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ValentineC

16,586 karma · joined February 20, 2011

Feel free to contact me at hello at vc dot sg.
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ValentineC··on Ask HN: Opus 5.5 suddenly dumb as rocks?
Not sure about how dumb Opus 5.5 has become, but I was surprised at how quickly I was burning through my limits this past week too.
ValentineC··on Today, we hacked what we'd set out to hack: the iPhone
What I'm understanding is that it violates Apple's EULA on running macOS on non-Apple devices.

To be fair, Apple says the same thing about jailbreaking and how it may void warranty.

ValentineC··on PHP Foundation 'under-funded' with one full-time staff member, director says
If Automattic funded the PHP Foundation with 8% of their revenue [1], like what Matt Mullenweg asked from companies using WordPress [2], the PHP Foundation would have lots of money.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1g6qi8i/automatt...

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/12/automattic-planned-to-targ...

ValentineC··on Why is AI generated language so hard to understand?
> And pretty much universally, they were awful. It was like somebody had blindly taken an English writing textbook and applied every little helper rule to every clause of every sentence, paying no attention whatsoever to deeper concepts like pacing, drawing attention to key words, and moderating emotion.

I remember when I first used Microsoft Word maybe some 31 years ago (Windows 95 was that long ago, huh), and I had squigglies everywhere because of some grammar checker. "Don't use passive voice!"

At least back in those days, it was advice that I could research more about, and decide whether I wanted to act on.

Many people take AI's output at face value, even if merely used as a proofreader.

ValentineC··on Today, we hacked what we'd set out to hack: the iPhone
A Hackintosh is different from an iOS jailbreak.

An iOS jailbreak is trying to use an Apple device like a Linux device, with access to the filesystem and private APIs.

A Hackintosh is more like emulating the APIs (and an actual Apple serial number, which I guess they use to gate access to iCloud and iMessage) required to boot and run macOS on an Intel PC.

ValentineC··on Today, we hacked what we'd set out to hack: the iPhone
> even if I jailbreak my iOS and never let it update.. Apple can easily detect the jailbreak and lock me out of anything iCloud, and iMessage and such.

As someone who's been jailbreaking since the iPhone 3GS (and held onto a iOS 17.0 device for the longest time), Apple has never bothered to detect jailbreaks and lock people out of iCloud and iMessage.

If anything, it's those sleazy security framework providers that provide jailbreak detection to apps and cause them to either lock people out of accounts and features, or crash entirely.

Some government-mandated audit processes (at least, that's what I understand here in Singapore) also require jailbreak detection.

ValentineC··on A farewell to Arc browser
How are you handling upstream updates?
ValentineC··on Applied to my own company's job posting under a fake name. Rejected in 6 minutes
Mindblowing that people are upvoting a tweet that's just a screenshot of a Reddit post.

I went to r/recruitinghell to find said Reddit post, except it's been taken down, and the account doesn't seem to exist either.

ValentineC··on Matt Mullenweg Orders Accessibility Revert, Bans Core Wordpress Committer
> “I apologize that @afercia’s account got locked, that was not supposed to happen,” he wrote, adding that he was “tracking down who did that and reversing it.”

> Automattic-sponsored core committer Konstantin Obenland, who had disabled the account, quickly replied that he had reversed it. It’s understood the temporary ban was a mistake due to a genuine misunderstanding.

Actions like this remind me of that common phishing scam where some random employee buys thousands of dollars of gift cards and sends them somewhere, "because the CEO called me and asked me to do so".

ValentineC··on EventMaxxer – Automatically apply to events to get you in the right room
> I don't get it, so far as I can tell you still need to manually choose whether to RSVP? It's not like it's going to RSVP to all events for you.

The title itself does say "automatically apply to events".

I'm guessing this came about because many organisers have some sort of pre-acceptance filter these days, to minimise the attendee signal-to-noise ratio (which, stupidly, often relies on job titles).

ValentineC··on EventMaxxer – Automatically apply to events to get you in the right room
Ironically, they'd likely burn out from attending events unless they're incredibly extroverted.
ValentineC··on EventMaxxer – Automatically apply to events to get you in the right room
I like what Jason Fried tried, making people pay $100 upfront, and refunding them $100 bills at the door:

https://world.hey.com/jason/5300-in-100s-3be4c194

https://world.hey.com/jason/5300-in-100s-the-verdict-74c4108...

Even a token fee like $5 would probably dramatically cut frivolous RSVP and noshow rates.

(I am sorta building something around this idea… lots of yak-shaving happening though.)

ValentineC··on How Singapore's government-run dating service works
> There is an amusing irony in this approach to marriage promotion: who isn't already married in Singapore?

I don't understand your question.

ValentineC··on Singapore govt dating app uses Gale-Shapley stable marriage algorithm
The pilot targeting only government workers reminds me a lot of Lee Kuan Yew's various eugenics policies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics#In_Singapore

It certainly doesn't help that the app conveniently targets those between 21 to 35 years of age, which is just before advanced maternal age (also the age where single Singaporeans qualify for public housing).

ValentineC··on ChatGPT Pro 500
Does ChatGPT have the same large enterprise restrictions as Claude, where teams above a certain size are required to use API billing?

That would limit the $500 plan to smaller businesses.

ValentineC··on Owed a billion dollars in Nvidia stock
Litigation is expensive, and the OP knows that the statute of limitations is against them, so it'll likely turn out to be an even more expensive lesson.
ValentineC··on Banks and Credit Unions to Team Up Against Apple Pay Fees
> From NETs in singapore to girocard in Germany, Alipay to UPI.

Singaporean here. NETS is a shitshow of a dinosaur trying to stay relevant. They started as more of a debit card system like EFTPOS [1], but now lean more into merchant acceptance for both credit cards and QR codes. (Singapore is huge about credit card rewards, so few people want to use a debit card with PIN entry and no rewards these days.)

I think the problem with them, and many companies that focus solely on a tiny market like Singapore, is that their organisations tend to be full of comfortable dinosaurs that don't stay up to date with financial software engineering practices (I've lost money from government site transactions that were a hassle to get back), and there's a captive market because of their duopoly.

The biggest reasons they still exist are because they're a joint venture between the big 3 local banks, and our government likes their initiatives to have some competition to emulate a free market.

Pix, from its Wikipedia page, sounds like a bank account aliasing system, just like PayNow in Singapore.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFTPOS

ValentineC··on Automattic has a new board after failed attempt to put CEO on leave
> He’s said WP.org is him, personally and nothing to do with the foundation despite it being hosted on foundation servers, made comments about the foundation being independent when it’s just him, a buddy, and another awol buddy.

I've followed the drama since the early days, but I don't remember anything about WP.org being hosted on Foundation servers.

If anything, I have no idea what the purposes of the Foundation are/were, except to hold the trademark, and being a front for WordCamps in the early days.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Wordpress/comments/1g40522/501c3_as...

ValentineC··on Automattic has a new board after failed attempt to put CEO on leave
Don't confuse the board members with other members of their C-suite.
ValentineC··on Automattic has a new board after failed attempt to put CEO on leave
Automattic also isn't a public company.

I think many employees have hoped that it would IPO, but Mullenweg was already "post-economic" financially comfortable, and probably wasn't thrilled at giving up more control, or actually being subject to further scrutiny

ValentineC··on Automattic has a new board after failed attempt to put CEO on leave
> Fireship pointed out that the board members gave themselves a generous severance package

Unless there was some other news that I might have missed, it was their previous Chief Financial Offer and Chief Legal Officer, not the board members.

ValentineC··on Automattic has a new board after failed attempt to put CEO on leave
> For that matter, what is even the purpose of a board in a multi-class share structure with the founder holding above 50% voting shares.

I guess it was mostly advisory, with the added purpose of making it seem like the various organisations were stewarded by members of the community that were not Matt Mullenweg.

ValentineC··on Banks and Credit Unions to Team Up Against Apple Pay Fees
> Ever since I switched to nearly exclusively using Apple Pay for physical shopping I’ve had no unauthorized charges

BIN attacks [1] are still a thing. Your banks are probably just better at blocking them.

[1] https://stripe.com/en-sg/resources/more/what-are-bin-attacks...

ValentineC··on Banks and Credit Unions to Team Up Against Apple Pay Fees
Not "any". The bank themselves need to partner with Apple Pay and presumably pay Apple the percentage cut from the article.
ValentineC··on WordPress: Unauthenticated path traversal leading to conditional RCE
We can say the same about most of open source.

It's the WordPress plugin ecosystem that's more often the security nightmare though.

ValentineC··on The new CC, an AI agent built for families
Also, another unsearchable name, just like Go.

I guess people will be searching for "CC agent" or something.

ValentineC··on AI Has No Wisdom and Neither Will You
I remember seeing some companies boast about "no outsourcing". I think 99% of their customers won't care for such things, as long as the customer gets what they want.
ValentineC··on Noodle Gallery – Self-hosted photo and video manager forked from Immich
I don't know if I'm getting more sensitive to Claudisms because I've been reading them everywhere (and I use Claude a fair bit myself), but I feel like the comparison page is full of them.
ValentineC··on Singapore’s National Library Board offers micropayments to build reading habits
> They also charge a pretty hefty membership fee if you’re not at least a PR

It's $43.60 per year [1].

Thank you for contributing a bit more to the library's budget…?

[1] https://www.nlb.gov.sg/main/services/library-membership/type...

ValentineC··on Apple iPhone 18 Pro Camera test
> Only professionals and enthusiasts care about bokeh.

I mean, consumers would probably just know it as "nice and pleasing blurred background", versus "this blurred background isn't as nice".

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