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kapad

88 karma · joined January 18, 2013

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kapad··on TP-Link Tapo C200: Hardcoded Keys, Buffer Overflows and Privacy
How do you set this up? (TL;DR version?)
kapad··on Duolingo CEO says there may still be schools in our AI future
https://web.archive.org/web/20250517092408/https://www.busin...
kapad··on Windows 10 to Linux upcycling campaign
"If you're not technically competent you shouldn't use windows because it's harder to use than linux or mac".

Harder but easier and less challenging. The distinction I would make is for users who are comfortable interpreting the command line and those who aren't. That comfort level is what should dictate the user's decision to opt for linux vs windows/mac.

(PS: IMO, mac power use often requires the CLI, but macOS has built-in some guardrails to prevent noob users from completely messing up the system. Linux has no such guardrails).

kapad··on Glycine vs. ETCS
Every time I come across an analysis piece, I always appreciate the author taking out the time to write down their analysis.

I then scan the article looking for references to claims made. If I don't find any, I quickly close the tab and move on.

kapad··on LibreOffice still kicking at 40, now with browser tricks and real-time collab
> I'm curious why people bother tolerating modern versions of MS Office when they could instead use an offline version like 2019 and call it a day?

I use the online version because it worked out cheaper than the offline version + Dropbox.

kapad··on Earthstar – A database for private, distributed, offline-first applications
JAWA = Just Another Web3 App
kapad··on CDC data are disappearing
https://archive.is/BUyzR
kapad··on OpenAI says it has evidence DeepSeek used its model to train competitor
Aah. So OpenAI can use whatever means necessary to gather data for training it's model. Regardless of copyright.

But somehow, it's a problem if another model developer distills it's model by training it on OpenAI?

IMO, if the first use is fair, then so is the second use.

kapad··on No Bitcoin ETFs at Vanguard (2024)
AI seems like a better use case for all the GPU and energy that goes to bitcoin mining.
kapad··on Founder Mode
Both the examples cited here, Airbnb and Apple, have been through difficult times as a result of "manager mode failure".

In other words, "founder mode" worked after a failure of "manager mode".

Yet, would Apple even had continued to exist to this day had Steve not been fired?

From the essay, one thing is obvious, "founder mode" looks very different for a 20 person company than it does for a 2000 person company.

> Obviously founders can't keep running a 2000 person company the way they ran it when it had 20. There's going to have to be some amount of delegation. Where the borders of autonomy end up, and how sharp they are, will probably vary from company to company. They'll even vary from time to time within the same company, as managers earn trust. So founder mode will be more complicated than manager mode. But it will also work better. We already know that from the examples of individual founders groping their way toward it.

The question that I have is, "is it possible for a founder to discover what 'founder mode' is for a 2000 person company, without going through some form of 'manager mode' as the company scaled from 20 to 2000"?

What would be even more interesting is comments from founders/employees of startups where "founder mode" persisted as the company scaled up from 20 employees. Were these companies successful? Do they continue operating successfully?

kapad··on Founder Mode
A bit "off" the off-topic point.

- I'm not really sure Stadia can be called a "technical achievement at scale". Mainly because it didn't achieve all that much scale to begin with. Definitely a technical achievement in cloud gaming. But the implementation at scale is something that I now see Sony and Xbox working toward (along with their console partners - hardware and software).

- Youtube, definitely, given the content base, the number of active users at literally anytime, is a monumental achievement. But so are a bunch of porn websites. And I know the porn industry doesn't have a good rep. Even in engineering. Still, porn sees more active users than Youtube and netflix combined, albeit, on a bunch of different websites, but a few large enough websites that are comparable to Youtube in terms of active users, and catalogue size. Also, these companies manage to host all of this content and delivery it all over the world on a much smaller budget than Youtube. Not to take away any of Youtube's achievements, but from a technical point of view, I do think the porn industry wins. To begin with, porn streaming is older than youtube, but quite a few years actually. Additionally, from what I've heard, some of the popular live streams on OnlyFans (and similar websites) see more concurrent viewers than most YouTube live streams.

kapad··on Founder Mode
Reed Hastings is also equally famous for having a rather non-traditional managerial style. Especially the "keeper test".

> If a person on your team were to quit tomorrow, would you try to change their mind? Or would you accept their resignation, perhaps with a little relief? If the latter, you should give them a severance package now and look for a star, someone you would fight to keep.

I agree with some of the other replies. That Hastings was very aware of two things - He's not the best manager - Corporate manager's are full of bs

IMO, the "keeper test" and some of the other famous and/or controversial policies at Netflix are a direct approach at avoid "manager mode".

kapad··on Ask HN: Fake CC that you can give to scammers and they get owned
> Many credit card providers, at least in the US, let their customers generate single-purpose or short-term card numbers, for when you don’t trust the merchant, or need to let someone else use your card.

My experience with using short-term card numbers has been validation failure in the webforms where I try to use them.

kapad··on Show HN: DNS.Surf – Querying DNS Resolution Results in Different Regions
I have the same question, but for querying google.
kapad··on Microsoft formally deprecates the Windows Control Panel
I wish windows fixed it's registry. Documented where different settings are in the registry. And also streamlined the registry to be a lot more intuitive.

UIs will build themselves around a simplified registry.

kapad··on Ask HN: Did Google search change (for the worse) today?
Still working as it did yesterday (tested in India).
kapad··on Governments Are Suddenly Shutting Down the Internet – Here's Why [video]
Video by https://www.youtube.com/@ColdFusion
kapad··on I prefer rebase over merge (and everything else)
"Eventually you’ll discover the Easter egg in Git: all meaningful operations can be expressed in terms of the rebase command. Once you figure that out it all makes sense." - Linus Torvalds

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21891091/what-does-this-...

kapad··on Outsourcing Cost Boeing Billions (2019)
> I seriously doubt this is the mistake of $9/hr workers. Those workers are unlikely to be familiar with the whole picture and would probably just have requirements delivered to them. This is not a case of badly written code, the code didn't crash. It just didn't fit the requirements, likely because those requirements weren't known, because someone I'd wager working directly at Boeing getting a industry-typical salary didn't deliver them.

source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41328272

kapad··on Venting Doesn't Reduce Anger, but Something Else Does, Study Says
the only sentence worth reading in this post
kapad··on Financial innovations brought by technology
I started reading the this article but then half way through the second section I realised I'd be much better of reading about financial innovations in India.

I agree the US is also a big country and has made lots of efforts to bring banking to every citizen.

India, though quite far from having at least one bank account for every single citizen, is leaps and bounds ahead of most other economies in terms of fintech and innovation in the field of mass banking.

Be it, the post office savings account scheme, way before banks had moved to computers, or the current wave that's happening with UPI and the aadhaar ecosystem.

My point is, if you want to read about financial innovations brought by technology ("fintech"), read about things happening in India (and also China).

kapad··on Google said it had successfully ‘slowed down’ European privacy rules
Maybe lobbying should be illegal. But right now, it isn't.
kapad··on Agile at 20: The Failed Rebellion
Hahahaha.. this is brilliant!!

And treat this comment as an acknowledgement for all future occasions on which I quote you.

kapad··on Will Linux phones stay around this time?
I recently tried setting up an Android phone with LineageOS without any gapps. Google's integration into the Android libraries that are used to build almost all the apps out there is so deep that a lot of apps that I use regularly wouldn't even launch on the phone.

Basically, by controlling the API that apps target when they are built, Google has attacked the AOSP from 2 sides. First is from the developer side of things. App developers need to jump through many hoops to make an app that would fall back to working with Google's services running on the phone (LineageOS without Gapps and using some fake gapps implementation to keep the API from breaking).

The second attack that Google has made to the AOSP is from the end user's perspective. They have made it harder and harder to use AOSP without Google's services. Since it's so hard for user's to setup and use a phone without Google's services, they almost never take that option. (I personally, reverted to the OnePlus' Oxygen OS and ditched LineageOS). The end result being that user's just don't want to leave Google's Android garden and explore the wilderness of AOSP without Google.

kapad··on California appeals court finds Amazon responsible for 3rd party sellers products
Yes. I too find that Amazon tries to hide (maybe even obscure) information of who the third party seller is.

So is amazon a marketplace or a seller. Hard to decide. I think courts should also give importance to how amazon markets itself.

EBay, always, marketed itself as a marketplace. There was never a confusion about whether it's a "store" or a "marketplace".

From the Amazon banners/ads/and other marketing material, I always get the sense that Amazon tries to market itself as a "store" and not as a "marketplace".

With that and the _hiding/obscuring_ of third party seller information on the amazon website, I think courts should treat Amazon as a seller/store more than a marketplace.

kapad··on Learn how to use popular APIs
I think the website should highlight how the material is different from the API documentation. I didn't sign up, because I couldn't find anything highlighting how the content is different (read better) than the API documentation.
kapad··on An open letter to FB, Twitter, Instagram regarding algorithms and my son's birth
This happens all the time. And I don't understand the reason for it. Companies are incentivized to understand that I have already bought something and then NOT have to spend on advertising the same thing to me. Yet they do. No idea why.
kapad··on An open letter to FB, Twitter, Instagram regarding algorithms and my son's birth
I don't think the author of this tweet is trying to educate the general public. I simply think she is trying to engage companies so that their ad targeting accounts for her case and someone else in the same situation doesn't face what she faced.
kapad··on Mozilla hit with takedown request for anti-paywall addons
I'm not sure if this has already been suggested, but if it hasn't been, then maybe you could market/describe your add-on as one that prevents sneaky websites from tracking you.

And instead of calling it a anti-paywall add-on, instead call it a anti-tracking add-on.

If you do that though, you may be asked to explain the list of websites for which the add-on activates. I guess you'll need to have some sort of "valid" explanation for that.

kapad··on Tim Cook makes blistering attack on the “data industrial complex”
and knowing that google will track and use their customers' data apple went ahead and made google it's default search engine for a couple of billion $ a year. from bing, who was their previous search provider. but not duckduckgo, the only privacy centric search provider.
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