It seems to update fast, but with significant ghosting, right? Looking at the cat example. Maybe this is just the best e-ink can do, and thats fine!
Readit Newssandos commented on Modos Paper Monitor – Open-hardware e-paper monitor and dev kit crowdsupply.com/modos-tec... · Posted by u/RossBencina
sandos commented on Ask HN: With all the AI hype, how are software engineers feeling? · Posted by u/cpt100
Sorry, AI does much less than 1% of my work. I work on semi-ossified, old, embedded, safety-critical code. Not exactly AIs forte, sadly.
We were (finally!) given the go for even using AI just before summer vacation this year, and I was very excited, having been obsessed with AI 20 years ago. I was still excited quite a while, until I slowly understood all the limitations that come with LLMs. We can not trust them, and this is one of the fundamental problems: verifying things takes a long time, sometimes its even faster just writing the code yourself.
We do have non-core-product tasks that can greatly benefit from AI, but that is already a small part of our job.
I did find two areas where LLMs are very useful: generatin documentation from code (mermaidjs is useful here) and parsing GDB output!
Seriously, parsing GDB output was like an epiphany. I was for real blown away by it. It correctly generated a very detailed explanation of what kind of overwriting was happening when I happened to use a wild pointer. Its so good at seeing patterns, even combining data from several overwritten variables and parsing what was written there. I could have done it myself, but I seldom do such deep analysis in GDB and it did it in literally 10 seconds. Sadly, it was not that terribly useful this time, but I do feel that in the future GDB+AI is a winning concept. But at the same time, I spend very little time in GDB per year.
sandos commented on Visa and Mastercard: The global payment duopoly (2024) quartr.com/insights/edge/... · Posted by u/bilekas
Interac is a debit network in Canada, and the merchant fees are impressively low. They're generally under $0.10 as a flat fee, not a percentage (credit cards would cost the merchant around 2%). https://www.interac.ca/en/payments/business/understanding-fe... , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interac
One consequence of the flat fee is that at some retail stores, if you pay by debit, you can ask for "cash back". For example, if you buy $20 of groceries and ask for $100 cash back, the cashier will charge $120 to your debit card, you will have fully paid for your groceries, and the cashier will give you $100 in paper money as if he were an ATM.
Obviously, "cash back" is a terrible idea if the merchant allowed the customer to pay by credit card.
Cash back was/is a thing in Sweden for a long time, but I have not actually seen it used in ages, or mentioned. We simply don't use cash much these days.
sandos commented on Google spoofed via DKIM replay attack: A technical breakdown easydmarc.com/blog/google... · Posted by u/frasermarlow
Oooooh, finally!!!
I received almost exactly this email a couple of months ago, but targeted at a google domains admin! I was, of course, also spooked by it. I did wait out and avoided clicking links in it, but I could not really find any references to this scam.
What gave it away was that all email-addresses were masked, and those masks did not match up with any emails that I administer as a workspace admin. But yes, the email itself was legit, I googled that and the text passage matched. In my case it was an email for a deceased persons email, which ofc also did not match reality. But I was almost 100% at some point that someone had actually convinced Google I was deceased, and was going to access my entire Google account, talk about scary!
sandos commented on AI overviews cause massive drop in search clicks arstechnica.com/ai/2025/0... · Posted by u/jonbaer
Of course slow, shitty web sites also cause a massive drop in clicks, as soon as an alternative to clicking emerges. It's just like on HN, if I see an interesting title and want to know what the article is about, I can wince and click the article link, but it's much faster and easier to click the HN comments link and infer the info I want from the comments. That difference is almost entirely from the crappy overdesign of almost every web site, vs. HN's speedy text-only format.
Iv'e been focusing on comments on social media for I don't know how long. It works 90% of the time as a pretty good summary for some reason.
I do this on hackernews, and especially on news-sites I check (cleantechnica, electrec, reneweconomy) and I actively shun sites _without_ comments.
sandos commented on Qwen3-Coder: Agentic coding in the world qwenlm.github.io/blog/qwe... · Posted by u/danielhanchen
At my work, here is a typical breakdown of time spent by work areas for a software engineer. Which of these areas can be sped up by using agentic coding?
05%: Making code changes
10%: Running build pipelines
20%: Learning about changed process and people via zoom calls, teams chat and emails
15%: Raising incident tickets for issues outside of my control
20%: Submitting forms, attending reviews and chasing approvals
20%: Reaching out to people for dependencies, following up
10%: Finding and reading up some obscure and conflicting internal wiki page, which is likely to be outdated
Very similar to my job, although its very variable: some weeks I do write / debug code 80-90% of the time.
sandos commented on Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience myvolvoex90.com/... · Posted by u/prova_modena
I think I’ll never buy an electric car. They all have way too much more software than needed, most depend on touchscreens to access basic functionality, and I simply do not want that.
I have a 2010s VW, and I think it has the right amount of software. The screen has CarPlay, radio and some configurations, but 100% of the driving can be done without using it. Things like wipers, AC, cruise control, everything is manual. Yet the car even has the latest safety stuff like lane assist and BLIS.
Is there an EV out there with the same level of software? Can we essentially buy a 2019 Golf with the fuel tank gauge exchanged for a battery level indicator?
Our 2015 Passat is also like this, it's so... perfect. I juuust want to replace the drivetrain to electric!
sandos commented on Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience myvolvoex90.com/... · Posted by u/prova_modena
I had an ex90 on pre-order for a long time, placed it within the first ~30 days of it being open.
It looked to be (and is!) an absolutely beautiful vehicle and also seemed to be making choices in the hardware (lidar) that I hoped, would, eventually deliver a combination of safety and self-driving capabilities that would be unmatched. I was willing to pay a premium and knew that it would take some time for the self-driving to come to fruition, but figured it would be a capable vehicle until that point in time.
But dang, what a botched launch. Not only were there all these issues, which are insane to me that Volvo didn't have more people in social media / subreddit, but also from a financial perspective the car is just insanely hard to get into. Lease terms were absolutely terrible.
I ended up getting a Hyuandai Ioniq 9 and am really glad I went that direction. Yeah, it doesn't offer as much as a Tesla in terms of FSD, but it also has better build quality and interior quality nearly matching the Volvo. I like the styling (but I know some do not), and it has actual physical controls for the stuff I care about and the best heads up display I have used (favorite feature: you get photos of incoming caller). NACS is also great... but I can't bring myself to take 2 spots yet at superchargers.
Funny that many say the Ioniq 9 looks like an older Volvo. I guess you really like Volvo!
Jokes aside, I would love the Ioniq 9, I think it looks much better than the EV9, or even EX90 which I find old looking.
sandos commented on Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience myvolvoex90.com/... · Posted by u/prova_modena
I have been driving VW for decades. Never had any issue apart from some Apple CarPlay snags. Drove Golf, Touran and Tuiguan Allspace. Always a pleasure.
Our passat has been so much better than our previous Kia and Renault, at least. 10 years without any non-normal breakage, a water pump did break and for some reason that is considered normal. If thats all that breaks during this time I am happy enough.
Japanese is maybe even better, but I just cant get over the styling.
sandos commented on Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience myvolvoex90.com/... · Posted by u/prova_modena
Toyota, Lexus, Subaru, Honda.
Not sure if Hyundai & Kia are quite as reliable, but if not it's on them because they have some of the best warranties in the industry.
Kia's are sadly not that good, we had a Ceed with very obvious rust problems that was widespread. Re-painting did not help, it was the steel treatment that somehow wrecked the paint from underneath.
Kias EVs are even more famour for troubles, just google for Kia ICCU. Even the XC90 competitor EV9 seems to have some trouble with this still.