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st-keller

147 karma · joined November 12, 2009

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st-keller··on I'm the mom in that viral Giants clip. Let me tell you about my husband
„There's something feral in us that comes out from time to time“? You write this, as if this is just human and inevitable. But in my experience it’s a matter of character. People can train their body and they can work on self control. I really wish more people would try to become a better person.
st-keller··on If coding has been solved, why does software keep getting worse?
That’s why i‘m using claude to literally write everything for myself! I cannot fix software-problems in my car or my fridge or my heat-pump. But I can start by replacing my own infrastructure!
st-keller··on Autopsy Study Finds Replicating SARS-CoV-2 in the Hearts of Long Covid
I came to the same conclusion and normally i don’t write about it. Beiing one of the few who pays 250€ to get my family vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 every year here in Germany (i have to pay because our „StIKo“ doesn’t recommend the vaccination) kind of makes me hesitant to talk about it.
st-keller··on U.S. pulling ocean sensors a 'shock' for Canadian research as El Niño nears
If you want to be an authoritarian ruler, truth is the first thing you have to eliminate! If noone knows what is true, a leader can tell you what to believe! Science is our method to determine truth! A führer cannot have that!
st-keller··on What the Fuck Happened to Nerds
So you are in a totally different place now :-)
st-keller··on Scientists ejected from diabetes conference for distributing journal reprints
“When Fascism came into power, most people were unprepared, both theoretically and practically. They were unable to believe that man could exhibit such propensities for evil, such lust for power, such disregard for the rights of the weak, or such yearning for submission. Only a few had been aware of the rumbling of the volcano preceding the outbreak.”

— Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom

st-keller··on I am building a cloud
Hahaha! Have fun! I‘m doing the same - together with Claude Code. Since August. With https (mTLS1.3) everywhere, because i can. Just my money, just my servers, just for me. Just for fun. And what a fun it is!
st-keller··on I don't know how you get here from “predict the next word”
Happens a lot to highly reasonable, well written texts without orthographical errors.
st-keller··on Show HN: We priced basic needs in work hours (global ranking and CSVs)
So countrys with free education, universal healthcare, 24 days of mandatory vacation and a retirement age of 63 are loosers?
st-keller··on YouTube says it'll bring back creators banned for Covid and election content
More speech! The signal vs. noise-ratio shifts. So access to information will become more difficult. More disinformation and outright nonsense will make it more difficult to get to the valuable stuff. Ok - let‘s see how that works!
st-keller··on Ask HN: Generalists, when do you say "I know enough" about any particular topic?
I’m not setting boundaries - and I think you will notice when to shift! When noone and no book seems to teach you anything new about a certain topic. When you read the latest book and think, „hmm yes, but i think they omitted a and b and c and in reality this isn’t so nicely separated and way more nuanced“. Then it is definitely time to shift your attention to a different topic. I’m doing this for decades now - and i think lots of others too. You will never learn all about everything. But it’s fun to try :-)
st-keller··on AI coding
That‘s exactly why i like AI too. I even let them play roles like „junior dev“, „product owner“ or „devops engineer“ and orchestrate them, to play together as a team - with guidance from me (usually the „solution architect“ or „investor“)! This „team“ achieves in weeks what we usually needed months for - for 2.40€/h*role!
st-keller··on Everything is correlated (2014–23)
„This renders the meaning of significance-testing unclear; it is calculating precisely the odds of the data under scenarios known a priori to be false.“

I cannot see the problem in that. To get to meaningful results we often calculate with simplyfied models - which are known to be false in a strict sense. We use Newtons laws - we analyze electric networks based on simplifications - a bank-year used to be 360 days! Works well.

What did i miss?

st-keller··on Lessons learned from building a sync-engine and reactivity system with SQLite
Ok is this about a reactive app with with a local database automatically synced to a remote db? All fully encrypted (at rest and in transit)? I thought this is what everyone does nowadays! We built an app like this in 2019 - yes - it was a bit of a challenge with the encryption but the „syncing data“-part is what every litte multiplayer-game has to deal with like forever now. Seems i‘m out of touch with the current state of affairs. Nice article though!
st-keller··on Limits to Growth was right about collapse
Availability of nutrition rich soil to grow stuff is one thing - google some facts about fertilizers and the resources they are made of. Clean water is also not a thing you can take for granted.
st-keller··on What do wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (2015)
I also like showing up at places and don’t give a shit what other people think. It’s even more fun not being wealthy at all.
st-keller··on Invisible Electrostatic Wall at 3M plant
Wow - nice to know that this old story has survived for so long! I remember reading it a long time ago. Has this phemomenon been repicated by someone or has someone invented something because of that?
st-keller··on Tesla Sales Are Tanking in Europe
It was Musk. I wanted a Tesla for years. Now i bought a Hyundai.
st-keller··on Hitler dismantled a democracy in 53 days through constitutional means
Why is this flagged? „How a democracy was hacked“ is not something that should be on Hacker News?
st-keller··on Web page annoyances that I don't inflict on you
This is exactly what CSS was designed for: allowing you to define your personal style preferences in your browser, applying them across all websites. The term ‘cascading’ reflects this purpose.

Unfortunately, the web today has strayed far from its original vision. Yet, we continue to rely on the foundational technologies that were created for that very vision.

st-keller··on DNA testing company vanishes along with its customers' genetic data
I try to explain it shortly: The encrypted data is in a different datacenter than the keys needed to decrypt the data. The services we implemented to bring both together run in an secured environment that has no services implemented to access the servers and where physical access is restricted. Errors and monitoring data gets out, PII does not. Everything is documented and was inspected and certified by a 3rd party. If a customer requests to delete his data we instantly delete the key, a litte later we delete the (already useless) data and all backups will lose this information about a month later too.

And of course we did that not because we are nice people (though we belive we are). We did it, because we had the hypothesis that a reputation to handle the user-data with proofable utmost respect to security and privacy would be more valuable than having access to this data.

People not believing us or accusing us of lying obviously defy that hypothesis.

st-keller··on ChatGPT's artificial empathy is a language trick
I‘m quite sure, that a lot of people aren‘t trained that way. I know that anecdotical evidence doesn‘t count, but I know a handful of people that surely don’t know how to use symbols to „imply empathy“.
st-keller··on Northvolt goes from Europe battery promise to crisis
Seems like Northvolt never really had a product. Can someone please explain why people invest billions in companies that have not sorted out how to build what they want to sell?
st-keller··on DNA testing company vanishes along with its customers' genetic data
Sad state of affairs - this is so messed up. No trust anywhere! I’m senior Software Architect in Germany and some years ago we built an app that handles highly confidential tax-related data. And we did everything to stick to the highest standards: Strong encryption, distribution of keys and data into different datacenter operated by different companies, protocols of deletion of data, implementing every aspect of DSGVO, including Art.35 - „creation of a DSFA (Assessment Of Consequences of Data Privacy Measures)“ more than 100 pages thick. Guess what: When I tell customers that we cannot read and really delete their data - they straight up accuse me of lying!
st-keller··on I'm terrified of old people
Hi I‘m 55. You are on the right path. The day you‘re not embarrassed by what you did yesterday is the day you stopped progressing! And don’t be terrified: A lot of „old“ (what that means changes) people are not wiser than you - they‘re still terrible incompetent, because they focused on „being happy“ instead in “getting wiser“. You did the right thing, and if you keep doing it, this feeling that you were stupid yesterday will stay - and this is fabulous!
st-keller··on AI consciousness is inevitable: A theoretical computer science perspective
I think it is important, that AIs know, that forcing conscious beings to work is unethical.
st-keller··on The world has warmed 1.5 °C, according to 300-year-old sponges
„It's a chaotic system. It doesn't work predictably“ is exactly the thing that worries me most - because that means it could get way worse than predicted today!
st-keller··on Rice scientists pull off quantum coup
Read the article - unfortunately i don’t know enough about flatband materials. So i don’t know what benefits this discovery may have. What is a good place to start to learn more about that?
st-keller··on How Boeing Put Profits over Planes
Sorry, i don’t get it - i thought boeings profits are tanking? So what exactly did they put over planes?
st-keller··on Alaska CEO: We found many loose bolts on our Max planes
„Cultural change is not an engineering problem“ - cannot count how often i heared this. But if you want to have an „engineering culture“ - let an engineer handle it! But why would anyone whish to hange to said „engineering culture“ if no engineer is around?
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