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vl

3,964 karma · joined October 4, 2008

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vl··on Google’s Project Suncatcher to put ML infrastructure in space
How can this practically work though? As Earth goes around the Sun 90 degrees, orbit will become half-shadowed.
vl··on Toyota is taking the Corolla electric
>Corolla is expected to come in several powertrains, including gas, hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and battery electric.

And also it’s just going to be confusing for the customers. Which one to get? Which one is better? It’s hard to imagine how same platform can have efficient structural layout for the large battery and for the ICE engine.

EV is much about software as well, and Toyota is not going to shine in this area either…

vl··on The largest electric aircraft just flew [video]
Also for traditional fuel you don’t have to carry half of the fuel - oxidizer comes from air. And then when you spend fuel, you have less weight to carry (which becomes noticeable on the plane).
vl··on Belgian car salesman becomes prince after DNA test proves royal parentage
” But he will not receive a royal allowance, nor will he be expected to take on official duties, and he has no rights to the Belgian throne.”

So it seems nothing will change for him.

vl··on Show HN: Reverse Minesweeper
I trained to play insane, usually a just bit slower than average, after using hints for couple times.

I suggest larger levels (yes, scrolling and zooming might be required). After all, minesweeper is the most interesting on the largest level.

vl··on Claude Opus 5
The simple fact is that economy can’t be 100% services. Who is going to pay these baristas if nobody else earns anything?
vl··on Claude Opus 5
The only reason you can figure it out is because of the system prompt which is designed to make model “useful”, safe and compliant.

Raw modern LLM with different pre-prompt will easily fool anyone.

vl··on Claude Opus 5
Or another way to see it is that current models are AGI as it was defined before, and the goal post is being moved.
vl··on Short sellers notch $8.7B profit as SpaceX shares dip to IPO price
Does market closing and not trading continuously affects this?

If market opens at significantly different price, you may be forced to liquidate and loose more than expected.

vl··on Kimi K3: Open Frontier Intelligence
Frontier labs release frontier models to the public only if there is market pressure to do so. Anthropic is not even hiding that they have been using Mythos internally for months now.

I wouldn’t be surprised if OpenAI (so much for “open”) is using GPT-6 internally already.

It appears that peasants like us are not going to get access to frontier AI anymore at any price.

vl··on Kimi K3: Open Frontier Intelligence
This is strategy by Chinese government, so much of US economy is invested in AI. Releasing free or cheap versions of the models undermines US economic growth. It’s asymmetric strategy that makes sense if you are close second in AI race. If situation is reversed, US would do the same.
vl··on Kimi K3: Open Frontier Intelligence
France’s football team is second only to England’s and Argentina’s.

It’s a miracle that in language same words have different meanings depending on context. If this wouldn’t be the case we could have hardcoded NLP algorithmically without inventing these expensive LLMs!

vl··on Kimi K3: Open Frontier Intelligence
While you are technically correct, in English it’s perfectly fine to say it this way as well.

“Second only” here has meaning “next after”, not “number two”.

vl··on Building and shipping Mac and iOS apps without opening Xcode
Bespoke solutions are better in many cases. They do exact things required for the project without taking extra dependency. Reducing dependencies is beneficial, because dependencies require management. So with llms economy of taking dependency shifted.
vl··on Claude Fable 5 Backlash Grows
I uploaded my blood test results and prompted pedestrian medical question. I shut it down because it's "bio research".
vl··on Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads
I really don’t understand what SD card reader on MacBook Pro is for.

All small cameras and devices use micro SD. Professional cameras don’t use SD since forever now. Basically I always need an adapter now.

vl··on The disappearance of Japan's animators
So for new Ghost in the Shell is it a good idea to watch previous ones before watching the new one? If so, it what order? Is movie worth watching at all?
vl··on SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B
Usually the grants are restructured. Ie instead of what was vested and unvested rank-and-file gets new 4 year grants. And then it works exactly the way you would expect: everyone works for 4 years and then leaves.
vl··on Where is the AI jobs crisis?
What people don’t get that traditional software jobs are gone.

There is no need for developers, testers, PMs, TPMs, devops, leads anymore. Communication burden and structure imposed by these roles is too high when you have AI. It doesn’t make sense to tell somebody to do something and for them to type it into the AI. You can type it into the AI yourself without wasting the time.

There is new job - software creator. Think of it as a single person replacing a team. This job requires different mix of skills, and different level of autonomy. Hiring needs to be adapted to this really, and people need to adapt. Some will shine in this new world, and those who still narrowly think of themselves as specialists in the specific old role are going to be jobless.

vl··on United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert
What transmitters? Now calls happen over WiFi which companies sell.
vl··on United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert
Now wait for manufactures introducing mandatory flight mode on devices (with Apple leading the way) that “trusted partners”, like airlines will be able to force-activate themselves.
vl··on United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert
Because they knew it’s not a real threat and they wanted to land at United hub for cost saving reasons.
vl··on United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert
What is even better now phone calls are prohibited, but all these airlines had actual credit card phones installed in every seat just 20-15 years ago and really wanted you to do phone calls for $1 a minute. And some people did, and it was annoying, and it was “fine”. Now that they can’t charge extra suddenly it’s “against regulations”.
vl··on The California state assembly has passed the 'Protect Our Games Act'
They are going to do what movie industry is already doing: create shell company for release of each game.

Then they will shut down the company when they want, and there will be nobody to come for.

vl··on Google's Antigravity bait and switch
Because for awhile they had access to infinite money printing press (search ads), and in the situation like this it’s impossible to focus and seriously compete in other areas.

Essentially all Google efforts were in protection of search ad revenue.

vl··on BBEdit 16
And amazingly free version is very usable as well. It’s same BBEdit package, and without license it doesn’t activate extra features, which I don’t need anyway. They used to ship it as free separate editor TextWrangler and now rolled it in into main BBEdit instead.
vl··on Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%
This is surprising about COBRA - I thought it’s always 18 months. Moreover it doesn’t make much sense to limit cobra - you are paying full price out of pocket anyway.
vl··on Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinbase by ~14%
I started with x86 assembler and Turbo Pascal (I still remember when I got documentation for Turbo Vision - this was groundbreaking!).

The simple truth is that I had to constantly learn something new and this is how it is in this profession. We’ve been in the trenches and we did it over and over again.

Now I’m using AI full time, doing same thing I always did - shipping products.

Newcomers with first set of skills don’t understand what is meta responsibility in this field - it’s never coding something, it’s shipping products to solve business needs.

vl··on Grok 4.3
Grok has the most useful voice mode (ChatGPT voice mode is very dumb, grok seems to use same model as main chat), so if I want to use voice this is the AI I use.

Also I use it for all uncomplicated topics because it gives precise short answers without fluff. Very refreshing.

vl··on Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price
These tractors are not new, they are rebuilt.
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