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pentaphobe

429 karma · joined April 3, 2011

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pentaphobe··on ZuckOff is a free app that sees Meta glasses before they see you
I'd rather use software which was made to solve a problem than software that exists to "get" people to use it.
pentaphobe··on ZuckOff Know when a camera is in the room
Forgive me using your comment as a madlib, but one potential ending:

(something as simple as a product name)... is enough to make someone ignore the actual point about software trust and instead argue that good marketing is what's important :)

pentaphobe··on Overshoot: The World Is Hitting Point of No Return on Climate
Darn shame - seems we clawed back some time during the peak of the pandemic lockdowns (a surprisingly high amount IIRC)

But we really do seem to have been intent on doubling down since then

pentaphobe··on My business partner sent a 5K vibe-coded PR that he didn't even test
I'm not sure we yet have the measure of how much agents/chatbots will alter our cultural norms, communication style, etc..

A lot of very quick "AI is not the problem" responses (and all in their own top threads. writing rather than conversing.. perhaps a pattern there? but I digress)

Agree with the pretext that some problems may be due to bad habits being amplified

But to me that default chorus of the "you're holding it wrong" thought-terminating cliche sounds no different to

"social media is not an issue, people just need to use control" or "ads are not the issue here, just ignore them.."

Or "hey, the button which randomly gives the pigeon seeds when pushed is not the issue here, pigeons just shouldn't be so needy"

Also I've seen good engineers (and non-engineers) get swept up in the "magic" of genai progressively lose chunks of their formerly consistent, and long-standing good behaviours

pentaphobe··on Show HN: Make your logo extra bright on HDR screens
This is why we can't have nice things.
pentaphobe··on Show HN: Remove AI voice from AI writings
that's a bingo! :)
pentaphobe··on Show HN: Remove AI voice from AI writings
"You see, we like our Nazis in uniform. That way we can spot 'em just like that. But you take off that uniform, ain't no one ever gonna know you were a Nazi. And that don't sit well with us. So, I'm gonna give you a little something you can't take off..."
pentaphobe··on I think you might be fooling yourself with AI
We're sorry we upset you, Carol
pentaphobe··on I think you might be fooling yourself with AI
If it gets cheaper then Jevons Paradox [1] would strongly indicate that it won't in any way reduce the negative impacts (and would tend to actually increase them)

[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Excerpt: Jevons Paradox/Effect is an economic phenomenon said to occur when technological improvements that increase the efficiency of a resource's use lead to a rise, rather than a fall, in total consumption of that resource

pentaphobe··on I think you might be fooling yourself with AI
It certainly seems that way from this - admittedly tiny - sample
pentaphobe··on I Think You Might Be Fooling Yourself with AI
The responses to this post made me really sad.

Sure - it was light on the meat, But it's an opinion blog post, not a full article. the author ventures to cite their refs, acknowledges potential bias.. way more than you get with a tonne of front page articles (many of which probably should have been short opinion pieces like this)

Sure - it's not particularly notable or high entropy enough to save, but it's far from offensive or bothersome ...yet all I'm seeing (at time of posting) is defensive dismissals, ad hominems, and echo chamber pablum

pentaphobe··on Strange Balls found on Queensland beaches could be toxic 'space debris': experts
Non-paywall link at a more legit news source

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/jul/05/myste...

pentaphobe··on Show HN: Overfitted a 900KB Transformer to Compress a 100MB CSV into 7MB
Hope this isnt too spicy a take, but i find it a bit disingenuous to use language that implies invention (and with no mention or citation of previous work), only to switch to dismissive language when someone notes a predecessor who you've apparently already heard of
pentaphobe··on Why all new flags look the same
Great TED talk by Roman Mars

Even features the same Milwaukee flag if memory serves

https://youtube.com/watch?v=pnv5iKB2hl4

pentaphobe··on U.S. intelligence shows Iran retains substantial missile capabilities
Wait, so you're saying there are "WMDs" in the Middle East?

Fun and totally not sarcastic fact fact: the opposite of "Deja vu" is "jamais vu"

pentaphobe··on Hokusai and Tesselations
This seems to work

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3ANDL85...

pentaphobe··on Show HN: Helix – open-source self-healing back end for production crashes
Fair question! I've no idea, but good on you for pondering

If it were me I'd rip the band-aid off, but might just be me being grey-beard. Name Collisions are inevitable these days I guess, and equally one could argue that no project should be able to camp out on a dictionary term :)

Either way, best of luck with your project (which looks super interesting) - I neglected to say that bit :facepalm:

pentaphobe··on Show HN: Irl.rent – What renters pay, not what's listed in SF
Sorry to be that chap, but UX is not a synonym for UI

I'm not a UX person, but have seen an increasing trend of the two terms being used interchangeably - it's actually a really interesting and nuanced field (more rooted in psychology, information architecture, and human centred design).

It's sorta like how a lotta folk assume SRE is just a neologism for "devops" and in the process miss out on the really interesting differences

pentaphobe··on Show HN: Helix – open-source self-healing back end for production crashes
Off topic, but whilst we've clearly got to accept name collisions in such a large word - it'd be ideal if there was _a modicum_ of care around not using names on other actively maintained projects

https://helix-editor.com/

pentaphobe··on Ripgrep is faster than grep, ag, git grep, ucg, pt, sift (2016)
Evidently reading isn't the same as comprehension
pentaphobe··on Ripgrep is faster than grep, ag, git grep, ucg, pt, sift (2016)
`[citation needed]`
pentaphobe··on Ripgrep is faster than grep, ag, git grep, ucg, pt, sift (2016)
And they wrote "... you'd need to pick a side and lose the pun.."
pentaphobe··on Is coding dead because AI has taken over it?
Short answer: no.

Long answer [^1]:

> Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states:

> "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

pentaphobe··on I don't write code anymore – I sculpt it
"Sculpting" as used here just feels like a pretentious euphemism for "vibing" as opposed to what actual sculpting is like (hint: it would be akin to... dramatic pause... writing code)

Brb, just rolled my eyes so hard that I'm now staring at my own visual cortex

pentaphobe··on Show HN: Nogic – VS Code extension that visualizes your codebase as a graph
All the GitHub links on your extension page are borked (including issues)

From the look of the associated domain it looks like you're going full product, best of luck

I'm a huge proponent of graph & visual analysis of complex systems - would have loved to try this out, but will always skip closed source editor extensions (especially in the age of widespread npm supply chain attacks & vibe coding)

pentaphobe··on Sisyphus Now Lives in Oh My Claude
No. Just, no to all of this
pentaphobe··on Inducing self-NSFW classification in image models to prevent deepfakes edits
Not sure the comparison works when it does all the work for you

I've had very little success mumbling "you are an expert chemist..." to test tubes and raw materials.

pentaphobe··on Inducing self-NSFW classification in image models to prevent deepfakes edits
This is a really cool idea, nice work!

Is it any more effective than (say) messing with its recognition so that any attempt to deepfake just ends up as garbled nonsense?

Can't help wondering if the censor models get tweaked more frequently and aggressively (also presumedly easier to low-pass on a detector than a generator, since lossiness doesn't impact final image)

pentaphobe··on Inducing self-NSFW classification in image models to prevent deepfakes edits
> we shouldn't ban tools

When I see the old BuT FrEe SpEeCH argument repurposed to impinge civil rights I start warming to the idea of banning tools.

Alternately "Chemical weapons don't kill people, people with chemical weapons kill people"

pentaphobe··on Inducing self-NSFW classification in image models to prevent deepfakes edits
Or making knives that turn into overcooked noodles if you try to use them on anything except vegetables and acceptable meats
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