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eigencoder

340 karma · joined July 22, 2025

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eigencoder··on Why ugly buildings create NIMBYism
I mean, all words were made up once! Yeah stroad is a relatively recent one.
eigencoder··on Where .env Went Wrong
But secrets are a kind of configuration, right? I agree they should be kept separate from non-secret config; ideally non-secret configuration can be committed to your codebase somewhere depending on the environment it's running in.
eigencoder··on Where .env Went Wrong
Hm, I haven't seen these issues personally. We only have one `.env` file and it's just for local secrets. Configuration emphatically does not go in `.env` and ideally is in docker compose and defined in code (we use Pydantic Settings).
eigencoder··on Why ugly buildings create NIMBYism
A related article on NITBYism and the built environment, but from the perspective of modern finance and how financial instruments may increase the amount of ugly buildings.

https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/you-probably-own...

eigencoder··on Italy Blocks Reproductive Health Websites Women on Web and Women Help Women
I think Americans get that other countries have different laws. But freedom of speech, an ideal we lifted from European enlightenment thinkers, is so important to our culture and national mythos that it is a little surprising how differently it's valued in much of Europe.

I'm sure the culture shock goes both ways though, as you say. Curious about your perspective on the the most bizarre / arbitrary things in the US?

eigencoder··on Passkeys were invented by engineers with zero understanding of consumer brain
I hate passkeys so much. They're so confusingly implemented.
eigencoder··on The startup's Postgres survival guide
This was a helpful guide. For someone using postgres for a few years, but rarely to its limits, a lot of it was review, but it had some great new tidbits to take in.
eigencoder··on Claude Is Not a Compiler
I always don't know enough about DNS. This is great stuff.

If exe.dev is running their own DNS zone, then wouldn't they be setting the expiry value in the SOA record themselves? So they could set it to something short, and secondary servers are supposed to honor it, right?

eigencoder··on Claude Is Not a Compiler
Usually when you create the VM, it gets its own DNS subdomain that looks like `my-new-vm-name.exe.xyz`. (I'm not affiliated with exe.dev, I just use their product). So I doubt there would be any cached requests for that particular subdomain before the VM is created.
eigencoder··on Claude Is Not a Compiler
I really like what exe.dev is doing. And their philosophy of how cloud services could work is amazing. I have a monthly subscription and it's really cool to just vibe code a little website with Shelley and have it running in minutes. I feel like I have so much fun using their service, and spend so much less time thinking about what things will cost, or what cloud service to use. It's just so much simpler and the friction is so much less compared to other cloud services.
eigencoder··on I'm a USB-C Maximalist
I don't like USB-C because they all look the same on the outside, but they're not all the same on the inside. Especially my cheap consumer electronics. Sometimes they will charge, sometimes they won't charge, but all the cables look the same, and you don't tend to know in advance.
eigencoder··on The Meta Glasses backlash is changing how (or if) people use them
I've honestly never seen someone wearing them in the wild. Is it just like a San Francisco thing?
eigencoder··on Buried Apple feature turns an iPhone into the perfect kids' dumb phone
I used Apple Configurator on my mac to supervise my iphone. Once that's done, you use configurator to add a profile to the device that (1) contains an allowlist of apps that can be used and (2) an empty allowlist of websites that can be visited. #1 means you can't use any new apps, and #2 prevents the ability to browse the internet by sending links to yourself in e.g. messenger or whatsapp.
eigencoder··on Buried Apple feature turns an iPhone into the perfect kids' dumb phone
One 11 year old with a rifle is probably fine, but two with rifles is just asking for trouble haha
eigencoder··on Good Tools Are Invisible
I'm not sure about this.

One of my favorite tools is my bicycle. To me, the user interface of my bicycle is totally invisible. I just pull it out of the garage, hop on, and away I go. And it's not like I enjoy my bicycle as a "puzzle" either -- I just want it to go somewhere.

But to my 6 year old, the user interface is quite literally fear-inducing. Everything about the tool is very "visible" to him. Does that make it a bad tool?

eigencoder··on Buried Apple feature turns an iPhone into the perfect kids' dumb phone
I like the feature, but I don't like the assumption at the beginning.

> Come September, he will have to walk across town to school on his own. But if he's going to be walking around out in the world without me, then a tracking tag won't cut it. He is far too young to have unfettered access to the internet and social media platforms, but what if he gets lost? A classic Nokia, supplying just texts and calls, won't come to his aid. Maps and satnav require a web connection.

What if he gets lost? With a classic Nokia, he could still call someone and get help. Or, he might (heaven forbid) just need to ask someone for help. Or walk around until he remembers where he is. These are all good skills to learn.

eigencoder··on Buried Apple feature turns an iPhone into the perfect kids' dumb phone
Yeah, but your kid can also walk to school without a map, it's not a big deal.
eigencoder··on Buried Apple feature turns an iPhone into the perfect kids' dumb phone
Also, it doesn't add up. How would Camera let you video call? Don't you need Facetime?
eigencoder··on Buried Apple feature turns an iPhone into the perfect kids' dumb phone
I've used MDM to make my iPhone dumb. It's great! I wish there was an easy way to publish my configuration so others could use it / adapt it, but it's a little involved because you have to wipe your phone the first time you set it up with configurator.
eigencoder··on Majority of Americans Support Banning Social Media for Kids Under 16
This doesn't surprise me at all. I don't think we should be letting kids under 16 use social media, and the issue is a collective action problem that is best solved collectively (i.e. with government regulation).

But, I understand concerns raised by many, for example the EFF, that legislation banning children will have negative implications for online privacy. How do we "protect the kids", while also maintaining online privacy, which has been a fundamental part of the internet for a long time?

eigencoder··on The 'papers, please' era of the internet will decimate your privacy
I disagree. Using social media is totally comparable to smoking. It's addictive, it's detrimental to health, and it's especially detrimental to kids going through puberty. "Browsing the internet", these days, mostly consists of social media platforms.
eigencoder··on Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't
Not yet. I did specify some specific things about the tech stack and the way I wanted pages outlined that I think helped it get on the right track. But I honestly didn't look at any of the code at all, even when there were a couple bugs that needed fixed. In the future, I'll bet they could.
eigencoder··on Improvement in advanced Alzheimer’s disease following high-dose psilocybin
I thought the Soma in BNW was more like a type of depressant, like an opioid.
eigencoder··on AWS Bedrock to require sharing data with Anthropic for Mythos and future models
Every retailer does that
eigencoder··on Why AI hasn't replaced software engineers, and won't
Yeah, I think this will really be a thing. I have been using `exe.dev` lately, and I was at an AirBnB with my family where we wanted to play a game, but it needed pencil and paper for each person, but we didn't have those. I thought it would be nice to have a little web app where you could write your input and then vote on other people's responses directly from your phone. I just spun up a VM on exe.dev, asked the AI to write the app, and then made the VM public-facing. It was a little buggy, but it worked well enough and we had a fun time.
eigencoder··on Hacking for Defense Stanford 2026 – Lessons Learned Presentations
I don't see how we could remove states and boundaries and warfare. Boundaries aren't bad things, they're a natural consequence of living in a natural world
eigencoder··on Corrupting a ZFS File on Purpose
I get what they're saying, it's more about the punchy tone than the word choice
eigencoder··on Apple decided not to roll out Siri in EU after denied request for exemption
I mean, borders still exist, and laws apply within borders. I don't believe that national (or supra-national in the EU's case) sovereignty is yet a dinosaur of the past.
eigencoder··on Anthropic Is Preparing for IPO and We Should Be Worried
As I understand it, those cost optimizations relied on someone else brute forcing new model development. If everyone was trying to do it cheaper, we wouldn't have the models we have today.
eigencoder··on Ontario auditors find doctors' AI note takers routinely blow basic facts
Usually tsp means teaspoons, and 4tsp / 20 mL vs 3tsp / 15 mL are the same ratios of tsp to mL, aren't they?
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