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sbt

1,707 karma · joined April 1, 2008

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sbt··on Astra for Coding: Why Are We Doing This Again?
There was a big jump around new year, but they seem to have flatlined since them. Just my experience.
sbt··on 216M Spy TVs – The LG Smart TV Problem [video]
Send the PMs that greenlit this to jail.
sbt··on Western Sahara
See also: Morroccan Donald Trump Highway
sbt··on Building on ATProto
Disclaimer: I have not looked carefully at the permissioned data proposal, but I know atproto reasonably well.

Stepping back for a momement, it's clear that permissioned data is driven by real world use-cases (Bluesky needs DMs, Tangled needs private repos, etc). However, I think the synergies with the existing atproto needs to be pretty significant to warrant developing yet another encrypted space spec. We already have various double ratchet protocols, Matrix is having a huge boom. From the point of view of an app developer, does everything need to be handled by atproto, or could we accept that atproto is just for the public stuff?

sbt··on xAI joins SpaceX
"If you mix raisins with turds, they're still turds" - Charlie Munger

Another consequence of US NatSec being gradually privatized is that once your income stream derives mostly from government spending, it becomes an imperative to influence politics to secure that stream. Yet some of these companies will remain vulnerable to shifting political winds.

sbt··on Today is when the Amazon brain drain sent AWS down the spout
> It never made sense to me how such a ruthless and inhumane culture is sustainable in the long run.

It’s pretty simple, actually. Once such a dominant market position is achieved, you can get away with almost anything, whether with customers or employees. This is true of all the BigTech companies.

sbt··on Why haven't local-first apps become popular?
This is the correct answer. Consumers also don’t seem willing to pay for privacy, sadly, when they can get a product for «free» in exchange for data.
sbt··on Trying to get error backtraces in Rust libraries right
> The core issue is that Rust still hasn't stabilized backtrace propagation on errors.

I would actually strengthen this to: «The core issue with Rust is that Rust still hasn’t stabilized _»

sbt··on Pony: An actor-model, capabilities-secure, high-performance programming language
This is probably my favorite programming language I would like to use if it had more backing. Their reference capabilities in particular seem like a very good match for the actor model. Alas, it does not appear to have a large corporation behind it pushing it forward, nor a compelling niche use case (e.g. it is still GC'd).
sbt··on Why is AI so slow to spread?
> ...context needs to improve drastically.

Yes, drastically. This means I'll have to wear Zuck's glasses I think, because the AI currently doesn't know what was discussed at the coffee machine or what management is planning to do with new features. It's like a speed typing goblin living in an isolated basement, always out of the loop.

sbt··on Why is AI so slow to spread?
I have been using it for coding for some time, but I don't think I'm getting much value out of it. It's useful for some boilerplate generation, but for more complex stuff I find that it's more tedious to explain to the AI what I'm trying to do. The issue, I think, is lack of big picture context in a large codebase. It's not useless, but I wouldn't trade it for say access to StackOverflow.

My non-technical friends are essentially using ChatGPT as a search engine. They like the interface, but in the end it's used to find information. I personally just still use a search engine, and I almost always go to straight to Wikipedia, where I think the real value is. Wikipedia has added much more value to the world than AI, but you don't see it reflected in stock market valuations.

My conclusion is that the technology is currently very overhyped, but I'm also excited for where the general AI space may go in the medium term. For chat bots (including voice) in particular, I think it could already offer some very clear improvements.

sbt··on Ask HN: Is anyone else just done with the industry?
Note that many companies are pretending to hire in order to look successful/growing. They might be willing to hire if some unicorn candidate comes along, but in practice the job ad is just marketing.
sbt··on The Future of Flatpak
The problem is that now you have to package for N distros. And the people who run the distro may not want to spend time on it, so you have to do it yourself.
sbt··on Will Elon Musk fire a third of the US government?
Please do it. It will not solve the problem (which is SS/Medicare spending), but will guarantee that they lose the midterms, which will grind the rest of the MAGA agenda to a halt.
sbt··on Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo
Unfortunately, the adaptive cruise control is also far dumber than it thinks it is, slamming the breaks when passing under bridges on the highway etc.
sbt··on District court rejects Tesla request, Postnord does not have to deliver plates
Well it’s not like Postnord manages to deliver something even if they try.
sbt··on U.S. GDP grew at a 4.9% annual pace in the third quarter, better than expected
> The US isn't just productive. It is productive beyond the wildest imagination of the rest of world.

Productivity has a specific meaning in economics, i.e. labor productivity (GDP per hours worked). What I think you are referring to here is output, i.e. GDP.

You can learn more about this here and see the latest country data: https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/gdp-per-hour-worked.htm

sbt··on Oil Is Hard to Quit, Even in Norway Where Electric Cars Rule
Cost of production is much higher in Norway than in Saudi.
sbt··on Scaling Rust Builds with Bazel
I didn't know about this but will check it out, thanks.
sbt··on Scaling Rust Builds with Bazel
We use a similar setup where I work. One challenge we have has been generating bazel targets for different sets of crate features for dependencies. We have solved this by writing Bazel tooling, but learning how to do this has cost a fair bit of time. We also rely heavily on cargo-raze, which has rough edges.

As with all things Bazel, it's great when it works, but it has a steep learning curve that could be hard to justify in many situations. You need at least one person on the team who is willing to really spend time on it.

sbt··on The Nobel Peace Prize 2022
I think awarding it to Obama was the wrong decision. That said, people sometimes misunderstand what the Nobel Peace Prize is about. "Peace" is interpreted in a very abstract sense by the committee and should perhaps be better understood as "Civilizational Progress". The reason the committee awarded it to Obama was because it wanted to commend the progress the US has made on the Civil Rights movement. Dr. Martin Luther King received the peace prize, and Obama is seen as a culmination of this movement. In short, Obama's prize should be seen as a prize given to the American people for their progress.
sbt··on What I’ve learned from users
This essay is uncharacteristically incoherent. The title is "What I've learned from users", yet after reading it I have no answer to this question.
sbt··on The Ethereum merge is done
> If you want to give "power to the people", you need some way of estimating independent voting power, that is not tied to resources.

You mean like a democracy?

sbt··on EV adoption in US is happening faster than predicted
As an EV owner, I would say you either need access to a commercial charger (e.g. at work) or be able to charge at home. But either of those alternatives would be fine by itself.

I don't charge at home, but do most of my charging in the parking garage at work. This is not a fast charger (~2kW), but is wholly sufficient because I just plug it in in the morning. Alternatively, you could charge at home and not having access to any other charging would also be fine. The home charger doesn't even need to be good, because you can just leave it in overnight and even for a slow charge this will fill up aroun d 200km. The only time I actually use a "supercharger" location is for road trips.

The two most common qualms I hear from prospective EV buyers is range anxiety and time to charge. None of these are real issues for me. A full battery anyway lasts for around 400km, which is either 2 weeks of driving to work for me, or ~4 hours of roadtrip driving. After 4 hours of driving on the highway, I have no problems waiting 20min at a supercharger while I get food. Usually, the charger is actually too fast for me in this case.

sbt··on Beginner's guide to error handling in Rust
The problem with errors in Rust is that the stdlib defined Error as a trait and traits are hard to use (not sized, etc). The current state of affairs with thiserror and anyhow is not satisfactory if we want to ease the Rust learning curve.

Errors are too fundamental to be this hard.

sbt··on Science needs more research software engineers
> You don't have enough letters after your name to matter, and you will likely be a pet instead of a peer.

This is an underrated point. This is the case for programmers in finance as well, and requires a hefty salary premium to put up with.

sbt··on Beyond Smart
PGs personality has been great for attracting the kind of college graduate clientele YCombinator has catered to.
sbt··on Demonopolizing the Internet with Interoperability
Another problem is that Big Tech owns the relatively corrupt US government.
sbt··on Is Norway the New East India Company?
There are so many logical flaws (and bad English) here that it’s hard to know where to begin. The analogy with opium is perhaps the only sensible one. Norway, however, is the world’s cleanest and most ethical producer of opium (oil). Given relatively fixed demand, who do you want as a producer?
sbt··on Fierce Nerds
A lot of this is just the description of an emotionally immature person.
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