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xrd commented on Roger Ebert Reviews "The Shawshank Redemption" (1999)   rogerebert.com/reviews/gr... · Posted by u/monero-xmr
xrd · 10 hours ago
If you go to Ebert's wikipedia, you can almost miss the link to the screenplay he wrote:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_the_Valley_of_the_Dolls

This was co-produced with Russ Meyer, who basically made a bunch films which are as close to porn as you can get without being technically porn. He also made a ton of porn films as well. I haven't seen any of them, but many are now cult films. It feels debatable that he intended these to become cultural relics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russ_Meyer

I was surprised to see Roger Ebert was involved in that film! Gene Siskel, his long time partner, rated Valley of the Dolls 0 out of 4 stars, which is funny.

xrd commented on TikTok's 'addictive design' found to be illegal in Europe   nytimes.com/2026/02/06/bu... · Posted by u/thm
xrd · 3 days ago
I used to feel, despite knowing how much harm the US has caused around the world, that I was lucky to be born American. Shamefully, I knew that deep down it was better to be born in the US than in a slum in Rio or Calcutta.

Now, I question that, because I know that American companies will never step in and regulate themselves, nor other "foreign run" companies like TikTok (I know it is really murky right now). I know Trump, who owns his own social media company, and Elon Musk, who has invaded the government and owns his own propaganda machine, will never be on the right side of history. My kids are forcibly addicted to their phones and these companies are racing to a bottom I don't think exists. I watch them consume in horror and helplessness.

Spare me your thoughts, childless commentators. You have no idea what kids these days are facing. You have no idea how hard I have fought. It is so horrible. And, the only parents who winning are Amish, Waldorf or home school kids. Every single friend in my kids life is even worse off than mine, so it is pushers everywhere. 13 year old brains were never designed to survive this kind of assault.

xrd commented on Litestream Writable VFS   fly.io/blog/litestream-wr... · Posted by u/emschwartz
xrd · 4 days ago
I love litestream. I've used it with pocketbase and it works. sqlite is a great building block for almost everything.

Does anyone know whether you could use this to stitch together a bunch of .db files (that share the same schema) in an ad-hoc way?

For example, if I decided I wanted to synchronize my friend's .db file, could I enable this using litestream? And, what if my friend wanted to sync two of his friends' .db files, but I'm only interested in his changes, not theirs? I assume this kind of fan out is not possible, but it would be fun if so.

xrd commented on Data centers in space makes no sense   civai.org/blog/space-data... · Posted by u/ajyoon
xrd · 5 days ago
Elon has used the greater fool theory for so long that they no longer exist on earth (at least fools with money who aren't also using the greater fool theory). It makes perfect sense he would focus on space because if he does find aliens it'll be an entirely new investor pool for him, and he desperately needs that now.
xrd commented on Agent Skills   agentskills.io/home... · Posted by u/mooreds
postalcoder · 6 days ago
Folks have run comparisons. From a huggingface employee:

  codex + skills finetunes Qwen3-0.6B to +6 on humaneval and beats the base score on the first run.

  I reran the experiment from this week, but used codex's new skills integration. Like claude code, codex consumes the full skill into context and doesn't start with failing runs. It's first run beats the base score, and on the second run it beats claude code.
https://xcancel.com/ben_burtenshaw/status/200023306951767675...

That said, it's not a perfect comparison because of the Codex model mismatch between runs.

The author seems to be doing a lot of work on skills evaluation.

https://github.com/huggingface/upskill

xrd · 6 days ago
Does this indicate running locally with a very small (quantized?) model?

I am very interested in finding ways to combine skills + local models + MCP + aider-ish tools to avoid using commercial LLM providers.

Is this a path to follow? Or, something different?

xrd commented on Agent Skills   agentskills.io/home... · Posted by u/mooreds
tobyhinloopen · 6 days ago
ln -s to the rescue!
xrd · 6 days ago
Why not hardlinks?
xrd commented on Classified Whistleblower Complaint About Tulsi Gabbard Stalls Within Her Agency   wsj.com/politics/national... · Posted by u/petethomas
xrd · 6 days ago
She is in the news a lot right now. I couldn't really understand why her involvement in the investigation of voter fraud in GA is a story until I read that it is really strange that she, as DNI, is involved in an FBI investigation. That's very unusual for a person in her post, right? The story as I understand it is that she is doing Trump's bidding, because otherwise she would have no place participating in this investigation. Did I get it right?
xrd commented on Zig Libc   ziglang.org/devlog/2026/#... · Posted by u/ingve
xrd · 6 days ago
Are you ok with the size of the budget these agencies control? Are you ok with it being headed by a guy who never has denied he took a $50k bribe from the FBI and wasn't even the initial target of an investigation?

I would bet you $1000 that not one of the immigrants being rounded up were even accused of that kind of corruption and crimes.

How is this not bald corruption and an insane way to spend tax dollars when people are really struggling in this country?

And I know plenty of restaurant owners in Portland that are closing because of down tourism. Why can Trump sue the IRS for $10B but Portland can't sue him for disparaging the city because he can't figure out that videos of riots are five years old?

xrd commented on Zig Libc   ziglang.org/devlog/2026/#... · Posted by u/ingve
AndyKelley · 6 days ago
The very same day I sat at home writing this devlog like a coward, less than five miles away, armed forces who are in my city against the will of our elected officials shot tear gas, unprovoked, at peaceful protestors, including my wife.

https://www.kptv.com/2026/01/31/live-labor-unions-rally-marc...

This isn't some hypothetical political agenda I'm using my platform to push. There's a nonzero chance I go out there next weekend to peacefully protest, and get shot like Alex Pretti.

Needless to say, if I get shot by ICE, it's not good for the Zig project. And they've brought the battle to my doorstep, almost literally.

Abolish ICE.

xrd · 6 days ago
My 85 year old mom lives in Portland and she attends rallies frequently. If you know of any way to support you or other local people doing this work, I'm very interested. My email is on my profile page.

I have a friend who is in Minneapolis. He's involved in caravans which are tracking ICE. He wasn't the driver in the last one. But, the ICE vehicle they tailed suddenly started going in a very direct path, instead of randomly driving. The driver figured it out first. They drove to the driver's house and then stood outside of their car for ten minutes staring at his house. Cars in Minnesota have their license plates on both the front and the back.

Is there any justification for that kind of intimidation? Did any of the Trump supporters vote for that? I hear about paid agitators on the left but not that kind of compensated actors. Is his name in a database now once they did the lookup?

xrd commented on Zig Libc   ziglang.org/devlog/2026/#... · Posted by u/ingve
xrd · 6 days ago
"Abolish ICE" at the bottom. Obviously a Bad Bunny fan, as I am.

u/xrd

KarmaCake day8435March 25, 2008
About
chris@extrastatic.com

https://webiphany.com

Wrote a book for O'Reilly: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/building-tools-with/9781491933497/

Univ. of Washington Comp Sci & Japanese Language and Literature

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