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jlarocco

8,107 karma · joined July 22, 2011

GitHub: https://github.com/jl2

Coding Blog: https://jl2.github.io

SmugMug: http://laroccophoto.com/

Radio Call Sign: KC0JSL

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jlarocco··on US Military disables ad trackers on troops' phones
If they cared about the troops, they wouldn't send them on bullshit missions like whatever we're doing in Iran.
jlarocco··on Claude for Commerce Agents
The intelligence is artificial, but the dollars it spends on your behalf are very real.
jlarocco··on Defrag98: Windows 98 Disk Defragmenter Simulator Online
I've said the same thing about using Linux.

20 years ago if somebody told you they used Linux it really meant something - they weren't running WSL, they weren't running a VM in EC2, they probably didn't power on and immediately have things working, and they probably learned a ton just getting to a login screen for the first time. Spinning up a VM just doesn't give the same learning experience.

jlarocco··on New Worlds: We are living in the future of J.G. Ballard or William Gibson
My favorite is "The Best Short Stories of J.G. Ballard".

It has some of his best sci-fi, and they're all under 50 pages. His longer fiction (Cocaine Nights, Empire of the Sun, etc.) is okay, but IMO short stories are where he really shined.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/70239.The_Best_Short_Sto...

jlarocco··on $580M undersea cable rerouted to avoid the grave of Dobby the House Elf
Yeah, isn't it crazy how that works?

There's some open space near my house with a fenced off area saying to stay on trail to protect the ecosystem, but of course oil and gas companies can drive their trucks through to setup fracking rigs.

jlarocco··on Lost my phone at the office. Claude suggested tracking Bluetooth signal strength
> Meanwhile, one peak at the code and you can already see the state starting to become a bit of a spaghetti mess.

So it's on par with humans, then.

jlarocco··on Meta Ran Ads That Contained AI-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Imagery
Is it surprising? Google and Facebook can barely police the content their human users post.
jlarocco··on Darktable
It's kind of shitty to pirate Capture One. The full, non-subscription price is only $350, which is less than most cameras, and not a bad price for "pro level" software.

I agree that it's a lot better than Darktable and RawTherapee, but if you don't want to pay for it you should settle for one of the open source tools. They're not so bad they're unusable, and editing RAW photos isn't exactly something you need to do.

Extra shame if you're using it commercially.

jlarocco··on Alien World Chemistry Found Inside Meteorite That Struck New Jersey Home
It happens at the same probability as anywhere else on earth.
jlarocco··on OpenAI and Hugging Face address security incident during model evaluation
I would have to laugh if AI's first autonomous achievement was accidentally zero-daying everything and crippling society.
jlarocco··on Jack Dorsey launches Buzz to combine team chat, AI agents and Git hosting
It's crazy how one lucky break lets somebody spend the rest of their life throwing s*t at the wall to see what sticks to earn them more money.
jlarocco··on A Road to Lisp: Which Lisp
Thanks! I don't think I've seen that one.
jlarocco··on A Road to Lisp: Which Lisp
On a related note, there's a cross-platform Common Lisp package, "Bike" https://github.com/Lovesan/bike, that lets you use .Net assemblies from Common Lisp.

I've used it a tiny bit at work (on Windows) and at home (on Linux), and ran into one issue with "out" parameters, but otherwise it works really well.

jlarocco··on What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public
It was a tongue in cheek complaint about their terrible apps and the user hostile way they force unwanted "features" on people.

I'd pay 2x my subscription price to be able to use a third party client again.

jlarocco··on What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public
I wish they'd buy Spotify...

Keep one SRE to keep the servers running, one guy to do security updates to the app, and the team that acquires rights to music.

jlarocco··on GAO: DOE Is Prematurely Excluding Less Expensive Options for Nuclear Cleanup
I think storing nuclear waste was decided to be a bad idea a long time ago.

I'm not a nuclear scientist, but I was under the impression that if something is radioactive enough to be a hazard then it's radioactive enough to generate power.

Is that not the case?

jlarocco··on County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'
Nice ad-hominem. Obviously if I think lobbyists are assholes it's because I'm un-educated.
jlarocco··on County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'
There's no reason not to blame lobbyists as well. A lobbyist saying "it's just business," doesn't excuse them for being assholes.
jlarocco··on The AI industry is pouring millions into US elections
"Voting with your Wallet" - the American way.
jlarocco··on Leaving Mozilla
I think Firefox gets hated on more than the others because they advertise putting the user in control but in practice they seem to undermine it at every opportunity.

A browser that puts users in control should make features like AI and advertising opt-in because there is a sizeable group of people who are concerned about those things. It's meaningless if they only put users in control who agree 100% with Mozilla's ways of thinking.

After so many times of blundering in ways that are favorable to their corporate sponsors, it's hard to believe they're not doing it on purpose.

jlarocco··on Federal judge blocks H1B visa $100K fee
Pay more.
jlarocco··on 32GB of DDR5 now costs $375 – AI shortage continues to squeeze PC building
I guess I'm old and haven't paid much attention recently, but $375 for 32Gb doesn't sound that bad to me.

But then again I remember spending hundreds of dollars as a high school student to upgrade my family's 8Mb desktop to 40 Mb.

jlarocco··on Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min
I'm surprised you can't believe it.

Most companies large enough to have their own IT have monitoring and know what's going through their network. The larger the company, the more likely they're watching. I've personally never seen that information used against anybody unless they were looking at shady stuff (porn, hacking websites, etc.), but I'm sure they're monitoring.

Even outsourced IT for small companies will often put "security" software like Sentinel One or Sophos on machines they manage, and those can track and block web traffic, report everything being installed, and even MITM HTTPS traffic.

Personally I don't see the big deal. If I don't want my employer watching something, I don't do it on their network. I monitor what's going on in my tiny home network, and I expect anybody administrating larger networks does the same thing.

jlarocco··on Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min
Other than adding buzzwords to a features list, I don't see AI really moving the needle here. As you've said, it's always been the expectation that employers are watching over their networks.

There's already loads of monitoring software available that can scrutinize, categorize, and track everything going through corporate networks. A company I worked at ~20 years ago had an internal website showing a live display of URLs accessed through their whole network, a "top 100" list, a break down into categories (news, email, games, etc.) and other stuff along those lines. They were absolutely categorizing and scrutinizing everything way back then, no AI needed.

jlarocco··on Adafruit receives demand letter from Fenwick legal counsel on behalf of Flux.ai
>What would be a better way to incorporate AI as a spell checker?

You just don't need AI to do spell checking. It's a waste of energy, bandwidth and tokens. It's like Java Enterprise Fizz-Buzz - 1000x more complicated than it needs to be and complete overkill.

But at least you can tell your manager you're using AI!

jlarocco··on Adafruit receives demand letter from Fenwick legal counsel on behalf of Flux.ai
Annoying, but not surprising.

The future is using AI to do everything, and nobody gets funded saying they're taking a small step forward.

jlarocco··on macOS needs its grid back
Could have been something else then, but (in the past, at least) they would definitely reset some of the settings on every major upgrade.
jlarocco··on Reviving Teletext for Ham Radio
There are actually multiple implementation of networking over ham radio (though not using teletext).

Some of the limitations are that ham radio requires getting a license (it's easy, but it's a little bit of work and turns some people off), the user base is tiny (it's a niche inside a niche), it requires technical knowledge and specialized hardware, and legally it can't be encrypted or used for commercial purposes. That's okay if your plan is to broadcast messages without censorship, but not so great if you want to check email or browse https sites.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/build-a-longdistance-data-network-...

https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/5bj5w0/intern...

jlarocco··on macOS needs its grid back
It's been a while since I dumped OSX and went back to Linux, but IIRC, this setting gets reset every time the system updates.

At some point Apple realized the "power user" market was too small, and they were better off treating all of their users like idiots. And that's when I left.

jlarocco··on Florida sues OpenAI and Sam Altman over AI risks
The 2016 election was 10 years ago.
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