FlyingAvatar (u/FlyingAvatar)

FlyingAvatar commented on `satisfies` is my favorite TypeScript keyword (2024) sjer.red/blog/2024-12-21/... · Posted by u/surprisetalk

plaguuuuuu · a month ago

but then you wind up with an entire repo, or an entire engineering team utterly hobbled by a lack of expressive typing (or advanced concepts generally) and debased by the inelegance of basic bitch programming.

FlyingAvatar · a month ago

Disclaimer: I'm not the OP, and there are certainly places where using recursive type definitions is justified.

My interpretation of OP's point is that excessive complexity can be a "code smell" on its own. You want to use the solution to match the complexity of the job and both the team that is building it and the one that is likely to maintain it.

As amused as I am by the idea of a dev team being debased by the inelegance of basic bitch programming, the daily reality of the majority of software development in industry is "basic bitch" teams working on "basic bitch" problems. I would argue this is a significant reason why software development roles are so much at risk of being replaced by AI.

To me, it's similar to the choice one has as they improve their vocabulary. Knowing and using more esoteric words might allow adding nuance to ideas, but it also risks excluding others from understanding them or more wastefully can be used as intelligence signalling more than useful communication.

tldr: Complexity is important when it's required, but possibly detrimental when it's not.

FlyingAvatar commented on Asbestosis diamondgeezer.blogspot.co... · Posted by u/zeristor

jojobas · 2 months ago

Unlike radiation, there's no safe asbestos exposure, if you're really unlucky a single strand can screw you up. On the other hand, of all people having worked at asbestos facilities with early 20th century approach to PPE only 20% developed mesothelioma and 10% died from it.

Thinking before swinging your drill will get most people safe enough not to worry about it.

FlyingAvatar · 2 months ago

I don't really buy the comparison. If you're really unlucky, you can get cancer from a "safe dose" of radiation.

Low exposures of both things are statistically less likely to hurt you than large doses. We pick a line to call "safe", but completely safety in either case is not guaranteed.

FlyingAvatar commented on Ask HN: Walled garden dwellers: What keeps you there? · Posted by u/FlyingAvatar

al_borland · 3 months ago

A speech or LLM based device is only more simple if it works perfectly. As it stands today, it’s far from perfect. When it makes a mistake, if there nothing to fall back on, I would think that would be very frustrating. I run into these types of issues on a daily basis with current LLMs.

I would liken it to a non-responsive touch screen. The magic of the modern smartphone evaporates if it stops responding to touch.

I missed the early iPhone as well. I actually setup my Home Screen on my phone to be the same app setup as the original iPhone when iOS 26 released. I still have other apps in the App Library if/when I need them, but I have my basic setup how things were in 2007… At least for now. I’ve actually liked it quite a bit so far.

I’m curious if Siri with Apple Intelligence will live up to some of what they showed in the ads last year, but at this point I need to experience it working with 0 issues for an extended period of time before I even start to think about an AI-first device, and especially for an AI-only device. I haven’t seen AI from anyone that can perform at that level. Much like full-self-driving, I feel like this is going to be something that is perpetually 5 years away.

FlyingAvatar · 3 months ago

Agree that if the primary UI is voice, it will need to be the the multiple nines of success to avoid being frustrating.

Even so, I still frequently use Siri now despite it being much less successful than that.

FlyingAvatar commented on Ask HN: Walled garden dwellers: What keeps you there? · Posted by u/FlyingAvatar

al_borland · 3 months ago

When you said you were looking at a simpler device, I was not expected all those requirements and an AI device at the end. I was assuming dumb phone.

It seems an AI phone is going to also lock you into its own walled garden. So I’m not sure what this would solve.

What kind of AI phone did you have in mind? As it stands, it seems AI is an app or OS integration to smartphones as we know them today. Anything else seems like it would be too compromised as a product.

I stay with Apple’s walled garden, because it seems like the best option in terms of hardware, software, and services. I’ve tried Android tablets, Windows laptops, and use Linux on and off for various things. I don’t like any of it as well as what Apple, and the 3rd party developers on Apple’s platforms, put out. If Apple were to horribly fumble the ball on privacy and sell out their customers (they are going in the wrong direction in a lot of ways), I would have to seriously consider leaving, but I honestly have no clue where I’d go.

FlyingAvatar · 3 months ago

Talking to an audio-enabled LLM is definitely "simpler" in terms of device interaction than navigating menus and such. Also having less GUI focus would feel simpler to me.

I find myself missing the experience of earlier iPhone where it didn't feel like I had so much crammed into my phone.

I can imagine using a device that I interact with primarily by talking with it, and the GUI is secondary or non-existent. For the bulk of what I use my phone for other than consuming video / doom-scrolling (which I could use much less of anyway), I think a voice interface would be preferable.

Initially "Apple Intelligence" was very exciting to think about, in that having a Siri that you could actually talk to would have a lot of possibilities, but we've seen essentially no progress in that direction.

FlyingAvatar commented on Ask HN: Walled garden dwellers: What keeps you there? · Posted by u/FlyingAvatar

JustExAWS · 3 months ago

Because I have more important things to do than inconvenience myself because of a meaningless geek holy war.

1. When I paired my AirPods Pro and my Beats Flex (more convenient for traveling) to my phone, they were automatically paired to and auto switch between my Mac, iPad, Watch and AppleTV.

2. When I get messages on my phone, they automatically appear and I can respond to them on my watch, iPad, Mac and in my car with CarPlay

3. When I go to the gym, run or get in the pool, I can leave my phone at home and still listen to music and accept calls on my Watch

4. Widgets from my phone show up on my Mac.

5. I can control my iPad from my keyboard and mouse paired to my Mac.

6. I can use my iPad as a second display with my Mac.

7. AirPlay works from iPhone /iPad to my AppleTV

8. I can copy and paste between my Mac, iPad and phone

9. I don’t think it’s really an argument that all Android tablets suck and Google has given up in the space.

10. CarPlay

11. My M2 MacBook Air runs cool, quiet, fast and battery last for 12 hours+

12. iCloud - I can drop my phone in the ocean, go to the Apple Store and get a replacement, log in and you can’t tell the difference between my new phone and old phone.

13. While this isn’t iPhone specific and you can do this with Android - Apple Pay from both my Watch and my phone

14. When I’m walking around in a city, having directions on my Watch means I don’t have to take my phone out.

FlyingAvatar · 3 months ago

Yeah, the convenience of pairing and switching is something I didn't think of.

FlyingAvatar commented on AMD claims Arm ISA doesn't offer efficiency advantage over x86 techpowerup.com/340779/am... · Posted by u/ksec

kccqzy · 3 months ago

That's not mostly because of a better ISA. If Intel and Apple had a chummier relationship you could imagine Apple licensing the Intel x86 ISA and the M series chips would be just as good but running x86. However I suspect no matter how chummy that relationship was, business is business and it is highly unlikely that Intel would give Apple such a license.

FlyingAvatar · 3 months ago

It's pretty difficult to imagine.

Apple did a ton of work on the power efficiency of iOS on their own ARM chips for iPhone for a decade before introducing the M1.

Since iOS and macOS share the same code base (even when they were on different architectures) it makes much more sense to simplify to a single chip architecture that they already had major expertise with and total control over.

There would be little to no upside for cutting Intel in on it.

FlyingAvatar commented on Debian switches to 64-bit time for everything theregister.com/2025/07/2... · Posted by u/pseudolus

misja111 · 5 months ago

Why would anyone want to store time in signed integer? Or in any signed numerical type?

FlyingAvatar · 5 months ago

I have wondered this as well and my best guess is so two times can be diffed without converting them to an signed type. With 64-bit especially, the extra bit isn't buying you anything useful.

FlyingAvatar commented on A 14kb page can load much faster than a 15kb page (2022) endtimes.dev/why-your-web... · Posted by u/truxs

simgt · 5 months ago

Aside from latency, reducing ressources consumption to the minimum required should always be a concern if we intend to have a sustainable future. The environmental impact of our network is not negligible. Given the snarky comments here, we clearly have a long way to go.

EDIT: some reply missed my point, I am not claiming this particular optimization is the holy grail, only that I'd have liked for added benefit of reducing the energy consumption to be mentioned

FlyingAvatar · 5 months ago

The vast majority of internet bandwidth is people streaming video. Shaving a few megs from a webpage load would be the tiniest drop in the bucket.

I am all for efficiency, but optimizing everywhere is a recipe for using up the resources to actually optimize where it matters.

FlyingAvatar commented on Inspect ANSI control codes and escape sequences ansi.tools... · Posted by u/webpro

FlyingAvatar · 5 months ago

I would have loved this in 1993. Not that I don't now, but I would have had a real use for it then.