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bthrn

437 karma · joined June 2, 2014

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bthrn··on T. Rex Had a Body Temperature of 97°F
Common sense suggests that living creatures are likely not boiling when they have a mild fever.
bthrn··on I Don't Like LLMs
For use cases like this, how is the LLM different from a Google search?
bthrn··on Nintendo has raised its employees base salary by 10%
I once watched a Vice President at an all hands explain that the company's decision to have non-competitive wages was because "it's not that we're underpaying, it's that everybody else is overpaying. If you want to go somewhere else to get overpaid, that's not going to last." I think about that every now and again and chuckle.
bthrn··on My spicy take on vibe coding for PMs
Diff is Phabricator terminology. A diff is roughly equivalent to a Pull Request in GitHub.
bthrn··on Ask HN: Our AWS account got compromised after their outage
This guy burgles
bthrn··on US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees
The most profitable way to fill a plane would be to knock everybody out and just pile them up in the fuselage.
bthrn··on US airlines are pushing to remove protections for passengers and add more fees
There is a 90 day decision timeframe starting from the time of submitting a complaint.

But note: > Due to a high volume of complaints, there will be a delay between when a complaint is submitted and waits in the queue and when the complaint process will start.

wat

bthrn··on Trump's new visa fees spur offshoring talks, hiring turmoil
That process remains tied to an employer, which is the very point that was originally made.

Many employers simply won’t do that paperwork by policy and treat that process as no different than sponsorship.

bthrn··on My thoughts on renting versus buying
Property taxes and insurance go up pretty much every year.
bthrn··on Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers
It's funny how employers try to rationalize this -- take Coinbase, for example: https://www.coinbase.com/blog/how-coinbase-is-embracing-ai-i...

> While some worry AI will dehumanize the hiring process, we believe the opposite. Deploying AI will enable more quality interactions, more quickly for the candidates who are the best fit for our jobs– without unnecessary administrative tasks or distractions. We fully believe in AI’s ability to build depth and breadth in our selection process, while acknowledging that the road ahead will have its challenges. Let’s face it: the candidates who want to work at Coinbase are as enthusiastic about AI as we are. They, like us, are optimistic about the future of this (and all) technology.

bthrn··on New Vulnerability in GitHub Copilot, Cursor: Hackers Can Weaponize Code Agents
It's not really a vulnerability, though. It's an attack vector.
bthrn··on Alexa+
Anchoring
bthrn··on Banksy Fights with Greeting Card Company for Control of His Trademark
Why does it matter either way?
bthrn··on I live my life a quarter century at a time
At work I coined the phrase "Fast & Furious Planning" to describe teams that plan only a quarter at a time (without regard for longer term thinking).
bthrn··on DOJ accuses Visa of debit network monopoly, impacts price of 'nearly everything'
> Also, if you factor in that cash is an option

Lots of places stopped taking cash. In many places my only option is to pay with a card.

bthrn··on Microsoft Confirms New Blue Screen Warning for Windows 10 and 11 Users
The difference is, Microsoft has a robust and sensible testing and rollout model.
bthrn··on Jia Tan "JiaT75": Added error text to warning when untaring with bsdtar (2021)
The goal here is to submit what appears to be a sequence of innocuous changes, none of which on their own are “obvious” vulnerabilities. The truth is, we don’t know what the strategic depths of this actor are. It may be years before we know whether an attack is successful.

For example — and this is just hypothetical - the author may have found that some consumer of this codebase uses it in a script, and consumes console output in some form. By modifying its output to behave differently, they may be able to influence the consumer’s execution in some clever way so as to create other conditions necessary for additional exploitation.

Or - the PR could have just been a test to gauge the scrutiny of the approvers.

bthrn··on Claude thinks it's a tumor, radiologists disagree
For some reason I read this and then think of Arnold saying, “it’s not a toomah!”
bthrn··on FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s
It's usually accurate, but I've had planes changed on me a couple times. For example, there could be a delay that results in it being used for a different flight, and you end up with something else. Or if the plane you're supposed to fly has mechanical issues.
bthrn··on Unlimited Kagi searches for $10 per month
" Kagi does not log and associate searches with an account."

> Am I supposed to believe that if their backend crashes after a user query, that can’t tell what has been queried?

I'm sure they'll know the query. They just won't know which user made the query.

bthrn··on The curious case of hybrids in watchmaking
I have a watch that would be considered expensive by most. It’s not really about telling the time - I simply appreciate the complexity and beauty of handcrafted mechanical watches.

People spend years learning how to build them. It takes a long time to assemble one. They’re precisely made with small parts made of precious metals which are themselves expensive.

With companies like A Lange & Sohne, each watchmaker can only make about 6 watches per year. At a pace like that you’re not really paying for the watch, you’re paying for their labor and expertise. You’re paying to preserve the craft. You can’t make 6 of something in a year and sell it for $100 if it’s how you make a living.

bthrn··on Buy well, buy once
> Fwiw I'd (very loosely) classify the points you're bringing under "prestige".

If I'd like my clothes made and sourced ethically, or if I want to support a local business that makes leather goods rather than buying mass-produced ones from somewhere else -- I wouldn't say those scenarios are motivated by prestige, but by valuing people and the work they do. It's a bit unfortunate that some things like that are considered a luxury these days.

bthrn··on Buy well, buy once
It really depends what you mean by “optimal cost” and “better value”. For example, if you want something that’s handcrafted rather than made in a factory on the other side of the world, you have to pay for the skills and labor that go into that. Depending on what it is, it might not last longer - but could be a better value in other respects than simply cost. Not everything has to be about making widgets for the lowest amount of money possible.
bthrn··on The Wait Until 8th pledge
…such as deferring how old people are when they are first given cell phones?
bthrn··on School district sues Meta, Google, and TikTok over ‘mental health crisis’
The first amendment only applies to state actors. I’m not sure why it’s so frequently used broadly as a blanket for free speech in any context.
bthrn··on Gmail is showing ads in the middle of the inbox
As annoying as this is, I was mildly amused at the irony that this article itself has ads shoved between paragraphs.
bthrn··on Big Banks Agree to Historic $30B Deposit Injection in First Republic
The point stands - if everything is fine, as many banks seem to be saying, their intervention would not be necessary.
bthrn··on Big Banks Agree to Historic $30B Deposit Injection in First Republic
“I’m so confident that X is solvent that I’m giving X a bunch of money, for solvency” seems a bit odd to me.

If everything is fine, why would any of this be necessary?

bthrn··on I quit infosec and I couldn't be happier
The author is French. I'd be curious to see if you could write something in a second language well enough such that the only criticism a native speaker had was your use of a technically valid, but uncommon word.
bthrn··on My grandmother died at home, just as she wanted. It cost $145,000
The claim is that this $16,200 monthly cost was cheaper than the alternative. So it's not entirely silly to include rent in this figure.
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