Espressosaurus (u/Espressosaurus)

Espressosaurus commented on If you're going to vibe code, why not do it in C? stephenramsay.net/posts/v... · Posted by u/sramsay

Espressosaurus · 10 days ago

It doesn't have problems with undefined behavior, memory safety, or especially thread safety?

That has not been my experience when using Codex, Composer, Claude, or ChatGPT.

Things have just gotten to the point over the last year that the undefined behavior, memory safety, and thread safety violations are subtler and not as blindingly obvious to the person auditing the code.

But I guess that's my problem, because I'm not fully vibing it out.

Espressosaurus commented on Has the cost of building software dropped 90%? martinalderson.com/posts/... · Posted by u/martinald

jollyllama · 10 days ago

Between yours and GP's comments, I find echoes of my experience:

> Most of software work is maintaining "legacy" code, that is older systems that have been around for a long time and get a lot of use.

> Granted that's because the program is incredibly poorly written

LLMs can't fix big, shitty legacy codebases. That is where most maintenance work (in terms of hours) is, and where it will remain.

I would take it one step further and argue that LLMs and vibe-coding will compound into more big, shitty legacy codebases over time, and therefore, in the long arc, nothing will really change.

Espressosaurus · 10 days ago

Yeah. I've got some EE coworkers that are vibe coding their way through everything and nothing in the codebase is understandable.

We're going to have to go through another quality hangover I suspect.

But since people that have never coded are now coding and think it's the best thing ever the only way out is through.

Espressosaurus commented on The C++ standard for the F-35 Fighter Jet [video] youtube.com/watch?v=Gv4sD... · Posted by u/AareyBaba

theICEBeardk · 12 days ago

Apparently according to some ACCU and CPPCon talks by Khalil Estel this can be largely mitigated even in embedded lowering the size cost by orders of magnitude.

Espressosaurus · 12 days ago

Yeah. I unfortunately moved to an APU where code size isn't an issue so I never got the chance to see how well that analysis translated to the work I do.

Provocative talk though, it upends one of the pillars of deeply embedded programming, at least from a size perspective.

Espressosaurus commented on Google Antigravity just deleted the contents of whole drive old.reddit.com/r/google_a... · Posted by u/tamnd

kissgyorgy · 18 days ago

I simply forbid or force Claude Code to ask for permission to run a dangerous command. Here are my command validation rules:

    (
        r"\bbfs.*-exec",
        decision("deny", reason="NEVER run commands with bfs"),
    ),
    (
        r"\bbfs.*-delete",
        decision("deny", reason="NEVER delete files with bfs."),
    ),
    (
        r"\bsudo\b",
        decision("ask"),
    ),
    (
        r"\brm.*--no-preserve-root",
        decision("deny"),
    ),
    (
        r"\brm.*(-[rRf]+|--recursive|--force)",
        decision("ask"),
    ),

find and bfs -exec is forbidden, because when the model notices it can't delete, it works around with very creative solutions :)

Espressosaurus · 18 days ago

This feels a lot like trying to sanitize database inputs instead of using prepared statements.

Espressosaurus commented on Ilya Sutskever: We're moving from the age of scaling to the age of research dwarkesh.com/p/ilya-sutsk... · Posted by u/piotrgrabowski

mynti · 23 days ago

If we think of every generation as a compression step of some form of information into our DNA and early humans existed for ~1.000.000 years and a generation is happening ~20years on average, then we have only ~50.000 compression steps to today. Of course, we have genes from both parents so they is some overlap from others, but especially in the early days the pool of other humans was small. So that still does not look like it is on the order of magnitude anywhere close to modern machine learning. Sure, early humans had already a lot of information in their DNA but still

Espressosaurus · 23 days ago

It only ends up in the DNA if it helps reproductive success in aggregate (at the population level) and is something that can be encoded in DNA.

Your comparison is nonsensical and simultaneously manages to ignore the billion or so years of evolution starting from the first proto-cell with the first proto-DNA or RNA.

Espressosaurus commented on Human brains are preconfigured with instructions for understanding the world news.ucsc.edu/2025/11/sha... · Posted by u/XzetaU8

MangoToupe · 24 days ago

I'm not nervous, I just don't see the utility. Perhaps you can elucidate this for me.

Espressosaurus · 24 days ago

You're communicating ideas across unknown thousands of miles with a stranger in near realtime and are able to comprehend each other, for one.

No cat or dog has managed that feat yet.

No cat or dog has managed to reproduce fire to the degree that evolution has changed their gut to adapt to the increase in available calories.

The big brain comes with down sides, but one thing it does have is utility.

Germ theory of disease has made it so a scratch isn't fatal anymore. Why, after all, do cats play with their prey? To tire it out so there's less chance of injury when they go in for the kill.

We just figure out how to farm it instead and mold it to our needs.

Espressosaurus commented on Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright bbc.com/news/articles/c1j... · Posted by u/YeGoblynQueenne

VBprogrammer · a month ago

No one is truly blinding you. Even old incandescent headlights can be unpleasant. Some people are more sensitive to it than others and things like a car coming over a slight hill or bend in the adverse direction can change the alignment of the lights in such a way that they appear much brighter.

The point I was trying to make is that reducing the brightness isn't a simple trade off. How many accidents are caused by people being "blinded" vs people not seeing something until it was too late?

If it needs regulation to fix then that regulation should try to balance those things. Perhaps by automatically adjusting the headlights when another car is detected (maybe matrix style headlights, or a simple angle adjustment).

Espressosaurus · a month ago

That's still ignoring the impact on bicyclists, pedestrians, and cars it can't detect because it's not a spherical cow on a uniform plane.

Look at the output of a car from 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and 30 years ago compared to today.

Each is progressively dimmer with their low beams. Modern low beams are brighter than the high-beams of yesteryear!

Espressosaurus commented on Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright bbc.com/news/articles/c1j... · Posted by u/YeGoblynQueenne

Wistar · a month ago

Adaptive headlights that actively shield oncoming drivers were finally made legal in the US in 2022 but complicated bureaucratic hoops make them hard to implement. BMW seems to have them working as I find their higher-end lighting (ex: ICON Adaptive w/ Laser Light) to be among the best to oncoming drivers—at least to my eyes.

CNN writes about why headlight brightness is worse in the US than in other countries:

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/15/cars/headlights-tech-adap...

Espressosaurus · a month ago

It's solving the wrong problem, and doesn't help the typical situation of being on hills, pedestrians, bicyclists, etc.

Just turn the damn maximum output down.

Espressosaurus commented on Astrophotographer snaps skydiver falling in front of the sun iflscience.com/the-fall-o... · Posted by u/doener

cosmic_ape · a month ago

Tbh, do not quite get the excitement around this picture. It was staged, and the stunt doesn’t appear to be particularly complex. A lot of logistics, sure. But seems like all there is to it is that someone just bothered to do it. So not clear what’s the additional value over photoshop.

Espressosaurus · a month ago

The difference is THEY DID IT.

Photoshop is not real.

This was real.

This was recorded.

The value is in the authenticity and execution of a cool idea no one else has done before.

Espressosaurus commented on FFmpeg to Google: Fund us or stop sending bugs thenewstack.io/ffmpeg-to-... · Posted by u/CrankyBear

iscoelho · a month ago

It’s a reproducible use-after-free in a codec that ships by default with most desktop and server distributions.

The recent iOS zero-day (CVE-2025-43300) targeted the rarely used DNG image format. How long before this FFMPEG vulnerability is exploited to compromise legacy devices in the wild, I wonder?

I’m not a fan of this grandstanding for arguably questionable funding. (I surely would not fund those who believe these issues are slop.) I’d like to think most contributors already understand the severity and genuinely care about keeping FFMPEG secure.

Espressosaurus · a month ago

DNG isn't exactly rarely used, it's Adobe's open raw format and lots of image processing programs read and write it.

It's not a codec made for one game back in 1994, it's still in very active use today if you're using such a rare and uncommon program as Photoshop.