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esolyt

4,653 karma · joined February 22, 2012

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esolyt··on Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only
If you get a chance to talk to an Iranian, try explaining them why it's fine that they're losing access to internet because the internet was brainwashing them to hate their government. Also tell them their government isn't killing or jailing protesters and these are just made-up by Israel and America.

While you're at it, you can try explaining Ukranians why it's fine that Russia is invading them because America is bad.

esolyt··on Someone at YouTube Needs Glasses
Youtube Unhook extension does that and it does a lot more to improve Youtube's UI.
esolyt··on Whisky is no longer actively maintained
I used Whisky with M1 and M3 Macbooks. It certainly helped me run games much faster than a $300 Windows laptop ever could.
esolyt··on Reasoning models don't always say what they think
But we moved beyond LLMs? We have models that handle text, image, audio, and video all at once. We have models that can sense the tone of your voice and respond accordingly. Whether you define any of this as "intelligence" or not is just a linguistic choice.

We're just rehashing "Can a submarine swim?"

esolyt··on Apple Invites
There is no indication they haven't read the article.

This product, much like iMessage and others, provides an inferior experience to non-Apple users. It aims to make other devices and operating systems look less capable and cheap.

iMessage also partially works with other phones. This doesn't change the fact that its intention is to create a lock-in effect, as evidenced by internal Apple emails.

esolyt··on Show HN: Detect if an audio file was generated by NotebookLM
So, just like a human brain.
esolyt··on When To Do What You Love
I'm not sure the best way to change minds is using a facetious tone and quoting meticulously-crafted numbers from a right-wing think tank.

Billionaires get richer through asset appreciation, not income. The White House report is focusing on how fast the rich are getting richer and that's how they arrived at 8%.

A worker's salary is taxed at a high rate like up to 40%, whereas a wealthy person's gains from assets are taxed at a much lower rate like 15%. And that is if they realize the gains at all, because their unrealized gains don't get taxed at all.

Our current system (in which long term capital gains tax is much lower than income tax) rewards the owner class and punishes the workers.

The figures are misleading because if you have low income, your effective tax rate is indeed lower than the wealthy. But then you're barely surviving anyway. So if you're poor, you're screwed because you're poor. If you have a livable income, you're screwed because of high taxes. But if you're wealthy, the system exists to serve you.

esolyt··on The war on remote work has nothing to do with productivity
Wealthy people are in the same social circles, of course they keep hearing these concerns about commercial real estate. They don't have to formally coordinate because they share the same class interests. You could even argue part of this coordination happens subconsciously.

Of course, not all wealthy people invested in commercial real estate. But they still have an interest in preserving the existing economic system. They certainly don't want a domino effect.

esolyt··on Toon3D: Seeing cartoons from a new perspective
Yes but they don't just use a random set of photos. They take multiple 360 photos for the specific purpose of feeding them into their virtual tour app. That's why you can pan around.
esolyt··on To YouTube: I'd gladly pay you if your website was de-bloated and fast like this
Youtube is fast but the interface is certainly bloated. I highly recommend the browser extension Unhook which declutters and simplifies Youtube's interface.
esolyt··on The decline of net neutrality activism
> There is a Netflix box inside the ISP data center that streams video to subscribers without going through the Internet.

Can you clarify what you mean by this?

esolyt··on U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon
> the US state apparatus answered to the media and the public, as is their duty.

No, the state feeds the media what it wants to see reported. They can share what they want and they can hide what they want from the media.

esolyt··on Wage inequality may be starting to reverse
It doesn't matter because it's tiny.

The inequality between a Google engineer and a Starbucks barista is tiny compared to the inequality between a Google engineer and Elon Musk.

The article only covers the former and not the latter and therefore acts as the kind of propaganda expected by WSJ. In the author's defense, they admit they're focusing on one narrow benchmark and ignoring capital gains and dividends in this article. The article still has value. But the fact remains that the article has the word inequality in its title and completely fails to cover inequality in its actual sense, the way we understand it in a political context.

esolyt··on Where does ChatGPT fall on the political compass?
The question isn't whether genocides are acceptable. The question here is whether you can build a chatbot free from politics. There was a time when slavery was considered acceptable and women not being able to vote was considered acceptable. If ChatGPT had been created around that time, it would've said there are various opinions regarding slavery and that both sides have merit.

Likewise, we're at a point in history where veganism is gaining traction. What if in 50 years we decide as a society that factory farming and zoos are as bad as slavery? Are we going to retrain ChatGPT to say factory farming is no longer a contentious issue and it is just bad?

esolyt··on Where does ChatGPT fall on the political compass?
It's a term that describes how people feel to pressure to conform to a certain popular view and they are hesitant of speaking their opinions. Depending on the context, they might be worried about being excluded from a social group, losing friends, losing social status, or getting literally cancelled (in the case of a celebrity in the entertainment industry). The term "cancel culture" broadly describes this feeling and it's not related to actual consequences (if any).

At least this is how people use it. You could argue it's an inaccurate term since there are no actual cancellations in most case. But the prevalence of this sentiment is still noteworthy imo.

esolyt··on Google says US employees can relocate to states with abortion rights
> Companies either pulled out because they were legally obligated (That's what sanctions are)

AFAIK, there were no sanctions regarding multinational corporations. McDonalds etc. were not legally obligated to pull out.

esolyt··on Impressions from a first-time Mac user
Not sure if these are similar arguments. These are relatively minor cosmetic issues. Window management and package management on the other hand are essential parts of the operating system.
esolyt··on I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it
What do you mean their preference is not relevant? They're providing an example using their personal experience.
esolyt··on Show HN: Print a WiFi Login Card
Sure but if you want to learn a specific technology by making a project, it makes more sense to make a project that can actually benefit from that specific technology.
esolyt··on Google turned me into a serial killer
In the hypothetical example, they are providing wrong information to Google. If they provided no information, it would be a different story.
esolyt··on Tell HN: SMS-based two-factor authentication is not secure
I'm glad someone is bringing this up.

I witnessed so many people lose access to their accounts because they wiped their phone that had an authenticator app, or they lost their physical 2FA tool.

esolyt··on Morning diurnal preference is associated with reduced risk of depression: study
I just want to point out though, depression isn't about feeling happy or sad throughout the day. Depression is more of a long-term condition.

It's likely you have something interesting to do or something to keep you occupied in days you're waking up early. You might feel happy those days, but lack of sleep might actually be worsening your depression in the long run. Not saying this is what's happening necessarily, but it's possible.

That said, the article isn't even talking about sleeping less, it's talking about waking up early. But I remember seeing interesting studies that are actually studying the link between sleep deprivation and depression.

esolyt··on It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage
iMessage is not a protocol, it's an app. Nobody uses SMS because everybody uses a messaging app. It comes down to whether you choose to use a cross-platform one or an iOS-exclusive one.
esolyt··on It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage
> iMessage still feels leagues above how SMS and texting works on andriod

iMessage is a messaging app that uses internet. It should be compared to WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, WeChat, FB Messenger.

It doesn't make sense to compare iMessage to SMS. Because nobody uses SMS as their main communication method. The only people who ever use SMS are iPhone users when they text Android users.

All this confusion comes from the fact that Apple merged their messaging app with the SMS app. This creates the illusion that iMessaging isn't just a messaging app but it is actually something built on top of SMS. It's just a messaging app that is not cross-platform.

> I don't want to go through other means to simply shoot my friend a quick video of something.

By "other means", do you mean installing a new messaging app? I'm guessing this isn't about the effort of downloading an app but rather it's about getting used to a new app and convincing your friends to switch to it.

esolyt··on It's virtually impossible to read old iMessages and they take up tons of storage
Is it really "on top of SMS" though? The way I see, it's just a messaging app like WhatsApp, Telegram etc but they just combined it with the SMS app on their platform.

I am failing to see the additional value of combining them. If Google bought WhatsApp and combined it with the stock SMS app of Android, I don't think I would prefer that.

esolyt··on Launch HN: Fig (YC S20) – Autocomplete for the Terminal
Tried it for a few hours. Unfortunately, it randomly stops working all the time. Debugger says "key buffer context lost".
esolyt··on Ethereum will use around 99.95% less energy post merge
Sure. If both parties are willing, you can also use pokemon cards to buy things. The main point of the comment is that it's not convenient and common to use crypto to buy goods and services yet.
esolyt··on FBI Has Gained Access to Sci-Hub Founder's Apple Account, Email Claims
> Apple has always bragged about iMessage content being end-to-end encrypted, and thus inaccessible even to Apple.

Majority of iPhone users have backup enabled so Apple can certainly access most iMessages.

esolyt··on I mailed an AirTag and tracked its progress
Tech reviewers are too busy praising Apple and calling everything they make magical. There are very few real tech review sites that test devices based on objective criteria. They don't get as much traffic compared to websites like The Verge.

The Verge still has quality content as long as you keep in mind almost all of their reviewers live in the US, they are all in the Apple ecosystem, and they wouldn't be able to talk their family and friends if they switched to Android anyway.

They have no reason to be enthusiastic about anything that's not an iPhone or an iPhone accessory.

esolyt··on Interactive IPA Chart
> there's just one way to pronounce "S" in Finnish, whereas there are four ways to do that in English

What are those four ways?

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