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belval

8,187 karma · joined November 29, 2019

https://github.com/Belval/
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belval··on Nearly all UK drivers say headlights are too bright
My parents bought a Lexus that happens to be tall-ish with very bright headlights. I don't think I have ever driven it at night without people flashing me.

It's really up to regulators to put something in place though, I don't understand why it is taking so long. It's not like they want those super-bright headlights, they just come with the car...

belval··on Rust in Android: move fast and fix things
Isn't that a lot though, that means 1 memory safety vulnerability per 1000 lines of code, that seems hard to believe.
belval··on Developers are choosing older AI models
Not the original commenter but I work in the space and we have large annotated datasets with "gold" evidence that we want to retrieve, the evaluation of new models is actually very quantitative.
belval··on Python Steering Council unanimously accepts "PEP 810, Explicit lazy imports"
I personally would have preferred "defer import os" instead of "lazy import os". It might be the non-native showing but lazy import feels unserious.
belval··on OpenAI signs $38B cloud computing deal with Amazon
Maybe but I wonder if it's just moving capacity around.

Anthropic is moving to Trainium[1], that will free Nvidia GPUs and allow AWS to rent those GPUs to OpenAI.

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-says-anthropic-will-us...

belval··on California passes law to reduce volume of commercials on streaming services
It's for sure an intentional issue considering how long its been there without getting fixed.

So obnoxious as well, it isn't somewhat louder, it's aggressively louder.

belval··on OpenAI's H1 2025: $4.3B in income, $13.5B in loss
> it's insane that these companies aren't just training up more internally

Adding headcount to a fast growing company *to lower wages* is a sure way to kill your culture, lower the overall quality bar and increase communication overheads significantly.

Yes they are paying a lot of their employees and the pool will grow, but adding bodies to a team that is running well in hopes that it will automatically lead to a bump in productivity is the part that is insane. It never works.

What will happen is a completely new team (team B) will be formed and given ownership of a component that was previously owned by team A under the guise of "we will just agree on interfaces". Team B will start doing their thing and meeting with Team A representative regularly but integration issues will still arise, except that instead of a tight core of 10-20 developers, you now have 40. They will add a ticketing to track change better, now issues in Team's B service, which could have been addressed in an hour by the right engineer on team A, will take 3 days to get resolved as ticket get triaged/prioritized. Lo and behold, Team C as now appeared and will be owning a sub-component of Team B. Now when Team A has issue with Team B's service, they cut a ticket, but the oncall on Team B investigates and finds that it's actually an issue with Team C's service, they cut their own ticket.

Suddenly every little issue takes days and weeks to get resolved because the original core of 10-20 developers is no longer empowered to just move fast. They eventually leave because they feel like their impact and influence has diminished (Team C's manager is very good at politics), Team A is hollowed out and you now have wall-to-wall mediocrity with 120 headcounts and nothing is ever anyone's fault.

I had a director that always repeated that communication between N people is inherently N² and thus hiring should always weight in that the candidate being "good" is not enough, they have to pull their weight and make up for the communication overhead that they add to the team.

belval··on AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?
I was in a lovely meeting where a senior "leader" was looking at effort estimates and said "Do these factor in AI-tools? Seems like it should be at least 30% lower if it did."

Like I use AI tools, I even like using them, but saying "this tool is so good it will cut our dev time by 30%" should be coming from the developers themselves or their direct manager. Otherwise they are just making figures up and forcing them onto their teams.

belval··on Intel Arc Celestial dGPU seems to be first casualty of Nvidia partnership
> From a corporate strategy perspective, cancel Arc or keep Arc, I can see it both ways.

Me too, I just really really doubt that it would come from Nvidia

belval··on Intel Arc Celestial dGPU seems to be first casualty of Nvidia partnership
Honestly, the rumor mill surrounding Intel is actually very similar to AMD 2015-2016 pre-Zen (not saying that they will see the same outcome). I swear I have seen the same "x86 license is not transferable [other company] might sue them" 9 years ago or "Product Y will be discontinued".

When it comes to GPUs, a $4T company probably couldn't care less what their $150B partner does in their spare time as long as they prioritize the partnership. Especially when the GPUs in question are low-end units, in a segment that Nvidia has no competition in and not even shipping that many. If they actually asked them to kill it, it would be 100% out of pettiness.

Sometimes I wonder if these articles are written for clicks and these "leakers" are actually just the authors making stuff up and getting it right from time to time.

belval··on Alibaba's new AI chip: Key specifications comparable to H20
I was referring to this: https://www.reuters.com/markets/emerging/china-tells-tech-fi...
belval··on Alibaba's new AI chip: Key specifications comparable to H20
> If CUDA isn't that strong of a moat/tie-in and Chinese tech companies can seemingly reasonably migrate to these chips, why hasn't AMD been able to compete more aggressively with nVidia on a US/global scale when they had a much longer head start?

It's all about investment. If you are a random company you don't want to sink millions in figuring out how to use AMD so you apply the tried an true "no one gets fired for buying Nvidia".

If you are an authoritarian state with some level of control over domestic companies, that calculus does not exist. You can just ban Nvidia chips and force to learn how to use the new thing. By using the new thing an ecosystem gets built around it.

It's the beauty of centralized controlled in the face of free markets and I don't doubt that it will pay-off for them.

belval··on John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta
Isn't that somewhat debatable? Originally they were aiming at much more (chromebook OS for example) but seems like they settled for Google Home only as their scope.

Still a very interesting project, but that feels like a similar story, for limited use cases (a smart thermostat/speaker with specific hardware) it works, but for wider use cases with heterogeneus hardware and complex interfaces (actual screen, peripherals) it didn't work.

belval··on SSL certificate requirements are becoming obnoxious
> it creates pressure (oh my.... not the scary yearly certificate renewal, i remember last year we broke something, we i don't remember what...)

Ah yes, let's make a terrible workflow to externally force companies who can't be arsed to document their processes to do things properly, at the expense of everyone else.

belval··on Does the stock market know something we don't?
Maybe you are right actually, I fact checked myself and seems like while there is a slight underestimate, it's still nowhere near the stock market returns (roughly 100%).

Housing (34%): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ASPUS New car (38%): https://caredge.com/guides/new-car-price-trends-in-2025 Food (29%): https://www.in2013dollars.com/Food-and-beverages/price-infla...

belval··on Does the stock market know something we don't?
I wonder if this isn't just a matter of inflation being under reported because it's an easy metric to game while revenue and profits from companies are not.

In the US the official inflation figure between 2019 and 2025 was 28%, but I feel like most people "on the ground" are seeing a much higher inflation rate in housing, food and transportation.

So the stock market is effectively a somewhat doped inflation indicator because SP500 outperforms in general.

belval··on Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
> Wouldn't it be better to try to regulate the necessity of needing these services out of existence?

No because these things are genuinely useful. As much as people lament that we are going cashless, it's very convenient to be able to just carry one card and it's genuinely useful to just give my email as an identifier when registering for stuff.

Regulating their necessity means forcing people to accept cash and then using this as a reason why MasterCard and Visa should be allowed exist. In practice if something is that ingrained into daily interaction, then it should have something like the common carrier rules, set the fee to a static percentage of the transaction and that's it. The current 50% profit margins rent-seeking approach is just inefficient.

belval··on Air Canada returned lost bag, it now had knife,toiletries, ticket scanner inside
Not a big fan of Air Canada, but if you are flying out of Montreal (YUL) I find that they have the best airport integration overall by a wide margin. For international flights (excluding the US), my record from drop-off at the airport to sitting at the gate was 15 minutes and it never was more than 45 minutes. Their infotainment system is also pretty good overall, never had a dead screen in +10 flights at this point.

But I feel like the average person flying only a few times a year makes this very difficult to evaluate properly. My only experience with WestJet was abysmal, same for Delta. United was ok. Transat (much smaller) was good.

belval··on Intel CEO Letter to Employees
You should see Amazon, some are CEO (Jassy) -> AWS CEO -> SVP -> VP -> VP -> Director -> Sr Manager -> Sr Manager -> Sr Manager -> Manager -> IC
belval··on Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience
Eh the author is coming from a place of emotion (considering the effort put into the website) so I would definitely cut them some slack on the fairness of their reporting. The owner is telling their story, not a journalist.

> But how is this an “override” of HVAC or a “total system breakdown”?

Complete failure of the throttle would fall within total system breakdown to me.

> Comms and decision making are prone to break down on the corporate ladder.

Businesses do not deserve the benefit of the doubt, they aren't human. If their support ladder broke down to this point that it is fair game to name and shame and up to them to do a PR push and fix their support.

belval··on Intel Announces It's Shutting Down Clear Linux
Which would be a valid point if they were competitive with AMD but that's not the case right now. Not having competitive CPUs is what is killing Intel in the DC.

Stuff like clear linux is sprinkles on the sunday, if you don't even have the ice cream it doesn't matter how good your sprinkles are.

belval··on Intel Announces It's Shutting Down Clear Linux
It baffles me how unreasonable some of the commenters are. Intel is trying to stop bleeding money and are cutting everything that's not core to their business. Side projects like clear Linux not being on the chopping block would be such a slap in the face of every employee that lost their job in the last year.
belval··on Jürgen Schmidhuber:the Father of Generative AI Without Turing Award
Every so often Schmidhuber is brought back to the front-page of HN, people will argue that he "invented it all" while others will say that he's a-posteriori claiming all the good ideas were his.

Relativity Priority Dispute: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_priority_dispute

We all stand on the shoulders of giants, things can be invented and reinvented and ideas can appear twice in a vacuum.

belval··on After millions of years, why are carnivorous plants still so small?
In a clean room maybe, but honestly hydroponics usually makes things like that worse, not better and I say that as someone who's had a set up for over ~5 years at this point.

At the end of the day it's a pit of water with nutrient that is usually somewhat warm. You can control algae with hydrogen peroxide but there is always some water that will stagnate somewhere and lead to some mold level. It's really best to grow plants with a clear growth => harvest cycle so that you can periodically re-sanitize everything.

belval··on NexusMods Changes Hands
Yes it is very interesting how the comment section is overtly negative yet NexusMods is one of the rare thing that "just works" for me. Even my girlfriend who is not well-versed in tech at all mods her Skyrim/Oblivion herself thanks to how easy it is with NexusMods.
belval··on They Asked an A.I. Chatbot Questions. The Answers Sent Them Spiraling
This is a limitation that I am encountering more and more when casually talking with ChatGPT (it probably happens with Claude as well) where I need to prompt it with as little bias as possible to avoid leading it towards the answer I want and instead get the right answer.

If you open with questions that beg a specific answer often it will just give it to your regardless of it being wrong.

Recently:

"Can I use vinegar to drop the pH of my hydroponic solution" => "Yes but phosphoric acid [...] should be preferred".

"I only have vinegar on hand" => "Then vinegar is ok" [paraphrasing]

Except vinegar is not ok, it buffers very badly and nearly killed my plants.

"Should I take Magnesium supplement?" => Yes

"Should I take fish oil?" => Yes

"I think I have shin splints what are some ways that I can recover faster. I have new shoes that I want to try" => Tells me it's ok to go run.

An MD friend of mine was also saying that ChatGPT diagnosis are a plague, with ~18-30 y/o people coming and going to her office citing diseases that no-one gets before their sixties because ChatGPT "confirmed their symptoms match".

It's like having a friend that is very knowledgeable but also an extreme people pleaser. I wish there was a way to give it a more adversarial persona.

belval··on Czech Republic: Petition for open source in public administration
I think libreoffice suffers from a branding style issue more than anything else. It's not like Office 365 is inherently superior, but it looks like it is straight out of 2006 and that negatively impacts the users perception of it.

My hunch is that if maintainers were to invest into making it look more like Office 365 (purely in a cosmetic way), the opposition to using libreoffice would reduce significantly.

And for the old timers that will run to "Office 2007/10/13 was the best version and had the old UI". I get it and agree, but the average person likes nice things that look up-to-date.

belval··on Cinematography of “Andor”
It's the opposite for me. I could not be more burnt out on StarWars, when they introduced the force in season 2 I rolled my eyes and it somewhat took me out of it. The main downside of watching Andor is that you have your brain nagging you about eposide 7 making everything that you are watching pointless (the new republic is obliterated after 20-30 years).

I have friends that I can't convince to watch it because they are just too done with that universe in general.

But that's the thing, Andor could be outside of StarWars and just its own thing because the world building that it does on its own is excellent, the premise (empire vs rebellion/revolutionaries) is mostly intemporal.

belval··on Alberta separatism push roils Canada
I genuinely wonder if and how that would hold though, you need the buck to stop somewhere, if Alberta were to vote to leave Canada you may call it illegal as you want to they won't just say "this is treaty land" and cancel their own referendum.

Say they separate politically and renege on the treaty, the first nations will go to the ICC? Or ask Canada to invade its own province? What support if any would the later have with the Canadian elector, sending the army to fight against other Canadians?

It's very similar to the old constitutional argument that separatism needs a "clear majority" which sparked questions that following a "yes" in Quebec the supreme court would have to statute on whether 51% is a "clear majority". Would Quebec actually have just accepted a ruling against them from a institution that is not really theirs?

belval··on Building my own solar power system
> Dumb question, why run inverters?

Can't say for OP, but DC appliances are just difficult to find, usually more expensive due to economies of scale and not as uniform in voltage (12/24/48V) as AC appliances. If your battery is in a shed somewhere it's also much easier to run a smaller gauge AC wire than setup distribution for your DC power.

Most large system are also 48V so you need to get it down to 12/24V which adds components anyway, at which point you might as well just have an inverter and not worry about any of that.

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