HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

Aozora7

174 karma · joined November 15, 2018

Software developer from Latvia.

https://aozora.one/

submissionscomments
Aozora7··on Dutch 'idealist' bank ASN blocks non-Google Android, including GrapheneOS
My bank app works on GrapheneOS but checks play integrity and disables biometrics and lowers limits.

Thankfully I'm not forced to use it since I can log into the bank and authorize transactions with the government digital signature app, which uses hardware attestation and considers GOS fully secure.

Funnily enough, the bank's app crashes on launch with memory tagging enabled which means they have memory bugs.

Aozora7··on Ask HN: What's your current AI agentic setup?
I subscribe to OpenCode Go when I have a personal projects I need to work on. It's by far the best value since it's only $10 and I doesn't run out of its five hour limit in an hour they way Claude Code/Codex do. Models are more than good enough.

At work, I'm using Codex with the subscription they give me, and I don't really have anything to complain about.

I don't bother picking obscure tools and heavily configuring them since almost all of the intelligence is in the model, and models themselves improve so fast that any complicated setup will be obsolete in a few months. All of the useful behavior just gets trained into the models, and all useful functionality gets added into every harness very quickly.

I'm not using any personal agents since I don't see any use case.

Aozora7··on AI is destroying my CS degree
That seems like a normal academia dysfunction, AI is just another thing they are failing to adapt to. I graduated 10 years ago and on the job I had to unlearn most of what I learned from the Java course, for example.

I haven't seen a better example of "those who can't do, teach" than CS professors.

Aozora7··on Revolut moves to self-hosted GLM
It's not spite towards humans. It's spite towards typical state of pre-AI codebases.

It's not even a matter of incompetence, most of the humanslop came from the fact that you could just never implement anything properly in the time you were expected to do it.

Aozora7··on Revolut moves to self-hosted GLM
Being unable to work on a codebase without AI is not necessary. Working with models you can fit on consumer hardware is already significantly more productive than rawdogging code. It's similar to "you won't always have a calculator with you" from math teachers, see how that turned out.

A way bigger problem is a codebase that you can't effectively work on with AI, which is a lot of legacy humanslop. And things that make a codebase more suited for AI, like documentation that provides relevant domain knowledge and context for requirements, automated quality control, and test coverage, also make a codebase easier to work on for a human too.

Aozora7··on BYD sold more EVs last month than the US did all quarter
Fast charging is massively overrated. Most people's charging needs are better taken care of by charging overnight at home. You're getting electricity cheaper than at fast chargers, and you aren't even altering your commute in any way to charge/refuel. The only issue with this is lack of residential charging infrastructure for apartment buildings, but getting 240V to a parking spot is orders of magnitude cheaper than building a fast charger.
Aozora7··on OccupySaaS
Matters to me. I'm personally tires of slopware (of both human and LLM variety) that takes 1GB of disk space and RAM for no reason, especially with current RAM prices. If all desktop software I use was as efficient as artcraft rewrites, my experience using computers would be significantly better.

Developers should have higher performance standards now that DX matters way less (you're not writing code by hand anyway).

Aozora7··on OccupySaaS
Photocraft may not be ready as a drop-in Photoshop replacement for professionals yet, and I didn't say it was. I said it was better than GIMP 3 (and all other free image editors, for that matter). I've been using pirated Photoshop for random image edits for most of my life, and Photocraft does exactly what my muscle memory expects Photoshop to do.

The video you linked is also three weeks old, which is an eternity in the scope of this project, since each week hundreds of PRs are merged, and several versions are released. At the speed they are going and with the amount of attention and usage they're getting, I expect they'll manage parity in months, but even in the current state, it's still useful enough.

The person testing it also seems to be an artist, so their workflow demands can be significantly different from someone doing image editing. Most artists I know use more specialized software like Clip Studio Paint over Photoshop anyway.

I think to stay competitive, open source software needs to adopt AI-first workflows that mostly automate quality control and review, rather than just allow LLM contributions. Allowing LLM contributions without sufficient infrastructure will just drown maintainers in slop.

Aozora7··on OccupySaaS
>GIMP already exists

PhotoCraft is already better than GIMP3 in every aspect. Usability is much better, binaries are 4 times smaller, and it's way faster. GIMP takes 5+ seconds to start, vibe-coded Rust Photoshop starts instantly.

I think the "old" open source community has very low standards for user experience when it comes to GUI software. It's one of the main reasons I could never get myself to use desktop Linux.

With AI, there are no excuses for open source software to be worse in any aspect at all.

Aozora7··on Domain hacks with unusual Unicode characters (2018)
My favorite use for it is putting it into mandatory surname fields, which sometimes works.
Aozora7··on Domain hacks with unusual Unicode characters (2018)
My favorite unicode character is zero width space. One of its funniest properties is that it's not a whitespace.

Also, some programming languages treat it as a valid identifier.

Aozora7··on The AI cost of JavaScript frameworks
I suspect that results would be different if the app was a bunch of boring forms with complex validation rules, which is often encountered in jobslop.

Not necessarily that Angular would win that, but I imagine that it would at least significantly shuffle the order.

Aozora7··on The first wired XR glasses powered by Android XR
I'm not interested in VR/AR stuff, but I'm still waiting for dumb lightweight wireless glasses that would be able to replace my four monitor setup on PC.
Aozora7··on Discord will soon let anyone find public server messages through Google
Discord is my favorite communication platform on the internet. It combines everything useful that was offered by older platforms like IRC, Skype and TeamSpeak, and provides that with a modern UI.

For me, it also helps that all of my favorite communities are on it.

Aozora7··on New 'Circadian' Subtype of Depression Affecting 1 in 4 Patients
No, and I've had this since early teenage years at least.
Aozora7··on New 'Circadian' Subtype of Depression Affecting 1 in 4 Patients
I'm probably immune to this because my circadian rhythm disorder (N24) jetlags me by one hour every day.
Aozora7··on We should be more ambitious with the software we build
When AI labs mature and inference costs start to matter, they will start optimizing for inference cost instead of sacrificing everything for intelligence.

But even without that, open weight models are already good enough and everyone would be fine with paying unsubsidized prices for them.

Aozora7··on Your Phone Is About to Stop Being Yours: 70 Days Until Lockdown
I switched to GrapheneOS this week, and it looks like I lucked out with my country in that regard.

Government digital signature app fully trusts GrapheneOS since it uses hardware attestation rather than Play Integrity, so I have access to all government services.

My bank's app runs on GrapheneOS but doesn't fully trust it. Device is labeled as insecure, biometric login is disabled, and transaction limits are significantly lower, but is otherwise functional for daily use.

Bank accepts logins authenticated with government digital signature app, so I can use that to login into the bank's web app and make transactions without reduced limits there.

The bank's app relies on Google Wallet for contactless payments, which doesn't work on GrapheneOS, but it looks like there are workarounds for this like Curve Pay that do work on GrapheneOS. Haven't tested this myself, since I just use a physical card.

Aozora7··on Your Phone Is About to Stop Being Yours: 70 Days Until Lockdown
I got a used pixel 10a and installed GrapheneOS on it partly due to this.
Aozora7··on Your Phone Is About to Stop Being Yours: 70 Days Until Lockdown
Yes, because GrapheneOS completely controls app installation and google play services is just an optional module.
Aozora7··on Jailbreaking the Switch 2
Opposite for me. I pirated and emulated some switch games that I wouldn't have played on an actual device because I don't like handhelds and I hate playing games at 30 FPS and in low resolution. Any polish and intended experience goes out of the window when I'm constantly distracted by terrible framerate.
Aozora7··on Putting Linux on my RTX Spark laptop because I don't have a Microsoft account
The worst it can get is having to reinstall windows with an image modified to run first setup with a local account. Though with a lot of manufacturers it's a good idea to do that anyway to also avoid all of the bloatware they preinstall.
Aozora7··on We still use paper
>Or jotting down any kind of quick idea I have when I am on the road (frequently).

Seems way too inconvenient compared to opening a notes app on a phone. I always have a phone with me, but there's no way I'd ever bring paper with me when leaving home.

>Or sketching an idea for a screen print or art design.

Fundamentally niche, but if ever wanted to draw anything, I'd get a tablet.

>Or making notes about what groceries to pick up the next time the wife and I head to the grocery store.

I use the cart of the grocery delivery app as a grocery list when going there in person. But if I didn't I'd just make a checklist in a notes app.

Aozora7··on We still use paper
I personally only have negative association with anything related to paper, handwriting, and stationery, since it reminds me of school.

Maybe it would be different if I wasn't forced to use them to do things I hated for 10000+ hours.

Aozora7··on We still use paper
I haven't used paper for anything since I graduated college 10 years ago. Excluding education where I only used paper because I was forced to, closer to 20 years. I would much rather open a text editor or a spreadsheet on PC.
Aozora7··on Ask HN: Are you hesitant to install vibe-coded apps?
As far as I can tell, they copied nearly every tool and menu and their behavior one for one. I'm not an illustrator so I can't tell how well they copied brush behavior for painting, but as far as editing goes, this does almost everything. One noticeable omission that I could find is lack of frame by frame animation and gif export.

I pirated photoshop when I was 12 and kept using that for image editing my entire life. The clone feels completely familiar and does exactly what my muscle memory expects photoshop to do.

Aozora7··on I know why the mathematicians weep
I guess I'm lucky that I've always hated my job, because that prevented me from tying my self-worth to it.
Aozora7··on Ask HN: Are you hesitant to install vibe-coded apps?
No. I see the risk of a vibe coder getting prompt-injected to be negligible compared to a programmer being malicious themselves, and I've been running closed source executables for decades.

In general, I find that new vibe coded (or at least AI-assisted) user-facing software tends to be good, actually. LLMs don't have a 9 to 5 job, and don't get burnt out or tired. Vibe coded software tends to have attention to detail that I don't see in human-written open source software because a human wouldn't bother.

I'm enjoying democratization of software. Maybe in a few years we will have a vibe-coded open source Windows replacement.

Aozora7··on Ask HN: Are you hesitant to install vibe-coded apps?
I installed vibecoded Photoshop. The binary is 3 times smaller than GIMP, usability is much better, and it opens instantly while GIMP 3 takes five seconds.
Aozora7··on Apple's new 'Switch to Safari' campaign details why you should ditch Chrome
Absolutely not.

Even if they did all of that and also allowed unrestricted sideloading, iOS is still awful overall, and iPhones themselves are terrible value. Even 16e and 17e start at €600/800. I can get a better android phone for €300, and I can't imagine spending more than €500 on a phone, let alone €1000 to get a basic feature like 120Hz refresh rate.

Page 1 of 3Next →