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sircastor commented on Australian court finds Apple, Google guilty of being anticompetitive   ghacks.net/2025/08/12/aus... · Posted by u/warrenm
seydor · 14 days ago
I can't help thinking that a lot of anticompetitive cases will be won outside the US now that the US is in all-out trade war with the rest of the universe.
sircastor · 13 days ago
I think what might happen is all these other markets are going to end up “playing fair” while the US remains an abused ecosystem- because it’ll be the only place left Apple and Google can push their advantage.
sircastor commented on UK backing down on Apple encryption backdoor after pressure from US   arstechnica.com/tech-poli... · Posted by u/azalemeth
jonplackett · a month ago
I assumed they’d only have asked for it if they’d already OKed it with the US, and that it was probably part of a plan to give US access too via 5-eyes sharing.

Turns out it was not 4D chess after all…

sircastor · a month ago
I think if we'd had a "normal" administration, this probably would have been pushed by the US government. The US services have been gunning for this for decades. But we have an administration that seems extremely disjointed in what it wants to do and why it wants to do it. I'm kind of curious about the internal conversations that must be happening on the other side of 5-eyes nations services as they're trying to accomplish their ends with such an unpredictable ally.
sircastor commented on AI is killing the web – can anything save it?   economist.com/business/20... · Posted by u/edward
lmpdev · a month ago
The thing that stops me pursing this idea though is how do you verify contributors to this new internet aren’t platforms/businesses?

Where do you draw the line?

Who gets to draw the line?

sircastor · a month ago
This is an incomplete thought, but a friend of mine has this idea around reputation built through a sort-of key signing. You get a key, your friend gets a key, you sign each other's keys. The key can serve as an indicator of trust, or validity that an individual's contributions are meaningful (or something). And if your friend suddenly turns into a corporate shill, you could revoke that trust. And if the people haven't established their own trust with that person, their trust goes when yours does. Transitive trust.

It obviously has some flaws, and could be gamed in the right circumstances, but I think it's an interesting idea.

sircastor commented on I want an iPhone Mini-sized Android phone (2022)   smallandroidphone.com/... · Posted by u/asimops
sircastor · a month ago
My iPhone 12 Mini's camera just broke (the zoom is failing..) I have been poking around for any solution that is around the same size. The best answer is generally never-heard-of companies that pop new phone models out and no certainty as to how long they'll last or be supported. That's on top of having to switch platforms (again).

I'm resigned to getting a new iPhone in Sept - reluctantly.

sircastor commented on LLM Inevitabilism   tomrenner.com/posts/llm-i... · Posted by u/SwoopsFromAbove
sircastor · a month ago
The hardest part about inevitablism here is that the people who are making the argument this is inevitable are the same people who are the people who are shoveling hundreds of millions of dollars into it. Into the development, the use, the advertisement. The foxes are building doors into the hen houses and saying there’s nothing to be done, foxes are going to get in so we might as well make it something that works for everyone.
sircastor commented on MacPaint Art from the Mid-80s Still Looks Great Today   blog.decryption.net.au/po... · Posted by u/decryption
sircastor · a month ago
One of the mild tragedies of my youth is that when we switched from the Macintosh SE/30 to the IIci, my MacPaint art didn't make the transition. My dad told me that the files were incompatible. I don't think that's actually true, but I didn't know enough at that age to be able to question it or even explore it. There are many many creations throughout first half of my life that are lost for a lack of storage space at the time.

As an aside: Do your best to capture at least something in a way that will be preserved.

sircastor commented on What a Hacker Stole from Me   mynoise.net/blog.php... · Posted by u/wonger_
ChrisMarshallNY · 2 months ago
I have found that there are people who just want to watch the world burn. There are many reasons, but, at its most basic, hurt people hurt people.

That's something I like to keep in mind, when I'm reacting to someone being ... less than friendly ... By reacting badly, I then make it all right for them to justify doing it again, to someone else. I've found that I can defend myself, without becoming a foaming-at-the-mouth maniac. We can enforce our boundaries with water pistols, most of the time. We don't need nukes.

Everything is connected. This chap may be naive, but he's actually trying to set good connections in motion. I applaud that.

sircastor · 2 months ago
> I have found that there are people who just want to watch the world burn. There are many reasons, but, at its most basic, hurt people hurt people.

I'm not sure that it's even malicious. I think many hackers look at a website or a service as a game to play. They aren't thinking so far as the person that this action affects, just as far as "I wonder if I could get all the data off that site?" or something similar. And on top of that, some view the rate-limiting as a challenge.

I think it's the same thing that drives the excessive snark or cruelty in comments. They don't think of the person on the other end as a person, they think of them as an endpoint.

sircastor commented on What 'Project Hail Mary' teaches us about the PlanetScale vs. Neon debate   blog.alexoglou.com/posts/... · Posted by u/konsalexee
crims0n · 2 months ago
Tangentially related, is this book worth the hype? I don't read a lot of genre fiction, but don't like to miss out on the exceptional (just finished and loved Flowers for Algernon, as an example).

Edit: Sounds like an enjoyable, low commitment book. Will give it a try, thanks for the feedback.

sircastor · 2 months ago
I absolutely loved it. It’s well structured. The science is well written, but not overbearing. Fun story.
sircastor commented on Ask HN: Worth leaving position over push to adopt vibe coding?    · Posted by u/NotAnOtter
noduerme · 2 months ago
I feel I'm sort of stuck in the opposite situation of OP. I manage a few massive codebases that I simply cannot trust an AI to go mucking around with. The only type of serious AI coding experience I could get at this point would be to branch one of these and start experimenting on my own dime to see how good or bad the actual experience is. And that doesn't really seem worth it, because I know what I want to do with them (what's on the feature list that I'm being paid to develop)... and it feels like it would take more time to talk to an LLM and get it perfectly dialed in on any given feature, and ensure it was correct, than it would take to write it myself. And I'm not getting paid for it.

I feel like I'd never use Claude seriously unless someone demanded I used it from day one on a greenfield project. And so while I get to keep evolving my coding skills, I'm a little worried that my "AI skills" will lag behind.

sircastor · 2 months ago
I do a lot of non-work AI stuff on my own, from pair programming with AI, asking it to generate whole things, to just asking it to clarify a general approach to a problem.

FWIW, in a work environment (and I have not been given the go-ahead to start this at my work) I would start by supplementing my codebase. Add a new feature via AI coding, or maybe reworking some existing function. Start small.

sircastor commented on Ask HN: Worth leaving position over push to adopt vibe coding?    · Posted by u/NotAnOtter
sircastor · 2 months ago
I'm a senior engineer with 20+ (oof) years of industry experience. I appreciate that this sucks and you don't want to do it. I wouldn't either. That said, it's a hirer's market out there right now. There will be plenty of people who will be happy to take your position while you're looking for something you prefer.

My opinion is that we're going to have about 5 years of this. Managers and C-suite folks are going to do their absolute darnedest to replace and supplement people with AI tools before they figure out it's not going to work. While I appreciate the differences, I remember seeing this ~6-7 years ago with blockchain at my last role. It'll work itself out. In the mean time, you get to contribute to the situation, instead of simply not being present. It's not going to be fun of course.

I don't think we're ever going back from this. There's an entire generation of new coders, and new managers who are growing up with this stuff. It's part of their experience, and suggesting they not use it is going to be akin to asking if you can use a typewriter instead of a computer with a word processor. Some companies will take longer to adopt, but it's coming...

u/sircastor

KarmaCake day5531August 4, 2017
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