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pyfon

66 karma · joined April 13, 2025

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pyfon··on Encryption Is Not a Crime
So in general, shit security is legal, good security is a crime?

A warehouse with shutters and bulky padlocks, a night security guard and camera system is a crime? A bank vault is a crime? Safety deposit boxes?

pyfon··on How a Forgotten Battle Created a More Peaceful World
Hell technically is a bunch of people who didn't repent. Might be pretty much like normal life, people wise.
pyfon··on How a Forgotten Battle Created a More Peaceful World
Where could you possibly get that idea?
pyfon··on As 'Bot' Students Continue to Flood In, Community Colleges Struggle to Respond
Pregnancy is a protected class.

Edit: not sure about Germany

pyfon··on As 'Bot' Students Continue to Flood In, Community Colleges Struggle to Respond
Should be able to sue. Basic human rights.
pyfon··on The Halting Problem is a terrible example of NP-Harder
Most of the time the constants are going to be similar. And by similar I mean < 3 orders of magnitude say. So 2^9 or adding 9 to N eats that up pretty quick.
pyfon··on Four Kinds of Optimisation (2023)
This! Extending the list of 4:

5. Remove unrequired behaviour.

6. Negotiate the required behaviour with stakeholders.

7. UX changes. E.g. make a synchronous flow a background job and notification. Bring back quick parts of the operation sooner (e.g. like a progressive jpg)

8. Architecture changes. E.g. monolithification, microservification. Lambdas vs. VM vs. Fargate etc.

And some more technical:

9. Caches?

10. Scalability, more VMs

11. Move compute local (on client, on edge comoute, nearby region)

11a. Same as 11 for data residency.

12. Data store optimisation e.g. indices, query plans, foreign keys, consistent hashing (arguably a repeat of data structures)

13. Use a data centre for more bang/buck than cloud.

14. Compute type: use GPU instead of CPU etc. I'll bundle here L1 cache etc.

15. Look at sources of latency. proxies, sidecars, network hops (and their location) etc.

16. GC pauses, event loops, threading, other processed etc.

pyfon··on Stop Conflating Genius with Asshole
False dichotomy. "If you deploy this code as is to production there is a high risk of bug X which I think is unacceptable risk. We had a similar bug 3 months ago.". Click the request changes button. Simple.

If someone keeps making mistakes, talk to their manager maybe. .

pyfon··on OpenAI is building a social network?
Doesn't matter. Subreddits create vast islands of value. A single sub overrun with bots is quarantined effectively.

That is why Reddit is one of my favourite social sites. It is algorithmic but if you go to r/assholedesign you get asshole design. (and an anal mod who keeps it like that) Etc.

Value $44bn ;)

pyfon··on OpenAI is building a social network?
It is a Threads. How is that doing?
pyfon··on Ask HN: How do I jump from Senior PM –> Senior Product Engineer?
I'm trying to get "senior" after 29 yoe lol. Titles mean nothing they are like saying your wealth has reached 1000000. 1000000 what?

He might go direct to senior (as a word in a title at given company) based on impact if he can regurgitate the right algos and design question answers.

pyfon··on Notion's Lies Sunsetting Skiff Mail
> We are excited to share that Skiff has joined Notion.

Lol. Good for you!

pyfon··on Show HN: Unsure Calculator – back-of-a-napkin probabilistic calculator
Only 1 percent of values would end up being 100+ on a uniform distribution.

For normal it is higher but maybe not much more so.

pyfon··on Show HN: Unsure Calculator – back-of-a-napkin probabilistic calculator
Not having this feature is a feature—they mention this.
pyfon··on Launch HN: mrge.io (YC X25) – Cursor for code review
There are a few of these already. Is this a land grab play, i.e. with investment get the big accounts then all the compliance ticks then dominate?

AI or conventional bots for PRs are neat though. Where I work we have loads of them checking all sorts of criteria. Most are rules based. E.g. someone from this list must review if this folder changes. Kinda annoying when getting the PR in but overall great for quality control. We are using an LLM AI for commenting on potential issues too. (Sorry I don't have any influence to help them to consider yours)

pyfon··on How to speed up US passenger rail, without bullet trains
Sydney to Canberra centre for government adjacent business you probably don't need a car. The train is near parliament and probably near your office and hotel. Maybe a taxi to get to the city centre which is 5 min away.
pyfon··on Albert Einstein's theory of relativity in words of four letters or less
That is not a counter point! The output has a probability distribution so you can assing zero to any e-containing token and scale everything else up accordingly.
pyfon··on Albert Einstein's theory of relativity in words of four letters or less
8 of them on the cover!
pyfon··on Albert Einstein's theory of relativity in words of four letters or less (1999)
It suck shit up
pyfon··on Why Everything in the Universe Turns More Complex
Life in the universe is pretty unfavourable! A rare thing indeed. Where it has evolved I think it is less about entropy and more about the nature of the matter - atoms, molecules. Particularly carbon and water. And the way they can replicate themselves through chemistry. That had to obey entropy but is not driven by it. Light scattering off the atmosphere will do the entropy trick well enough!
pyfon··on Why Everything in the Universe Turns More Complex
Yes indeed. As I understand it, entropy is about states that are more likely.

I wonder if it always increases though? Eventually there will be enough entropy that any change may cause it to reduce or oscillate? (At universe / reachable universe scale).

pyfon··on How to speed up US passenger rail, without bullet trains
I think once the decision is made 10 yrs is fine. But Australia has a smaller population than most so you'd need to prove decent usage first.
pyfon··on How to speed up US passenger rail, without bullet trains
Someone made a good argument on Reddit when discussing Australia which is also has a slowish rail network.

It is a 3hr drive Sydney to Canberra and 4hr on train. Mainly because the train track was originally for freight so has more curves than needed for passenger.

They said rather than aim for a super fast train just improve the tracks we have and get the time down to 3hr to compete with the car.

This is a good point because then you get more revenues and usage (the trains are full right now but infrequent - maybe they can run them every 15 minutes)

Then you can go make the case for an even faster train for 2050.

The Japanese Shinkansen is something else. Doing my first decent trip on one this week and can't wait!

pyfon··on Open guide to equity compensation
Oh that is bad! It is a 20k/y pay cut you weren't expecting.

If they were keen to make amends they should just bump your pay that much. Unless they are struggling.

By the way I have a similar RSU amount and schedule. So gar so good but cognizant that in the contract they can stop it at any time. I took the risk as I can also quit at any time!

pyfon··on What can we take away from the ‘stochastic parrot’ saga?
Dead parrot is a Monty Python reference. Also where the Python language get's its name.
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