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tempestn

14,539 karma · joined August 2, 2012

Hey, I'm Nathan, founder of autotempest.com and searchtempest.com. Feel free to get in touch. Email is my first name at either of those domains.
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tempestn··on Magnolias are so old that they're pollinated by beetles, not bees (2025)
We've got a fly-pollinated bush in our yard. Smells like rotting death when it's wet to attract them. (I did not plant it...)
tempestn··on Ask HN: Do you delete your browsing history?
I also explicitly save stuff I plan to use later, but you can't always predict that in advance.
tempestn··on Kill The Cookie Banner
The practical argument I can understand. From the abstract argument though, it sounds like you'd be opposed even if the anonymization could be guaranteed, which I don't understand. Why is it "spying" to try to understand in aggregate how users are using your website? How are you supposed to eg. identify usability problems without this information? And what is the harm to users? (Again, in the abstract case where we leave aside any possibility of individual users being identified.)
tempestn··on Kill The Cookie Banner
You're right about explicitly set preferences.

What do you see as the harm in website owners using aggregated analytics data to improve their sites?

tempestn··on Kill The Cookie Banner
My understanding is that any front-end analytics solution will require consent. You're right about explicitly set preferences. I was mixing that up with inferred preferences.
tempestn··on Kill The Cookie Banner
You're right; I haven't looked into this in detail in some time. You can't save inferred preferences, but can save things that the user has explicitly selected to save.
tempestn··on Kill The Cookie Banner
You can't even save user preferences (like language or other settings) without showing a cookie banner. Edit: I was mistaken. You can't save inferred preferences, but can save explicit user-saved options.

And for a serious website, front end analytics are kind of a necessity to understand how users interact with pages and improve the experience. Note that it certainly doesn't require tracking the behaviour of individual users, just understanding how controls are used in aggregate.

I know it seems like you could work around this with careful design and maybe focus groups and such, but I can tell you we regularly uncover surprising insights from (aggregate) trends in front-end events.

tempestn··on Kill The Cookie Banner
Aggregated analytics do, and you can't run a serious website without some kind of analytics. Preference-storing does as well, despite any reasonable user expecting that, if they set a preference, it will be saved.
tempestn··on Kill The Cookie Banner
"I didn't read it," sure. But, "A reasonable person would not read it?"
tempestn··on AIs don't do what you want. This is bad
I've found Gemini to be one of the better ones as far as disagreeing.
tempestn··on An old patent inspired the new "Y-zipper", a three-sided fastener
Even if it weren't lighter, it might be faster to set up and take down.
tempestn··on How to stop Claude from saying load-bearing
Agreed, that was a great line. The whole comment made me wish I could upvote more than once.
tempestn··on How to stop Claude from saying load-bearing
Literally a true statement, I guess.
tempestn··on Your 'app' could have been a webpage (so I fixed it for you)
And in fact, a significant subset of users will pester you to make an app, even if your website can and does do everything an app could do.
tempestn··on Count Binface, Nigel Farage's space-warrior foe
Yeah, I mean obviously. Who among us hasn't received a casual £5M from friends now and again? Why would it have anything to do with his political campaign?
tempestn··on Count Binface, Nigel Farage's space-warrior foe
Same reason as always. Someone found it interesting and submitted it. Others found it interesting and up voted it within a period of time.
tempestn··on How to Write an Email
The thing I've been struggling with recently is how to sign off. When "Thanks" isn't called for, I always feel awkward using any of the standard sign-offs, like "Cheers", "Best", "Regards"... I'm somewhat leaning toward just using Thanks when it makes sense, and if it doesn't, then just "-Myname" is probably fine.
tempestn··on Every new car sold in the European Union must include a driver monitoring camera
I like a fair bit of what the EU does, and in the past they've been behind some significant advances in vehicle safety, but boy do I hate most of what's coming out of there lately as far as driving . All these driver "assistance" features that arguably do more harm than good for competent drivers and are forced to be enabled by default on every drive. And now this. Bleh.
tempestn··on ChatGPT's image generator can be manipulated to produce violent, sexual content
I once accidentally got a version of this. Was asking it to change the wheels on a picture of a car, and provided a link to the original image. I guess it was blocked from accessing the url, but it assumed that it could and generated a random car image with the wheels in the color I'd requested. I imagine the same approach would work for making it think you'd provided an image here.
tempestn··on GPT-2: Too Dangerous To Release (2019)
Isn't that kind of good then? It's probably valuable for the public to know that this is how he sees himself.
tempestn··on If Claude Fable stops helping you, you'll never know
> If Claude gives me poor or incorrect advice while I’m working on an AI component, I have no way of knowing whether the model was confused, whether my problem is unsolvable, or if some invisible policy restriction quietly kicked in.

You should be able to know if your problem was solvable by using your own expertise and judgement, no? If you're relying on LLMs as a substitute for those, I wouldn't expect great results.

tempestn··on GPT-2: Too Dangerous To Release (2019)
I honestly feel like that's a counter-example. With AI he'd be tweeting some other nonsense. It's not like anyone saw the image and thought he actually was orange Jesus.
tempestn··on Canada to order military plane fleet from Sweden in shift from US suppliers
And this is mostly thanks to the oil sands. Will that always be the economic engine it is today?
tempestn··on My new obsession: A horse-racing board game of pure luck
I'd hoped this would be a post about Giro Galoppo, which is a fantastic little board game if you have kids (and can find a copy). It's easy enough for small children to learn, but the mix of strategy and luck is such that an adult can put real effort into winning, but will still probably only win 2/3 to 3/4 of games, not every time. And it's quick to play. Great game.
tempestn··on Why the Smart Home Bubble Popped
I expect the more significant concern would be OpenClaw opening your front door for someone else.
tempestn··on AI is breaking two vulnerability cultures
But don't we know that some of the vulnerabilities being discovered predate ai coding?
tempestn··on Trump fires NSF's oversight board
This is a reference to RJK Jr's pronouncement that Trump has a "different way of calculating percentages". Seems apt to me in this context.
tempestn··on Nothing Ever Happens: Polymarket bot that always buys No on non-sports markets
How is it an anomaly? Global stocks go up (or at least have positive total return) over time on average because companies produce value. Ultimately it's true that that money has to come from somewhere, so you can say printing it is monetary policy, but the reason it can be done without runaway inflation is the tangible value produced by the firms.
tempestn··on One neat trick to end extreme poverty
Do you think carrying a gun gives the child soldier power to change his circumstances? It's a problem of organization and collective action, not lack of arms.
tempestn··on One neat trick to end extreme poverty
If they wanted it to persist, why would they give up a portion of their income to end it? Are you suggesting the 40% is just more honest than the 60?
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