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Arch485

833 karma · joined December 7, 2021

Hi! I'm Kurtis. I make software.

https://kurtis.omg.lol/

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Arch485··on Every AI model has the same "controversial" take on humans
I think there cannot be an objectively most correct punishment for a given crime. The closest we could maybe get is "undo the harm that you have caused", but some harm cannot be undone.

Hence morality and ethics, I guess.

Arch485··on Pg_vectorsearch: An index that is faster than pgvector's IVFFlat and HNSW
Re: Max dimensions: You can truncate your input vector specifically for the index, and then when querying, you can query the index via a truncated vector and perform an additional full-length comparison as well.

For example: (taken from a project I'm currently working on)

```

SELECT *

FROM report_embeddings a

INNER JOIN report_embeddings b

    ON (

        subvector(a.embedding, 1, 768)::vector(768) <-> 
subvector(b.embedding, 1, 768)::vector(768)

    ) < $1

    AND b.id != a.id
WHERE a.id = $2

    AND a.embedding <-> b.embedding < $1
```

In this example, I truncate the embedding to 768 dimensions for the index and the lookup, (see the INNER JOIN) but do an additional full vector comparison as well. (in the WHERE clause)

This performs a fast but less accurate lookup into the index, and then only does the non-indexed full vector check for the matched results.

Arch485··on YouTuber Says Cops Visited Him After He Built a Flock-Style Camera to Track Cops
The police are like vampires. So long as you don't invite them, they can't come in. (with some exceptions of course, but that's not as pithy)
Arch485··on A Design Space Exploration of Async/Await
It's not that it's optimized away, it's that the authors have done a bad job translating their pseudo code into Rust etc.

In Rust, if you do not `await` a future, it does not run - so in their example where only C is printed, they must have translated this into some Rust code that does not await the call to print AB.

This is simply not something you would ever do in real life, and in fact the Rust compiler emits a warning if you create a future but do not await it.

A more "correct" approach would be to call `tokio::spawn` with the future to print AB. This would result in AB always being printed, usually in the order ACB, but with no hard guarantees on that order because of the semantics of the `sleep` call. (specifically, it will wait at least the amount of time specified, but possibly more)

Arch485··on Zig: Build System Reworked
It is. I definitely agree that strings in Zig can be tedious, but the upside is that if you need it, you can build a string library that does everything you want it to do, in the way you want.

For comparison, while Rust offers a very rich string library, it's also very strict about what you can/cannot do with strings, so if your use case falls outside of that you're out of luck. With Zig, you can pretty easily roll your own and make it do what you want. (and when Zig is post 1.0, I imagine there will be some very nice pre-made string libraries by the community etc.)

Arch485··on The main thing about P2P meth is that there's so much of it (2021)
Honestly, that was sort of the impression I got. It's not that the meth is contaminated, it's that the meth is way stronger and more pure. I wouldn't be surprised if incredibly high doses of any stimulant causes schizophrenia.
Arch485··on What's Wrong with AI?
I disagree, if you'd like to propose solutions to these problems as well as an implementation strategy, I'd be very happy to hear them! Source: am the author.
Arch485··on What's Wrong with AI?
Most AI data centres use evaporative cooling. One of the linked sources talks about this; that 7 billion cubic metres metric is how much water gets evaporated into the air. (which makes that water no longer usable for drinking/watering crops/etc)
Arch485··on Ask HN: Is anyone seriously considering a career change?
Up until pretty recently, I was unemployed and I also wanted a career change for similar reasons (although I'm in my 20s). I was broke, so going to school wasn't an option (plus I applied to a couple universities anyways and got rejected or waitlisted, I assume because of my age).

The economy is so messed up right now that the only jobs I found that didn't require a degree or several years of prior experience were hard labour for minimum wage. Even McDonald's apparently requires 3 years of experience.

So, my advice would be that school is expensive, wages are low, and if you're in a spot where you can reasonably get a decent paying job, you should take advantage of that. (as much as I would love to work in an industry that isn't the total shitshow that software is right now)

Arch485··on Garbage collection without unsafe code
I agree completely; I think choosing Rust and then adding a GC is a weird design choice. If I was in a situation where I really, truly needed GC for my memory management, I wouldn't use Rust.
Arch485··on GitHub CLI now collects pseudoanonymous telemetry
Exactly - purely "data driven" decisions are how we end up with ads really close to (or overlapping with) some button you want to press, because the data says that increase click-through rate! But it's actually a user-hostile feature that everyone hates.
Arch485··on Garbage Collection Without Unsafe Code
I've never really had the urge to use GC in Rust, but if I were to speculate, I'd say easier cyclic references would be one benefit. And depending on the specific GC implementation, you can probably get around many of Rust's ownership rules because Gc<T> pointers are usually `Copy`, so you can pass things around everywhere and not think about references/ownership as much.
Arch485··on ChatGPT Images 2.0
I think you're misunderstanding - most people's beef with AI art isn't that it "isn't made by experts", it's that

1) it's made from copyrighted works, and the original authors receive no credit; 2) it is (typically) low-effort; 3) there are numerous negative environmental effects of the AI industry in general; 4) there are numerous negative social effects of AI in general, and more specifically AI generated imagery is used a lot for spreading misinformation; 5) there are numerous negative economic effects of AI, and specifically with art, it means real human artists are being replaced by AI slop, which is of significantly lower quality than the equivalent human output. Also, instead of supporting multiple different artists, you're siphoning your money to a few billion dollar companies (this is terrible for the economy)

As a side note, if you have a business which truly cannot afford to pay any artists, there are a lot of cheaper, (sometimes free!) pre-paid art bundles that are much less morally dubious than AI. Plus, then you're not siphoning all of your cash to tech oligarchs.

Arch485··on Less human AI agents, please
I think there's a difference between

"Hey boss, this isn't practical with the requirements you've given. We need to revise them to continue, here are my suggestions"

and

"Task completed! Btw, I ignored all of the constraints because I didn't like them."

Humans do the former quite often. When we do the latter, our employment tends not to last very long. I've only seen AIs choose the latter option.

Arch485··on Less human AI agents, please
Or the "find all references" feature almost every code editor has...
Arch485··on Sauna effect on heart rate
Increasing skin temperature is known to induce sleep (can't find a source currently, sorry). Something about your skin being warmer allowing your body to cool more effectively, I think.

So a hot shower before bed is actually great for sleep, because you get the increased skin temp, relaxed muscles from the warm water, and general relaxation because showers are (for many people) relaxing.

Arch485··on Hold on to Your Hardware
I think that's only because electricity is the bottleneck, though. If it was no longer the bottleneck, crypto miners would expand rapidly with more hardware, mining difficulty would increase, and eventually the bottleneck is storage space for all your GPUs, if not the GPUs themselves.
Arch485··on Looking at Unity made me understand the point of C++ coroutines
I dunno, I've worked on some pretty big projects that have used lots of coroutines, and it's pretty easy to avoid all of the footguns.

I'm not advocating for the ubiquitous use of coroutines (there's a time and place), but they're like anything else: if you don't know what you're doing, you'll misuse them and cause problems. If you RTFM and understand how they work, you won't have any issues.

Arch485··on A Japanese glossary of chopsticks faux pas (2022)
I'm curious about Hashibashi as well. I've seen lots of Japanese people doing it, and now I'm worried I look like a total poser from copying them.
Arch485··on A most elegant TCP hole punching algorithm
I think many people know how to google "what is my IP" and send that to a friend, but don't necessarily know what a port is.

NAT randomization, I don't know. Depends on your setup, I guess.

Arch485··on Nanny state discovers Linux, demands it check kids' IDs before booting
Or lots of parents will put their ID into their kid's computer so that they have full access.
Arch485··on Zig – Type Resolution Redesign and Language Changes
It's not so much a workaround as it is an elegance in design. In Zig, when you @import a file, that file is converted to a struct with comptime fields for all of the public members. Similarly, a "namespace" in Zig is just a nested struct with more fields. Usually it's just another import of something else.

N.B.: Coffee hasn't reached my bloodstream yet; accuracy not guaranteed.

Arch485··on Humans 40k yrs ago developed a system of conventional signs
I like JR's "shaggy fur" interpretation, but my initial thought for the mammoth was that it might be butcher markings? (as someone who is not a butcher and knows less than they should about anatomy)
Arch485··on You can't use a code editor when you're under 18 now?
Fear not, Zed has vim mode!
Arch485··on British Columbia is permanently adopting daylight time
I feel like days are a non-issue; they would just start at different times (UTC) in different territories. This wouldn't make things any more complicated than they already are (currently, if I want to talk to someone in Australia, I have to look up what time it is in Australia and infer the day of the week from that, if necessary. If everything is under UTC, I know what "time" it is, but I still have to look up what day it is).

Most of the issues time zones cause are not "day of the week" related anyways (at least in my experience), so I think having to figure out what day of the week it is somewhere else wouldn't be a common problem anyways.

Arch485··on Man accidentally gains control of 7k robot vacuums
I've just accepted that Microsoft, Google, and Meta all have a constant wiretap in my office (on account of my Windows PC, Android smartphone, and Meta VR headset).

It's rather dystopian to just know and accept this, but there's really no alternative if you want to participate in modern society at a normal capacity (sans the VR headset, that really isn't a necessity).

Something something, keep your enemies closer, right?

Arch485··on How far back in time can you understand English?
fr fr, OP be cappin 2000 ain't English
Arch485··on Zero-day CSS: CVE-2026-2441 exists in the wild
I've heard this sentiment a lot, that governments/secret agencies/whoever create zero-days intentionally, for their own use.

This is an interesting thought to me (like, how does one create a zero-day that doesn't look intentional?) but the more I think about it, the more I start to believe that this fully is not necessary. There are enough faulty humans and memory unsafe languages in the loop that there will always be a zero-day somewhere, you just need to find it.

(this isn't to say something like the NSA has never created or ordered the creation of a backdoor - I just don't think it would be in the form of an "unintentional" zero-day exploit)

Arch485··on Async/Await on the GPU
Very cool!

Is the goal with this project (generally, not specifically async) to have an equivalent to e.g. CUDA, but in Rust? Or is there another intended use-case that I'm missing?

Arch485··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2026)
Your early access signup is broken!

I get prompted to enter a 6-digit code that was sent to my email, but I only receive an email with a link to localhost.

Otherwise, looks cool!

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