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stldev

166 karma · joined November 26, 2019

SWE/DOE; LA/STL; en/fr.
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stldev··on Let's Ditch Google (Verb)
Marketing teams kill for this. Every business wants this in the beginning. Once you're big enough that it threatens the trademark, the game changes.
stldev··on ChatGPT Pro 500
Fair point, I'm quite sure it is the opposite.

Tomorrow's FTC perhaps.

stldev··on America.gov
100% this.

When you need to work with the government, the last thing you want is a program limited by a specific set of rules and interfaces. You want a person who understands your (sometimes unique) issue, who knows how things actually work, and can work around the restrictions imposed upon programs. Someone who can pick up a phone, help you out of bureaucratic corners.

stldev··on GPT 6.1 Sol: Near-Astra intelligence for a fifth of the price
My experience as well.

For coding specifically, I've found 5.6-Sol > 6.0 Sol > Astra.

For modeling and artwork, Astra has been great routinely outperforming Kimi.

This is reminiscent to me of what Anthropic pulled back in February with their adaptive thinking rollout.

I can't wait for technology to catch up to a point where we can rid ourselves of this oligopoly.

stldev··on ChatGPT Pro 500
> If your Pro 200 subscription was active at the eligibility cutoff or during the seven days before it, you’re eligible to keep your previous included usage allowance through Oct 29, 2026 while you have an active Pro 200 subscription.

Got it, calendar updated: switch back to Claude on the 29th.

I realize this may be an unpopular opinion, but I feel the FTC should start looking at things like this. If a well funded company can bait the market long enough to drown most everyone else out then double their price overnight (ok, 30 days..) doesn't competition just become a matter of who has the deepest pockets?

stldev··on 1996 chat room simulator connected to Win95 and System 7 web desktops
Neat! Reminds me of circa 92-94 Prodigy/CompuServe days. By '96 I recall having moved on to local dial-up ISPs. The longer handshake was well worth it for 56k versus the 300-2400 many of us came from.
stldev··on Vomit: Clean up Claude 5's token output with a separate LLM
Regex pre-filter. You're welcome.

  re.sub(r'(?is)\b(?:honest|caveat|absolutely right)\b.*', '', text)
stldev··on Anthropic's War on open source AI
Right. Steal the world's information and wrap it up as a set of numbers. Convince a bunch of billionaires that those numbers are worth a trillion. Then once you realize it's just another commodity and the competition is real, aim for "too big to fail", cozy up with the gov't and hope for a bailout.
stldev··on Cursor is now a part of SpaceX
Is this solely to prop up SPCX?

Besides its following, does Cursor have any sort of moat? It's VS Code with a harness right?

stldev··on Admin: Terminally Ill Patients Aren't Exempt from Medicaid Work Requirements
This is incredibly cruel, and not surprising at all.

On par with this administration- Goons pulled back because they're murdering innocent civilians at car stops? Chief goon steps up and says "put them back!"

Then he takes to the waves to instill fear and uncertainty in our election process.

Americans are being boiled alive, nice and slow- and a third of them love it!

stldev··on U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio reaches 123%
Reserve status is based on confidence. The US can't bomb markets into trusting the dollar. They've already begun diversifying away from it.
stldev··on A $500 RL fine-tune of a 9B open model beat frontier models on catalog review
They built their own benchmark and then trained directly against its scoring function.. seems to be the rage, but nothing convincing from the article alone.
stldev··on Our position on open-weights models
This is my read too- if American companies start backing nonsense like this, they'll fall behind permanently.

> My primary concern is the risk that authoritarian governments—not solely the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), although the CCP is clearly the most capable threat—

Isn't this article an argument in favor of authoritarianism? Plus a tad hypocritical no? The US is on an obvious authoritarian path; complete with threatening their neighbors, murdering innocent civilians, and locking up innocent people in droves

Please stop giving this company money, people.

stldev··on “We have information that Moonshot distilled Fable for the development of K3”
So company who stole stuff to make their stuff is mad because another company is stealing their stuff.

And now a regime best known for lying to their own people is the one trying to convince me?

Go, China!

stldev··on ICE to Pay Thomson Reuters $125M to Find Voter Fraud
That's the one murdering innocent civilians in the streets? That's the one locking up thousands and denying basic human rights?

No. They're not the 'correct agency' for anything.

stldev··on ICE to Pay Thomson Reuters $125M to Find Voter Fraud
This isn't about "finding" fraud.

This is about instilling fear, uncertainty and doubt.

stldev··on Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controllers
Interesting generalization; that’s almost the opposite of my experience.

A common hiring anecdote we share with people outside tech is literally: “A CS degree doesn’t teach you how to code.”

For me, ~25 years ago in the UC system, it was all math/science/theory-oriented. Some C++/Java that was introduced to get you through all that theory. Learning how to code/actual software engineering comes with practical experience.

stldev··on Anthropic apologizes for invisible Claude Fable guardrails
Agreed, it seems to be working and it's nonsense. I don't know why you're being downvoted.

"This information is too dangerous for you, so we'll just hold on to it.."

Thanks big brother, super anthropic of you!

The internet of '95 is looking back at us, with tears in its eyes.

stldev··on US-Canada border library gets new Quebec-only entrance
As an American, I'm deeply ashamed of m̶y̶ this country.

I don't expect the damage to be undone within my lifetime.

stldev··on Texas grid flags risks as data centers, crypto sites fail voltage tests
Do we really need to keep slamming the grid and killing the planet for pseudonymous casino chips?

Can someone please merge crypto with llm training/inference somehow?

stldev··on U.S. to dismantle system tracking Atlantic currents that are at risk of collapse
Hey now!

The man is _acing_ the multitude of cognitive tests that doctors keep giving him.

stldev··on U.S. to dismantle system tracking Atlantic currents that are at risk of collapse
Agree on cause, disagree on solution.

I'd lean more towards education than fornication.

No judgement.

stldev··on U.S. to dismantle system tracking Atlantic currents that are at risk of collapse
This makes sense.

Facts cease to exist because you ignore them. I think Huxley wrote that.

stldev··on Ask HN: Entrepreneurs, how long did it take you to succeed?
I started coding AddonInteractive/AddonChat in 2001 shortly after graduating. A simple Java-based chat SaaS. When I felt it was good enough I put up a web site and started marketing.

Within six months of starting development I had my first customer- who hated my product's bugs, but helped me find and offered ideas for improvements. A year later I was at $30k ARR. That doubled year after year for some time before leveling out. It was enough to live comfortably for ~15 years, but nobody mistook me for wealthy.

No exit opportunities.

I didn't start by dwelling on ideas. Some parity has to come first, then add value. I looked at companies building things of interest to me that I knew to be attainable wrt time and money. I emulated in my own style what they did best, I avoided or improved upon what they did poorly and I shouldered my way into the market. Above all, I listened to my customers and followed their lead.

stldev··on Claude Opus 4.8
4.5 works well for me too and avoids adaptive-dismissal, though anymore Codex is crushing them all. If 4.8 just brings us back to Opus circa February, it'll be a massive improvement.
stldev··on US's big bet on quantum computing may not be legal
Assuming a rational decision from this regime is an absurd and amusing thought to ponder.
stldev··on Blog ran on Ubuntu 16.04 for 10 years. I migrated it to FreeBSD
The first time someone explained Docker to me I remember saying, "Oh, you mean a jail?". Not quite, as the article explains. :)

kqueue was a huge win too.

A huge thank you to the FreeBSD developers. I ran my first company for 15 years on FreeBSD with incredible uptime and resilience.

stldev··on Goodbye Visa and Mastercard: 130M Europeans switching to sovereign payment
Tant mieux pour eux.

I suppose some added sovereignty is to be expected when your closest ally extorts, threatens annexation and slams you with tariffs.

stldev··on I don't think AI will make your processes go faster
The METR report continues to hold up. I would add "No Silver Bullet" to the reading list.

Careful who you share this information with- better to roll with the kool-aid drinkers when they're holding the cards.

stldev··on Ask HN: When did computers stop being fun?
I think it's natural to lose enthusiasm over time when a joy becomes a job.

"I don't care for coding new stuff. Everything I may need either already exists or is too complex to do on my own (and no, I won't vibe-code it, what's the fun in that?)"

I'm not sure if you mean "code gen without a plan/expertise" or just code gen. If you found joy because you enjoyed building things, now be the best time to explore and prototype something you've always dreamt of.

If you found joy because of the craft itself, low-level hands-on stuff (breadboards, esp32s, soldering, ..) can scratch that itch too.

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