rdn (u/rdn) - Readit News

rdn commented on Time saved by AI offset by new work created, study suggests arstechnica.com/ai/2025/0... · Posted by u/amichail

rcruzeiro · 4 months ago

Would you be comfortable sharing a bit about the kind of work you do? I’m asking because I mostly write iOS code in Swift, and I feel like AI hasn’t been all that helpful in that area. It tends to confidently spit out incorrect code that, even when it compiles, usually produces bad results and doesn’t really solve the problem I’m trying to fix.

That said, when I had to write a Terraform project for a backend earlier this year, that’s when generative AI really shined for me.

rdn · 4 months ago

For ios/swift the results reflect the quality of the information available to the LLM.

There is a lack of training data; Apple docs arent great or really thorough, much documentation is buried in WWDC videos and requires an understanding of how the APIs evolved over time to avoid confusion when following stackoverflow posts, which confused newcomers as well as code generators. Stackoverflow is also littered with incorrect or outdated solutions to iOS/Swift coding questions.

rdn commented on Amazon reveals first color Kindle, new Kindle Scribe, and more aboutamazon.com/news/devi... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

hi_hi · 10 months ago

Wait, you have to pay to not have ads on a Kindle?

When did that start being a thing? I've been using a kindle for about 14 years, my current one is a few years old. I've been thinking about upgrading, but it works perfectly fine, and I've never had it display ads, and haven't had to pay anything for that "privilege".

It sounds like this will be my last Kindle device if I now have to pay extra for no ads, on a device I've already paid for, to read books I also pay for.

When will the madness stop!?

rdn · 10 months ago

Its been that way for years, the ad is on the lockscreen, and its an ad for other books. The version with no advertisement is 20$ more, I don't see the problem if someone wants to get a discount for looking at ads.

rdn commented on One malicious car could trick smart traffic control systems in the US (2018) bleepingcomputer.com/news... · Posted by u/fanf2

mrandish · a year ago

The cited research exploring potential weaknesses in the Vehicle-to-Infrastructure standards seems worthwhile, in part because the primary entities (auto makers and a government agency) aren't exactly known for robustly secure early implementations of new emerging technologies.

More broadly, the area of roadway infrastructure tech brings up a pet peeve of mine. The street I live on ends in a T-intersection with a traffic light onto a main thoroughfare in our mid-sized suburb. The cross-traffic on the main thoroughfare can be quite dense but only during peak commute hours. Understandably, the wait for the green arrow to turn left onto our street is quite long after triggering the in-road sensor because it's stopping a lot of traffic which they don't want to do too frequently. Late at night the wait timer is set much shorter since there's very little oncoming traffic. However, quite consistently, there are other periods with equally little oncoming traffic, such as a couple hours every weekday mid-morning and mid-afternoon.

This leads to residents in our neighborhood waiting three or more minutes to turn left in the middle of the day when there aren't even any oncoming cars to stop, and often no cars at all on the thoroughfare within half a mile. Regularly leaving turning cars idling for so long when no other cars are even in sight is environmentally wasteful as well as super annoying. I assume a Raspberry Pi-level SBC with a camera could easily make the traffic signal efficient for cars waiting to turn left without adding any delay for oncoming traffic over the current timer system (or digging up roadway for more sensors).

In this not-uncommon scenario, the "smart light" doesn't need to even be that smart or bullet-proof since it can always fall back to the basic timer if the situation isn't clear and can be gated at the other extreme by a max frequency limit for acting. Which is why I'm puzzled I don't see any such solutions deployed anywhere. It seems like a simple way to improve worthy metrics that's easy to deploy, low cost and has no downsides.

rdn · a year ago

Some intersections have a sensor under the asphalt to detect a vehicle and sequence a light transition, and its not a new technology

rdn commented on U.S. sues Apple, accusing it of maintaining an iPhone monopoly nytimes.com/2024/03/21/te... · Posted by u/jcfrei

matheusmoreira · a year ago

This "Zuckerware" is powerful enough to defeat judges, governments. It works just like Signal, same end-to-end encryption implementation.

Network effects make the perfect solutions dead on arrival. It's pointless to complain. I'll just count my blessings instead: never in the history of humanity have so many people used something this secure to communicate with each other.

rdn · a year ago

Except that non E2E chat archive backups are on by default

rdn commented on Faircamp is a free Bandcamp alternative wedistribute.org/2023/11/... · Posted by u/Tomte

easyThrowaway · 2 years ago

More choices are always welcome, but the strength of Bandcamp primarily was the zeitgeist and the culture around it, not the tech.

The Bandcamp fridays, the curation, the interviews, the selectors, the IRL presence at Record Fairs or at events like Record Store Day...Considering the strong communal experience it was, the idea of federating (and further distancing) the space between the artists and the audience sounds more like a downgrade.

rdn · 2 years ago

To me the strength is the ability to buy the music files directly without hurdles and without being trapped in something like iTunes

rdn commented on How to fix the disastrous new Xcode 15 console lapcatsoftware.com/articl... · Posted by u/zeroimpl

esalman · 2 years ago

Xcode still a disaster?

rdn · 2 years ago

Each version is a new type of disaster

rdn commented on Snoop unto them as they snoop unto you blog.dataparty.xyz/blog/s... · Posted by u/nullagent

jbaber · 2 years ago

I used to think this before I moved to the Eastern seabord of the US. Many freeways have the speed limits randomly oscillate to values ranging from 50 to 75 with the flow of traffic pretending the speed limit is always 65. There are definitely speed traps set up in many unexpected 55 zones which I only know to slow down at from familiarity.

rdn · 2 years ago

In western Virginia they sit at the bottom of hills and give tickets to out of state plates that go over the limit by any amount.

rdn commented on Alcohol without the hangover – scientists are finding ways wsj.com/articles/syntheti... · Posted by u/meany

chasebank · 2 years ago

I think you're right. I've always wondered why they don't water down GHB to be the equivalent of a low ABV drink. The only scary thing about GHB is its relative potency to volume. It's honestly a wonderful drug.

rdn · 2 years ago

It is a pretty nice alternative to alcohol, and since their name is GABA Labs, and GHB can be synthesized from GABA, I assume they will be selling some analog or even rebranding and packaging GHB properly for consumption.

rdn commented on Alcohol without the hangover – scientists are finding ways wsj.com/articles/syntheti... · Posted by u/meany

rdn · 2 years ago

Looks like a rebranding of GHB

rdn commented on First 'tooth regrowth' medicine moves toward clinical trials in Japan mainichi.jp/english/artic... · Posted by u/elorant

safety1st · 2 years ago

There's also the question of how much dental "care" is really that. I will just throw some random stuff out there.

* It used to be more popular to remove wisdom teeth. Opinions seem to have changed on this over time, I've never had mine removed, in my 40s now and so far so good.

* I had a small crack in one of my molars and saw a dentist who said a crown would be necessary. I was skeptical and got a second opinion. The second dentist immediately said "It's small and I don't think you need a crown for this" and did a filling instead. Eight years later, so far so good!

* Even FLOSSING was removed from the U.S. Department of Health's recommendations several years ago because there is a lack of evidence that it's effective! (I still floss around a couple of teeth every day in places where food likes to get stuck.)

To do a crown the dentist has to grind down your tooth into a stub and irrevocably destroys the enamel in the process. To me an unnecessary crown sounds like borderline malpractice. I wonder how many other unnecessary procedures dentists are doing for the $$$$.

rdn · 2 years ago

Once I went to a new dentist in a new area to do a teeth cleaning. He told me I had 4 cavities that needed filling. I was skeptical so I went to another one the next week. He said 2 cavities. I went to two more that month to see what else they'd say: one said no cavities, the other said 6. That was 8 years ago, I still don't have any cavities.