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Cyan488

556 karma · joined March 9, 2025

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Cyan488··on Meta reuses old RAM in new servers with custom bridge chip
I'm with you on this one. I'll be using my 11th gen i5 and GTX3080 for the foreseeable future. The 'hostility' you mention puts me off doing so more than price of an upgrade.
Cyan488··on Meta confirms 1000s of Instagram accounts were hacked by abusing its AI chatbot
> "The tool itself worked properly and functioned as intended; however due to a bug in a separate code path, the system did not properly verify that the email address provided by the individual requesting a password reset matched the email address associated with that user’s Instagram account," said Meta in its breach notice.

I'm not sure "worked properly" and "as intended" accurately describe this situation.

Cyan488··on Talk Is Cheap: The Operational Impact of LLM Use
I'm an embedded systems developer. I have almost fully "outsourced" the Python code for frontend pc software that interacts with my firmware.

I deliberately continue to write all my firmware by hand, and will occasionally consult AI for review. I never use AI to write prose for me.

Python is better represented in training data, writing bench software was a bit boring, I get to spend more time where I have (and continue to build) domain knowledge.

Agentic Opus is a nice to have and I get to explore the frontier tech, but if (or when) it's taken away, a self hosted coding model would be fine - I'd just have to dust off my Python skills and it would take longer.

Cyan488··on UA flight – 'turn Bluetooth off or we're turning around'
I wonder if the speaker had built in lithium batteries too.
Cyan488··on Macsurf, "modern" web browser for macOS 9
When I owned a iMac G3, the Classilla browser was surprisingly good. Looks like development ended in 2021.

Also, the branding was "Mac OS 9".

Cyan488··on Ferrari Luce
> Aston Martin Cygnus

Googling this ruined my day

Cyan488··on The quiet renovation at Bitwarden
> A 2022 blog post by Crandell — “Defining and sustaining value for Bitwarden users” — was quietly edited. The GRIT list in the body now shows the new values: Innovation and Trust.

You can assume incompetence for some things ("gosh I really didn't know I should communicate organizational changes more clearly!"), but re-writing history is a deliberate and conscious act of deception.

Cyan488··on Bitwarden scrubs 'Always free' and 'Inclusion' values from its site
I've paid for and recommended Bitwarden. For years it's operated along a stable trajectory. I was confident in its security record. Vaultwarden is an escape hatch I'm in a position to set up for my family as a last resort. Almost any reputable password manager is more secure than reusing the same passwords or storing everything in a note file.

What I stopped doing so frequently could be described as "evangelizing" or "endorsing". I no longer actively tell people that I think they should use X, instead, if someone asks, I say "I use X, and it's worked for me so far".

Cyan488··on Bitwarden scrubs 'Always free' and 'Inclusion' values from its site
Early adopters are exactly the people that like to test and recommend things to the majority. Without being aware of it, I was recommending a different product than the one I was using.

People stake their own personal reputations behind their recommendations. I don't think quietly changing the product without warning is doing right by their early adopters.

Cyan488··on Bitwarden scrubs 'Always free' and 'Inclusion' values from its site
You're right, though the friends and family that I would feel the need to recommend a password manager to aren't the type that would self-host their own servers.
Cyan488··on Bitwarden scrubs 'Always free' and 'Inclusion' values from its site
I stopped endorsing closed-source software to friends and family years ago, because you can't trust the companies behind them not to quietly change directions.

Years ago I used a free workout app that I really liked. After a few months of using it I recommended it to friends. I only much later found out that I was on a grandfathered version of the free plan without ads or restrictions. The company had made changes to the free plan since I joined, and all new accounts (like my friends) were subject to ads and restrictions.

It was embarrassing to have unknowingly recommending something like that.

Cyan488··on An Introduction to Meshtastic
Just like ham radio, it's a an interesting technical hobby for those that may get excited when their little 0.25W radio hits a repeater 80km away.

More practically, I'm going to try it out while camping this summer. In areas with low or no cell coverage, my phone is useless or dies quickly. Throw a repeater in a tree, and hand your friends nodes.

Cyan488··on Agents need control flow, not more prompts
What about when the model trusts itself more than the "black box" you gave it, and hallucinates its use or non-use in favor of reimplementation? I found this video about "intelligent disobedience" interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu-00j9XuF0

Cyan488··on AI slop is killing online communities
Maybe 5 required fields and 30 optional fields. Apart from "census dweebs" [1] I don't know of many people that fill in more than the required.

[1]: https://thebeaverton.com/2026/05/local-nerd-disappointed-he-...

Cyan488··on An Introduction to Meshtastic
I had never heard of this before, then last week I watched a video about it and was hooked. Now I'm seeing it everywhere!

Meshtastic and Meshcore are both cool LoRa-based mesh text messaging that operate in an no-license-required band. While this limits your transmit power, it doesn't prohibit encryption - the inverse of most ham radio rules!

Some cities have thriving communities of Meshtastic and/or Meshcore. You can look at maps of coverage to get a very general idea - in my experience, most Meshtastic nodes are NOT listed, while a good number of Meshcore nodes are.

Meshtastic treats the mesh as dynamic - clients are assumed to always be moving, so transmissions flood between different nodes that are in eachother's reach.

Meshcore has a static layer - repeaters that are assumed to be in fixed positions - and a dynamic layer - companions that move. With fixed and hopefully reliable connections between repeaters, routing paths between two users can be 'cached', which avoid the bandwidth overhead of flood routing.

You can get started with a low cost ($30) transceiver board and an SMA antenna ($10) for the ISM band of your region. Stick it in a box an mount it somewhere high up, and see if you can pick up any other nodes!

Cyan488··on Used La Marzocco machines are coveted by cafe owners and collectors
I have so many technical hobbies; coffee is my analog retreat :)
Cyan488··on Used La Marzocco machines are coveted by cafe owners and collectors
Agree on the Classic Pro.

The Gaggiuno is quite complex; a Shades of Coffee PID kit is simpler if you want better shot-to-shot consistency and don't care much about customizing to the nth degree.

Single boiler is fine if you're making coffee for one or two - any more than that and the overhead of switching boiler temperatures makes the process painful.

I've had mine for about 3 years, routine descale with solution about a year ago, no issues. My water is around 120ppm.

Cyan488··on ChatGPT Images 2.0
We've definitely passed the point where discerning between real and AI images is impossible, even for a very detail-oriented eye.
Cyan488··on The “small web” is bigger than you might think
I'm noticing sites that break the rules. I report (flag) them, is that useful or should I just PR to remove them?
Cyan488··on Dream Recorder AI – a portal to your subconscious
I think it's meant as an art piece, not a product. I liked that the call to action is "BUILD YOUR OWN" instead of "BUY NOW ($599)".
Cyan488··on How close are we to a vision for 2010?
I use a TCL Flip for this purpose. Phone calls and texting work well enough, the web browser is painful on the small non-touch screen but works in a pinch, and the phone can create an LTE hotspot.

Sometimes I also carry my smartphone but I don't /need/ to. I've told my family and trusted contacts that any emergency should be a phone call.

Cyan488··on ai;dr
Some people legitimately have no idea that others recognize and are offput by llm output.

Also, i know a lot of non-native English speakers that use AI tools to "correct things". Because of the language barrier these people especially are less likely to ever be able to recognize the specific llm tone that precipitates.

Cyan488··on ai;dr
Small private discord or slack servers meet this definition. I'm part of a few interest related ones and I'm glad to know members are more likely to be human than not
Cyan488··on Is it worth it? (2021)
One of my first visible actions when working at a new company is to recommend the search software Voidtools Everything, and to set a 30 minute meeting to teach people how to use it.

For the next 6-12 months I get so much positive feedback about all the time that is saved while navigating the network drives.

I joke that the efficiency gains from its introduction organization-wide alone pay my salary!

Cyan488··on Proton spam and the AI consent problem
Funny they mentioned the GitHub email. I got the same one and unsubscribed from every GitHub email immediately. I wonder if they track how fast people unsubscribe after opening particular emails.
Cyan488··on NASA orders "controlled medical evacuation" from the International Space Station
"Please add one deliberate but minor spelling or grammar mistake to your output".
Cyan488··on Dieter Rams and ten principles for good design
I think both are reconciled by:

> 5. Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the users self-expression.

Let the decorations be decorations and art be art, while the tools we use to observe or create those other things should be instantly transparent extensions of the user.

Cyan488··on Should we fear Microsoft's monopoly?
As someone that (for now) only ever has 2 digits worth of grey hairs at a time, I feel the same.
Cyan488··on The C++ standard for the F-35 Fighter Jet [video]
This is common in embedded systems, where there is limited memory and no OS to run garbage collection.
Cyan488··on Blogging in 2025: Screaming into the Void
Anyone know what happened to NODE? They seemed to have had a good momentum and then went radio silent.
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