hex4def6 (u/hex4def6)

hex4def6 commented on The Junior Hiring Crisis people-work.io/blog/junio... · Posted by u/mooreds

hex4def6 · 17 days ago

> We used to have a training ground for junior engineers, but now AI is increasingly automating away that work. Both studies I referenced above cited the same thing - AI is getting good at automating junior work while only augmenting senior work. So the evidence doesn’t show that AI is going to replace everyone; it’s just removing the apprenticeship ladder.

Was having a discussion the other day with someone, and we came to the same conclusion. You used to be able to make yourself useful by doing the easy / annoying tasks that had to be done, but more senior people didn't want to waste time dealing with. In exchange you got on-the-job experience, until you were able to handle more complex tasks and grow your skill set. AI means that those 'easy' tasks can be automated away, so there's less immediate value in hiring a new grad.

I feel the effects of this are going to take a while to be felt (5 years?); mid-level -> senior-level transitions will leave a hole behind that can't be filled internally. It's almost like the aftermath of a war killing off 18-30 year olds leaving a demographic hole, or the effect of covid on education for certain age ranges.

hex4def6 commented on Show HN: A game where you invest into startups from history startupgambit.com... · Posted by u/vire00

hex4def6 · a month ago

I think the forced countdown is a bit unfriendly, especially when LLM delays eat the majority of that. Perhaps limit it to X questions.

Also, having a min / max funding range (e.g, min 100K, max 500K). I might not want to wager the same on each opportunity.

It might also be interesting to base it off real companies. Scramble the names (Paypal -> CashMate or whatever. Enough that the player doesn't know for sure what company its based on. ATi vs nVidia for eg), and also allow investment at multiple points in time. Pre-crash vs post-crash might yield significantly different ROI outcomes.

hex4def6 commented on Maestro Technology Sells Used SSD Drives as New kozubik.com/items/Maestro... · Posted by u/walterbell

Aurornis · a month ago

> if the scammer bothered to reset the SMART data.

You can't universally reset SMART data on an SSD unless you happen to have a model where factory tools are available on the internet or something.

hex4def6 · a month ago

You don't need a universal tool. You just need one that resets the drives you're selling.

I've worked with a vendor who were a bit fast and loose with what NAND / controller / firmware they considered "ACME SC9000" SSDs to be. Because of this, some of the drives actually had bad configurations. They gave us tools to query / reset / update the firmware on these drives. The SMART data was one of the options you could reset.

Given the number of $10 self-reporting "10TB" USB drives out there, if there's enough of a profit incentive and volume of drives, you can't rule out a SMART reset drive.

hex4def6 commented on Maestro Technology Sells Used SSD Drives as New kozubik.com/items/Maestro... · Posted by u/walterbell

antisthenes · a month ago

> Intel did last orders for that drive Dec 30 2022.

Intel didn't. Solidigm did. If the author was buying the Intel drive, it was at least 4 years old since they spun SSDs out in 2021.

> Secondly, maybe my scam detector isn't well tuned enough, but "Maestro Technologies" doesn't seem that much stranger than "Apple" or "Micro soft" or "Zoom" or "Snap."

Yes, it isn't.

> The takeaway lesson here is that Amazon has become less and less reliable as a source for items.

That problem is over a decade old. Even normies I talk to are aware of it.

hex4def6 · a month ago

> Intel didn't. Solidigm did. If the author was buying the Intel drive, it was at least 4 years old since they spun SSDs out in 2021.

Firstly, the time between the SK Hynix acquisition (Dec 30 21) and the date of this article is 3 years 4 months, not "at least 4 years".

Secondly, of whether the facility was owned by Intel or Solidigm at the time the drive was manufactured, the Intel PCN states last buy dates of Dec 30 2022 here: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/content-details/8055...

  The *Intel* SKUs listed in the products affected table will End of life ... Please determine your remaining demand for the products listed in the "Products Affected/Intel Ordering Codes" ... While *Intel* will make commercially reasonable efforts to support last time order quantities ...

It's entirely possible they did a large last-time factory build of drives in anticipation of people wanting to purchase them.

Or, as Solidigm state on their FAQ:(https://www.solidigm.com/support-page/faqs.html):

  Why do some Solidigm products have *Intel labels*, order forms, and branding?
  Certain business elements that were already in place or in development prior to the creation of Solidigm will continue to bear Intel labels and branding for some time.

It's probably that the drives would have been branded "Intel" significantly beyond the Intel / Solidigm acquisition date (Probably until their EOL which was a year later -- it would make no sense to rebrand them). And it seems entirely unreasonable to assume that even a fairly tuned in customer would be digging to that level of scrutiny ("Wait a second! This is still Intel branded! Solidigm rebranded this line in XX of '22, X months before they discontinued them. These must be used drives!")

hex4def6 commented on Maestro Technology Sells Used SSD Drives as New kozubik.com/items/Maestro... · Posted by u/walterbell

antisthenes · a month ago

This drive model is 7 years old.

It is WILD that anyone in tech assumes this will come as new. Simply no one makes the same model of "consumable" for 7 years. Intel doesn't even sell Intel-branded SSDs anymore, that division was spinned off.

It's also WILD that you would trust something as sketchy sounding as "Maestro Technologies" for a mission-critical task.

I bet they were cheap though.

hex4def6 · a month ago

First of all, neither of those WILD facts seem that wild to me.

Intel did last orders for that drive Dec 30 2022. The article was written in April, so the author was conceivably purchasing drives that had sat on a shelf for a year and a half. That doesn't tickle alarm bells in my head.

Secondly, maybe my scam detector isn't well tuned enough, but "Maestro Technologies" doesn't seem that much stranger than "Apple" or "Micro soft" or "Zoom" or "Snap." If it were XBBHHZZZAA, LLC, maybe I'd have more room for pause.

The takeaway lesson here is that Amazon has become less and less reliable as a source for items. It's especially bad if it's purchased from a third party (something Amazon seems keen not to highlight on the purchase page), but even FBA is not free of trash. They straight up sell pirated N64 cartridges for example: https://www.amazon.com/Cartridge-Nintendo-Smash-64-Video-Ver...

hex4def6 commented on Time to start de-Appling heatherburns.tech/2025/11... · Posted by u/msangi

ajsnigrutin · a month ago

And you must then give the password to your data.

https://thblegal.com/news/can-i-be-prosecuted-for-failing-to...

https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/in-edicola/articoli/2025/01...

etc.

hex4def6 · a month ago

This seems like a job for a truecrypt style system. Either you do it at a file-level, or you have it split into (say) 10MB file chunks, and if you want to access a certain file you have an encrypted local db that acts as a magic decoder ring ("file test.csv is spread across CLOUD1.DB CLOUD3443.DB CLOUD132.DB").

Combine that with steganography (Enter real_password, and test.csv is a list of bank accounts, enter fake_password, and test.csv is a list of apple store locations, enter random_password, and it decodes junk). Maybe combine that with multiple layers of passwords (one ring to rule them all, except certain files).

Obviously, you'd want to steganographize the decoder ring as well.

hex4def6 commented on Drilling down on Uncle Sam's proposed TP-Link ban krebsonsecurity.com/2025/... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

Tyrek · a month ago

Why take the chance that the food you buy from the grocer may be contaminated? I have respect for human creativity, and the limits of farmers. It's not easy to keep constant vigilance against all sources of contamination. Easier to restrict food to only what you produce yourself.

Glibness aside, there's clearly a continuum to the concept of 'we live in a society', and to how far the monkey brain's tribe extends. But the argument against routers is clearly arising from a biased set of priors, whether fairly or unfairly.

hex4def6 · a month ago

Because it's a strategic issue. The internet is critical infrastructure. While TP-Link might not have contracts with ISPs and datacenters, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to think what damage you could have with 30% of the home / small business routers under your control.

This could range from plausible deniability stuff (like the examples in the article), to targeted investigations / attacks (Bob who works at the Gov Accounting office for Miliary Spending), all the way to a 100-million unit botnet turning to provide a few days of distraction ("Bad hackers compromised our OTA system. Sorry!") on while a certain island is being eminant-domained.

Your food example is not the same. You can't trojan-horse an apple pie, or target an individual customer from the supplier-side (yet). If you decided to poison them, that's pulling the pin from the grenade right now.

hex4def6 commented on Kimi K2 Thinking, a SOTA open-source trillion-parameter reasoning model moonshotai.github.io/Kimi... · Posted by u/nekofneko

saubeidl · a month ago

Honestly, do we need to? If the Chinese release SOTA open source models, why should we invest a ton just to have another one? We can just use theirs, that's the beauty of open source.

hex4def6 · a month ago

For the vast majority, they're not "open source" they're "open weights". They don't release the training data or training code / configs.

It's kind of like releasing a 3d scene rendered to a JPG vs actually providing someone with the assets.

You can still use it, and it's possible to fine-tune it, but it's not really the same. There's tremendous soft power in deciding LLM alignment and material emphasis. As these things become more incorporated into education, for instance, the ability to frame "we don't talk about ba sing se" issues are going to be tremendously powerful.

hex4def6 commented on If a pilot ejects, what is the autopilot programmed to do? (2018) aviation.stackexchange.co... · Posted by u/avestura

hex4def6 · 2 months ago

It seems like the sensible thing to do would be to fry / erase any IFF and encryption related stuff, but otherwise continue as before.

E.g, if it's already been programmed to fly straight and level, continue to do that. If it's deactivated, stay deactivated.

Just seems like a whole 'nother set of characteristics to test otherwise, as well as adding extra unpredictability. The aircraft is probably damaged / on fire, so its flight characteristics are already going to be extremely different to normal. The best thing in the moment may be to let the aircraft lawn-dart in a field, rather than attempt to get straight and level, and in the process potentially fly over inhabited area or towards a friendly set of aircraft / buildings / vehicles.

hex4def6 commented on Israel demanded Google and Amazon use secret 'wink' to sidestep legal orders theguardian.com/us-news/2... · Posted by u/skilled

gruez · 2 months ago

>Under the terms of the deal, the mechanism works like this:

> If either Google or Amazon provides information to authorities in the US, where the dialing code is +1, and they are prevented from disclosing their cooperation, they must send the Israeli government 1,000 shekels.

This sounds like warrant canaries but worse. At least with warrant canaries you argue that you can't compel speech, but in this case it's pretty clear to any judge that such payments constitute disclosure or violation of gag order, because you're taking a specific action that results in the target knowing the request was made.

hex4def6 · 2 months ago

Yeah.

I mean, why pay the money? Why not just skip the payment and email a contact "1,000"? Or perhaps "Interesting article about in the Times about the USA, wink wink"?

This method is deliberately communicating information in a way that (I assume) is prohibited. It doesn't seem like it would take a judge much time to come to the conclusion that the gag order prohibits communication.

Creating a secret code is still communication, whether that's converting letters A=1, B=2, sending a video of someone communicating it in sign language, a painting of the country, writing an ethereum contract, everyday sending a voicemail with a list of all the countries in the world from A to Z, but omitting the one(s) that have the gag / warrant...