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bartread commented on Modifying other people's software   natkr.com/2025-08-14-modi... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti
datadrivenangel · 7 days ago
Modifying source code like this is one method. For web software, bookmarklets are another great way to do that.
bartread · 7 days ago
I’m a big fan of Greasemonkey scripts for this, although these days I prefer Violentmonkey because it has several capabilities that the OG doesn’t.
bartread commented on Sunny days are warm: why LinkedIn rewards mediocrity   elliotcsmith.com/linkedin... · Posted by u/smitec
bluedino · 7 days ago
LinkedIn is decent for jobs/searching/applying. That's all I really find it useful for.

Things I don't find it useful for:

Salespeople trying to sell me some enterprise product when I don't have anything to do with selection/purchasing those items. Everything from IP phones to enterprise storage to whatever SaSS is hot

Low-effort recruiter spam. Jobs I'm not interested in, qualified for, over-qualified for, want me to go into the office but it's 2 hours away, "I am impressed by your profile...."

Former co-workers posting about how much they learned at some conference or seminar or the pizza part for Jerry who finally retired

Cheatsheet/tutorial spam since my job is developer/linux adjacent.

"Freshers" not in my network, spamming looking for jobs.

Typical motivational/marketing stuff from Seth Godin and wannabe influencers.

Awww cute videos with a baby or small animal.

bartread · 7 days ago
That's a pretty exhaustive list, but I think you forgot, "What X taught me about B2B sales..." type posts. These do seem to have died down but 2 - 3 years ago my feed was absolutely awash with them. They were like a really beige version of those daft TikTok crazes you see. Very much good riddance.
bartread commented on Who does your assistant serve?   xeiaso.net/blog/2025/who-... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti
Aurornis · 7 days ago
> I feel like this should go without saying, but really, do not use an AI model as a replacement for therapy.

I know several people who rave about ChatGPT as a pseudo-therapist, but from the outside the results aren’t encouraging. They like the availability and openness they experience by taking to a non-human, but they also like the fact that they can get it to say what they want to hear. It’s less of a therapist and more of a personal validation machine.

You want to feel like the victim in every situation, have a virtual therapist tell you that everything is someone else’s fault, and validate choices you made? Spend a few hours with ChatGPT and you learn how to get it to respond the way you want. If you really don’t like the direction a conversation is going you delete it and start over, reshaping the inputs to steer it the way you want.

Any halfway decent therapist will spot these behaviors and at least not encourage them. LLM therapists seem to spot these behaviors and give the user what they want to hear.

Note that I’m not saying it’s all bad. They seem to help some people work through certain issues, rubber duck debugging style. The trap is seeing this success a few times and assuming it’s all good advice, without realizing it’s a mirror for your inputs.

bartread · 7 days ago
> Any halfway decent therapist will spot these behaviors and at least not encourage them. LLM therapists seem to spot these behaviors and give the user what they want to hear.

FWIW I agree with you but, to some extent, I think some portion of people who want to engage in "disingenous" therapy with an LLM will also do the same with a human, and won't derive benefit from therapy as a result.

I've literally seen this in the lives of some people I've known, one very close. It's impossible to break the cycle without good faith engagement, and bad faith engagement is just as possible with humans as it is with robots.

bartread commented on Claude says “You're absolutely right!” about everything   github.com/anthropics/cla... · Posted by u/pr337h4m
klik99 · 11 days ago
Is that GPT5? Reddit users are freaking out about losing 4o and AFAICT it's because 5 doesn't stroke their ego as hard as 4o. I feel there are roughly two classes of heavy LLM users - one who use it like a tool, and the other like a therapist. The latter may be a bigger money maker for many LLM companies so I worry GPT5 will be seen as a mistake to them, despite being better for research/agent work.
bartread · 11 days ago
My wife and I were away visiting family over a long weekend when GPT 5 launched, so whilst I was aware of the hype (and the complaints) from occasionally checking the news I didn't have any time to play with it.

Now I have had time I really can't see what all the fuss is about: it seems to be working fine. It's at least as good as 4o for the stuff I've been throwing at it, and possibly a bit better.

On here, sober opinions about GPT 5 seem to prevail. Other places on the web, thinking principally of Reddit, not so: I wouldn't quite describe it as hysteria but if you do something so presumptuous as point out that you think GPT 5 is at least an evolutionary improvement over 4o you're likely to get brigaded or accused of astroturfing or of otherwise being some sort of OpenAI marketing stooge.

I don't really understand why this is happening. Like I say, I think GPT 5 is just fine. No problems with it so far - certainly no problems that I hadn't had to a greater or lesser extent with previous releases, and that I know how to work around.

bartread commented on A CT scanner reveals surprises inside the 386 processor's ceramic package   righto.com/2025/08/intel-... · Posted by u/robin_reala
gruturo · 14 days ago
Same size as a normal ISA connector but "deeper" (2 rows of contact if you could inspect them)? EISA

Full ISA connector (potentially missing the bit in the middle) and then a further piece? VLB

Shorter than ISA but higher density? AGP (it's even a bit shorter than PCI)

Was it at least a Pentium? Can't be AGP otherwise.

Going to ignore PCI-X, PCIE and obscure AGP variants

bartread · 14 days ago
I was talking about what was on the card itself rather than the interface, because the poster I was responding to mentioned the card, but your point about interfaces is well made.

Back in the day - late 80s, very early 90s - I’d see Amstrad (ugh!) 286-based desktop systems on sale in our local branch of Dixon that included graphics cards fitted with VGA chipsets, but cards compatible with the AGP interface on then newer motherboards didn’t cross my radar until the second half of the 90s.

bartread commented on A CT scanner reveals surprises inside the 386 processor's ceramic package   righto.com/2025/08/intel-... · Posted by u/robin_reala
devmor · 15 days ago
Super cool! This was the CPU in my very first PC (which I got to build myself, under the tutelage of a family friend). I remember that it was cooled by nothing but a tiny stick-on heatsink and a small plastic fan that clipped on top of that.

8MB of DRAM, a 250MB spinning disk hard drive, 5.25 and 3.5 inch floppy bays, removable bios that I had to sort through a tupperware of chips to find the correct unit, some unnamed AGP video card that I had to slot removable chips into as well and a great big 16" CRT.

I think I had to install a special serial card in an ISA slot to use a mouse too.

bartread · 15 days ago
> some unnamed AGP video card

Do you mean VGA rather than AGP? AGP came much later than the 386 and wouldn’t have been supported by its motherboard chipsets.

bartread commented on Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers   fortune.com/2025/08/03/ai... · Posted by u/robtherobber
lm28469 · 20 days ago
> AI in its current form is democratizing and allowing exactly the not rich to be relatively more dangerous.

Which part exactly ? The part where everyone pays 20+ a month to a few megacorps or the part where we willingly upload all our thoughts to a central server ?

bartread · 20 days ago
Yeah, exactly. Lots of people use AI, if they can afford the subscriptions, but it’s only the tech oligarchs who can control AI, including controlling access to it.

Until you can run high quality models on affordable devices on your desk or in your hand the extent of the democratisation is much more limited than you might like.

Perhaps OSS will come to the rescue here.

(Aside: obviously free tiers are available but these are all hobbled in various ways: usage limits, data sharing/leakage, etc.)

bartread commented on Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers   fortune.com/2025/08/03/ai... · Posted by u/robtherobber
Aurornis · 20 days ago
I gave feedback like this when I first started doing interviews

I had to stop very quickly when I realized how many candidates take it as an invitation to argue, accuse me of being wrong, or see it as an invite to redo the problem and resubmit.

I also had one case where someone tried to go on a rampage against me and the company because they though our rejection was unfair (the candidate wasn’t even top 5 among the applicants)

bartread · 20 days ago
I’ve had people come back at me after giving feedback, which I always do give for anyone I’ve spoken to. They argue, they ask for a second chance, etc. I simply tell them my decision is final and stop responding to further communication attempts. I have no problem doing that.

But that’s a minority: most people just appreciate getting some feedback, and not being ghosted.

And if they’ve taken an hour out of their day to speak to me, providing a short piece of (ideally actionable) feedback, or at least that explains where their experience or skills didn’t match up to other applicants, is the least I can do. It’s also an opportunity to provide encouragement on positive aspects of the interview, even if those weren’t enough to carry the day.

You have to understand that even - perhaps especially - unsuccessful applicants will talk about their experience of your hiring process. Unless you work somewhere that people really want to work, and where they’ll be willing to wade through shit to do it (cough, Google, cough - perhaps Google of yore anyway), you want to be doing everything you can to ensure that even unsuccessful applicants are treated well and have as positive an experience as possible.

It won’t always work out but, in my experience, the extra effort is worthwhile.

bartread commented on Vibe code is legacy code   blog.val.town/vibe-code... · Posted by u/simonw
WD-42 · 25 days ago
I would not default to assuming it was his competitors, that sounds like scapegoating to deflect responsibility. What most likely happened is his site was scanned by one of the increasingly sophisticated exploit crawlers (anyone who runs an internet facing site and can view traffic knows what I'm talking about). His site got flagged as vulnerable, the hacker found out it was built like swiss cheese and had fun with it.
bartread · 24 days ago
It's 100% this. Anyone who's run a website or web app for any length of time in recent years and makes a habit of inspecting their logs will quickly realise that they're being scanned by bots looking for vulnerabilities multiple, or even many, times per day. The search for vulnerabilities is entirely automated and will pick up any domain that has a website or web app attached to it.

One those vulnerabilities are found, the hackers will pounce, and, whilst ransomware is one potential outcome, they might instead do all of the kinds of things GP has described. They don't care what the site is for or what industry you're in.

bartread commented on Electric cars produce less brake dust pollution than combustion-engine cars   modernengineeringmarvels.... · Posted by u/tzs
guywithahat · a month ago
Is 50k a lot? I drove my ford fiesta 120k without changing the pads. I'm certain the motor helps, but assuming it's a relatively lightweight vehicle I don't think you should be changing pads that much unless you're an aggressive driver
bartread · a month ago
> aggressive driver

Hi.

Although I’d call it spirited rather than aggressive. I’m not out to intimidate people or drive dangerously: but when I have the space and time I enjoy throwing a car around.

u/bartread

KarmaCake day9160March 14, 2012View Original