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TheBicPen

107 karma · joined February 13, 2022

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TheBicPen··on Stringman, an $800 open-source room scale gripper robot
I agree with the rest of your comment but

>The toddler:robot win ratio is gonna be like 100:1

is beyond unacceptable for a consumer product.

TheBicPen··on Android 17 is the first since 3.x to add new APIs without releasing to the AOSP
Why GNU? I get the appeal of Linux, but Android has that angle covered. What makes GNU a better userspace than Android for phone use? I actually think the Andoid userspace is very good for what it is. If Google's influence were magically removed, Android would be more or less the ideal OS, at least for me.
TheBicPen··on Nitter and XCancel receive cease and desist notices
Any creative work you create is copyrighted by default as soon as it is recorded onto some medium, at least in the US. https://www.copyright.gov/what-is-copyright/
TheBicPen··on Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra
Not OP, but I absolutely know people like this. Devs who don't even know what POSIX is, let alone care whether their OS is compliant.
TheBicPen··on Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra
People have preferences. Some preferences are shallow. That's it, really. All kinds of people exist in this world, and wanting to be perceived as high-status is practically quintessential human behaviour.
TheBicPen··on Nvidia's Risky Business
An AGI doesn't need that level of detail to do most tasks effectively. To use the OP's example, a cat catching a bug out of the air does not need to run a fluid dynamics simulation of airflow over the bug's wings to be able to catch it. A cheap approximation of the flight path is sufficient. Perhaps some physical tasks will need that level of detail but many will not.
TheBicPen··on Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta warn against overregulating open-weight models
There absolutely are laws restricting what hardware you are allowed to use. e.g. https://www.fcc.gov/faqs-recent-updates-fcc-covered-list-reg...
TheBicPen··on Passkeys were invented by engineers with zero understanding of consumer brain
Can these services not use the same fallback mechanism that already exists for non-passkey logins? i.e. an email with a 1-time code or similar. Yes that somewhat defeats the purpose of passkeys but that option is going to exist for a long time regardless of passkey adoption.

If you don't want to downgrade security, how about requiring confirmation from another session that is already logged in using a passkey? e.g. You try to log in on PC2. A prompt appears with something like "confirm this login from [PC1, etc.]". You log in on PC1 using your passkey. The service recognizes that the login id definitely you, or at least someone in possession of your physical device and login method for that device. Therefore, it then allows PC2 to register a new passkey. Kinda similar to how google confirms new logins by sending a notification to your phone.

TheBicPen··on I'm a USB-C Maximalist
I've had the opposite experience. Lightning was been far more fragile than USB-C.
TheBicPen··on I'm a USB-C Maximalist
> throw out all the ones that don’t

> encouraging as many other people as possible to also throw out their cheap cables

One of the main advantages of a single standardized plug is reducing e-waste. This just sounds irresponsible. Having a single tool that covers every possible use case is rarely a good solution.

TheBicPen··on WebUSB Extension for Firefox
> I didn't have a way of running that code and only giving it access to a single USB device and nothing else.

To be honest I think that's the most compelling case for webUSB today. If desktop OSes had sandboxing tools (or more granular permissions in general) that are easily usable be everyday users, there would be no need to put webUSB in a browser sandbox. The cross-pltaform nature of it is nice, but that alone is not enough IMO. I think it would be interesting to see a Linux distribution where software that is not explicitly trusted (i.e. not installed by the system package manager) has no permissions by default. Interpreters make this more complicated but for binaries it could work.

TheBicPen··on A GitHub Issue Title Compromised 4k Developer Machines
I'm partial to "The AI is more A than I"
TheBicPen··on Hardening Firefox with Anthropic's Red Team
> you dont get that much karma if you are consistently posting bad takes.

I wonder how true that is. While this site doesn't have incentivize engagement-maximizing behaviour (posting ragebait) like some other sites do, I would imagine that simply posting more is the best way to accrue karma long-term.

TheBicPen··on MacBook Neo
> Last month, Apple released an update for the iPhone 8 and iPhone X [1]. The iPhone 8 was released September 2017. I seriously doubt 9-year old Android phones, even flagship models, are still getting software updates.

How usable is an 8-year-old iPhone as a primary phone though? I agree that having 8 years of support is a good thing, but at that point the hardware is so degraded that it's not suitable for its original purpose anymore. At that point I'd rather have android just so I can root it and install Linux. Then again, with improvements to phones slowing down in recent years, this is becoming increasingly untrue.

TheBicPen··on Across the US, people are dismantling and destroying Flock surveillance cameras
Do you have a link to the agenda? The only Monday meeting I see on the mountain view site is a Board of Library Trustees meeting
TheBicPen··on Netflix Animation Studios Joins the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron
The best way to draw a circle in gimp is still the awkward select -> foreground fill workflow. At this point this example is beating a dead horse, but the horse shall continue to be beaten until a proper ellipse tool is added.
TheBicPen··on High-Level Is the Goal
As 1 datapoint to support this, see Audacity moving from WxWidgets to Qt for 4.0.
TheBicPen··on Ask HN: Share your personal website
https://thebicpen.ca
TheBicPen··on Hunting for North Korean Fiber Optic Cables
Maybe the real humanitarian failure is that the US didn't nuke everybody and start over from the stone age. Can't any societal problems if no societies exist, right?
TheBicPen··on Hunting for North Korean Fiber Optic Cables
Does any serious historian believe that fully defeating the Soviet Union after WWII would have been possible? Even with the advantage of nuclear weapons, I doubt the US would have made it very far.
TheBicPen··on Hunting for North Korean Fiber Optic Cables
At least NK's human rights abuses are contained within their borders. I hope future generations will look back on the many US invasions of foreign countries over the years and all the war crimes that took place during those invasions with the scrutiny they deserve.
TheBicPen··on Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service
While I agree with you, I find it hard to argue against the view that politicians are elected for the views they held during their campaign. They may change their mind after being elected, but their constituents that voted for them will not all change their mind simultaneously. To the ones that don't change their mind, it does appear to be a betrayal of their principles. A rational politician would not want to gain that kind of reputation out of pure self-interest.
TheBicPen··on Drilling down on Uncle Sam's proposed TP-Link ban
No. But which nation claims to be all about freedom, and which is known for restricting individual liberties for (whatever the people in charge consider to be) the greater good?
TheBicPen··on Kimi K2 Thinking, a SOTA open-source trillion-parameter reasoning model
> I'd agree but we're beyond hopelessly idealistic. That sort of approach only helps your competition who will use it to build a closed product

That same argument can be applied to open-source (non-model) software, and is about as true there. It comes down to the business model. If anything, crating a closed-sourced copy of a piece of FOSS software is easier than an AI model since running a compiler doesn't cost millions of dollars.

TheBicPen··on $50 Oil Could Crush American Shale Growth
As opposed to every other country where it is somehow not short sighted?
TheBicPen··on Counter-Strike's player economy is in a freefall
And in France specifically, the first case you open is guaranteed to not be a good item. So it's essentially the same system but with an additional $2,50 entry fee
TheBicPen··on A competitor crippled a $23.5M bootcamp by becoming a Reddit moderator
It's a shame how many platforms are moving away from transparent moderation. I get that there are strong incentives to do so - a user that knows they're banned will immediately try to find a way to circumvent the ban. Shadowbanning delays that reaction if not stopping it outright. But damn does the concept feel dystopian. Like you're being ignored through seemingly no fault of your own. Surely that can't be healthy. And yet the platform is better off because the person isn't trying to circumvent the ban. And don't even get me started on replacing human interaction with AI for shadowbanned users.
TheBicPen··on WASM 3.0 Completed
It's been stuck at stage 1 since early 2022 unfortunately. https://github.com/tc39/proposal-type-annotations
TheBicPen··on WASM 3.0 Completed
Where does the 4 come from? I thought it was R+G+B+A, but you already have 3 colour channels in that calculation
TheBicPen··on Shai-Hulud malware attack: Tinycolor and over 40 NPM packages compromised
In 2022, sure. But not today. Even something as simple as generating and running a `git clone && cp xyz` command will create code not directly generated by the LLM.
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