Hacker News Reader

victorvoskon OpenAI's plans according to Sam Altman removed at OpenAI's request

I don't care what the official line is, something changed with it. It might be the same model but the way it answers questions and the content of those answers is much more dubious now. I think how it manages its conversation context was gimped in the web chat version. I find it routinely completely forgetting things in longer conversations.

victorvoskon Blizzard CEO denies culture of harassment and blames unions for company problems

Bobby at it again

victorvoskon Belgium legalises ethical hacking

I know everyone is high fiving but this like most Euro tech laws, is so obscenely murky and essentially opens the flood gates on anyone running servers over there.

victorvoskon Throughout the rich world, the young are falling out of love with cars

I always liked cars as a kid. Faster the better. But Tesla kind of broke everything. A super car for 150k and its only going to get cheaper and faster as time goes by. There is no longer any parity. EV's don't have roaring engines, outside of the cringe fake engine noises some are adding. There is nothing to be excited about when your future 30k 4 door sedan can do 200mph, 0-60 in 3 seconds.

victorvoskon Start test names with “should” (2020)

I thought "should" was a product of silly TDD, like my widget "should do this thing" and it doesn't yet because TDD, and then the developer would implement it.

victorvoskon Building a Cloud Database from Scratch: Why We Moved from C++ to Rust (2022)

Hot take, I feel like people that complain Rust is hard typically write bade code in other languages. Rust is just preventing you from making common mistakes or using patterns that make your code hard to reason about and debug later.

victorvoskon Wizards of the Coast Releases SRD Under Creative Commons License (CC-BY-4.0)

Real people have disagreements and work through them. Lets not be mad for the sake of being mad. It was completely within the rights of WOTC to do whatever they wanted. People complained and they decided not to do and guarantee they will never do it in the future. Be happy.

victorvoskon Whipper: Accurate Audio CD Ripping

I love how this software would have been legend in the 90s/00s but now you are just a weird audiophile nerd for messing around with physical CDs.

victorvoskon Alpine.js

Basically the problem with every framework that think its fine to sprinkle in strings as code in html.

victorvoskon Ask HN: I'm 40 and feel my mental ability declining. Programming seems harder.

I am nearing that age, and personally I find its a factor of motivation more than anything. I got really excited about a side project last year and smashed out more code than I had in years. Refactoring an api for work doesn't sound super exciting. When I don't care, my brain doesn't care as much either.

If you do not believe that is a factor then examine your sleep and physical fitness. These things factor a lot more into brain function as we age.

victorvoskon Drowning in AI Generated Garbage: the silent war we are fighting

Honestly this feels like an old man screaming at the wind type thing. Inevitable doesn't even begin to describe was going to happen over the next 20 years. You should be much more terrified of when their content isn't garbage.

victorvoskon Smartphones wiped out 97% of the compact camera market

https://imgur.com/a/GPShi1r

First try and the lighting wasn't great.

victorvoskon Smartphones wiped out 97% of the compact camera market

I just got a Pixel 7 Pro. My photos look obscenely good. The new macro lens let me take a picture of a fly up close and you could see the individual hairs on its abdomen. It looks like it came out of a national geographic. I can't believe "normal" cameras even still exist for most photography.

victorvoskon Tailwind is a leaky abstraction

Tailwind was the response to the "I need more control and customization than bootstrap or (insert framework here), but I also don't want to write a ton of vanilla, best-practice css."

You can easily add your own custom classes. You immediately jump to a complicated problem and say Tailwind is bad because it doesn't handle this edge case well. (btw, its not trying to handle it)

victorvoskon Kite is saying farewell and open-sourcing its code

I find co-pilot useful when I am working with a language I am not familiar with but I imagine that isn't the case for most developers working their day to days. I see ML and AI in dev as more of a code generation tool. Describe something large in a prompt, get a bunch of code. Then a dev can run through it like a code-review, making changes and tweaking it to suite the need of the client/business.

victorvoskon India follows EU's example in requiring USB-C charging for smart devices

I wasn't attempting to be literal. The observed effect "in the wild" though is pretty obvious, and the overall experience of the internet is worse off for it.

victorvoskon India follows EU's example in requiring USB-C charging for smart devices

Because legislatures are incredibly short sighted and ignorant when it comes to technology. ("Would you like to accept cookies on this site you chose to visit, if not it won't work and you should probably leave")

victorvoskon Functional programming should be the future of software

Not to mention you can use just about any language provided you adhere to FP standards. It doesn't need to be forcibly "baked in".

victorvoskon Functional programming should be the future of software

Love the dubious github repo chart.

victorvoskon Turbopack, the successor to Webpack

Why would you want your tooling to be coupled when it doesn't have to be with zero downside?

victorvoskon Connect-Web: TypeScript library for calling RPC servers from web browsers

or... https://github.com/t3-oss/create-t3-app

victorvoskon I Looked into 34 Top Real-World Blockchain Projects So You Don’t Have To

I agree except "an staggering amount of crime". This has been studied a lot and there is no clear evidence of more crime than normal occurring just because of bitcoin

victorvoskon Health effects of the use of non-sugar sweeteners: a review and meta-analysis

Right... its more likely our bodies are probably some miraculous, fuel-less generators capable of producing energy (and fat) from thin air.

Meanwhile, in my own anecdotal, completely unscientific personal study, I went to eating one meal a day 6 weeks ago and have lost 10 pounds, despite eating all sorts of stuff you are not supposed to eat (sugar) during that one meal each day.

victorvoskon Health effects of the use of non-sugar sweeteners: a review and meta-analysis

The absurd amount of money and time that has been spent on studies around artificial sweeteners should tell you its probably safe. Everyone has been dying to find a smoking gun here for decades and it never happens.

victorvoskon Former Coinbase PM charged in cryptocurrency insider trading tipping scheme

From his perspective he could have believed it was just coinbase connecting the dots and he was just going to leave since they, if alone in their investigation, effectively had no immediate power over him.

victorvoskon Effect of fruit rich diet on liver biomarkers, insulin resistance, lipid profile

How do I get funding for garbage studies? "Our overweight group had bad bloodwork, too much fruit is bad for you."

victorvoskon The Lightning Network: Turning Bitcoin into Money

BTC and a lot of other chains are Level 1 (L1). Final settlement layers for transactions. To compare that to normal banking, your credit card is like an L5. Tons of things go on in-between your CC transactions before its actually settled even if it appears to be instant and final to the end user.

Truth is crypto enthusiasts have been overly ambition in this space, insisting a single L1 chain will come along and be the solution.

The average user A) Doesn't care and B) needs a higher level transaction layer that is flexible, where charges can be reversed or funds restored in the presence of theft or fraud. That stuff happens all the time in real life.

There is no way to improve the blockchain as currency UX without a centralized mediator(s) for average people. People get scammed all the time despite there being dozens of safety nets in place. How is that going to work when an attacker just needs your crypto keys to steal your entire net worth?

victorvoskon System76 Lemur Pro Linux laptop with 14 hours of battery life

Once the fanless M1 air came out, I could not use anything else. I pray the rumored 15 inch M2 air is also fanless with huge battery life and more ports.

My S76 laptop just annoyed me. It was fine for a linux machine, but there was just so many little details, build quality, etc I missed from the mac. I also found a few bugs in their custom pop packages and I reported them. The first engineer that responded was honestly pretty rude and implied I didn't know what I was talking about. A second engineer responded and said in fact one of the things I reported was true and hard to fix unfortunately. About a month later I noticed an update went out that fixed the other thing I reported.

victorvoskon Joseph Stiglitz: 'We should shut down the cryptocurrencies'

"We should shut down a system where everyone can see all transactions because its not transparent, what we really need is a way for the government to track everyone."

victorvoskon AI-art isn't art: DALL-E and other AI artists offer only the imitation of art

Creativity is going to be digitized and automated and the artists of the future will all be programmers. That goes for all mediums; movies, sound, games, art etc.

The average consumer does not care where it comes from as long as its entertaining, full stop.