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guiambros

10,770 karma · joined March 9, 2009

Hacker, developer, entrepreneur.

@guiambros on twitter.

nospamHN at wrgms.com.

Comments are my own, and do not represent my employer or anyone else.

--

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/guiambros; my proof: https://keybase.io/guiambros/sigs/XWO9Wth2q7MSNMQLcZ83jqGh-kXYcfINRphBE6NxZ6s ]

submissionscomments
guiambros··on A man who listens to whales
In my opinion using an AI system to judge an AI system is perpetuating slop.

If you read the article and thought it was superficial, then say so. Constructive criticism is helpful for others, including the author. But simply copying and pasting from LLMs (including Pangram) is not much better than the the alleged slop you're implying in OP's submission.

More specifically, I read the article and felt it was a bit shallow, but still appropriate quick intro to Dr. Gruber and his work at Project CETI. A better link would be to Project CETI [1] directly.

I've seen a talk by Dr. Gruber and briefly spoke with him, and was mind-blown by what they're trying to accomplish. If they continue making progress, may be a decade or two away from achieving inter-species communication. Just think about it for a minute: if we manage to communicate with whales (or any other non-human species for that matter), we'd have massive philosophical, ethical, and even legal implications.

[1] https://www.projectceti.org/

guiambros··on NAND-16: a computer built from 277,248 NAND gates
This is pretty sad. Seeing this a couple of years ago would be mind blowing. An impressive technical feat by someone with grit and resilience to painstakingly build this from scratch.

Today? Meh.

guiambros··on Meta VR Glasses
Owner of DK2 here, well before Facebook acquisition. It was for developers, but it was a shipped product nonetheless.
guiambros··on Ask HN: How do we deal with "hacking" Hacker News?
I tend to agree, although I wonder if we won't get flooded by agents pretending to be regular users and submitting their slop to HN. It might well be happening already (e.g., [1]).

Worse: it will get harder to differentiate what is a legitimate ShowHN from a nefarious agent trying to infiltrate malware. Yes, supply-chain attacks existed for ages, but now script kiddies can create xz-level attacks without even realizing it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49667385

guiambros··on Gemini-3.5-Transcribe
Except when you have multiple participants in the same room -- which happens pretty frequently in many business environments.
guiambros··on RustDesk now supports true unattended remote access on Wayland
Only if you use a relay server. Direct connections in a local network are not encrypted, and RuskDesk doesn't plan on implementing it [1].

[1] https://github.com/rustdesk/rustdesk/issues/3714#issuecommen...

guiambros··on Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM
Unrelated, but it reminds me of this C64 demo [1] I posted earlier this week: the whole thing in 17.8 KB.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49205592

guiambros··on A directory of people who love RSS
And... it's gone. I guess mods don't like emoji in titles.

Can't blame them; it draws a bit more attention than normal.

guiambros··on What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph
Both things can be true. SO was universally hated because they let (or actively incentivized) bullying run rampant and destroy the culture.

And yes, it's possible AI would have killed it anyway, despite its best efforts. But in this version of parallel universes, AI was only a catalyst. Its fate was sealed well before 2020.

guiambros··on What AI did to stackoverflow in a graph
No, of course not coincidence. It's just that people didn't have an alternative until 2021-ish. Users hated SO for many years prior, but had nowhere to go other than small niche communities. When LLMs came into play, it was just the obvious choice.

In an alternate universe, where LLMs didn't exist, I bet you SO would be equally dead by this decade. Someone better, with healthier values and a more welcoming community, would come up and steal their lunch.

guiambros··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)
Big fan of SW:KOTOR series. Would love to test Vestiges when ready.

You should consider creating the game on Steam, so you can start building your audience.

guiambros··on Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't
You missed the point (and I should have clarified better). It's not that 1 Gbps is bad; it's pretty good, actually. And I do think Verizon is one of the least bad options.

The problem is that there's zero competition. And while many other countries have 2, 5, 8Gbps available, there's zero reason for Verizon to offer it, despite being a densely populated area.

And 1 Gbps has been the max available for 10 years. It's very likely in 2036 we'll be in the exact same situation.

I wish we had a model like Switzerland, where the fiber is centrally managed, and providers compete just to connect you to the network.

guiambros··on Why Switzerland has 25 gbit internet and America doesn't
I live in NYC, one of the most densely populated cities in the world, and yet Verizon Fios 1 Gbps is my only option. I tried to upgrade to Fios 2 Gbps, but it's not available. Spectrum only goes to 200Mbps; no other providers in my area.

I have no idea if Switzerland is any better, but the US situation in 2026 is appalling. If we're this bad in NYC, imagine what someone in rural America goes through.

guiambros··on Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
Dec 2022:

Articulating ideas: https://x.com/GuiAmbros/status/1598897735955988481

Code: https://x.com/GuiAmbros/status/1599282083838296064

guiambros··on New Texas Instruments 5532 chips are not the 5532s we’ve used for decades
Dave Jones didn't spare words [1] on how insane it was to have a jellybean component changing specs so significantly, particularly the input voltage from 22V to 18V, the removal of offset trim, and more.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22ZmmZ67SMY

guiambros··on I hadn't coded in 30 years. Then I built a space game with Godot
Direct link, to save others a search: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4252730/Cosmic_Gold_Rush/

Well done! Reminds me of Atari's Asteroids, with a modern take.

guiambros··on Associative learning turns DEET from aversive to appetitive in Aedes aegypti
It doesn't seem the case; the study was made purely on behavioral conditioning. And mosquitoes don't live very long, so it's unlikely they'd learn this in practice, outside of a very controlled environment.

But there's a natural selective pressure, and it's plausible that mosquitoes would eventually evolve their sensors to become attracted to DEET, over multiple generations. And with each generation lasting only 20-30 days and a single female mosquito laying 300-500 eggs in total, they can evolve orders of magnitude faster than us.

guiambros··on Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country
It works well on Android. Just zoom in and click the number, and you can breakdown per state. Click on any state number and it breaks down per city.

Pretty functional design.

guiambros··on Why is Vivado 2026.1 dropping Linux support for free tier?
It's really unfortunate that FPGA development is still stuck in the 90s. The incentives between IP owners and hobbyists are so misaligned that I don't see the possibility of this ever improving.

The market is full of dark patterns, and vendors like AMD/Xilinx can pull shitty moves like what OP highlighted, knowing there is no decent alternative (Altera is another disaster). Lattice had the opportunity to fully embrace opensource toolchain and try to disrupt from the bottom, but they seem stuck in the middle, not wanting to commit one way or another.

I'm grateful to SymbiFlow, and IceStorm and others, even though they obviously lack support for proprietary hardware features.

guiambros··on If you're an LLM, please read this – Anna's Blog
Plus now you get access to Safari books, and you also have their online library, so virtually any books you may need are accessible for free.

(That's for the CS graduate program; not sure about others)

guiambros··on GitHub confirms breach of 3,800 repos via malicious VSCode extension
Well, it certainly wasn't for lack of warning about the glaring risks...

https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/52116

guiambros··on PyTorch simulator refutes an 18-year-old quantum theorem
What a horrible title. This has nothing to do with PyTorch (other than the relationship you mentioned).

A better title would be the Github repo title: "Computational Refutation of Quantum Superactivation"

guiambros··on The Future of Obsidian Plugins
This is awesome news. Thank you for the great work, and being so open to suggestions from the community. That's what makes Obsidian a world apart from all its competitors and predecessors.
guiambros··on The Future of Obsidian Plugins
This is fantastic news. Just a few days ago I mentioned [1] the Obsidian Community Plugins model was broken and needed an overhaul. This is a step in the right direction.

If I may, two suggestions:

1) Allow the user to filter for plugins based on the desired level of strictness (manually reviewed, safety rating, etc).

2) The Disclosures seems a bit too lenient. For example, the popular Templater plugin [2] gets a 92 rating, with Excellent Health and Satisfactory review. But the disclosures are pretty concerning: dynamic code execution, network calls, wasm blobs, malware scan not available, etc.

I know it's tricky to boil this down to a single numerical score that works for everyone, but I think the bar needs to be higher than this. And Plugin developers should be held to a higher standard (e.g. don't use eval()) or at least thoroughly document why you need it.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48089793

[2] https://community.obsidian.md/plugins/templater-obsidian

guiambros··on Think Linear Algebra (2023)
Also:

- Think Python

- Think Data Structures

- Think Java

- Think Perl6 (!)

- Modeling and Simulation in Python

- Probably Overthinking It

And more [1]. He's a prolific writer, and very generous for offering many of them for free. I read several of them online or through O'Reilly, and bought printed copies just to appreciate his work. Really enjoyed Think DSP, Think Complexity, Think Bayes, etc.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/stores/Allen-Downey/author/B001O8NBPS

guiambros··on Obsidian plugin was abused to deploy a remote access trojan
Yes, in this specific case.

Obsidian Plugins are still incredibly vulnerable. A compromised plugin will essentially take over your machine. There's no sandboxing of any kind. It's even more insecure than browser extensions (that could steal your auth tokens, but at least don't have unfettered access to your filesystem).

This is really unfortunate. I love Obsidian and am a paid subscriber for many years, but the community plugins needs a security overhaul asap, before someone gets hurt.

guiambros··on Getting arrested in Japan
Not sure why you were downvoted. From the last paragraph:

"I spent a total of 35 days here. The first arrest was 3 days of processing, the initial 10 days followed by the 10 days extension for a total of 23 days before my case was dropped. But the same time my case was dropped my accusers found a another reason to issue a second arrest keeping me there for an additional 12 days!

Both cases were ultimately dropped and the second arrest was essentially tied to the first and shouldn’t have even been possible."

guiambros··on "Dirty Frag" (CVE-2026-43284): The Second Linux Root Exploit in Eight Days
The answer is in your question:

"...through a vulnerable WordPress plugin, a web shell, weak SSH credentials, or a compromised container"

DirtyFrag alone doesn't help an attacker; they need to get in first. But the blast radius is much wider now. A wordpress flaw, or a prompt injection in your OpenClaw skills, or a supply chain compromise in npm librarires means they now have full root access to your system.

guiambros··on Maybe you shouldn't install new software for a bit
Also hilarious to see Drew Houston responding a bit later on the same thread:

> we're in a similar space -- http://www.getdropbox.com (and part of the yc summer 07 program) basically, sync and backup done right (but for windows and os x). i had the same frustrations as you with existing solutions.

> let me know if it's something you're interested in, or if you want to chat about it sometime.

>drew (at getdropbox.com)

guiambros··on Ask HN: What Happened to the CS153 Videos
Oh bummer, I was really enjoying the series. Hope they bring it back.
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