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rifty

180 karma · joined May 29, 2022

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rifty··on Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop
I suppose today the substitute workflow would be to alias/shortcut something onto the desktop, then delete it from the desktop when you are done.
rifty··on Canada will match US tariffs 'dollar for dollar' as trade talks break down
I would too argue it wouldn't be respect but he responds to lines when it's forced upon him for sake of making things difficult in the face him chasing easy wins. You need to prove to him that the reality and consequences you propose exist and are material. Does it guarantee better behaviour from him? No. Because he also has a vindictive side for which he will exercise if he sees a chance to be. But likely you'll experience different approaches despite chasing similar ends.

But the audience of this transaction isn't just the microcosm of Trump in the world at large and time at long. Canadian's supporting their government standing on doing things the right way will set the right expectations for others when dealing with them.

rifty··on I Have Thoughts on the iPhone Air
This is a super obscure wish but I'd love this phone to death if it boosted the speaker and stayed with the single camera and instead had a caseless lens mounting interface.
rifty··on Cloudflare Drop
I don't know about Windows, but on macOS you can. If you wanted to try yourself you could use SingleFile to export a webpage as a .html zip file which you could then just 'open' into the web browser.

For a web app, you might have to unzip it and launch the .html inside. CyberChef for example does offer a downloadable copy of its web app instructing you do just that.

[1]: https://gchq.github.io/CyberChef/

rifty··on Rewriting Bun in Rust
Super interesting!

I feel like people will make the wrong comparison with the cost to complete. $165000 should be compared to not the cost of a programmer going line by line by hand but someone designing a transpiler from zig to rust. The time to complete is impressive though, if you could spend $165000 and a year of time to find out the rewrite project worked, or instead spend that in a month, you'd probably take that month now that this proof of concept exists out there.

rifty··on If more than 50% press blue, everyone survives. Red pressers always survive
I assume most people are aware there will be some blue voters. I also assume that greater than 50% of the population are more socially minded than not as if it was otherwise, in the long run the society would fail to stay cohesive.

It would be easy to self justify picking red as 'it's not unethical killing, it's self preservation' but I'd still bet on society being more socially minded than not, for betting otherwise would mean i think society as an idea of togetherness is a total illusion. If choosing red, after, it would be non existent.

Though also to me the experience of life is starkly temporary; dying early or not doesn't really matter to me so i'm not surprised other's emotional conflict varies here. But as a result personally, losing the existence of something unique to experience (togetherness) in preference of something otherwise fleeting, even the self, isn't very interesting to me.

rifty··on If you thought code writing speed was your problem you have bigger problems
While I find your frequent use of 'it turns out' to remind me of https://jsomers.net/blog/it-turns-out .. I do think there may be supportive logic to be had. A lot of software previously wasn't simply hand done, it was done along with implementing libraries of code or using snippet libraries. So, software engineers had already abstracted away coding a lot of the reusable parts between projects they will be now in-house developing with AI.

If so, it might be true that in many cases writing code wasn't as big of the story as some people think for some other people in the industry. I imagine there were many people though who toiled by hand a lot of code they didn't need to before for lack of experience or awareness, and so for them this a big increase in speed.

rifty··on MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and M5 Max
There has been for a long time. It used to be called Wineskin — Sikarugir is the successor to that project. There's also Porting Kit which helps setting up and installing the wrappers.

Underneath it all is Wine which is the open source compatibility layer project which Crossover contributes to.

rifty··on You don't have to
I think this essay illustrates pretty well the value in indulging an experience not just for the sake of it but to try and truly know it emotionally.. and perhaps also given some of the responses, it is rightly counterbalancing a lack of appreciation and understanding for anyone doing just that.

I do wonder the prospects of any etsy-like outcome for largely hand crafted software though. While you can personally find stylistic expression in the craft i'm not sure how apparent the nuances of crafting code is to users of the product beyond the requirements of a UX design and vision. It's hard not to imagine generation industrializing a lot of this part of the craft of making software.

For me I think the important thing to not lose sight as we use generation more and more in software is our care for the work piece. It feels like care, and deep understanding are set up to become further valuable rarities in the future as we become less and less intimately involved and we have to be intentional about in order to keep.

I feel like there is some parallels here to industrial designers and their desire to hold on to obsessing about and understanding the details in the face of using industrialized tooling and being very much removed from the intimate feeling of crafting every millimetre. Deeply caring is still meaningful and valuable even if it isn't minimally required.

rifty··on Luce: First Electric Ferrari
If I understand you correctly, there is a cool video on youtube that shows off a concept AE86 EV conversion that matches the driving experience of the original.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE2oDKguy3Q

rifty··on Vouch
Ahh, I see now the angle you were coming at it from, my wrong!
rifty··on Vouch
It feels like the problem here comes from the reluctance to utilize a negative sum outcome for rejection. Instead of introducing accidental perverse incentives, if rejected your stake shouldn't go to the repo, 50% could be returned, and 50% deleted. If it times out or gets approved you get 100% back. If a repo rejects too often or is seen doing so unfairly reputation would balance participation.
rifty··on TikTok users can't upload anti-ICE videos. The company blames tech issues
I think there's value in the homepage placing these things less prominently, while making more prominent the other things we want the culture here to be about - despite those things being less generally engaging and obviously popular.

For when someone is a new person here, they'll then first get mildly introduced and familiar with the expectations and aspirations of space through more neutral discussions. After their initial impression they're always free to seek out these hotter discussions on /active once they realize they happen here.

rifty··on Prediction markets are ushering in a world in which news becomes about gambling
In theory I like the idea of prediction markets but how they are done right now makes a bunch of markets too insecure to put much stock into or informationally unvaluable to inform other decisions

There is little incentive for someone with significant information, reason, or intuition to reveal it early leaving the market dumb for most of its existence or also open for someone influencing the outcome late.

They also aren't currently that reliable for gauging the wisdom of the crowds for situations where trust in the market effects its outcome. It's easy due to the scale of them for someone to just burn money to skew the perception of it for rhetorical and influential benefits.

I feel like there is no getting off this train though because news media companies are still desperate for revenue. Gambling around news will either increase advertising revenue for them, or if they do real information uncovering journalism, drive subscriptions because there's now incentive for getting news early on more than just financial news.

rifty··on Trump says Venezuela’s Maduro captured after strikes
This part of the situation is the interesting thing to me.

Is this US administration establishing itself as the effective dictator of Venezuela indefinitely? What does running that country have to look like directed by the US president and what changes will they make to restrict the position to prepare it for transition? Is the plan to make no changes to the position and then forever make a mockery of their elections by only letting people run in the future who suite US interests? It feels like this situation has the potential to turn into a colonial-like relationship always under threat of direct US military intervention.

rifty··on 10 years of personal finances in plain text files
The question to ask when tracking to optimize reoccurring bills for home and grocery is if there is even any room you can give anyways.

You'd probably find the easy end actionable changes better by tracking the amount and which food spoiled before eating, or by testing your standard basket item costs at different stores you are willing to go to. But all of this isn't something you need to do continuously. Once you figure it out, you should be good for some period of time.

rifty··on The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI Partner on Sora
With numbers like this, it feels like OpenAI is selling at this point the value of an IPO if everyone consolidates around OpenAI more than on the competitive value of its product.

For every extra company they get effectively exclusive usage with the more believable the strategy becomes. As it wouldn't be the first time that beating out competitors in enterprise distribution led to users making what they are used to using at work what they use personally.

rifty··on John Giannandrea to retire from Apple
I know, it's lame. Over that amount of time Apple with the help of third party developers could have walked much of useful distance we now are trying to run to with LLMs for controlling devices. Unfortunately Apple neither wanted to give up the interaction point to developers nor develop it themselves, and only gave users some control super late with Shortcuts.
rifty··on Gnome is better macOS than macOS
Personally, I think the trade offs for more window space is worth it versus window positioned app menu bars. If you really are trying to maximally optimize menu bar navigation you go with the menu bar as a context menu wherever your cursor is, or a key command to prompt searching for the menu option you want to use.

As for 3, the way you'd solve this while retaining the 'global' menubar style is by treating screens more individual and having a screen unique menubar. Introduce screen focus, and have the screen focus follow where the cursor is. Further you could make it so that when a screen regains cursor focus it also refocuses the last window on that screen. The menu bar would then serve the purpose of visually indicating and emphasizing which app on which screen has latent focus even when the screen lacks focus itself. (Which now saying it honestly might have been an original MacOS consideration before losing focus caused window dimming)

rifty··on Show HN: A subtly obvious e-paper room air monitor
There is actually one in the house, but I'm not in a situation where I can install one in a specific room or upgrade the in/out flow in that room.
rifty··on Show HN: A subtly obvious e-paper room air monitor
> It's surprising how quickly a room with a closed door and one person can go from ~ambient CO2 levels to 1000ppm+.

Yeah, having seen myself how quickly it happens i've recently been thinking of finding automatic window openers that would respond to CO2 levels reported from either my aranet or on its own.

rifty··on Google boss says AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'
This has been how I've framed a lot of the expenditure despite lack of immediate substantial new revenues. Everyone including Google is driven to protecting current revenues from prospective disruption. But the vulnerability AI created for Google is to other companies worth positioning themselves to take advantage of if Google falls behind and loses chunks of marketshare.
rifty··on When did people favor composition over inheritance?
>Do people not have an understanding of fundamental Software Engineering principles from OGs like Parnas/Liskov/etc.?

I believe this hints at a major culprit contributing towards the sentiment and use of OO in practice over the years. I'm going to say no people don't. Even if someone goes through education, it won't often require engaging with multiple formative past perspectives at length.. even though there is real value to these musings by comparing and contrasting them altogether first hand.

rifty··on Steam Frame
It felt like the headset hardware had reached a sweet spot for the moment, but with this announcement the software situation is now also going to be reaching a similar place. Now we have a continuity of freedom with a PC OS on the headset away from home as well as the full mobility of a untethered headset display with the full power of a stationary PC at home. Can't wait to see what dev's do with this.
rifty··on Why Sam Altman was booted from OpenAI, according to new testimony
“All four of us who fired him came to the conclusion that we just couldn’t believe things that Sam was telling us, and that’s just a completely unworkable place to be in as a board — especially a board that is supposed to be providing independent oversight over the company, not just helping the CEO to raise more money.”

I think I have to disagree here because they talk about loss of trust. Loss of trust is enough when deciding who you want to work associate with. Firing seems steep, but when working with someone feels forever untenable, your options are really you or them exiting. There's not really an in-between option to balance the response for how much the issue crossed the line of trust when you don't see it coming back.

Maybe they shouldn't have lost total trust at Sam's behaviour. But personally I'd lean towards it being a pretty normal response from people existing in the environment itself; whom are at the time feeling the active shift effect Sam was having on the power balance to their detriment.

rifty··on The Case That A.I. Is Thinking
I think the medium where information transformation happened was for many the only artificial line between what they called processing and what they called thinking. The caveat for others being that thinking is what you do with active awareness, and intuition is what you do otherwise.

That caveat to me is the useful distinction still to ponder.

My point of contention with equivalences to Human thinking still at this point is that AI seems to know more about the world with specificity than any human ever will. Yet it still fails sometimes to be consistent and continuous at thinking from that world where a human wouldn't. Maybe i'm off for this but that feels odd to me if the thinking is truly equivalent.

rifty··on Affinity Studio now free
I'm not disappointed at how far Affinity has pushed the baseline for graphic design software up until this point for me with V1 and V2. I'll stay tentatively hopeful that we don't see this backslide in V3 even though i'm not expecting the same development velocity for new baseline features outside of the subscription now.

I'm not that hopeful though.. with freemium, everything is subject to be clawed back slowly into a subscription if the subscription offering fails to perform well enough.

rifty··on Simplify your code: Functional core, imperative shell
I agree because it reads as it will process in the direction I normally read. But I do think one of the benefits of the function approach is that the scope isn't cluttered with staging variables.

For these reasons one of the things I like to do in Swift is set up a function called ƒ that takes a single closure parameter. This is super minimal because Swift doesn't require parenthesis for the trailing closure. It allows me to do the above inline without cluttering the scope while also not increasing the amount of redirection using discrete function declarations would cause.

The above then just looks like this:

  ƒ { 
    var users = db.getUsers();
    var expiredUsers = getExpiredUsers(users, Date.now());
    var expiryEmails = generateExpiryEmails(expiredUsers);\
    email.bulkSend(expiryEmails);
  }
rifty··on Feed the bots
I suppose once you've lured them into reading a couple garbage pages you've successfully identified them as bots. You could then serve them garbage pages even for real urls as well just in case they ever got smart enough to try and back out of endless garbage. You could probably do a bunch of things that would only affect them specifically to increase their costs.
rifty··on Computer science courses that don't exist, but should (2015)
He's actually semi active on Quora!

https://www.quora.com/profile/Alan-Kay-11?share=1

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