itissid (u/itissid) - Readit News

itissid commented on Litestream VFS fly.io/blog/litestream-vf... · Posted by u/emschwartz

itissid · 3 days ago

Really nice. We should have this as an add-on to https://app.codecrafters.io/courses/sqlite/overview It can probably teach one a lot about the value of good replication and data formats.

If you are not familiar with data systems, havea read DDIA(Designing Data Intensive Applications) Chapter 3. Especially the part on building a database from the ground up — It almost starts with sthing like "Whats the simplest key value store?": `echo`(O(1) write to end of file, super fast) and `grep`(O(n) read, slow) — and then build up all the way to LSMTrees and BTrees. It will all make a lot more sense why this preserves so many of those ideas.

itissid commented on How Google Maps allocates survival across London's restaurants laurenleek.substack.com/p... · Posted by u/justincormack

itissid · 4 days ago

Nicely done. I think from a product perspective it is interesting that:

- Humans really value authentic experiences. And more so IRL experiences. People's words about a restaurant matter more than the star rating to me.

- There is only one reason to go somewhere: 4.5 star reason. But there are 10 different reasons to not go: Too far, not my cuisine, too expensive for my taste. So the context is what really matters.

- Small is better. Product wise, scale always is a problem, because the needs of the product will end up discriminating against a large minority. You need it to be decentralized and organic, with communities that are quirky.

All this is, somehow, anethma to google maps or yelp's algorithm. But I don't understand why it is _so_ bad — just try searching for 'salad' — and be amazed how it will recommend a white table cloth restaurant in the same breath as chipotle.

There are many millions that want to use the product _more_ if it was personalized. Yet somehow its not.

itissid commented on NYC congestion pricing cuts air pollution by a fifth in six months airqualitynews.com/cars-f... · Posted by u/pseudolus

afavour · 5 days ago

> Remember kids: congestion pricing is nothing but a tariff on transportation.

On driving. And it actually makes driving more appealing, there’s much less traffic so you can get where you’re going much quicker.

> Instead of making public transport more appealing through competition

Like having multiple subway systems? NYC did that already.

itissid · 5 days ago

This is also quantitatively correct because for two people coming in from afar you might change two trains or a bus and train and each ticket is at least 3.00$(bus/path from NJ) which is 24$ minimum both ways, with more than two it would make even more sense to take the car.

Congestion pricing brings in a toll above the 16$ you pay throu the tunnel. I think it's 18, So 34$ total?

So you are incentivized to get more than 2 people by car. Less traffic.

itissid commented on Pebble Index 01 – External memory for your brain repebble.com/blog/meet-pe... · Posted by u/freshrap6

itissid · 5 days ago

Could this record like a morse code(ish) like clicks instead of speaking? I can find a number of use cases for it:

1. Distress/Emergency makes you Unable to speak.

2. While doing vipassana meditation to record how strong the feeling attached to a thought was.

3. Repeat previous action.

itissid commented on Pebble Index 01 – External memory for your brain repebble.com/blog/meet-pe... · Posted by u/freshrap6

itissid · 5 days ago

Oh I love this. I am going to contextually switch the instructions from this to my home trained instruction fine tuned LLM for doing a multitude of things.

itissid commented on LLM from scratch, part 28 – training a base model from scratch on an RTX 3090 gilesthomas.com/2025/12/l... · Posted by u/gpjt

jadbox · 6 days ago

I just want to chime in here about the importance of taking notes and having a journal. These things are now more important than ever as they can literally help fine-tune agents to help assist you using your personal style.

itissid · 6 days ago

I have always wondered if I should be recording all my conversations privately — with consent —with family and friends and then train an LLM to let anyone speak to someone that sounds "like me" when I am gone.

I suppose one could order all the data over time -— decades — and then train a model incrementally every decade and imitate me better at a point in time.

I suppose one could also narrate thoughts and feelings associated with many transcripts, which would be very tedious but would make the LLM imitate not just style but some amount of internal monologue.

I suppose one level further could be an LLM learning about the variety or parts of the ego, the I, me, mine, ours. Then the Observer and the Observed parts of thought — if we can somehow tap internal thought without manually speaking — because thoughts are, metaphorically speaking, the speed of light.

Why would one do all this? I suppose a curt answer would be to "live" eternally of course — with all the limitations of the current tech — but still try.

It might make a fascinating psychoanalysis project, one that might be a better shot at explaining someone's _self_ not as a we, a stranger, might as outwardly see it: just as a series of highs and lows and nothing in between, but instead as how they lived through it.

itissid commented on LLM from scratch, part 28 – training a base model from scratch on an RTX 3090 gilesthomas.com/2025/12/l... · Posted by u/gpjt

pwython · 6 days ago

For those that have homebrewed a base model, does your output have the same AI-isms like overusing em dashes? If so/not, what dataset did you use?

itissid · 6 days ago

Does yours also use the oxford comma and generally more commas?

itissid commented on GrapheneOS is the only Android OS providing full security patches grapheneos.social/@Graphe... · Posted by u/akyuu

yipbub · 8 days ago

I don't understand your syntax:

    `You+App --Read/Write-> f_private(your_data) <--Write only- 3p`

Does this mean a server where third parties can send code to run on your data, but cannot respond to them?

itissid · 7 days ago

It means any 3rd party even the app provider cannot read your data or the output of the function run. They can provide some data/resources like say map tiles, PoI data and a function to run.

itissid commented on GrapheneOS is the only Android OS providing full security patches grapheneos.social/@Graphe... · Posted by u/akyuu

axelthegerman · 8 days ago

Oh that's one of the best news in the smartphone world in a long time.

It's impossible to escape the Apple/Google duopoly but at least GrapheneOS makes the most out of Android regarding privacy.

I still wish we could get some kind of low resource, stable and mature Android clone instead of Google needlessly increasing complexity but this will over time break app compatibility (Google will make sure of it)

Edit: I do think Pixel devices used to be one of the best but still I'd like to choose my hardware and software separately interoperating via standards

itissid · 8 days ago

I have been trying to come off of google and cloud by building — quite slowly — my own nas server which has 2 nodes in two geographic regions where I am building certain services like cloud storage and backup, webhosting etc. But I think there are a few key things that need to be community driven to really get rid of this duoply.

0. A privacy first approach would be something like this:

`You+App --Read/Write-> f_private(your_data) <--Write only- 3p` and App cannot communicate your data to 3p or google/apple.

Think of Yelp/Google Maps but with no _read_ permissions on location, functions can be run in a private middleware e.g. what's near an anonymous location or ads based on anonymous data. You can wipe your data from one button click and start again for EVERYTHING, no data is ever stored on a 3p server. Bonus: No more stupid horrible permission fiascos for app development that are just plain creepy.

1. An opensource data effort that can support (0) with critical infra e.g. precise positioning, anonymous or privacy preserving functions that don't reveal their data or processes to 3p.

Here is my favourite open source effort: Precise Location Positioning. A high recall, opensource, 3D building and sattelite-shadow Data-Infra effort[3]. This world class dataset on shadows and sattelites are a must. Most geo-location positioning tied to Radio signals is just a bandaid and fraught with privacy issues — thought there are heroic privacy first efforts in this direction[1][2] which though amazing will be playing catch-up with google already deploying [3].

[1]https://beacondb.net/

[2] https://github.com/wiglenet/m8b

[3] https://insidegnss.com/end-game-for-urban-gnss-googles-use-o...

itissid commented on Ilya Sutskever: We're moving from the age of scaling to the age of research dwarkesh.com/p/ilya-sutsk... · Posted by u/piotrgrabowski

kace91 · 19 days ago

>this would be a much better world.

Would it?

We’d close one of the few remaining social elevators, displace higher educated people by the millions and accumulate even more wealth at the top of the chain.

If LLMs manage similar results to engineers and everyone gets free unlimited engineering, we’re in for the mother of all crashes.

On the other hand, if LLMs don’t succeed we’re in for a bubble bust.

itissid · 19 days ago

> Would it?

As compared to now. Yes. The whole idea is that if you align AI to human goals of meeting project implementation + maintenance only then can it actually do something worthwhile. Instead now its just a bunch of of middle managers yelling you to do more and laying off people "because you have AI".

If projects getting done a lot of actual wealth could be actually generated because lay people could implement things that go beyond the realm of toy projects.