RobAley (u/RobAley) - Readit News

RobAley commented on A cryptography research body held an election and they can't decrypt the results nytimes.com/2025/11/21/wo... · Posted by u/FabHK

TheJoeMan · a month ago

Earlier in the article they explain why only 2 keyholders is a bad idea, then the final statement is they are going to do that anyways.

RobAley · a month ago

Their reasoning for not having 2 keyholder is that 2 people are more likley to colude to change the results (in this case announce false results) than 3. Of course 3 people could still colude to do so, so it's a matter of reducing not eliminating the risk. My understanding is that in 2 out of 3, the third can also decrypt/view the results, so (assuming number 3 doesn't lose their key) then 2 can't colude to cheat (unless they also colude to somehow "deprive" number 3 of their key (e.g. with a heavy wrench)). If number 3 does lose their key, then the risk of colusion is higher than "requires all 3", but conversly the risk of "accidental or deliberate failed election" is lower. It's (always) about a balance of risks.

RobAley commented on PHP 8.5 stitcher.io/blog/new-in-p... · Posted by u/brentroose

dgb23 · a month ago

The pipe operator example omits the typical way you would write this code in any language: simply by introducing temporary variables or by shadowing.

The url parse example is not being compared to the builtin parse_url function that is just as easy to use.

RobAley · a month ago

Parse_url isn't standards compliant, often fails with relative url's and most importantly only parses urls, not uris (with the exception of file://). I also find it's syntax clunkier than the new uri(), but that's just personal preference.

The pipe operator is indeed just syntactical sugar (and the article links to another article specifically about it which does cover the case of temporary variables), but with the coming partial function application feature it (in my opinion) will make easier to read/reason chains of code than temporary variables or nested function calls.

RobAley commented on It's the end of observability as we know it (and I feel fine) honeycomb.io/blog/its-the... · Posted by u/gpi

MoreQARespect · 6 months ago

Often this is true but I find that for complex or semi-complex applications with confusing (and often shitty) user interfaces LLMs are pretty much a net positive. For all of their faults, one thing LLMs are good at is providing a more user friendly UX for complex apps that are used rarely.

For observability I find most apps fit in this category. They are complex, they usually have UX that is so bad it makes me rage and I don't use most of their deep level features very often.

I think Jira could also benefit. Its UX is so bad it borders on criminal.

The hallucination issue can be worked around by providing that demonstrates the agent's working (i.e. what tools they called with what parameters).

RobAley · 6 months ago

> The hallucination issue can be worked around by providing that demonstrates the agent's working (i.e. what tools they called with what parameters).

And this is (in my opinion) an intractable problem - You can get the AI to list the tools/parameters it used, but then you can't be sure that it hasn't just hallucinated parts of that list as well, unless you both understand that they were the right tools and right parameters to use, and run them yourself to verify the output. And at that point you might as well just have done it yourself in the first place.

I.e. if you can't trust the AI, you can't trust the AI to tell you why you should trust the AI.

RobAley commented on Show HN: I created a >1.6B~ subdomain search database scrapped from public data twitter.com/c3l3si4n/stat... · Posted by u/celesian

RobAley · a year ago

It says "nhs.uk" is an invalid domain. Is it restricted to just certain TLDs?

RobAley commented on Hetzner switches to new billing model docs.hetzner.com/general/... · Posted by u/throwaway220033

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK · 2 years ago

Whatever that means, you will pay more.

RobAley · 2 years ago

No, you'll max pay the same. May pay less.

RobAley commented on I was infected with Zika to test a vaccine worksinprogress.co/issue/... · Posted by u/bswud

giantg2 · 2 years ago

"I would receive no ‘direct benefits’ from the study – except for $4,875 in cash."

They don't cover related medical treatment for adverse events?

RobAley · 2 years ago

(Source : I work in vaccine research, including challenge studies, in the UK, but only in IT/Digital, I'm not clinical).

In the UK at least (and as I understand it in most countries that subscribe to the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki), all of our studies have to have insurance to cover such eventualities (which are exceedingly rare these days). In addition, we provide clinical contacts for the participants throughout the trial and follow-up, and ensure that participant NHS medical records (and central NHS databases such as for the COVID vaccines) are updated with the necessary details for any future related care.

Money/Payment is always a careful balance. You don't want people taking part in the trials purely for the money (i.e. doing something they wouldn't otherwise be comfortable doing), but you need to ensure they aren't disadvantaged by taking part in the trial.

RobAley commented on Counting License Plates alexmolas.com/2023/07/01/... · Posted by u/alexmolas

olddustytrail · 2 years ago

But that's not the format for UK licence plates at all!

They are XX11 XXX. The initial 2 letters are the region and the following 2 numbers are the year. The second half of the year is the number plus 50. So, eg 2022 car might be HA22 ABC or HA72 ABC.

Edit: I said UK licence plates but that's not strictly accurate. Northern Ireland has a different system.

RobAley · 2 years ago

Technically, that's not true either! That's the current format, previous formats (still legal and transferable/usable) have included XN, XNNXXX, XXXNX, and others!