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jquaint

121 karma · joined December 12, 2020

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jquaint··on Nobody Reviews Compiler Output
If the quality of LLM's keep increasing, will it emulate the abstraction shift that compliers gave us?

i.e. can useful deterministic complier-like behavior ever be found with a non-deterministic LLM approach?

In my view the answer is yes (for most people). I don't think the technology has to formally perfect to create a significant shift in how we write (most) software.

There will still be some who review AI code. Probably in the domains where people review complier code. But not everything actually needs that level of formal verification.

jquaint··on We programmed a program to program new programs (2011)
Thanks OP, I have been looking for this specific comic for a while!

This feels very accurate to reality.

jquaint··on PyCon US 2026: Why we're asking you to think about your hotel reservation
I concede that [3] is not the best case of this reading more into it. My point still stands though.

If visitors are one immigration mistake away from weeks in a detention camp, or any other unjust punishment it's reasonable that visitors would not want to visit.

jquaint··on PyCon US 2026: Why we're asking you to think about your hotel reservation
I miss PyCon US a lot and I'm sad I can't go. As a Canadian, recent USA ICE government actions have made it really hard for me to attend.

No conference is worth getting thrown in an ICE detention camp. This actually has happened to people from my country. [1] [2]

A big part of this conference is the non-USA residents who show up.

> We attribute this largely to the sad but understandable decline in willingness of international attendees, as well as some vulnerable domestic attendees

It seems like part of the hotel problem is the lack of international attendees that are stopping travel to the USA travel due to recent government actions.

In general USA-Canada Travel has been down all year. [3]

Hoping for a future PyCon that is as big, but I don't have to take risks around my freedom to attend!

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/10/ice-canadian...

[2] https://ca.news.yahoo.com/canadian-man-detained-ice-dies-200...

[3] https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2026/03/19/canada...

jquaint··on My university uses prompt injection to catch cheaters
I had a professor in university that would do this pre-LLM. He would take the first result on google and modify his problem to be slightly different. Students that copied from google were easy to find and missed a key part of the problem. Seems like a natural progression.
jquaint··on The purpose of continuous integration is to fail
https://github.com/srid/nixci Is this the project or is this a completely different Nix based CI/CD tool? I can't find a Github or anything on the website.
jquaint··on Elaine Radigue, Electronic music pioneer, dies at 94
Rest in peace.

One of her best works IMO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKrZdvqzAEc&pp=ygUiZWxpYW5lI...

jquaint··on VR-based brain training for ADHD
From the paper:

The experiment is conducted with 11 subjects diagnosed with ADHD by pediatricians and psychiatrists. Binaural Beats (10 Hz via wired earphones, sine waves) are used for audio, and pulses of light (10 Hz via VR device) are used for visual entrainment. This audio-visual entrainment is done for 20 days with 15 minutes of entrainment per day. EEG was recorded pre and post entrainment sessions using an Emotiv Epoc X device. The analysis revealed an improvement in 8 subjects out of 11 subjects in terms of attention and spatial learning. [0]

[0] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21622965.2025.2...

In my own experience, I find VR helpful for ADHD. Curious if this applies to more than Binaural Beats and 10z flashes.

jquaint··on Mistral releases Devstral2 and Mistral Vibe CLI
This is such a cool project. Thanks for sharing.
jquaint··on Covid-19 mRNA Vaccination and 4-Year All-Cause Mortality
Unfortunately, one of the only things that is proven to convince vaccine skeptics is when someone from their community dies of a preventable illness.

This is a great book on this topic: https://www.amazon.com/Anti-vaxxers-How-Challenge-Misinforme...

jquaint··on Learning music with Strudel
Anyone have any experience improving performance of their Strudel patches?

I find I get close to something ready to perform... but then the webapp starts struggling and I find myself back at the drawing board.

I get the sense I'm not using it right and making the DSP work much harder than it needs to :P

jquaint··on Learning music with Strudel
This is a great plugin! It's so cool to do this in a vim workflow.
jquaint··on S&box is now an open source game engine
This is cool, though I'm reluctant to give praise when they have been so weird with Linux support on their games.

It was annoying after buying Rust to learn that you can't play on official servers on Linux. The game runs fine on Linux, the devs just don't allow it.

https://www.pcgamer.com/games/survival-crafting/rust-develop...

jquaint··on Show HN: Gitlogue – A terminal tool that replays your Git commits with animation
This is cool! It feels fresh and new.

Suggestion for the related projects section: https://gource.io/ Tree view visualization of git history over time.

jquaint··on It's insulting to read AI-generated blog posts
> Do you not enjoy the pride that comes with attaching your name to something you made on your own? It's great!

This is like saying a photographer shouldn't find the sunset they photographed pretty or be proud of the work, because they didn't personally labor to paint the image of it.

A lot more goes into a blog post than the actual act of typing the context out.

Lazy work is always lazy work, but its possible to make work you are proud of with AI, in the same way you can create work you are proud of with a camera

jquaint··on Comprehension debt: A ticking time bomb of LLM-generated code
I agree with this sentiment. Perhaps this is why there is such a senior / junior divide with LLM use. Seniors already build their theories. Juniors don't have that skill.
jquaint··on Launch HN: Webhound (YC S23) – Research agent that builds datasets from the web
Used this in a "vibe coding hackathon" the other day. Works really well!
jquaint··on Beyond package management: How Nix refactored my digital life
For me, the success is having a simple way to prompt an Agent AI to modify my NixOS desktop and get live feedback.

It can use the above MCP to search NixOS options and packages for me and make recommendations and edit the actual files, rebuild, etc.

It can then use nix flake check and other commands to verify the work it does actually did what was expected.

Even if there is still a bad result from time to time, I find this pretty valuable!

jquaint··on Beyond package management: How Nix refactored my digital life
For stuff that's not in Nixpkgs like this, IMO flakes is the best option. Both of these require flakes.

On the topic of deploying flakes to consumer users. I'm currently exploring using https://github.com/nix-community/nixos-generators to create pre-made install iso's for a full "batteries included" experience. You can just "overwrite" the regular nixos image. Its Nix all the way down.

jquaint··on Beyond package management: How Nix refactored my digital life
https://github.com/nix-community/awesome-nix
jquaint··on Beyond package management: How Nix refactored my digital life
I'm super curious about a similar goal.

https://github.com/snowfallorg/nix-software-center https://github.com/nix-gui/nix-gui

These might be interesting for you :)

jquaint··on Beyond package management: How Nix refactored my digital life
AI + Nix is indeed amazing!

https://github.com/utensils/mcp-nixos

Highly recommend this + nix flake check for best results.

jquaint··on Claude Is Down
Wow Anthropic is not having a good week.

Claude code appears to retry 10 times! They are probably getting DDoSed by all the clients which sounds like a total mess.

I don't envy the people fixing this right now.

Edit: working in Canada now?

jquaint··on Dubious Math in Infinite Jest (2009)
I enjoyed Infinite Jest.

I think it's good book if you are someone who HAS to know all the details.

The book itself criticizes this way of thinking, while letting you in the all the details you could want. (the footnotes especially)

I get the sense that the writing style is a metaphor and part of it for sure.

I also really like many of the subtle ideas the book presents.

Though like many "post modern novels", it's not for everyone. If intentionally dull parts are not your thing, that's perfectly fine IMO.

jquaint··on Copy Excel to Markdown Table (and vice versa)
Cool tool!

Anyone have recommendations for a command line solution on Linux? :)

jquaint··on How to harden GitHub Actions
Do you have an example config?

Trying to get the same behavior with renovate :)

jquaint··on A 6-Hour Time-Stretched Version of Brian Eno's Music for Airports
Great song.

For anyone curious how to produce something that sounds like this, paulstretch is the way to do it. https://sonosaurus.com/paulxstretch/

My personal favorite use of this: https://youtu.be/XiKWfcy-Z70?si=iJTP0XTEAAObI_rU

jquaint··on A year of uv: pros, cons, and should you migrate
I excited to try uv for my next project. It seems like a good future proof way to package python packages in Nix. https://github.com/pyproject-nix/uv2nix
jquaint··on Persistent packages on Steam Deck using Nix
Love using Nix for retro gaming setups. Its great to bundle drivers, emulators, etc.

https://nixos.wiki/wiki/RetroArch https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Playstation2

jquaint··on TinySecrets: Technical information about small Lenovo PCs
These machines are great. I managed to pick up a couple from my local cities IT overstock for ~100 CAN a piece.
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