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redm

6,077 karma · joined February 14, 2011

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redm··on Opus 5.5 is good at explainer videos
Even if I could answer your question (which I can't), things change so fast right now that it might not be valid for long. All you can do is be willing to rapidly adapt and stay focused on where your product adds value.
redm··on Gateway 2000's hilariously bad ads in the 90s (Part II)
For a while in the 90's, I did Gateway 2000 tech support. It's nice to hear you had a good experience :) The mandate was to move quickly while also solving the customer's problem (which is harder than it sounds over the phone).
redm··on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Bay Model
These are the kinds of interesting engineering challenges that were solved with human ingenuity and grit; I wish we were talking more about them to our youth to inspire imagination about what's possible.
redm··on Google’s AI is being manipulated. The search giant is quietly fighting back
Manipulation and misinformation on Wikipedia have been happening for many years (based on my personal experience trying to correct facts). I'm not referencing politics per se, though political views certainly impact Wikipedia since source material, these days, often has a political bias. I'm talking about business facts that get manipulated for that business's benefits.

How does that saying go? If you can't identify the mark in the room, you're the mark. Diligence and a good amount of skepticism serve you well before AI, and certainly post-AI.

redm··on Data centers are transitioning from AC to DC
I guess we've come full circle. It was just 20 years ago that my datacenters gutted DC in favor of AC.
redm··on Show HN: Atomic – Self-hosted, semantically-connected personal knowledge base
This is pretty cool!

What's holding me back from AI repos and agents isn't running it locally though. Its the lack of granular control. I'm not even sure what I want. I certainly don't want to approve every request, but the idea of large amounts of personal data being accessible, unchecked, to an AI is concerning.

I think perhaps an agent that focuses just on security, that learns about your personal preferences, is what might be needed.

redm··on I'm OK being left behind, thanks
I agree with the sentiment of this article.

Sadly, I'm still disagreeing while crypto kiddies are driving past me in lambo's. If its the future of money, yes we'll get there eventually, but like every technology shift, there's a lot of money to be made in the transition, not after. *

* I sold all crypto a few years ago and I'm a happier person :D

redm··on Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act
The question I keep coming back to regarding the recent debate around age verification is "Why now?"

I'm 47, and I started using the internet in my early teens through BBS gateways. I've seen every age of the Internet, and there's always been widely available pornographic materials. Why all of a sudden is this a crisis?

Perhaps I'm missing something?

redm··on Cloudflare was down
SLA’s usually just give you a small credit for the exact period of the incident, which is arymetric to the impact. We always have to negotiate for termination rights for failing to meet SLA standards but, in reality, we never exercise them.

Reality is that in an incident, everyone is focused on fixing issue, not updating status pages; automated checks fail or have false positives often too. :/

redm··on Cloudflare was down
Im much more concerned with customer sites being down which indicates are not impacted. They are.. :/
redm··on Backblaze Drive Stats for Q3 2025
I've been following this report for many years, but Backblaze, as a backup service (traditionally), has very different IO patterns than many users. They originally started with consumer drives, which we found to be far too unreliable. In my experience, the BER and write cycles have a dramatic impact on overall drive performance. The MTBF declines sharply as write cycles increase, both as a percentage of IO and overall IO.

Backblaze changed IO patterns with B2, but that would be the key data for me to make this more useful: failure rate as a percentage of bytes read/written, etc.

redm··on How Tube Amplifiers Work
This is an interesting topic, but the ads overlaying the content make this very hard to read :(

* Please don't suggest I install an Ad blocker.

redm··on Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube
In my experience with OFCOM, Child Safety is just the gateway to a vague list bullet points including “terrorism” and “hateful” content (vaguely defined); what could go wrong??
redm··on Tesla seeks to guard crash data from public disclosure
I don’t understand all the FSD “disdain” in these comments. FSD 13+ on HW4 is amazing. I’ve basically stopped driving and it’s a marvel of technology.

It’s hard for me to understand how everyone doesn't geek out about it all the time.

redm··on Canadian Government Buries “Lawful Access” Provisions in New Border Bill
These types of legal shenanigans, sadly, usually work; Politicians just keep attempting to pass the same provisions in different forms with slightly different language over a period of years until they slip, whatever it is, through.
redm··on Spring 83: a draft protocol intended to suggest new ways of relating online
This kind of reminds me of Instagram stories, somewhat ephemeral, the current state of being of people I follow, and things I'm interested in. I guess I like the federated timeline because it's a federated timeline of things I care about.
redm··on I just want to serve 5 terabytes [video]
Somehow this has only gotten funnier since it was originally posted..
redm··on MCP vs. API Explained
What the article doesn't say (well, there's a lot it doesn't say) is that this protocol was created by Anthropic but is being adopted more widely.

MCP reminds me of a new platform opportunity akin to the Apple App Store.

It's rapidly adopted, with offerings from GitHub, Stripe, Slack, Google Maps, AirTable, etc. Many more non-official integrations are already out there. I expect this will only gain adoption over the coming year.

redm··on Forum with 2.6M posts being deleted due to UK Online Safety Act
I've been working with OFCOM on implementing the requirements of this act. They seem reasonable, and what they are looking for is mostly table stakes. That said, I wouldn't want to live in or run a UGC business in the UK right now.
redm··on DeepSeek Has Been Inevitable and Here's Why (History Tells Us)
Setting aside specific cases like DeepSeek, the tech trend is a consistent march towards cheaper, faster, and better solutions. This march is often fueled by new approaches in manufacturing, materials, and techniques, all part of the broader march of scientific progress. The result is usually similar or superior performance at a significantly reduced cost.

I agree with the OP that constraint is the biggest driver of this innovative trend, which is why disruption is the best form of innovation.

redm··on Ask HN: How to Fundraise in 2025?
Thanks for the response. Do you mean by leveraging contacts or just by "existing" in it for a lengthy period (i.e., people see you as a more committed or more experienced option)?
redm··on Show HN: Hacker Herald – like HN but with crowdsourced pics and subtitles
The saying, “If it ain't broke, don’t fix it,” comes to mind. I’m all for progress, but Hacker News's simplicity and density are its major features.
redm··on The U.S. government may finally mandate safer table saws
I'm a woodworker, and i've suffered some injuries over the years (but not on a tablesaw). This seems like more of a political issue, those for and against regulation. I'm surprised to see this on HN and there is too much drama in this thread to otherwise comment.
redm··on OpenAI and Elon Musk
I'm not a Meta fan, but it's hard to not look at how they have handled Llama and how well it's worked out for them and the "community." I think that OpenAI could also be playing a leading role in the science instead of selling subscriptions for Microsoft.
redm··on Sora: Creating video from text
Why are all the example videos in slow motion?
redm··on DoorDash driver rages at customer who won't tip over $5 on pizza order
In my experience, tipping culture first started to change with Starbucks, but it really seemed to accelerate with integrated tips in terminals like square and point of sale devices.

In short, when the checkout terminal asks you to round up your change for a donation to help kids, and the cashier is looking at you, nobody wants to feel like the jerk that says no.

redm··on James Webb Space Telescope captures high-resolution image of Uranus
I have to say, with all the discussion about how magnificent the JWST was going to be, and now it is, I expected a better picture. It puts into perspective just how far away Uranus is, which is hard to wrap my mind around...
redm··on Canadian internet bill S-210 is a step closer to becoming law
Protrcting privacy worked out so well with these cookie banners, I cant imagine what could go wrong with this…
redm··on You do need a technical co-founder [video]
That may be more of a personality conflict. There's no more important choice than who you co-found with, and both parties should have high regard for each other's value to the business.
redm··on You do need a technical co-founder [video]
The inverse side of this is, that depending on the business, you may need another type of co-founder as well. Two technical co-founders aren't the right fit for every business.
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