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eigencoder

337 karma · joined July 22, 2025

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eigencoder··on Wisconsin communities signed secrecy deals for billion-dollar data centers
Let me give you an anecdote that illustrates why it was needed in Eagle Mountain, Utah. One of my friends works for the city there and he told me about how the development went down.

When the city council first heard that Facebook wanted to build a data center, they shot it down solely because of Facebook's reputation. A year or two later, Facebook proposed the exact same project to the city council, while keeping their name secret under an NDA. Then, when the city council was only considering the economics of it, they jumped at the chance for the tax revenue and infrastructure investment. With essentially the same exact plan as before, one of the council members who rejected it before the NDA said "this is exactly the kind of deal a city should take."

I think in many ways, these companies are fighting their own reputations.

eigencoder··on Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux
MacOS lets you rebind Caps Lock, Ctrl, Option, Command, and the Globe/fn key in Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard shortcuts... > Modifier Keys. Does that not work for you?
eigencoder··on TikTok settles just before social media addiction trial to begin
Yeah because casinos and distillers already have laws regulating their use
eigencoder··on Heathrow scraps liquid container limit
Nice! I always bring razor blades (they're hard to buy on-location) and I've never had them taken.
eigencoder··on Proton spam and the AI consent problem
Last year I started self-hosting and went with [MXRoute](https://mxroute.com/). It was pretty easy to switch and I really like their pricing model.
eigencoder··on What has Docker become?
What's better about it?
eigencoder··on What has Docker become?
I don't want Microsoft's fingers all over docker -- if anything that would have accelerated the rise of e.g. podman
eigencoder··on Apple testing new App Store design that blurs the line between ads and results
Buried in settings there's a way to turn off Apple Music (the subscription) and limit to only your own mp3s.

I tried to run both my music library and Apple Music subscription together, but found that when I let my subscription lapse, all my playlists got deleted, even the ones that just used my own music. Now I'm staying FAR away from apple music the subscription.

eigencoder··on America could have $4 lunch bowls like Japan but for zoning laws
I don't think economics have squeezed out free time -- phones squeeze out all our free time.
eigencoder··on Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids
I didn't read that connotation into it, but maybe in your social circles people have a problem with homeschooling?
eigencoder··on Floppy disks turn out to be the greatest TV remote for kids
The make your own cards are really nice for this. We bought a bunch of them and you can add any mp3s you want onto them. We even print stickers to put on the front.
eigencoder··on Horses: AI progress is steady. Human equivalence is sudden
I'm confused. Isn't the sharp decline in the graph due to the population boom?
eigencoder··on Fighting the age-gated internet
I just disagree with this article. Age gating is a good thing. We should have more gates to keep kids out in the online world and less in the physical world.

I want to see legislation that age gates every social media site. Social media companies have harmed a huge amount of my generation and we should stop them from addicting children.

Privacy preserving methods for age verification exist, and we should use them.

eigencoder··on Framework Laptop 13 gets ARM processor with 12 cores via upgrade kit
What about plan9? ;)
eigencoder··on AirPods libreated from Apple's ecosystem
I think this is a problem with USB-C. The cables all look the same, but they don't actually always work for every device, at least in my experience.
eigencoder··on The Useful Personal Computer
Hey, I store recipes on my home computer! Having a portable handheld terminal that can view the recipes makes it much more practical than it would have been in the 80s.
eigencoder··on iPhone Pocket
I have a fanny pack. I usually put my phone, a notebook, my wallet, some band-aids, and a couple diapers. Sometimes I add a charger if I think I'll need it. It's quite convenient, and I basically don't put anything in my pockets. Phone sits on its charger or in the bag, usually.
eigencoder··on Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line
Or, you could just use quality signals like ratings, time spent and repeat visits and not weight by the bids. All the upside, none of the downside.
eigencoder··on The Case Against PGVector
I think these are the salient concerns I've faced at work using pgvector. Especially getting bit by the query planning when filtering -- it's hard to predict when postgres will decide to use pre- vs post-filtering.

As for inserts being difficult, we basically don't see that because we only update the vector store weekly. We're not trying to index rapidly-changing user data, so that's not a big deal for our use case.

eigencoder··on Tiny sugar spoons are popping up on NYC fast-food menus
To get a 32-oz soda, wouldn't you just have to go to a gas station?
eigencoder··on Why I Choose Email over Chat Messaging
I love this idea, but the difficulty isn't in using email, it's getting my friends and family to use it
eigencoder··on The Omarchy/Framework Thing
I guess it's hard when people don't share your politics
eigencoder··on American solar farms
The blue ones generally have a lot of people and need a lot more energy
eigencoder··on The fight between doctors and insurance companies over 'downcoding'
My pediatrician always charges us for an office visit + preventative care when we go in for a preventative care visit. It's obviously to get more $$ from insurance. I feel like this goes both ways...
eigencoder··on Gifted children are special needs children
But how does pulling a GT program help with equality? Putting bored kids in a classroom with kids who are far behind them developmentally drags everyone down. Don't the GT kids deserve to learn, too?
eigencoder··on Gifted children are special needs children
I think you may misunderstand what a gifted kindergartener is. Like, some kids come in and they essentially taught themselves to read. That doesn't mean they have helicopter parents who think they're extra special -- it means they have distinct needs that aren't well served in the normal classroom, which is boring for them.
eigencoder··on Nearly half of drivers killed in (Ohio County) crashes had THC in their blood
I take issue with calling it "cruel". But yeah we should have really strict penalties on using smartphones while driving.
eigencoder··on Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement
I know I'm late to this, but there is a minimal distribution of LaTeX that I used for e.g. writing my master's thesis. It's called TinyTeX.

https://yihui.org/tinytex/

eigencoder··on Open Social
Loved the breakdown of a topic I wasn't familiar with.

I just can't help but think that the whole ethos of Open Social Media is misguided. I think that social media isn't good for us -- not just because of the big companies making it worse, but because the technology itself doesn't promote health.

It feels like trying to make cigarettes open-source. Sure you can stick it to big tobacco but at the end of the day you're still making cigarettes.

eigencoder··on The Theatre of Pull Requests and Code Review
I think approval time would take much longer. The issue is that while actual time spent in review may be shorter, there's a lot of context-switching time costs that increase with the number of PRs submitted.

No one on the team is just sitting there refreshing the list of PRs, ready to pick one up immediately. There's a delay between when the PR is marked as ready and when someone can actually get to it. Everyone is trying to get work done and have some time daily in flow state.

Imagine you have a change; you could do it as one PR that takes 1 hour to review, or 3 small PRs that each take 15 mins to review. The time spent in review may even be shorter for the small PRs, but if each PR has a delay of 1 hour before a reviewer can get to it, then the 3 PRs will take almost 4 hours before they're done, as opposed to just 2 hours for one big PR.

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