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lsllc

5,724 karma · joined August 8, 2011

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lsllc··on My phone detects going on a run as “someone snatching my phone and running off”
I got an Apple Watch just before the pandemic. In the winter I love to XC Ski, but it wasn't in there as an activity -- I guess not much snow in Cupertino.

After a year or two of daily charging I went back to my trusty Garmin 935 that lasts ~2 weeks on a charge (used to be more like a month, but you know what I can install a replacement battery!) -- the Garmin does have an XC Ski activity.

lsllc··on Advertise in ChatGPT
Of course not, just like when you pay for Netflix or Prime Video there are no ads ... right? ... right?
lsllc··on GPT-5.6
Interesting that Sol (low) did better than Sol (medium) in your benchmark (and is barely more expensive than Terra). I too have been using 5.3 codex as a cheap-but-good model and are switching to Terra (xhigh).
lsllc··on Swift Package Index joins Apple
Yes, congrats to Dave on two successes!
lsllc··on Show HN: Forty.News – Daily news, but on a 40-year delay
It says "Weather: Partly cloudy, 72°F". Normally, I'd ask "where" (not here in New England!) ... but in this case, "when"? Is this the weather from 40 years ago also? (and if so ... I guess "where").
lsllc··on Spatial intelligence is AI’s next frontier
> taking actions that reduce the difference between predictions and reality, effectively minimizing prediction errors

Since you can't change reality itself, and you can only take actions to reduce variational free energy, doesn't this make everything into a self-fulfilling prophecy?

I guess there must be some base level of instinct that overrides this; in the case of "I think that sabertooth tiger is going to eat me" you want to make sure the "don't get eaten" instinct counters "minimizing prediction errors".

lsllc··on AWS multiple services outage in us-east-1
The Ring (Doorbell) App isn't working, nor is any the MBTA (Transit) Status pages/apps.
lsllc··on Did Space Debris Hit A United Flight Over The Rockies Thursday?
When TWA Flight 800 went down over Long Island in 1996, there were at the time multiple witness statements of a "streak of light" which had been reported (and later discounted by the investigation) as a possible missile.

Although the odds are incredibly slim, I wondered around the time if it could have actually been a meteorite striking the aircraft, passing through the fuel tank and causing the explosion. Presumably it would have been moving very quickly, might have looked like a missile to an observer, and wouldn't have left any shrapnel debris/marks in the wreckage.

I would imagine that the space debris mentioned in the article would be a lot less dense and moving much more slowly (relatively speaking) than a meteorite at the impact with the aircraft.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800

lsllc··on Windsurf employee #2: I was given a payout of only 1% what my shares where worth
So "heads I win, tails you lose!"
lsllc··on Neil Armstrong's customs form for moon rocks (2016)
I think Customs is on to that -- that was how Saddam Hussein got the precision parts of his "supergun" out of Europe into Iraq, the parts were all labeled as oil industry related.
lsllc··on Qwen3-Coder: Agentic coding in the world
I think in 2-3 years, it'll be the same story except it'll be bigger/better/faster.

As Heraclitus said "The only constant in life is change"

(and maybe Emacs)

lsllc··on OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google
Presumably the founder(s) is/are getting a better deal by walking away in this case. If they've been through a few round of funding, they may have been diluted to the point when this sort of exit is better (for them).
lsllc··on OpenAI’s Windsurf deal is off, and Windsurf’s CEO is going to Google
Isn't there not some contractual agreement between the VCs and the founders? (I understand that a non-compete might not apply [in CA], but taking VC money is a little different that simply getting hired).

Were I a Windsurf investor, I'd be pissed right now and calling my lawyer.

lsllc··on Seine reopens to Paris swimmers after century-long ban
In London the Thames Tideway Tunnel is designed to intercept and divert sewage overflows from the River Thames, particularly during heavy rainfall:

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68464798

I think there's a B1M episode on Youtube that has a good overview.

lsllc··on OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D
Might even ameliorate some of the corporate RTO efforts and now s/w devs will have more employment choice and a presumably more vibrant job market.
lsllc··on OBBB signed: Reinstates immediate expensing for U.S.-based R&D
Looks like prior years can be caught up with:

> Companies with capitalized domestic R&D expenses from 2022–2024 can elect a catch-up deduction, which could significantly improve cash flow for firms engaged in innovation.

lsllc··on That XOR Trick (2020)
Yes! in the old MS-DOS days (circa 286?), it was quicker in terms of cycles to do:

  xor ax, ax
Than:

  mov ax, 0h
lsllc··on The Zed Debugger Is Here
Via Scoop:

  scoop bucket add extras
  scoop install extras/zed
It works really well on Windows, haven't had any problems, nor with any extensions.
lsllc··on Show HN: McWig – A modal, Vim-like text editor written in Go
So interesting that you use diffs for undo/redo! Ingenious!
lsllc··on Cloudlflare builds OAuth with Claude and publishes all the prompts
> >My brother for example built a thing with Microsoft copilot that helped automate more in his manufacturing facility (used to be paper).

> I have harped on this endlessly as a non-programmer working a non-tech job, with 7 "vibe-coded" programs now being used daily by people at my company.

Aren't AI coding agent(s) just the next iteration of democratizing app development? This has happened before with Microsoft Access (even Visual Basic), or going back further FoxPro, dBase & Clipper etc? With all of these tools, non-programmers had been able to create apps to help them with their businesses.

lsllc··on AtomVM, the Erlang virtual machine for IoT devices
This is really incredible, the esp32 examples are really straightforward compared to the C versions of the same. The Erlang actor model makes this much easier!

... if they can nail the OTA updates and hot-loading of code!

lsllc··on I salvaged $6k of luxury items discarded by Duke students
The problem is that move-out happens in May, but move-in happens in late Aug/early Sept. So there's lots of useful stuff being discarded in May (beds, desks, bookcases, in-window A/C units etc) that would likely be in demand in Sept but have long been sent to the landfill by then.
lsllc··on Severed Fingers and 'Wrench Attacks' Rattle the Crypto Elite
Another example of Randall Munroe's prescience:

https://xkcd.com/538/

Although this is the one I'm really worried about:

https://www.xkcd.com/2203/

lsllc··on Show HN: Plandex v2 – open source AI coding agent for large projects and tasks
In the table showing the hosting options lower down in the README, the 3rd row is titled "Self-hosted/Local Mode", but the link in "Follow the *local-mode quickstart* to get started." goes to a GH 404 page.
lsllc··on Show HN: Plandex v2 – open source AI coding agent for large projects and tasks
You should talk to the folks at Warp, this plus Warp would be pretty interesting.
lsllc··on Show HN: Plandex v2 – open source AI coding agent for large projects and tasks
The link in the README.md to "local-mode quickstart" seems broken.
lsllc··on Wasting Inferences with Aider
Simple, just ask an(other) AI! But seriously, different models are better/worse at different tasks, so if you can figure out which model is best at evaluating changes, use that for the review.
lsllc··on A 32-bit processor made with an atomically thin semiconductor
If it's anything like regular InkJet printers, the liquid semiconductor would paste be all dried up every time you went to use it, or the capacitor cartridge would run out long before the resistor one did!

/s

lsllc··on US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU
Interesting - I haven't seen that mentioned in any of the coverage, do you have a source for that?
lsllc··on US Administration announces 34% tariffs on China, 20% on EU
According to the BBC reporting, it appears that for each country he's charging 50% of the tariff they place on US goods coming into those countries, or a baseline of 10% for some countries like the UK.

(sorry, this is a BBC live news ticker link):

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c1dr7vy39eet?post=asset%3A3a34...

And a picture of the chart they had showing the per-country tariffs:

https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c1dr7vy39eet?post=asset%3A7f78...

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