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jvolkman

2,210 karma · joined June 25, 2015

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/jvolkman; my proof: https://keybase.io/jvolkman/sigs/vHq_PWj4HPJyq6stHeItu9okcwmKo0ckVWKDAMxLrlM ]
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jvolkman··on Nobody Asked for a Crab Chair
It does have a retractable foot rest.
jvolkman··on Bazel's UX is really, really, really bad
Here you go: https://github.com/jvolkman/re.bzl
jvolkman··on Google avoids a breakup of its ad tech business
Yes. We had the same comments about Gulf of America.

Edit: I don't know that there's an actual database served up by the US Gov, but governments control the naming of these things within their own jurisdictions. All of the big mapping products have the ability to serve up different names based on where you're viewing from.

And Apple just renamed: https://apnews.com/article/apple-lake-ontario-america-google...

jvolkman··on uv: Deduplicate all files in the wheel cache
> The only advantage of uv is to have support for parallel async extraction

Maybe the only advantage in a particular area (installing)? Because there are many other advantages.

The rich lock file for instance allows for much better cross-platform tooling. I can build a linux Docker container from a macos build host, for example, without VMs or any other emulation - simply using the cross-platform details in uv.lock and the correct tooling. I can even cross-compile numpy and other native wheels (linux -> macos, macos -> linux).

Other locker tools provide similar cross-platform information (Poetry, PDM), but pip is still lacking.

jvolkman··on Aphantasia Beginner's Guide
I think the apple is just a small example to enable comparison.

People that actually have aphantasia will know from a lifetime of experiences (like thinking "counting sheep" is a metaphor), but might not know that the condition now has a name or that most others have a different experience.

jvolkman··on Wiped out: US faces surging toilet paper prices amid trade war with Canada
Many have a fan option for drying.
jvolkman··on Protobuf has LSP support
> Protobuf now has modern IDE support for the first time

Weird post. I built IntelliJ protobuf support [1] while at Google like 10 years ago, and it started shipping by default with IntelliJ in ~2021. Maybe that's not considered "modern".

[1] https://github.com/jvolkman/intellij-protobuf-editor

jvolkman··on Google I/O 2026 had nothing to say and said it badly ahead of Apple's WWDC
> There's a supercut of the event on YouTube which solely shows every mention of the term "AI." It's about a minute long and by the end you want to cover your ears to shut out this sound and fury.

Amateurs. Apple would never allow something like this to happen.

Oh, wait: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-CPfqZgWTk

jvolkman··on 'No way to prevent this,' says only package manager where this regularly happens
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_...

Which one?

jvolkman··on A History of IDEs at Google
IntelliJ was unsupported ("community supported") when I joined in the summer of 2015. I built a new protobuf editor plugin during that period as a side project, mostly for myself, which suddenly became used by thousands of Googlers when IntelliJ became the supported IDE again in ~2016?

I eventually handed it over to JetBrains and I think it ships by default with IntelliJ now.

jvolkman··on A History of IDEs at Google
The settings in the internal version are "Antigravity User Settings". Pretty sure they're the same.
jvolkman··on Alphabet Announces First Quarter 2026 Results
That's been Alphabet's site since the restructuring happened back in 2015. The site has barely changed in a decade.
jvolkman··on Newly purchased Vizio TVs now require Walmart accounts to use smart features
While all of that is certainly true, even the DU6900 has the "Start with Smart Hub Home" option that defaults to enabled but can be disabled according to its manual. I assume that's what OP is seeing; it's a common thing to want to disable on Samsung TVs.
jvolkman··on Newly purchased Vizio TVs now require Walmart accounts to use smart features
What is the half-screen display? On my Samsung S90D (new within the last year or so), I can set it to skip the "home" screen and go directly to the last input on power on. It works well.
jvolkman··on I dropped our production database and now pay 10% more for AWS
Back in my day, we didn't need AI to accidentally drop production databases.
jvolkman··on Hacker News front page now, but the titles are honest
Feature request: put the original title in a tooltip (or similar).
jvolkman··on Show HN: Gemini Pro 3 imagines the HN front page 10 years from now
If you look at web traffic when making Gemini web requests, you'll see that Bard is still in the URL (so are LaMDA (pre-bard) and Assistant (pre-GenAI)):

gemini.google.com/_/BardChatUi/data/assistant.lamda.BardFrontendService/StreamGenerate

jvolkman··on Gemini 3 Pro: the frontier of vision AI
Nano Banana 2 actually did generate a pretty good looking 5-legged dog for me.

https://gemini.google.com/share/e7a8b902ff67

But it didn't actually think it had done so, aligning with your observations. The last bits of its thinking were pretty sad (for it):

Analyzing Missing Anomaly

I'm focusing on the discrepancy - the persistent absence of the fifth leg in the generated images. Despite multiple attempts, the output consistently depicts a four-legged dog, contrary to the explicit requirement. This ongoing failure necessitates a shift in approach.

Acknowledge Leg Omission

I've made a final check, and unfortunately, the image still lacks the anomaly. The consistent absence of the fifth leg necessitates admitting my limitation. I'll provide the best image I could generate, clearly stating the missing feature.

jvolkman··on DOOM could have had PC Speaker Music
In the Doom-era game Rise of the Triad, if you shrink the viewport all the way down to postage stamp size, it displays "Buy a 486!" underneath.
jvolkman··on Nano Banana Pro
Just search the r/bard or r/geminiai subreddits for Logan. He's very famously a Google employee these days.
jvolkman··on Guideline has been acquired by Gusto
The process is somewhat archaic (often involving mailing around paper checks) and I imagine many people just don't want to deal. Rolling over pulls your money out of the market which means you could miss a good day (or a bad day).

I left a trail of 3-4 accounts until just recently, when I rolled them all over to my current Vanguard 401k. They were all invested in the same Vanguard fund so there's not much change other than simplicity.

jvolkman··on Gemini 3.0 Pro – early tests
I don't think Google was ever going to be the first to productize an LLM. LLMs say stupid shit - especially in the early days - and would've just attracted even more bad press if Google had been the front runner. OpenAI came along as a small, move-fast-and-break-things entity and introduced this tech to the public, and Google (and others) was able to join the fray after that seal was broken.
jvolkman··on Local LLMs versus offline Wikipedia
https://www.prepperdisk.com/

It's not a USB stick, though. Probably a raspberry pi.

jvolkman··on Fstrings.wtf
But if it were Perl, they'd be celebrating.
jvolkman··on Top DNS domains seen on the Quad9 recursive resolver array each day
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22amazon.dev%22

Looks like their customer support rep portal. Presumably there are not A/CNAME records at the top level, but na.headphones.whs.amazon.dev resolves.

jvolkman··on YouTube's new anti-adblock measures
But it is now. And there's no contract, so it's easy to cancel if that ever changes.
jvolkman··on Block YouTube ads on AppleTV by decrypting and stripping ads from Profobuf
YouTube premium also includes ad-free YouTube Music. Yes there are still sponsorships in podcasts as usual, but no injected ads.
jvolkman··on Gemini 2.0: our new AI model for the agentic era
> It's like Microsoft creating an AI tool and calling it Peertube.

How is it like that? Gemini is a much more common word than Peertube. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini

jvolkman··on Monorepo – Our Experience
Apparently Gerrit supports this with topics: https://gerrit-review.googlesource.com/Documentation/cross-r...
jvolkman··on US probes Tesla's Full Self-Driving software after fatal crash
This is what Waymo realized a decade ago and what helped define their rollout strategy: https://youtu.be/tiwVMrTLUWg?t=247&si=Twi_fQJC7whg3Oey
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