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nikolay

8,845 karma · joined March 16, 2007

Un provocateur extraordinaire. A blatant cynic. Unorthodox Orthodox Christian. Opinions are my own.

https://nikolay.omg.lol

Bitrated: https://www.bitrated.com/nikolay/

Keybase: https://keybase.io/nikolay (https://keybase.io/nikolay/sigs/ZcBBT64hGhoszh6TAt-pJZJXNjDECE4QlFusbUKKSIE)

https://keyoxide.org/nikolay@omg.lol aspe:keyoxide.org:4DUXZAN4MEOSVMYHA6WF7ILJI4

lYbuRJoy0E

wonderfuldev_ohshqboq6cd6poo1jcw6obzq

meet.hn/city/33.6856969,-117.8259810/Irvine

Socials: - bsky.app/profile/nikolay - cal.com/nikolay - calendly.com/nikolay - discord:nikolay.kolev - facebook.com/nikolay - github.com/nikolay - gitlab.com/nikolay - instagram.com/kolev - linkedin.com/in/nikolay - nikolay.at.hn - nikolay@hey.com - open.spotify.com/user/kolev - reddit.com/user/kolev - soundcloud.com/nikolay - t.me/nikolay - x.com/nikolay

Interests: AI/ML, Cybersecurity, DevOps, Entrepreneurship, Hacking, Healthcare, Mobile Development, Open Source, Philosophy, Programming, Remote Work, Research, Science, Space Tech, Startups, Technology, Web Development

submissionscomments
nikolay··on David Potter, founder of Psion, dead at 82
Memory eternal! Psion had amazing tech in the '90s!
nikolay··on Fable 5 update: Still willing to cybercrime
People need attention through posts that don't post anything new. Filters are LLMs, too. I just keep trying stuff, and eventually it works without even trying to be smart. I'm not sure why people need to pretend that they've invented something new!
nikolay··on It's Time to Reserve Your WhatsApp Username
Pathetic! A post on Facebook, but you can only claim your Instagram username! Meta has so many messengers, which don't even interop! I can't message somebody on Instagram or Facebook from WhatsApp!
nikolay··on Beer CSS – Build material design in record time
I agree. In Chrome, vertical and horizontal padding aren't even; some text is a pixel or two offset.
nikolay··on HackerRank open sourced its ATS. My resume scored 90/100. Oh wait 74. No – 88
Roll the dice, HR folks!
nikolay··on Epidurals are a miracle technology
It surely is. Ascetism and stoicism are extinct virtues, maybe venerated only in Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Many of our holy fathers have suffered terrible torture and death, but they even welcomed it. That's why Orthodoxy is so hard to grasp in the West, where people damage their livers just to tame their headache a bit, let's say.
nikolay··on Epidurals are a miracle technology
... Except when they injure your spine, like with one of my friends. I'm not sure why women choose painless childbirth, which is not only potentially bad for them, but for their newborns as well. My wife gave birth to 3 children, two in the US, and doctors were shocked she didn't want them. Yes, it hurts. The moment your child is born, all pain is gone, and you're in the most beautiful state ever, and this creates even a stronger bond, knowing what you had to go through to bring a child to life! Men, women - we're all weaklings today. When I think about our ancestors and the sword-and-spear bloodbath battles they fought in to protect their families, we don't have such men and women anymore! Pain is an essential part of life. Chronic pain is a different story, of course.
nikolay··on HPV vaccine cuts risk of dying from cervical cancer before 30
We forgot to get another vaccine shot. On the form, they ask if we want Gardasil. We declined. Then they took our daughter to administer the shots. They brought her back and started to apologize: "We're sorry, we didn't see that you declined, and we gave her the shot anyway." We could've sued them, especially with the adverse effects, but we're coming from a culture that's not overly litigious.

And this is not the first time doctors in leading Southern California medical groups have completely ignored what's on the form! My son was going to have a minor surgery, so they asked me: "Oh, we give an anesthetic before we actually administer the actual one, because some kids are afraid of shots." I told them he's one of those kids and always liked, actually, even watching when they administer the shot, and never cries. This is given he's already on IV! Another doctor came a minute later and started changing the IV. I asked him, "What are you doing?" He said he was administering the pre-anesthetic. And I said that we declined it on the form, but it was too late. Then another doctor came and started to apologize - they don't read, they assume what people want! And this was at CHOC, the most prestigious children's hospital! Of course, as I said, we didn't sue.

So, I know that you should double-check and ask exactly what they are doing. Unfortunately, you can do this only if you're present. And you should always require them to repeat what they plan to do to your kids if they are taking them away from you. And... you should sue, as commercial entities, just like people, learn best when it hurts.

nikolay··on HPV vaccine cuts risk of dying from cervical cancer before 30
Except that HPV vaccines are not mandatory in most states [0].

[0]: https://www.immunize.org/official-guidance/state-policies/va...

nikolay··on HPV vaccine cuts risk of dying from cervical cancer before 30
My oldest daughter almost died from the first Gardasil, so you may not die from cervical cancer, but die from something else. I am not against vaccines; my kids are all fully vaccinated on a spaced-out schedule and not taking more than one shot in at least 2 months, and so am I, but the HPV vaccine was not mandatory, so, given the experience and the similar genetics, we didn't do it for the other two kids. Yeah, there's a risk of cancer, which might be curable 5-10-15 years from now, but the risk of side effects is here now... for some. So, it's not always a win-win, and we've got no interest from health authorities in assessing the risk for my other two kids, so they also seem very risk-averse and want us to assume all the negatives.
nikolay··on I feel like giving up on coding
Maybe if you looked at it as "software engineering" or the old-fashioned "programming," you wouldn't be so fed up after all.
nikolay··on Made a free macOS menu bar app that fixes typing in the wrong keyboard layout
I will "Show HN" it when it's done, so don't worry!
nikolay··on The average SpaceX buyer post-IPO is almost under water after two-day slide
Not today, not tomorrow, not 5 years from now. Meanwhile, everybody's working on reusable rockets, including the Chinese.
nikolay··on The average SpaceX buyer post-IPO is almost under water after two-day slide
It's a fantasy market. You shouldn't be able to make hundreds of billions only because the stock market is full of illiterate optimists. I don't believe in the Wisdom of the Crowd. This is the political populism turned financial. People abandoned cryptocurrency (at least one positive thing), precious metals, and fundamentals-based stocks to free up funds for overhyped IPOs. This really removes any incentives to start a legit business, as it's much more profitable to launch a bubble. I'm not saying SpaceX isn't a real business, but it can't be worth more than the combined economies of many countries, for example. Just convert a few trillion dollars into Albanian or Greek islands, for example. It's crazy, really! And is, for example, Anthropic worth over a trillion dollars only because it's just less than 6 months ahead of the Chinese?! This lead will not last forever, and it will only get shorter.
nikolay··on DuckDB Internals: Why Is DuckDB Fast? (Part 1)
DuckDB is a major RDBMS, yet there's almost no support for it from DB migration frameworks, etc.
nikolay··on Made a free macOS menu bar app that fixes typing in the wrong keyboard layout
Is it just site vibe-coded or the whole thing?
nikolay··on US Government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5
Big deal! Can't wait for the Chinese models to catch up - cheap, no marketing gimmicks, no politics, humble, hardworking, and they are only getting better. America is no longer a trustworthy technology partner! No wonder Europe is trying to detach itself from the present and future Trumps, Pete Hegseths, and other deranged narcissists. But I wonder why Anthropic is cutting my access, too, as I'm a US citizen residing in America? They could've vibe-coded a self-improving ID verification in no time, right? Should US models in the future require biometric verification to make small CSS tweaks to a vibe-coded website?!
nikolay··on InkyCap – Typst-based PKM for academics, writers, and everyone
Source Code: https://codeberg.org/InkyCap/app
nikolay··on Notes on DeepSeek
> steve hsu?

Actually, just searched my history, and it was Alexander Unzicker [0], actually.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuLjsFMzZrE

nikolay··on Notes on DeepSeek
I can't recall the scientist's name, but he said months ago that DeepSeek is best for Physics (maybe it was on The Diary of a CEO podcast). So I had a long chat about the Simulation Hypothesis, and I was really surprised by how good, deep, and straight to the point it was.

What's brutal is that Google, which started this AI revolution, has literally the worst coding model! I tried 3.5 Flash last week (the stupid still pays for Ultra due to Google One's storage), and before I gave up on 3.1 Pro, I saw a coding agent hallucinate for the first time in months, even at the highest effort level!

Meanwhile, I've tried DeepSeek with the DeepSeek TUI (now CodeWhale), and it didn't do any worse than Codex or Claude Code. I know there are benchmarks and all, some of them gamed, I'm sure, but in real-world experience, DeepSeek is absolutely amazing for its price! If you have software engineering skills and are not an accidental vibe-coder, honestly, try it out and stop burning money. I'm sure you will get even better results with OpenCode! Human Intelligence + Artificial Intelligence beats the highest AI model without the guidance of a HI!

Meanwhile, I burned through my entire budget on the $200 Max for Fable 5, for a modest-amount project in Python using its own CLI coding agent. What a waste!

I keep hearing "always use the bestest model" - no, always use the most practical one for the job! I got so many issues with Fable on a very small project that even Copilot found that it's simply not worth it for 99% of your tasks!

nikolay··on Albania Is Not for Sale: Kushner's $4B Resort Triggers'Flamingo Revolution'
Albanians should realize that $4B will not change their lives a bit, but they will look like submissive sheeple. I hope they prove to be brave and determined. Their president is a total madman - I'm not sure why they elected him, which makes me think Trump's corrupt family will get what they want.
nikolay··on Albania Is Not for Sale: Kushner's $4B Resort Triggers'Flamingo Revolution'
Was this going to Epstein Island 2.0?
nikolay··on Let's Encrypt bans certificate usage in any US sanctioned territory [pdf]
Yeah, let everybody build and use their own services, and then the US will end up having less control and visibility. Great tactics!
nikolay··on Aging and Eye Problems
I used the wrong term, sorry. My concern applies to both bifocals and progressive lenses, though: aren't drivers trading off convenience over safety? Shouldn't we have at least two pairs of glasses - one for driving, and another for everything else?
nikolay··on New U.S. college grads now have higher unemployment than the average worker
Isn't getting a college degree actually making you more selective, too, leading graduates to pass on jobs they would otherwise have taken?
nikolay··on Aging and Eye Problems
Really? I bought them when they were released, but never wore them because I thought they were gimmicky once I got them.
nikolay··on Aging and Eye Problems
Aren't the bifocals just a convenience over quality? It's inconvenient to wear two sets of glasses, but why would one wear bifocals while driving? This convenience can come at a high price!
nikolay··on Uber's $1,500/month AI limit is a useful signal for AI tool pricing
Uber is a service company. Maybe there are tons of changes on the backend, but literally anything customer-facing barely ever changes. So, software development is more of a business optimization job than a product development one - you can't spend more than you're trying to optimize, so limits for them make sense. For a product development company facing fierce competition, setting limits limits your competitive advantage. As a person, I spend nearly half of that limit on non-essential stuff just for fun and learning, but $1,500 on non-subsidized enterprise plans is literally nothing!
nikolay··on Ian's Secure Shoelace Knot
That's how I've been doing it since I was a kid (in the '80s) without anyone telling me about it. It's interesting how people put their names on some common-sense stuff! Disgusting!
nikolay··on Show HN: Synapse – 2.9MB Mac app with screenshot, clipboard, Keep Awake and more
I purchased. No Homebrew install?
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