callc (u/callc) - Readit News

callc commented on It is worth it to buy the fast CPU blog.howardjohn.info/post... · Posted by u/ingve

npn · 20 hours ago

I find it crazy that some people only use a single laptop for their dev work. Meanwhile I have 3 PCs, 5 monitors, keyboards and mouses, and still think they are not enough.

There are a lot of jobs that should run in a home server running 24/7 instead of abusing your poor laptop. Remote dedicated servers work, but the latency is killing your productivity, and it is pricey if you want a server with a lot of disk space.

callc · 19 hours ago

I was away from my regular desktop dev PC for multiple months recently and only used a crappy laptop for dev work. I got used to it pretty quickly.

This makes me remember so many years ago starting to program on a dual core plastic MacBook.

Also, I’m very impressed by one of my coworkers working on 13 inch laptop only. Extremely smart. A bigger guy so I worry about his posture and RSI on such a small laptop.

TLDR I think more screen space does not scale near linearly with productivity

callc commented on GDPR meant nothing: chat control ends privacy for the EU [video] youtube.com/watch?v=3NyUg... · Posted by u/givemeethekeys

em-bee · 8 days ago

doing nothing hands over too much power to criminals

you either have encryption, or you don't. there is no middle ground. any measure to force access to encrypted messages would effectively disable encryption entirely.

callc · 8 days ago

I was going to respond to this part of GP but along the lines of communication being (mostly?) not a crime in an of itself. Committing crimes in the physical world is still illegal.

I just want to make that clear, governments don’t need complete access to your digital life to make the legal system go round.

Unfortunately the argument of strong privacy for everyone loses compared to the emotional argument of “we could have prevented this horrific crime if we had access to XYZ”, in the emotional political arenas

callc commented on AI is different antirez.com/news/155... · Posted by u/grep_it

atleastoptimal · 9 days ago

AI has already rendered academic take-home assignments moot. No other tech has had an impact like that, even the internet.

callc · 9 days ago

A pessimistic/realistic view of post high school education - credentials are proof of able to do a certain amount of hard work, used as an easy filter for companies while hiring.

I expect universities to adapt quickly, lest lose their whole business as degrees will not carry the same meaning to employers.

callc commented on Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy theguardian.com/film/2025... · Posted by u/nemoniac

qrios · 10 days ago

> I don't care if someone knows how many times I've watched Idiocracy.

I come from Germany, from East Germany. And some people there wanted to know if you had seen certain films and how often. And ‘Idiocracy’ would have been very high up on their list.

Not all films were banned right from the start (‘The Legend of Paul and Paula’ [1]), but right from the beginning the Stasi found it very interesting who had watched the film.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Paul_and_Paula

callc · 10 days ago

This. Privacy does not matter until it does.

Thanks for your example, qrios

callc commented on Steve Wozniak: Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about happiness yro.slashdot.org/comments... · Posted by u/MilnerRoute

bko · 11 days ago

There's bad behavior among a lot of people who did great things.

Do you feel the same way about MLK based on his FBI files?

If everyone was super nice and pleasant we would likely wouldn't have made any progress.

callc · 11 days ago

I don’t know about the FBI MLK files. But if I were to meet MLK or Ghandi or <insert widely recognized figure> and they were an asshole, I wouldn’t excuse or overlook their behavior.

The underlying ideas here are greatness and individuals ascribed to doing great things.

Without any evidence I suspect an extremely large majority of progress is done by normal individuals whose names we’ll never know.

callc commented on Steve Wozniak: Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about happiness yro.slashdot.org/comments... · Posted by u/MilnerRoute

bko · 11 days ago

[written from my iPhone]

I think the net effect of people like Jobs is a huge positive in this world. Why do you judge people that did great things by the standards of everyday interaction. You think this could be related? Perhaps there is something unpleasant about the person that had some effect on his ability for greatness? Or do you think people are like a video game with knobs where you can turn down "don't be a jerk" without affecting anything else?

callc · 11 days ago

I don’t see human interactions having a “net effect”. If someone is nice to me 99% of the time, and 1% screams obscenities at me, the 99% does not excuse the 1%.

Bad behavior is bad behavior full stop.

Try slapping someone and then follow it up with “but I wrote X software that benefits Y amount of people”

callc commented on PYX: The next step in Python packaging astral.sh/blog/introducin... · Posted by u/the_mitsuhiko

woodruffw · 12 days ago

Python packaging has a lot of standards, but I would say most of them (especially in the last decade) don't really compete with each other. They lean more towards the "slow accretion of generally considered useful features" style.

This itself is IMO a product of Python having a relatively healthy consensus-driven standardization process for packaging, rather than an authoritative one. If Python had more of an authoritative approach, I don't think the language would have done as well as it has.

(Source: I've written at least 5 PEPs.)

callc · 11 days ago

Do you really think Python’s consensus-driven language development is better than authoritarian?

I am honestly tired of the Python packing situation. I breathe a sigh of relief in language like Go and Rust with an “authoritative” built-in solution.

I wouldn’t mind the 30 different packaging solutions as long as there was authoritative “correct” solution. All the others would then be opt-in enhancements as needed.

I guess a good thought experiment would be if we were to design a packaging system (or decide not to) for a new PL like python, what would it look like?

callc commented on Online Safety Act – shutdowns and site blocks blocked.org.uk/osa-blocks... · Posted by u/azalemeth

cm2187 · 12 days ago

Or start breaking statues penises again

callc · 12 days ago

That would at least help change size expectations!

callc commented on Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act bbc.com/news/articles/cjr... · Posted by u/phlummox

jimbob45 · 14 days ago

Wikipedia has been introduced as the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Anyone can publish problematic material or false information.

But the top articles are always perma-locked and under curation. Considering how much traffic those articles receive relative to the more esoteric articles, the surface area of vandalizable articles that a user is exposed to is relatively low. Also to that end, vandalism has a low effort-to-impact ratio.

callc · 13 days ago

n=1 I’ve used Wikipedia for many years with no immediately noticeable false information. And of course all the “citation needed” marks are there. I trust Wikipedia to be correct, I expect it to be correct, and Wikipedia has earned my trust. Maybe I don’t read it enough to see any vandalism.

Compared to LLMs, it’s extremely striking to see the relative trust / faith people have in it. It’s pretty sad to see how little the average person values truth and correctness in these systems, how untrusted Wikipedia is to some, and how overly-trusted LLMs are in producing factually correct information to others.

callc commented on Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers fortune.com/2025/08/03/ai... · Posted by u/robtherobber

beefnugs · 21 days ago

Half the benefit of ai screening is upper management being able to put in race/religion/private-data-purchased restrictions without the HR knowing about these illegal settings

callc · 21 days ago

+1

Offloading of liability / responsibility to complex systems, particularly AI, has been a trend for at least two decades.

I hope society sees past this excuse.