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febeling

1,034 karma · joined March 25, 2007

Software engineer and entrepreneur.

http://florianebeling.com

mail@florianebeling.com

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febeling··on Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?
The immediacy with which any vision can be built is amazing. But the minute you let go of the direction and abandon responsibility, it eats you alive. Like a powerful dog.

You are the gen. And you are also the slop.

febeling··on You Wouldn't Download a Hacker News
You wonder what all the Rust talk was about before the programming language's release in Jan 2012.
febeling··on Lynx is the oldest web browser still being maintained
I miss websites that look like lynx's: https://lynx.browser.org/
febeling··on Fighting back against proper noun feature names (2021)
I hope this idea makes the rounds. It's so terrible when you have to learn the idiosyncratic nomenclature of products.

It feels like it was already worse some years ago, but this piece spells it out. And, ironically, gives the problem a name, which is a good thing in this case.

febeling··on Show HN: Konty – A Balsamiq-alternative lo-fi wireframe tool for modern apps
What are the eyebrow raising connotations you have?
febeling··on Shipt’s algorithm squeezed gig workers, who fought back
I had similar thoughts. But let's not overlook the information asymmetry, which contributed to the dissatisfaction. I don't want to live in a world which is controlled unilaterally, and intransparently by a group of people who assume they have a full picture of the situation and assume they understand moral completely, and also don't think it necessary to explain how they think so highly of themselves.
febeling··on The deep ocean photographer that captured a 'living fossil'
The sensational capture of a coelacanth was really very recent, only since 1938 we know they still live!

Did you know all birds are living dinosaurs?

febeling··on Boeing says workers skipped required tests on 787 but recorded work as completed
Imagine being part of a management that thinks when your workers lie on paperwork that excuses you.
febeling··on Dear Europe, please wake up
MBP 2014. Firefox is smooth as can be, opening on Chrome blocks the whole machine.
febeling··on Open-source alternative to Heroku, Vercel, and Netlify
I can vouch for Dokku being equally very reliable and surprise-free to use.
febeling··on Leaving Rust gamedev after 3 years
The link works, but the link parser on HN (of all places) is confused by the parens.
febeling··on Attackers spread backdoor via eScan antivirus software update process
I realize now it was a stupid question, but the excellent refresher and ensueing discussion of edge cases was well worth the downvote someone felt compelled to leave, haha
febeling··on Attackers spread backdoor via eScan antivirus software update process
Can’t you switch out the signatures inflight, too?
febeling··on Lunatik: Lunatik is a framework for scripting the Linux kernel with Lua
Ok, makes sense. Thanks for clarifying
febeling··on Lunatik: Lunatik is a framework for scripting the Linux kernel with Lua
Interestingly, this project (Lunatik) started over 30 years ago in 1993.

https://github.com/luainkernel/lunatik/graphs/contributors

febeling··on Regex character "$" doesn't mean "end-of-string"
Seriously, just write one unit test for your regex.
febeling··on The "End of Programming" will look a lot like programming (2023)
„In general, a lot of the AI takes I see assert that AI will be able to assume the entire _responsibility_ for a given task for a person, and implicitly assume that the person’s _accountability_ for the task will just sort of…evaporate?“

This is a key insight.

febeling··on The EU Wants Its Own DNS Resolver That Can Block 'Unlawful' Traffic,TorrentFreak
25 years ago I also had a lot of trust in freedom on the internet, because it would just "route around censorship" and all that. I don't have the same confidence anymore.
febeling··on The EU Wants Its Own DNS Resolver That Can Block 'Unlawful' Traffic,TorrentFreak
Not hard to anticipate how this might play out. I can see how it first becomes the "official" resolver, which in a later steps is maybe "recommended," then required if you want certain kinds of funding or subsidy, or just serve public contracts, etc. Before you know it it's mandatory.
febeling··on Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time
UBI is the weirdest thing. I'm certainly no fan of an economic system which casually threatens each of it's member with starvation and homelessness if personal misfortune strikes. But universal basic income is something different than support for someone in need. It has to be paid by someone, but this someone isn't ever mentioned. It's somehow the government. But government needs to be funded, too. So ultimately it's an attempt make everyone hand over responsibility of our lives and livelihoods to some opaque sustenance function, without thinking or asking any questions.
febeling··on Think Python, 3rd Edition
What is a good book for learning Python when you already now some/many other languages?
febeling··on How to write stuff no one else can
What changed with boot camps?
febeling··on The Undercover Generalist
Yes, it seems like advertising as a specialist while being a generalist is a winning strategy. This is only true as long as there is no personal rapport though, as soon as some personal trust relationship is built it matters much less, almost not at all.

It's actually quite weird. I got tasked with things I explicitly didn't have experience with from people who knew me several times.

I think even a career change can be engineered more easily like that, within the context of client or employment relationship, and the opportunity comes up.

febeling··on GPT-3.5 crashes when it thinks about useRalativeImagePath too much
The operation of this server is very uniform, in my imagination. Just emitting chunks of string. That this can be disrupted and an edge case occur, by the content of the strings - I find it puzzling.
febeling··on GPT-3.5 crashes when it thinks about useRalativeImagePath too much
That sounds wild. While being ignorant about LLMs internals, I would have expected such things, crashes and session leaks, be impossible by design.
febeling··on The Ultimate Docker Cheat Sheet
> What Is The Difference Between A Dockerfile, An Image And A Container?

I would like to know what the difference is between a stopped container and an image.

febeling··on How to Be More Agentic
> My rule is never to take instructions on how hard I should work from someone who hasn’t burned out before

I love this piece!

febeling··on Statement regarding the ongoing Sourcehut outage
What is the motivation of ddos attacks, in general? I assume it comes with some risk of being criminally prosecuted, so there must be some upside. Is it shakedown attempts, or competitor's sabotage? Neither seems too plausible in this case.
febeling··on Fixing Macs door to door
Reminds me that what we really crave is authenticity. It’s the number one rule for writing. Also shows why AI content is so pointless.
febeling··on UK plan to digitise wills and destroy paper originals "insane" say experts
The numbers to support political decisions are usually made up
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