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idiocrat

422 karma · joined April 23, 2020

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idiocrat··on 10-year Treasury yield climbs above 5.3% to a level not seen in 24 years
Very soon we all be multi-quadrillionairs.
idiocrat··on Prompting Claude Opus 5.5
It force-switched me to Opus 4.8, which has run through now.

You gave me good idea to let 4.8 write a hand-off and then let 5.5 try implementing it.

idiocrat··on Prompting Claude Opus 5.5
Refusal: "Opus 5.5's safeguards flagged this session. You may be seeing this for the first time on an Opus model: Opus 5.5 is more capable and has stronger safeguards as a result, which can sometimes flag non-cybersecurity work. We're improving these safeguards to reduce the amount of incorrectly flagged messages."

My appeal: "This is my own code, my TST and PRD environments and I am concerned about the hardening the hand-rolled BasicAuthHttpModule function.

I asked DeepSeek V41 Flash to review this code already and worked in his recommendations.

Now I want to ask you for a second round of review, a second opinion audit.

This is an ASP.NET 4.8 application facing internet and I want to make sure I handle the edge case, HTTP error codes, and have no logic gaps in my code."

idiocrat··on Ask HN: What task manager do you use? What do you miss on them?
I recommend System Informer. Such a great tool!

https://github.com/winsiderss/systeminformer

idiocrat··on Didgeridoo playing as alternative treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea (2006)
There seems to be a typing mistake. The embouchure should have diameter of 2.8-3.2 centimeters, not millimeters. Perhaps that can be done DIY from an PVC pipe with an hot air gun or a gas burner to soften and shape the end.

"Participants received a standardised acrylic plastic didgeridoo that was developed by the instructor in collaboration with Creacryl GmbH (Ebmatingen, Zurich, Switzerland, and costs €80 (£43; $94), fig 1). The didgeridoo is 130 cm long with a diameter of 4 cm and an elliptical embouchure with a diameter of 2.8-3.2 mm. Acrylic didgeridoos are easier for beginners to learn on than conventional wooden didgeridoos."

idiocrat··on Show HN: Yumo.to, a map of 19,652 onsens in Japan
For me the dots appear as white on a grey terrain. Impossible to see.

Win Firefox 148.

idiocrat··on LLM Inevitabilism
Do we still need program source code?

One idea would be not to have the code as the result of your prompt, but the result itself.

Why not to let the environment do everything integrated, according to your prompt?

Else you have the disconnect between the prompt and the generated code. The generated code need to run somewhere, need to be integrated and maintained.

That stringdiff function is a part of the bigger environment.

So ultimately you should just be able to request your assistant to make sure all the work assigned to you is done properly, and then the assistant should report to the original requestor of the work done.

idiocrat··on Query optimization doesn't work because SQL is declarative
Maybe the "query optimization works because sql is set-oriented"?

The types of operations in SQL are limited to sets, therefore allowing certain optimizations.

idiocrat··on Google.com search now refusing to search for FF esr 128 without JavaScript
Good that there are also non-EU instances of searx.

Here is an extended list:

https://searx.space/

idiocrat··on Goodbye from a Linux Community Volunteer
Yes, what you are saying is fair enough.

I can imagine technological "divorces" will happen more often going forward, as the polarization between the G7 and the BRICS++ members grows.

idiocrat··on Goodbye from a Linux Community Volunteer
And then the next paragraph of the wikipeida: "In Chicago, Frederick Stock was forced to step down as conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra until he finalized his naturalization papers. Orchestras replaced music by German composer Wagner with French composer Berlioz. After xenophobic Providence Journal editor John R. Rathom falsely accused Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor Karl Muck of refusing to play The Star-Spangled Banner and triggered a trial by media in October 1917, Muck and 29 of the orchestra's musicians were arrested and interned in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, until well after the Armistice. "
idiocrat··on Goodbye from a Linux Community Volunteer
This reminds of the Anti-German sentiment during WWI.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-German_sentiment

"The Justice Department attempted to prepare a list of all German aliens, counting approximately 480,000 of them. The Committee of Internment of Alien Enemies recommended sending them to internment camps, though the idea was opposed by the War Department and the Attorney General. More than 4,000 German aliens were imprisoned in 1917–1918. The allegations included spying for Germany and endorsing the German war effort.

When the United States entered the war in 1917, some German Americans were looked upon with suspicion and attacked regarding their loyalty. Propaganda posters and newspaper commentary fed the growing fear. In Wisconsin, a Lutheran minister faced suspicion for hosting Germans in his home, while a language professor was tarred and feathered for having a German name and teaching the language. The Red Cross barred individuals with German last names from joining in fear of sabotage. One person was killed by a mob; in Collinsville, Illinois, German-born Robert Prager was dragged from jail as a suspected spy and lynched. Some aliens were convicted and imprisoned on charges of sedition for refusing to swear allegiance to the United States war effort. Thousands were forced to buy war bonds to show their loyalty."

idiocrat··on Ask HN: How is job search going for you?
A quick thought: You could try to peek into the new world. They are not calcified (yet) and thus growing quickly, covering half of the world population. Surely they could appreciate your extended experience.
idiocrat··on Microsoft exec sends stern warning to staff about return to office
I would be for the employees returning to office, if they could make Windows UI flexible and customizable.

After all, there is at least some minimal efforts to modernize the Win11 UI: it seems not impossible (after many years of trying) to make taskbar icons small, or align the taskbar icons to the left.

idiocrat··on Leak claims RTX 5090 has 600W TGP, RTX 5080 hits 400W
Finally a valid reason for those 1000W platinum PSUs.

Their highest efficiency is at 80-90% utilization, but the efficiency drops off when underutilized.

idiocrat··on SQL Tips and Tricks
> Learn your DB server. Check the query plans often. You might get surprised. Tweak and recheck.

Oftentimes the well-designed queries behave unexpectedly, because the column statistics are not updated or when the data is fragmented for big tables (e.g. random PK insertion).

idiocrat··on Xkcd 1425 (Tasks) turns ten years old today
The 5 years estimate is off by 3 years?
idiocrat··on Google strikes $100/ton deal with Holocene to capture CO2 from the air
Sorry to be sarcastic, but obviously there is no money to make with planting forests to capture same amount of CO2 from the air.

"Saving Amazon Forest" has been memory-holed.

The technology will save humanity.

idiocrat··on Counter-Strike 2 gaming using Neuralink is 'insane'
As with usual exponential growth -- do not blink.

The exponential growth is that you see nothing for long time, until it is too late.

Once you blinked you will find the HN site is full of articles about the minimal-invasive brain microsurgery startups getting funded billions of dollars. And that we are in the midst of another tech bubble.

idiocrat··on Billionaire takes off for first ever private spacewalk
Can they pick up the two poor stuck guys on the way down?
idiocrat··on China's super-radar detects plasma bubble over the pyramids in Giza
I have a friend who loves climbing tall mountains.

He sends me pictures where he is on a mountain summit, pointing his "made it" fingers (or even his ski poles) into the blue skies.

I pray each time that he does not getting hit by a random lighting strike.

idiocrat··on Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B
Talking to an electronic assistant is so antiquated. It feels unnatural to formulate inner thoughts into verbal commands.

An ubiquitous phone has enough sensors/resources to be fully situationally aware and preempt/predict for each holder any action long time ahead.

It can measure the pulse, body postures and movements, gestures, breath patterns, calculate mood, listen to the surrounding sounds, recall all information ever discussed, have 360 deg visual information (via a swarm of fully autonomous flying micro-drones), be in an network with all relevant parties (family members, friends, coworkers, community) and know everything they (the peers) know.

From all gathered information the electronic personal assistant can predict all your next steps with high confidence. The humans think that they are unique, special and unpredictable, but opposite is the case. An assistant can know more about you than you think you know about yourself.

So your 8yo daughter does not need to tell how to alternate the audio books, the computer can feel the mood and just do what is appropriate, without her need to issue a verbal command.

Also in the morning you do not need to ask her how she slept tonight and listen to her subjective judgement.

The personal assistant will feel that you are probably interested in your daughters sleep and give you an exact objective medical analysis of the quality of the sleep of your daughter tonight, without you needing to ask the personal assistant of your daughter.

I love it, it is a bottomless goldmine for data analysis!

idiocrat··on Low level of Magnesium linked to disease-causing DNA damage
Thank you. I found this by chance two years ago. Just a 3 days of Mg supplementation (2 grams/day) was a life-changing experience for me and fully cured my RLS.
idiocrat··on Ask HN: BTree Alternative for Storing to Disk?
Can you try to use a memory-mapped file, so the tree is always stored to disk, without a need of de/serialization?
idiocrat··on Ask HN: As you got older what have you realised?
Life is short and limited and you will die sooner than you think.
idiocrat··on Good performance is not just big O (2023)
On responsibilities: In my previous company the product website system was over-engineered and urgently required 50 people on-call every second night, because always something was not working.

The company has lots of cash, so they kept adding layers of teams, spreading the responsibilities, so nobody was in charged of anything. (but it was SOX etc. compliant).

It was a big mess.

The site front-end was developed by somebody else and included some CSS script from some other CDN, which had a 8 seconds time-out. It could not be fixed because nobody was in charge and nobody took initiative.

I think nobody even recognized there was a 8 second delay in page loaded and nobody cared.

idiocrat··on Study shows that tacking the “AI” label on products may drive people away
PrecrAIme ©
idiocrat··on Study shows that tacking the “AI” label on products may drive people away
Because of the fAItigue the mentioning of AI will go away, but the orweillian precrAIme is here to stay.
idiocrat··on "20% for tech debt" doesn't work
A spoonful of tar spoils a barrel of honey.
idiocrat··on Why don't we know how antidepressants work yet?
> Moncrieff argues that drug companies, doctors and psychiatrists benefit from this situation because it’s profitable.

I recently discovered low dose lithium for myself. (self-medicated OTC lithium orotate, 5mg 2x daily)

This has greatly improved my mood and attitude to life.

Lithium has removed most of my procrastination by eliminating negative thoughts (i.e. "that is a difficult task, so I better defer this to tomorrow"). Starting and finishing something has become so easy now.

All work and household related tasks are now lightweight (chores, washing dishes, making beds). All things I found annoying to do before.

I am generally happy, positive-minded and open-minded toward other people.

Lithium is not a sedative or a pain killer -- I am still normally tired after a day, but now I am prioritizing my time rationally, and not based on negative emotions.

Somebody said that Lithium is too cheap, no profit to make, so pharma companies will not spend much on further R&D.

P.S. Of course lithium is a psycho-active substance, and surely has some side-effects. All above is only my personal experience. Please consult your doctor and be extremely careful with self-medication.

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