Don’t the best of the best typically work on OS fundamentals though?
The windows kernel is great. It's the stuff built on top of that that sucks. I doubt MS puts the best of the best on coding the start menu
Readit Newswongarsu commented on Microsoft open-sources LiteBox, a security-focused library OS github.com/microsoft/lite... · Posted by u/aktau
wongarsu commented on TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe nytimes.com/2026/02/06/bu... · Posted by u/thm
They are arguing its not the recommender that is unique it is the network effect.
If it was only network effect, then how did TikTok grow in a space where Instagram and Youtube were already much bigger players? How did they gain that user base?
Network effect helps, but it only explains why they stay big, not how they got big
There really isn't that much making TikTok unique. Yes, their app is well designed. Yes, stitches and video replies make for great social/parasocial features because creators are actually interacting with each other and the community, almost like tumblr. But in my opinion those are reasons number three and two why TikTok is successful. Their recommendation algorithm is number one, by a wide margin.
wongarsu commented on TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe nytimes.com/2026/02/06/bu... · Posted by u/thm
> At a major semiconductor manufacturer, agents reduced chip optimization work from six weeks to one day.
I call BS right there. If you can actually do that, you’d spin up a “chip optimization” consultancy and pocket the massive efficiency gain, not sell model access at a couple bucks per million-tokens.
There should be a massive “caveats and terms apply” on that quote.
So far the AI productivity gains have been all bark and no bite. I’ll believe when I see either faster product development, higher quality or lower prices (which indeed happened with other technological breakthroughs, whether the printing press or the loom) - if anything, software quality is going down suggesting we aren’t there yet.
I'm willing to bet "chip optimization work" doesn't mean "the work required to optimize a chip", but "some work tasks performed as part of chip optimization". Basically they sped up some unknown subset of the work from six weeks to one day. Which could be big or could be negligible
wongarsu commented on CIA to Sunset the World Factbook abc.net.au/news/2026-02-0... · Posted by u/kshahkshah
You can make propaganda without lying, by choosing what metrics you value over others for example, by adding them or omitting them or implying whether a stat increasing is positive or negative.
Also choosing which methodology is the "right" one to measure a specific number.
There are lots of ways to measure ethnic groups, the size of the capital or the unemployment rate. If you publish the numbers you get to choose which one suits you best, you just have to be globally consistent
wongarsu commented on CIA to Sunset the World Factbook abc.net.au/news/2026-02-0... · Posted by u/kshahkshah
Where do you think the information on Wikipedia comes from? Not that Wikipedia strongly relies on The World Factbook, but it can't exist without other secondary sources like these.
Most countries have some kind of statistics department that publishes that kind of data in great detail.
The issues start when you try to compare data, because different sources will use different methodologies
wongarsu commented on Modernizing Linux swapping: introducing the swap table lwn.net/SubscriberLink/10... · Posted by u/chmaynard
Another useless feature into Linux kernel. Who uses swap space nowadays?! Last time I used swap on Linux device was around Pentium 2 era but in reality closer to 486DX era
It's unloved on Linux because using Linux under memory pressure sucks. But that's not a good reason to abandon improvements. Even more so with the direction RAM prices are headed
wongarsu commented on Microsoft's Copilot chatbot is running into problems wsj.com/tech/ai/microsoft... · Posted by u/fortran77
> Microsoft 365 Copilot | Create, Share and Collaborate with Office and AI
That's some insight into Microsoft's brain rot, isn't it? "Imagine spending every day for the next year dealing with robot office software."
I spend most work days with robot dev software (claude code). If Copilot had a similar ability to do useful work with meaningful oversight I wouldn't mind spending time with it. Sadly it does not
wongarsu commented on Claude Code: connect to a local model when your quota runs out boxc.net/blog/2026/claude... · Posted by u/fugu2
What are your needs/constraints (hardware constraints definitely a big one)?
The one I mentioned called continue.dev [1] is easy to try out and see if it meets your needs.
Hitting local models with it should be very easy (it calls APIs at a specific port)
I've also made decent experiences with continue, at least for autocomplete. The UI wants you to set up an account, but you can just ignore that and configure ollama in the config file
For a full claude code replacement I'd go with opencode instead, but good models for that are something you run in your company's basement, not at home
wongarsu commented on Exploring Different Keyboard Sensing Technologies lttlabs.com/articles/2026... · Posted by u/viraptor
I believe that keys with optical switches are less reliable, being sensitive to things like sensor misalignment or dust.
I have not used any keyboard with optical switches, but several decades ago I have used keyboards with hall sensors, which had a superb quality and reliability, much better than anything that I have used later.
Sadly, I had to abandon the first keyboard that I have used with computers owned by me, which had Hall sensors, because it was not IBM PC compatible (its origin was in some DEC-compatible video terminal and I had used it with a Motorola MC68000 based PC, which I have replaced with a PC/AT clone, for which I had to use a compatible keyboard, of much lower quality).
Otherwise, I am certain that it would have remained perfectly functional until today, unlike the many keyboards that I had to replace since then, when too worn out.
I have a hall-effect keyboard from Wooting, and they are indeed excellent. Very reliable, and setting the trigger point in software/firmware allows a number of interesting features like triggering different key codes depending on how far you've pressed the key down, enabling more rapid keypresses or using keys as analog input.
Their first keyboards actually used optical switches, and from everything I've heard were less reliable, and tracking precision was much worse than with the magnetic switches