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sid_talks

41 karma · joined November 21, 2020

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sid_talks··on Gemini 3.7 Flash
The Gemini Flash models makes perfect sense to me coming from a company like Google. Google AI Mode for search is a product I really find useful. It makes sense that Google focused on smaller, faster yet smart enough models that wouldn't break your bank on inference. It plays well into their product ecosystem.

Google AI Mode consistently gets me consistently good results and good speeds. It really changes what "googling" is for me.

sid_talks··on Terence McKenna's Mega Bad Trip (2025)
> Cannabis dependency really can sneak up on people, and for some it’s quite difficult to get off it, with real physical and emotional symptoms.

Throughout my university years, many of my peers smoked cannabis on a daily basis, often several times a day. Most of them seemed oblivious to the fact that they might have developed a dependence; whenever anyone tried to talk to them about it, they dismissed it, claiming cannabis is completely benign and nothing to worry about. Today, I personally know that at least a couple of them developed serious mental and physical problems, and to this day, they are unable to cope with life without being high.

There should be more awareness about safe cannabis use and its risks rather than framing it as a "healthier" alternative to other drugs, with people usually saying "at least I am not doing X, I am just smoking weed".

sid_talks··on India asks WhatsApp to pause username feature rollout
I do not think this is a valid argument. Especially coming from the Indian government, who has at many times cited security and safety issues to curb internet freedom.[1][2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_India

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn074j04l3eo

sid_talks··on Learn Vim motions with an ice-cream van
Looks pretty neat but it doesn't seem to register the '^' key at all with a German keyboard.
sid_talks··on So where are all the AI apps?
AI does make me more productive. At least until the stage of getting my idea to the "working prototype stage". But in my personal experience, no one has been realistically able to get to the 10x level that a lot of people claim to have achieved with LLMs.

Yes, you do produce more code. But LoC produced is never a healthy metric. Reviewing the LLM generated code, polishing the result and getting it to production-level quality still very much requires a human-in-the-loop with dedicated time and effort.

On the other hand, people who vibe code and claims to be 10x productive, who produces numerous PRs with large diffs usually bog down the overall productivity of teams by requiring tenuous code reviews.

Some of us are forced to fast-track this review process so as to not slow down these "star developers" which leads to the slow erosion in overall code quality which in my opinion would more than offset the productivity gains from using the AI tools in the first place.

sid_talks··on Shall I implement it? No
> Trust but verify.

I guess I should have used ‘completely trust’ instead of ‘trust’ in my original comment. I was referring to the subset of developers who call themselves vibe coders.

sid_talks··on Shall I implement it? No
[flagged]
sid_talks··on Show HN: Make slides with text, markdown, YAML, JSON or JavaScript, your call
I stopped using PowerPoint for presentations long back. What I use now is LaTeX with the beamer class to make classy professional looking presentations. This looks like another good alternative to try out.