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cik

2,788 karma · joined July 17, 2013

Just a person
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cik··on Anonymous GitHub account mass-dropping undisclosed 0-days
I'm still waiting for the interrabang to become compromised as well. They've already taken my em dash, and my use of the Oxford command, apparently, is an insant flag.
cik··on Job application asked for my SAT scores
It's always odd to me when filters are applied, that arguably neither influence, nor impact outcomes. From what I can see, SAT scores have effectively changed over time, such that reading comprehension has dropped dramatically, with maths abilities increasing (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/06/11/for-the-1...).

One (me) might argue that now, more then ever, reading matters. The age of AI, only increases the value of critical thinking and reading comprehension skills. Combine that with a (notable) 5-10% change in SAT scores, and it would appear that this practice is unlikely to unearth what factor is being filtered for.

Mind you, no one has ever not accused our industry of tunnel vision, and confirmation bias.

cik··on CTOs Agree: Cognitive Debt Is the New Technical Debt
This sounds like dysfunction. As engineers, we're not necessarily any more correct than anyone else. But we do have a seat at the table, and good organizations at least listen.
cik··on Microsoft new Outlook takes 10 seconds to do what Outlook Classic does instantly
This year, for the first time since 2006 I've have Outlook and friends in my life. I run Linux, so naturally I turned to firefox.. Not a win. Fair, I use Chrome only for these products.

Dear Lord, how has the software gotten this much worse in 19 years? I thought that Thunderbird was bloated and awful... until I tried Outlook, in a browser, on Linux. Now, the Thunderbird experience is shockingly pleasurable, compared.

Don't even get me started on the horror that is trying to mix left-to-right and right-to-left languages within the same document. OpenOffice figured this out a decade ago. Google Docs has done this perfectly since the beginning. When I learned that it was genuinely this bad on Windows too, my mind was blown.

I don't understand how this is possible.

cik··on SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B
Generally this is how liquidity works. Their employees will have a six or twelve month lock up (six being most common).

Investors in certrtain rounds (or sizes) tend to have no lockup, whereas later stages have a six month. Alternatively, I've reviewed agreements where the lockup is based on minimum market cap, but I've only seen that a couple of times.

cik··on Waymo Premier
I have the same situation here. We live intentionally without a car, and our quality of life is fantastic. People assume poverty, given the lack of car, as opposed to I just don't see the value, and value controlling my time (the walks are force exercise, a win for me). I learned along time ago to not play other peoples games.
cik··on Petition to Withdraw Canada's Bill C-22
The last time I remember feeling that I had representation, as a Western Canadian was 3 Prim Ministers ago. I didn't even vote for Harper, but the others simply ignored the gulf between Regina and the Okanagan. It doesn't get better once you move to Ontario. You then realize that your MPs also don't represent you, but at least they're in government now.
cik··on German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews
> It doesn't help that there have been active efforts for decades to prevent people from learning and developing critical thinking skills.

This very much depends on where you live between state (US), and countries. Where I live, it's the complete reverse, critical thinking is baked into the population, into learning, into nigh everything. Our challenge is the complete lack of privacy, sadly.

cik··on German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews
The problem with "the user" argument is the spectrum of users. There are different skills, capabilities, and intelligence. Frequently we wave our hands and say exactly this, critical thinking. But, not everyone is capable of that, nor is everyone capable to the same degree.

As a society we decide. Are we embracing all users, are there basic rights and assunptions? Do we only enable some?

As a free (as in cost to end user) system, Germany is arguing that their social compact raises the mininum bar. Frankly, thus might help drive a rush to increased accuracy for AI- tech finds a way. Equally it may hinder - beaurocracy creates barriers.

I'd love to be able to rely on these search results. I see them ad the same prior set of inaccuracies whereby I have to do more research. At least now there's a summary and direct links to the supporting information. But equally, we're primed with the information in the summary.

cik··on Are you expected to run five Python type-checkers now?
This is a big part of the reason that I've embraced ths sqlc (d/re)evolution.

Writing queries in sql and then generating for the target language also provides a flexibility that has reduced rewrite cost. Add to this ease of organization and layoit, and I'm not going back.

cik··on OpenCV 5 Is Here: The Biggest Leap in Years for Computer Vision
Ummm embedded robotics is all about this. For years.
cik··on SpaceX, Other Mega IPOs Denied Fast Index Entry by S&P
Whenever someone says nowadays, they're highlighting recency bias. The goals of holding a broad market ETF are diversification leading to sleeping well over the long term (at least to me).
cik··on The Ask
I've been enjoying Rands for what feels like 2 decades now. Spot on, over and over again. Great advice few newbies, great reminders for people who have been there before - just generally great.

I take this as generally focusing on the what ask (and hence give) becomes. But it reminds me of the business classic Theory of Constraints. To me the laserlike focus, or attempt to get to singular clarity is the point; in this highlight we're seeing the notion of software skills rather then a data-based approach, as it's a soft problem.

Both matter. I appreciate this reminder.

cik··on Gemini CLI will stop working from June 18, 2026
Sometimes it becomes 11 different chat applications among the way.
cik··on Bitwarden scrubs 'Always free' and 'Inclusion' values from its site
What's the current method that works? I keep meaning to ditch Authy, and now that I'm moving to ProtonPass, it seems like a great time to finally finish this (Ente?)
cik··on Claude for Small Business
A deacde ago Xero, Shoeboxed, Calendly, Payment Evolution, and a time tracker eliminated all my overhead.

I scaled to 30+ people with automated administration. My cost was under $150 a month for everything we needed to run a successful consultancy and product business. Our accountant was blown away by how simple his life was.

I'm constantly amazed at how it has gotten much worse in the resulting decade.

cik··on Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school
This very much depends on where you live, your school, and the commitment of the parent body.

I went to a school decades ago that was both small, and highly effective at explusion. I can't say that this successfully led to improved academic outcomes however.

cik··on Update on "Co-authored-by: Copilot" in commit messages
These are the same thing. Marketing, and the ability to track reach. There's no other reason to do this.
cik··on AI didn't delete your database, you did
Still sounds like a basic security issue to me.
cik··on Telus Uses AI to Alter Call-Agent Accents
> The other issue is that this further incentivizes companies to off-shore their support

Why is this a problem? Why are we so attached to the notion that a role must be completed from a specific jurisdiction (outside of regulatory). If you believe in remote work, then why should it matter from where that work is delivered?

Plenty of small companies offshore early support, to reduce costs. In many cases this provides jobs in economies that otherwise doesn't have them, and can lead to a tech industry that in turn hires globally. There are several economies that received a boost this way, and now benefit.

I don't see the problem. Yes, there may be uncomfortable shuffling of roles, layoffs,etc. But, as a believer in globalization, this will just happen. Yes, it will impact me as well.

cik··on AI didn't delete your database, you did
The whole life delete my database fiasco is being looked at the wrong way. Why did tooling have access to alter or drop? Why did tooling, in any way have more permissions than were m I nimallt necessary to do the job?

Decades ago we embraced POLA. What happened to basic hygiene? Sure the agent "screwed up", but it never should have had this access in the first place.

cik··on Can you stop beans from making you gassy?
Lactose issues are fascinating. Some peop’e are triggered by pasturized milk, others can't handle milk at all. Some people can only handle cooked milk, others cheese until limits. For some lactose works, and for others not - to the point of upsetting stomachs. There's even compelling annecdotes (to my knowledge, no research) indicating that adding a couple of drops of any citrus to milk helps some people.

For some reason this all blows my mind.

cik··on Ping-pong robot beats top-level human players
> If war is mostly played out from a disrance

I left a company because they pivoted to exactly this. There are so many companies in this space today, testing what they call "physical AI autonomy" today, and we have to recognize that this is our today.

There are entire marketplace options for buying the pretrained, supported, private models, or the datasets if you have your own goals. If you're interested purely in ditzing around with GPS denied, or communications lost, you can do that today.

I watched a demo video, in March where a company was sharing their remote instructed (note, not controlled) multiple format (spider, dog) robot swarm. The company claimed to be 35km away from where the drones dropped off the payloads, and the mission was engaged. Lightweight explosives were used to toss off a car.

This is our present.

cik··on US national level OS-level age verification bill proposed
For years people have been able to legally murder on behalf of their country, with not have a beer. This is another item that will operate as intended.
cik··on Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times
It's absolutely a service problem. I can pay for the local sports rebroadcast packages.. but oh wait, you just don't feel like this week, playing the Raptors game, because there's a local thing you think people will watch? Fair enough, subscribe to DAZN, and pay there.. oh sorry, we've opted to stop carrying <insert all leagues>.

Sigh, fine, I'll pay for NBA Leaguepass. I don't live in your country... great, random blackouts. Fine, I'll try and use a VPN (hell, I literally used tailscale to a friend's house for a bit).. but then those games are blacked out too, at random?

I'm literally paying you for the service. So yeah, giving some insanely sketchy crypto website $5/month for unlimited whatever that just always works, is worth it. 10/10 will definitely do again. I'm sick and tired of fighting with the NBA, the CFL, or G-D only knows what just to try to watch the things I'm paying for.

cik··on An AI Vibe Coding Horror Story
Professional bodies act as nothing more then gatekeepers and rent seekers for things of this nature. Anyone can write software, but not everyone writes security minded software.

We already have laws in place, and certifications that help someone understand if a given organization adheres to given standards. We can argue over their validity, efficacy, or value.

The infrastructure, laws, and framework exist for this. More regulation and beaurocracy doesn't help when current state isn't enforced.

cik··on A new spam policy for “back button hijacking”
Great. Now do Android phones...
cik··on The case for becoming a manager
The best managers of my career have all been developers, and like myself enjoy going up and down the management chain based on the need of the org. My favourite, at age 61 joined a ~250 person company as CTO, but spent his initial, transitional period of 90 days, as a part developer, part meeting listener, quietly learning as one would expect, helping them scale to 800+ people.

He's the example to me, of the career I'm intentionally pursuing. There's tremendous amounts to learn from, and contribute to, everywhere. Sometimes an organization and I best work together with me managing, other times with fingers on the keyboard. Sometimes, there are multiple jobs.

We could recognize that we're in a different era, or at least that's my bias. Roles are increasingly combinations of generalists, especially in the AI era.

cik··on OpenAI Has New Focus (on the IPO)
100% agreed. There's so much locked up appetite for IPOs, both from the tech crowd and the general public. There have been very few quality IPOs since COVID frankly.

I'll wager that the IPO market can actually absorb all three of these that yes, are the size of the last 10 years combined. The trading market itself is larger, as are values, and valuations.

I assume that to maximize value you see a standard lock and roll play here. The S-1 will declare the 10% release, with commentary about future (6 or 12 months) another 5%. Plus don't forget institutional. There's ample space here, even before the Nasdaq 100 changes that are probably coming into play. If those come into play then inflows accelerated, as did valuations.

cik··on Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting
At scale they will. For now, someone else puts the effort into growth marketing, eyeball capture. Reddit eventually changes the rules, seizing control, thereby acquiring users for less human cost (as opposed to missed revenue opportunity).
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