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robben1234

248 karma · joined September 8, 2015

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robben1234··on PS5 Relapse Exploit
Ask Google, Microsoft or Nvidia why it's not in fact the future of gaming. You need to be rich enough to have fast internet and pay an expensive subscription yet poor enough to fail to afford a GPU at home, all while accepting low bitrate and high input latency. It's not a large addressable market.
robben1234··on Our decision on Cursor following its acquisition by SpaceX
More productive in what way? Letting agents burn tokens to produce garbage output is not productive. And letting teammates read code that wasn't reviewed by a human submitting it also isn't productive.

If I work with one agent / few subagents on one feature I can steer it as soon as I notice it drifting into the direction of waste. This way I only review the total diff 1.5-2 times. And I also don't waste my own mental energy on context switching between tasks agents are producing diffs for in parallel.

robben1234··on A race condition in Aurora RDS
My cluster recently started to failover every few days whenever it experiences the load to trigger scale up from 1-2 to 20+ acu.

And then I also encountered errors just like op in my app layer about trying to execute a write query via read-only transaction.

The workaround so far is to invalidate connection on error. When app reconnects the cluster write endpoint correctly leads to current primary.

robben1234··on Notes on rolling out Cursor and Claude Code
I work with python codebases and consider comments that answer "what?" instead of "why?" bad.

LLMs tend to write comments answering "what?", sometimes to a silly extent. What I found helping for using Claude 3.7 was to add this rule in cursor. The fake xml tag helped to decrease the number of times it strays from my instructions.

<mandatory_code_instruction>

YOU ARE FORBIDDEN FROM ADDING ANY COMMENTS OR DOCSTRINGS. The only code accepted will be self-documenting code.

</mandatory_code_instruction>

If there's a section of code where a comment answering "why?" is needed this rule doesn't seem to interfere when I explicitly ask it to add it there.

robben1234··on Three Felonies a Day (2013)
>It only becomes a crime when you're absurdly over the limit.

I vividly remember my confusion learning about how many states in the US use an absolute value to turn speeding violation into a criminal charge, and namely Virginia which just a few years ago had that value set to 80mph (~130kmh) - a state with lots of interstate traffic and I-95 speed limit set to 70 mph (~115kmh).

And I could understand a predatory scheme set up by the government to generate revenue - set speed limit low, make fines really high. But in this case it's not clear to me what the state is gaining - throwing someone in jail for a weekend and labeling that person a criminal ruins their life for good but there's almost no profit for the treasury.

robben1234··on Oh man! Our entire team has been replaced by Vietnam developers.
The pilot license is the largest obstacle to mass adoption, not even the price, in my opinion.

For fixed wing private flying you are looking at at least hundred hours fully dedicated to new knowledge and skills at an expensive rate. That's assuming you are proficient at learning and able-bodied enough to pass medical.

Unlike driving, when flying you can't just safely pull off to shoulder and stop to figure out whatever problem you are having. So there's a lot effort spent on ensuring whoever is flying is able to prevent known issues and handle emergencies in a non-tragic way.

robben1234··on ID verification service for TikTok, Uber, X exposed driver licenses
But there are already regulations and companies with their executives are being held accountable against it. Does it matter how many badges the person designing the system is wearing if it complies with regulations and passes an audit? The problem with leaks to me looks like more of the nature of lax enforcement and few consequences when found in the wrong.
robben1234··on Alternative clouds are booming as companies seek cheaper access to GPUs
Is there anything stopping those teams from deploying k8s and every possible apache product onto these machines?

There's also middle ground in the form of Digital ocean's kubernetes which runs noticeably cheaper than big tech cloud offerings.

robben1234··on Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe
Airlines always check additional documentation for people with passports that do not get visa-free entry to destination. It's a liability issue - they would have to fly that person back if they are not let in.

Of course airlines do not care about documents allowing you entry to the departure point.

robben1234··on Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe
I don't follow how is this concerning. All people with more than one citizenship I know at least via a few handshakes use their passports exactly this way for travel.

Why would a Russian citizen go through the hoops of getting a Russian visa on their Czech passport? Does Czechia not allow dual citizenship to call the second secret?

robben1234··on Paris Vote Targets SUV Drivers with Parking Fees Set to Triple
American car companies push for large vehicles because those are exempt from strict emission standards. And the rest eventually started following because the US is the most lucrative car market in the world, even if their own country has different legislation.

Remove the loophole and everything gets back into place without any weird & local workarounds like Paris had to retreat to.

robben1234··on Why you've never been in a plane crash
>The trouble is, what speed is wrong?

I don't really agree that this is the "trouble". Any competent transit-related professional knows what type of driving is wrong. Even American cops know [0] that in terms of traffic the key thing is to not impede traffic and target dangerous driving.

However, hunting school zone speeders, left lane hoggers and traffic weavers will never generate as much revenue as using an automatic machine that points at cars going faster than arbitrary number.

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn6C6ZkBdb0

robben1234··on Python 3.13 Gets a JIT
How much of Python in the world is ran on Azure? It's my language of preference and the main professional one, along with JS/TS and Go. But if they pulled something like this I'm pretty sure I'd reluctantly pack things up and move to Go.
robben1234··on Python 3.13 Gets a JIT
Have you looked into Mypy with the strict flag?

https://mypy.readthedocs.io/en/stable/command_line.html#cmdo...

robben1234··on Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US
>People focus too much on edge cases when making life decisions, imo.

Spending dozens of thousands on a personal people mover I would like it to enable and expand my freedoms. I.e. supporting painless weekend road trips. Fossil fuel cars answer this requirement, EVs don't.

For the extremely constrained happy path of commute in urban areas it is much more efficient to develop public transport. Living in a city with developed public transport I'd rather take the train than drive an EV to get to the same destination.

robben1234··on Google Voice goes US only
>having a phone number when traveling, when you cannot receive SMS on your US phone number (thanks verizon)

Is there a good reason why carriers in USA and Canada refuse to provide free incoming sms (& calls at expense of the caller) while abroad?

My experience might be limited to only a handful of sims from different countries, but prepaid Telus (Canada) failing to receive sms while visiting USA was a first and a big surprise to me. Made me transfer to PM which offers this.

robben1234··on BC Supreme Court bars man from calling himself an 'engineer'
Funnily enough, both provincial and federal government doesn't mind contracts and applications with title "software engineer" for immigration related services. As long as work experience fulfils the NOC 2173 definition. Licensing in the NOC is only mentioned as required for Professional Engineer work.

https://www23.statcan.gc.ca/imdb/p3VD.pl?Function=getVD&TVD=...

robben1234··on Pilots hide mental health problems so they don't lose their licenses
Social media is an echo chamber for people with nothing better to do that represents a tiny part of population. In real world many industries would gladly disqualify professionals from working at the first hint of screws flying loose. Especially where any threat to safety have high potential to be fatal.
robben1234··on Factors driving a productivity explosion
Things I managed to deliver in my first year of the first startup with Django + Ajax/Vuejs were a number of multiyear multiteam developments in my second startup (scaleup) that had dozens of microservices and Angular SPA.

I'm only seeing comparable productivity on the backend these days when teams are using AWS native services.

robben1234··on Factors driving a productivity explosion
At some point time difference kills any productivity gain. West Coast to West Europe is barely workable even if everyone in the "secondary" zone is self-sufficient.

However, hiring engineers from Latam could indeed be an option to replace US workers if they can't offer an edge. The issue here is the language barrier.

robben1234··on Starship will attempt a launch this Friday
>just “have 7 figure on a spreadsheet of what I have managed to accumulate”

7 figure on a spreadsheet enables a lot.

An unregistered savings account in one of Canadian banks (just a point of reference, not sure if US has better) currently offers 4% yearly. That's 40k a year off the million. Enough to retire with kids in a LCOL country or travel year round as a nomad with a base in LCOL country.

Build a little bit more wealth and all those LCOL options turn into MCOL. E.g. northern Italy.

All while just being a working professional. It'd be unheard of in Europe to have this kind of options after just a couple years of work.

robben1234··on Starship will attempt a launch this Friday
>Then EU > US. In the EU most people have a shot at this, with free education and possibilities.

This comparison only works at birth, or maybe up to teens. We are, most likely, working professionals here. With a degree and fairly established position. Becoming a millionaire is still a monumental task. However at this baseline US is much easier.

robben1234··on Police are not primarily crime fighters, according to the data
>What do you think speed limits are for then?

In the presence of vulnerable bystanders or users of the road (e.g cyclists on city streets), limit serves as protection against fatal outcomes in case of an error. That's the only case where no one could argue against limit.

Does UK track average speeds in cities? I'm not familiar with their system. But aware that Dutch use it on highways to make everyone miserable. While their east neighbor doesn't have a default limit on highways at all while still having one of the best in the world highway safety record.

robben1234··on Is ORM still an anti-pattern?
I feel that ORM might be an antipattern depending on a language.

Every Java developer I interacted in my career with wanted to avoid ORMs and instead come up with a bunch of pattern-abstracted ways to write raw SQL.

Every Python developer I interacted in my career with loved their ORMs. Django or SQLAlchemy.

robben1234··on Reddit bans subreddit detailing how to move to competitor Kbin
I mixed up pricing. Several thousands a month. But if you could buy a 192 CPUs server for just 10 grand, seems like not a bad deal. Especially if this hypothetical project is able to attract the load we are discussing for longer than a few weeks.
robben1234··on Reddit bans subreddit detailing how to move to competitor Kbin
Whoops. Mixed up pricing. 192 vCPUs instances on-demand depending on the type indeed fluctuate around $10/hr, leading to several thousands a month.

Not to forget the data transfer costs though https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/on-demand/ And also the potential minefield of API GW and NAT costs.

robben1234··on Quality of new vehicles in US declining on more tech use: study
It's only boring because all the fun was removed for convenience. Just the third pedal makes it pretty much fun even at low speeds.
robben1234··on Quality of new vehicles in US declining on more tech use: study
It's one piece of tech that makes life universally easier. Especially on car dependent continents.

That being said, I'd take large European mirrors that know to go down when car is put in reverse and basic sensor over this any day.

robben1234··on Reddit bans subreddit detailing how to move to competitor Kbin
Serving a social network is not the case where you'd want just one server. Mainly due to reliability concerns, spikes in traffic and different patterns at different times.

But if you like the idea of ignoring best practices, there are EC2 instances with 192 vCPUs that go for several thousands an hour. And taking as example Golang benchmarks https://github.com/smallnest/go-web-framework-benchmark where it's not uncommon to be able to serve 6 digits of 30ms requests per second with just 4 cores. Then the conclusion is, the limit is the sky, if you are stubborn enough.

robben1234··on New York City will charge drivers going downtown
>The pavement doesn't need to withstand thousands of pounds of vehicles.

It has. It'd be illegal and extremely dangerous to design a city without properly functioning infrastructure for emergency services, garbage disposal, physically impaired accessibility. Also very inconvenient to not include commercial deliveries and public transit into that list of essential road use scenarios. Most of the vehicles performing these services are heavy.

For the most part only private ICE cars are light enough to be a drop in a bucket on the road maintenance. Private EVs, and especially EV SUVs, are likely making an impact on the maintenance schedule though.

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