mft_

> People decided this is acceptable.

I think this is fluid, and changing.

1) The Democrats of the last decades are just as much the friends of the rich and the corporations as the Republicans. So even if people in the US don't think this is acceptable, there was no meaningful (legal) political route out of it. Except...

2) I believe one of the factors behind the rise of (what is called) populism (both left- and right-wing) is the failure of the mainstream centerist political parties to align with the needs of the people (and especially the poorer side of society) rather than the rich and the corporations. They're presided over ever-growing financial inequality, coupled with ongoing inflation that far outstrips wage growth. The rise of AOC, the grass-roots support for Sanders, and even the rise of Trump (remember the points he campaigned on, rather than his actions when in power) are driven by this.

> CEO of UnitedHealthcare was shot dead...

As I've mentioned on here before, this was the first time I've seen the sparks of what might be a class consciousness in the US, as people who have lost out due to the awful healthcare situation (or have sympathy with those who have) found common ground, irrespective of their underlying political leanings. But it takes a lot more than one example to trigger a revolution.

The US has moved beyond simple capitalism to a new era, which might be called late-stage / end-stage capitalism, or some form of dystopian corporatism.

Everything from workers’ rights (obvs) to the rule of law are now ridden roughshod over by the corporations. Politicians are (legally) bribed when necessary, for direct advantage or just to maintain the status quo. On the rare occasion a corporation is subject to the rule of law, it’s via a fine which is so irrelevant as to be an operating expense.

In such a world, of course the CEOs are safe, hidden behind swathes of immoral small print, armies of lawyers, and a disempowered establishment, and with their bomb shelters in non-extradition countries on standby in case anything actually gets threatening.

* not vibe-codeable

* unlikely to hit the front of HN

Yes it does. Firefox 155, MacOS 15.6.1

You wrote:

> The issue comes when taking information you haven't paid for, and then locking it into a machine you charge for.

This is two distinct complaints:

1) Using information they've not paid for

2) Charging for the outputs

You also wrote:

> It would be an entirely different story if OpenAI was indeed open and the resulting model was available for all.

This implies that you don't have a problem with #1 (using information without paying) but you do have a problem with #2 (charging for the outputs).

So my point wasn't that #1 is okay (as much as I dislike copyright law as it stands, corporations should follow the law, just as individuals are forced to) but rather than I find #2 to be okay, in isolation.

Nice idea, but the rain sound (at least on my system) isn't rain - it's just white noise?

Except… it costs a huuuuge sum of money to transform that tranche of inert information into a totally different useful form (an LLM).

That process of transformation, the expertise required to enable it, and the cost of then making it available to users is what is being charged for, no?

> And if the value is correcting misunderstandings, I don’t see it. The very fact that the communication failed and there was a misunderstanding is a huge no hire red flag. Communicating clearly matters as much as doing the job

What if the miscommunication is 50:50, rather than just the candidate’s fault?

Working in an international organisation I became aware that people from Europe vs. the US speak a different corporate language. At its most extreme, smart experienced colleagues from the US would say things and I literally wouldn’t understand their meaning.

However, colleagues better versed in that particular corporate dialect would absolutely understand their meaning, and might think what they were saying had great value.

And the flipside is that I must assume that at times, my (clear direct, I think) European communication could also be misunderstood.

Which is to say: a miscommunication in an interview might be as much your fault as theirs; and you may reject excellent candidates based on this.

I’m interested: how would you spend $20k to get close to performance parity (speed and ability) with a frontier model?

Your prefilters only lasting two weeks, plus two household members developing asthma, might make me think very seriously about moving somewhere less polluted, and quickly.

AFAIK, Wine/equivalent only works for older versions (up to 2016?) - newer versions +/- AD require a VM of some variety. (This was originally where I noped out and switched to MacOS instead.)

Microsoft Office. That’s the last reason.

I was using Windows on my personal-but-for-work laptop; it got to the point where I hated it too much so tried Linux. Most stuff was great (even Teams was 90% fine!) but I couldn’t function professionally without installed versions of Office, and I couldn’t find an acceptable workaround.

I then switched back to MacOS and am mostly happy hanging on to Sequoia… but I’m dreading the point at which (for some reason) Apple make it unavoidable to upgrade.

Then… Windows 11 LTSC?

Small bug, Firefox/MacOS: if I search for a location, use the suggestions that appear to select it, remove it by clicking on the x button, and then try to search for a different location, the suggestions no longer appear. I had to refresh the page to get them back,

This is currently the weakest part of the workflow. I'm tracing the output images with VTracer [0] and then finishing them manually.

Through a combination of careful initial prompting (e.g. requesting line drawings, requesting limited colours ["posterization" works] if you need colour at all, requesting background removal) and then using the settings in VTracer to limit the colours used for the resulting SVG to the minimum needed, you can end up with an SVG that doesn't take too long to clean up in Inkscape. It usually takes a few minutes of deletions and path unions to produce something usable.

Diffusion models outputting SVGs would obviously be very interesting for this, but this is probably a small niche compared to everything that diffusion models can do with raster images, and I've not found anything usable online so far. LLMs (understandably, given their core technology) are still pretty bad at creating SVG art.

[0] https://github.com/visioncortex/vtracer

Off the shelf - it’s a Brother. It prints via a proprietary file format (.PES) but there’s an extension for Inkscape that supports creation and export.

I've played with diffusion models on and off since the first release of Stable Diffusion - just for amusement, without a particular goal.

Recently, I've been helping a friend's wife with some basic vector images for her sewing hobby (she has what is essentially a CNC sewing machine) and have been super-impressed with FLUX.1-Kontext, which I've been running on my Macbook Pro with mflux. Its ability to (for example) take a photo of a human or an animal and return a line drawing which is recognisably them (rather than just a generic similarish image as I've experienced with other models) is excellent.

It's an older model now, but (AIUI) has the text-handling features baked in, and in my various testing is very reliable at giving me the outputs that I want, without the randomness I've experienced previously. It's big and relatively slow (~3 mins per 512x512 image edit on my M1 Max Mac) but excellent to work with. It's also very straightforward to set up, without the harness complexity of e.g. comfyui.

I agree to a degree - it feels manipulative on the part of the writer, trying to exaggerate any sympathy a reader might feel.

That said, I also feel that the level of negativity the lady suffered was a little out of proportion to her 'crime' - essentially amounting to bullying.

This must be a personal preference based on ear anatomy.

The first-gen Airpods fit my ears perfectly, and were secure. When I lost them and upgraded to the 2nd gen, I was initially upset - aside from the body being fatter (and so less comfortable in my ears) they were very insecure - I couldn't even walk around without them loosening and dislodging.

I was on the point of returning them when I saw the advice online to 'twist' them into a different position. I now use them with the stalks horizontal, and they're secure. Still a touch less comfortable than the v1s, but easily tolerable.

Moderation is always the key. Although some people would be fine with a modest aging effect, given the other positive benefits of sun exposure.

One could also add positive mental health effects, and benefits of morning sunlight for maintaining a healthy circadian rhythm.

Sure, you can always come back that you can take anti-depressants, and try to use some sort of sun-mimicking light, but then we're really going to extremes to avoid the sun altogether.

So is exposure to the sun, at the right times, in moderation, with appropriate but not extreme protection okay?

Nice write-up and a nice outcome, but speaking as a reasonably successful home/amateur woodworker, this is very over-thought and over-engineered. I say this not to criticise the creator as I appreciate that they are new to this, but to help others considering such pursuits.

Some constructive feedback:

* There is no need for the extruded aluminium frame - some cheap wood would have sufficed as a frame

* The CNC'd hanging brackets are totally unnecessary - a couple of holes, one either side, with a keyhole hanger over each would have sufficed

* The balancing and 3d-printed endcaps is unnecessary assuming you've got reasonably well-placed hangers

* The fancy ESP32 board could have been replaced by a commodity ESP8266. (You could get rid of the ESP altogther and just buy pre-wired LED strips, but then you lose the opportunity to program nice lighting effects.)

As a result, the bill of materials is multiples of what is could have been. I estimate that you could replicate this in a single weekend for ~80-85 EUR (15 EUR countertop, 10 EUR wooden frame, 5-10 EUR plexiglass, 40 EUR LEDs + PSU, 5 EUR ESP8266, 1 EUR for two keyhole hangers) assuming you have a few screws and some wood glue available, plus whatever the cost of the markerspace is. Everything could be sourced from your local DIY store, plus an order from Aliexpress for the electrical components.

> I thought sun exposure was bad. Or is it good again? Was it good all along?

It's good as long as you don't get sunburn or skin cancer...

> Do I need to wear sunscreen in front of my desk too now? Will the body cream include it?

That's the sort of thinking we need, champ - you just earned yourself a promotion to Chief Product Officer. :)

There’s a startup opportunity: a body cream with concentrates of beneficial microorganisms.

“Pair it with our full spectrum sun lamp and you can have all the benefits of playing outside from the comfort of your standing desk”.

Yes; as a home user you have to use some 3rd party script or software to achieve the same outcome, but there are examples that are well-regarded and open-source.

e.g. https://github.com/raphire/win11debloat

None of those issues are a problem for corporate managed Windows installations, which would be the proper comparator in the case given in the article.

There are other reasons that Windows sucks, even (or especially?) in a corporate environment, just not those.

IANAL but... isn't this somewhat analogous to side-loading apps on iOS or Android? As in, Google/Apple make it awkward for you to provide your own files to run on your phone, but ultimately it's not impossible nor illegal.

Likewise, if you're able to upload your own custom MIDI (or other) files for your piano to play, then all you'd be doing is sharing a utility that creates mixed audio/MIDI MP3s, which may or may not be used to create files which can then be legitimately uploaded to a piano.

I agree with most of what you've written here.

However, this is not the topic (I thought I) was responding to. I was disagreeing that America's issues in Iran "has exposed many limitations and weaknesses in America's defense capabilities" - because the Iran situation is somewhat of an edge case, as I detailed.

If the point you were originally making (I now infer) was something more like "some of the challenges that the US has faced in its war with Iran may also apply to a potential future war with China, should China invade Taiwan, such as..." then with respect that's what you should have written, rather than assuming your readers would just guess correctly.

(There are also major differences between the cases of Iran and China, which would warrant more detailed analysis.)

> You're treating an inability to strategize as a strategic blunder and not weakness. You should reconsider that.

No... you're conflating cause and effect. The strategic blunder was an outcome, the cause of which we can debate; an "inability to strategise" would be one potential cause.

I think you’re partly right: normal ‘non-internet’ folk care less about such things… until a reason to care is demonstrated.

Take the recent anti-Flock actions - it’s probably mostly not ‘internet people’ going for evening walks with their angle grinders. Everyone starts to care about privacy when it really becomes invasive.

Likewise, people might be fine getting their elderly parents a robot to help out with household tasks, until intimate stolen videos start appearing on realgrannies.com or similar.

> Iran has exposed many limitations and weaknesses in America's defense capabilities

I'm far from a fan of current US policy nor an apologist, but this is a flawed analysis.

The war with Iran has exposed the stupidity of entering into that particular conflict, where:

* the goal (if there was one?) was something like regime change at arm's length

* 'arm's length' means using expensive long distance precision weapons, as there was/is very little taste for an invasion

* the target (Iran) is situated next to US allies which also happen to be hugely important as oil producers/exporters

* the target can also threaten a hugely important global shipping channel - the Strait of Hormuz

* the target has prepared for this action for years if not decades, and has good-enough drone technology to hand to threaten its neighbours and the Strait of Hormuz

This is an almost unique case in the world, and as such, its lessons of "US weakness" of "US failure" simply can't be assumed to translate more broadly. Iran is/was far more a strategic blunder which could/should have been foreseen, than a sign of America's weakness.

Yes, America currently has low stocks of long-range precision munitions and Patriots, but it still has the most powerful conventional military by far, and a globally-unrivalled ability to project that power around the world, if it chooses to.

---

"But what about Ukraine? What about drone warfare? America is far behind there." This may have changed the game. The heavy usage of drones in Ukraine evolved, noting Russia didn't initially invade with swarms of drones. If the US had had a strong reason to support Ukraine (imagine Russia had instead invaded Florida) they could likely have used conventional means (air superiority, tanks, men) and ended the war within a few weeks. Admittedly, now it's far less certain how those tanks and men would fare in current drone battlefield.

> and it's a fraction of the threat China is

It depends entirely on the nature of the war envisaged (see the points about Iran being a unique situation.). In particular, China does not have anything like the US Navy to project power in the way that the US still can.

So if I understand you correctly, Gemini has direct free access to the Google Maps API in a manner that others (people, LLMs) would need to sign up for API access and pay for?