that I didn’t watch), while the devices did not support doing the connections in that direction. No reasonable human reading the involved manuals would think those solutions feasible. Not impressed, again.
eCa··on Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features
> Why search, wade through dubious results, etc when you can just instantly get the result you want in the format you want it?

For one, that way you can see that the source is dubious. Gemini gives it to you cleaned. And then you still have to dig through the sources to confirm that what it gave you is correct and not halucinated.

eCa··on Are Apple gift cards safe to redeem?
> I do create an ephemeral Apple ID every time I get a new phone

In other words, you do have an in-use apple id at (pretty much) all times.

eCa··on Thin desires are eating life
No, I want to read it (or not) the way the writer intended.
eCa··on Koralm Railway
The 57 km Gotthard Base Tunnel has been in operation since 2016. There's also a 3km long tunnel between France and Italy that opened in 1882. Nowadays there's probably hundreds of 1km+ tunnels in the Alps.
eCa··on Show HN: Gemini Pro 3 imagines the HN front page 10 years from now
While I agree completely with the conclusion, for obvious reasons we can’t know for sure if it is correct about the future until we reach it. Perhaps asking it for wild ideas rather than ”most likely” would create something more surprising.
eCa··on I successfully recreated the 1996 Space Jam website with Claude
Laziness is one of the three virtues (of a good programmer), but I think Larry didn’t anticipate the current situation when he wrote it:

”The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it.”

eCa··on How elites could shape mass preferences as AI reduces persuasion costs
The ”historically” does some lifting there. Historically, before the internet, mass media was produced in one version and then distributed. With AI for example news reporting can be tailored to each consumer.
eCa··on AI Is Breaking the Moral Foundation of Modern Society
Especially combined with the AI companies focusing on the destruction of value of human creative output.
eCa··on Google boss says AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'
I’m probably an outlier: I use chatgpt/gemini for specific purposes, but ai summaries on eg google search or youtube gives me negative value (I never read them and they take up space).
eCa··on Mixing Is the Heartbeat of Deep Lakes. At Crater Lake, It's Slowing Down
In addition to that, how many lakes would need to be pumped or would it be a feel-good project for famous lakes?
eCa··on European Nations Decide Against Acquiring Boeing E-7 Awacs Aircraft
> leave US clouds

The pressure to leave US controlled cloud providers actually started way back with the US Cloud Act. I’ve been surprised that that process has been as slow as it has been, especially for the public sector and adjacent services.

eCa··on European Nations Decide Against Acquiring Boeing E-7 Awacs Aircraft
China is trying to grow their influence around the world, while the US is trying to reduce their influence around the world.

From where I’m sitting in the EU, both seem successful in their quests.

(So I’m assuming they mean China.)

eCa··on ChatGPT terms disallow its use in providing legal and medical advice to others
> AI tools must stay within ethical and regulatory boundaries. It’s better for AI to guide people toward professional help than pretend to replace it.

Both of those ships have _sailed_. I am not allowed to read the article, but judging from the title, they have no issues giving _you_ advice, but you can’t use it to give advice to another person.

eCa··on End of Japanese community
> this large dataset we prepared

You mean the two+ decades of labour of love was always done to be a nameless contribution to the AI machine? Somehow I think he would have picked another hobby if he had known that back then.

eCa··on iOS 26.2 to allow third-party app stores in Japan ahead of regulatory deadline
Mu favorite Macos bug (haven’t upgraded to 26 yet, so not sure if it is still a thing):

1. Have Bluetooth on.

2. Turn it off from the menu option, but don’t close the menu.

3. The shortcut to lock the computer don’t work.

It’s been like this for 5+ years.

Funniest thing is if you’re quick enough it’s possible to close the menu using a Bluetooth mouse after BT has been turned off. It’s my daily challenge to pull that off.

eCa··on Paris had a moving sidewalk in 1900, and a Thomas Edison film captured it (2020)
This somehow feels like the horizontal equivalent of a Pater Noster elevator. But probably with even worse error modes if it stops working at 100mph.
eCa··on I am a programmer, not a rubber-stamp that approves Copilot generated code
> I would guess that interest, passion, and motivation all play a role here.

And, to use less pointed language, people’s brains are wired differently. What works for one doesn’t necessarily work for another, even with similar interest, passion, and motivation.

eCa··on Beliefs that are true for regular software but false when applied to AI
> Nobody knows (full scope and on every level) how human brains work.

That is what the parent meant.

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