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henryfjordan

2,823 karma · joined May 1, 2017

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henryfjordan··on Shopify is moving from React Native back to Swift and Kotlin
I don't understand the logic. AI vs Human development still have similar cost profiles. It costs $ per unit of thought (salary or tokens).

If React Native worked well for human programmers, wouldn't it be just as good for AI?

henryfjordan··on Trey Parker and Matt Stone Are Changing the Name of South Park to South America
> Censorship is the government controlling what information the public can access

Wikipedia and the ACLU both use a more expansive definition, where your definition is only 1 type of censorship. The "Left" uses empathy to convince people to self-censor and less often uses "Cancel Culture" to pressure companies into private censorship.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship https://www.aclu.org/documents/what-censorship

henryfjordan··on Trey Parker and Matt Stone Are Changing the Name of South Park to South America
The perception is that the left is in favor of censoring slurs and hate symbols. As a reaction, Trump/MAGA has brought back the R-word for instance.

Saying the Left are "pro-censorship" is not factually incorrect but definitely has a different connotation.

henryfjordan··on Tao: Open math problems being non-renewably mined by AI
The story of the cubic equations is another great example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_equation

Dudes straight up used to hoard solutions to equations and use them in math battles.

henryfjordan··on Play Store blocks AuroraStore, hurting GrapheneOS users
Google's business model is providing you services that are excellent, while also providing advertisers access to your willing eyeballs when you use those services.

Yes, the advertising targeting is incredibly invasive, but let's not pretend they aren't providing world class Search, Email, Docs, Maps, Video (YT), etc in exchange.

henryfjordan··on Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub
Not who you asked, but I was going to say Actions or CI/CD from when I tried out Gitea a few years ago (back when running a Jenkins instance was more normal) but looks like Gitea supports that kind of workflow now: https://about.gitea.com/products/runner/
henryfjordan··on Oracle bans AI-generated code from OpenJDK
The courts are 100% going to have to interpret what is "sufficient human control" at some point.
henryfjordan··on LLMs reward expertise
I've seen junior engineers be productive on their first day in the industry because of AI, so I don't think the article is the whole truth.

The example math is boundary-pushing and definitely not a solved problem. But most of us work on CRUD backends with a React frontend. Those are more or less solved problems that have well-documented solutions. For those kinds of tasks, LLMs just reward usage.

I can count on one hand the number of times in my career I've needed to solve a problem that's not described on Stack Overflow.

henryfjordan··on Startup founders urge U.S. government not to shut off Chinese open weight AI
Is it? Turning a book into an AI model is lot more transformative than turning an AI Model into another AI Model.
henryfjordan··on New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices
Now I'm being super pedantic, but every town can't have the same "landmark" law. What makes a law a "landmark" is that other municipalities look to it for direction.

In a world where the California law exists, and the New York Times has been used as an example of the success of that law for years already, claiming some sort of moral victory with the "landmark" qualifier is objectively wrong.

Does any of this matter? No, but I like arguing about it.

henryfjordan··on New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices
The municipality is already qualifying the sentence! Instead of "NYC announces click-to-cancel law" they qualify it with "landmark".

I think it's silly for a municipality to lie (by omission?) in their own press announcements.

henryfjordan··on Mmorpg World of ClaudeCraft, vibe coded with Fable 5
The term MMO is about the game/server architecture more than the size of the game. MMOs are online games with a single (or sharded) persistent gamestate. That's it.

Most shooters have rounds that restart, breaking the persistence quality of the game. Other games like Minecraft emphasize individual / private servers and break the "single gamestate" proposition. The "Massively" word refers to that single gamestate that many users can interact with, not how many do actually play.

To me, The "play offline" option is more against the MMO definition than the actual number of players.

henryfjordan··on I want to live like Costco people
There's 1655 calories in a pound of uncooked rice, so with 330lbs you are sitting at ~1500 calories a day for a whole year.

You wouldn't starve to death, but you'd absolutely want to supplement (both for more calories and probably for vitamins). But also you'd be eating that rice every single day pretty much, how else are you getting through that much rice?

henryfjordan··on Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%
The layoffs being "due to AI" is usually about freeing up the budget to build a couple datacenters and buy GPUs. And they have to layoff 14% of their workforce because they are buying those GPUs at many times the normal price thanks to the zeitgeist.

They aren't saying that they don't know what to do with the AI productivity boost, but rather they think it worth taking a huge productivity hit right now so they can invest in the future. Whether their vision of the future is realistic...

henryfjordan··on Can I disable all data collection from my vehicle?
I was thinking all it takes is an IMU to tell if the car is a rockin'
henryfjordan··on Battle for Wesnoth: open-source, turn-based strategy game
Not everyone will take a job that requires clearance because they are usually "defense" related.
henryfjordan··on Live: Artemis II Launch Day Updates
Until nukes are going off, Pax Americana stands strong.
henryfjordan··on I found a vulnerability. they found a lawyer
Thanks for clarifying. I was thinking of the CCPA which does have some revenue or user count minimums.
henryfjordan··on I found a vulnerability. they found a lawyer
It's kinda wild that you don't need to be a professional engineer to store PII. The GDPR and other frameworks for PII usually do have a minimum size (in # of users) before they apply, which would help hobbyists. The same could apply for the licensure requirement.

But also maybe hobbyists don't have any business storing PII at scale just like they have no business building public bridges or commercial aircraft.

henryfjordan··on Show HN: I taught LLMs to play Magic: The Gathering against each other
The cards _could_ be copyrightable, would probably be essentially a coin flip if you took it to court.

No individual card text (limited to just the mechanics) is copyrightable but the setlist of cards might be. It would come down to how much creativity went into curating the list of cards that is released. It gets especially murky because new cards are always being released and old cards are being retired, so they obviously put a lot of creative energy into that process. You'd have to avoid pre-made decks as well.

Unless you have funding from an eccentric MTG-loving billionaire, I see why you'd comply with the cease-and-desist.

henryfjordan··on The Waymo World Model
Gemini works well enough in Search and in Meet. And it's baked into the products so it's dead simple to use.

I don't think Google is targeting developers with their AI, they are targeting their product's users.

henryfjordan··on xAI joins SpaceX
Solar can always just go on the roof...
henryfjordan··on Antirender: remove the glossy shine on architectural renderings
"Filter" is a Tik-tok / snapchat / instagram parlance for any kind of overlay / transformation. It's grown larger than just sepia filters and similar. All the ones that do facial tracking and overlay a mustache or w/e is funny in the moment are also referred to as filters.

See https://www.snapchat.com/lens

henryfjordan··on TikTok settles just before social media addiction trial to begin
They are constantly evolving the menu and it's entirely data-driven, so yes? It's not down to the person level like tiktok but if they could, it would be.
henryfjordan··on TikTok settles just before social media addiction trial to begin
I can get a cheeseburger delivered, or there's a dozen places within a 15 minute walk to get one. I can hardly leave the house without seeing an ad for one or some other fast food item on the side of a bus. I can't avoid being hungry, but I can leave my phone at home.

Sure it's a matter of degrees but I don't see a bright line between McDonald's and tiktok. Both want me hooked on their product. Both have harmful aspects. Both have customers they know are over-indulging. Why would only tiktok be liable for that?

henryfjordan··on TikTok settles just before social media addiction trial to begin
Cheeseburgers are everywhere, are addictive to some, and eventually eating enough will kill you.

Put another way: If McDonalds sees I eat 5 cheeseburgers a day, at what point do they have to stop serving me for my own health? Do they need to step in at all?

If Facebook knows I'm scrolling 6 hours a day, at what point do they have to stop serving me?

henryfjordan··on OpenAI to begin testing ads on ChatGPT in the U.S.
The poster above me suggested advertising is inherently evil and should be abolished, I was just countering that absolutist position.

I don't disagree that there are absolutely some awful ads out there, and that they should be regulated heavily. I've been getting so many ads for semaglutide on tiktok lately that seem designed to prey on people with eating disorders. Whoever is behind those is evil.

henryfjordan··on OpenAI to begin testing ads on ChatGPT in the U.S.
Advertisement serves an important purpose. If you were a farmer with a mule and the tractor salesman came by for the first time, that would be life-changing for you. You wouldn't say that salesman was evil for advertising his tractor.
henryfjordan··on X blames users for Grok-generated CSAM; no fixes announced
> Where does the line fall between provider responsibility when providing a tool that can produce protected work, and personal responsibility for causing it to generate that work?

If you operate the tool, you are responsible. Doubly so in a commercial setting. If there are issues like Copyright and CSAM, they are your responsibility to resolve.

If Elon wanted to share out an executable for Grok and the user ran it on their own machine, then he could reasonably sidestep blame (like how photoshop works). But he runs Grok on his own servers, therefore is morally culpable for everything it does.

Your servers are a direct extension of yourself. They are only capable of doing exactly what you tell them to do. You owe a duty of care to not tell them to do heinous shit.

henryfjordan··on Microservices should form a polytree
An AuthN/Z system would probably end looking like counterexample #2, which immediately raised a red flag for me about the article.
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