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lsaferite

2,958 karma · joined June 11, 2012

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lsaferite··on OpenAI unveils its first custom chip, built by Broadcom
https://taalas.com/
lsaferite··on Show HN: Got sick of ads, so I made my own logic puzzle site
My next vacation project is basically this, but as an offline-capable PWA served from a 100% static site. I don't want to install apps for these types of games and I want them to fully function on my phone when I'm offline.
lsaferite··on MiMo Code is now released and open-source
Saying "This" on a post about "Mimo Code" leads one to, rightly, assume you are referring to "Mimo Code". If they commentor wanted to make a comment about a specific model it would have be clearer to simply mention the model instead of getting there transitively.
lsaferite··on I let AI build a tool to help me figure out what was waking me up at night
As I sit in bed at midnight, winding down from my day, this comment gave me a great belly laugh. Thanks!
lsaferite··on You gave me a u32. I gave you root. (io_uring ZCRX freelist LPE)
I would caution against thinking it's difficult for an LLM. I've used them in raw data file analysis and they are frequently shockingly good at pulling structures and meaning out of seemingly random data. Disassembled binaries already are structured, so pulling code flow out of that is easier. Mixing that with existing disassembly and inspection tooling and an LLM has what is needed to fast track this kind of vulnerability research. Point being, an LLM with the proper tools can potentially follow code flow from disassembled binaries way easier than a human.
lsaferite··on Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license
That may explain it then. I use flight controllers and driving controllers. Both just show up as generic HID devices and both are easily used in the games I play.
lsaferite··on Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license
Just out of curiosity, what modern game won't function with a generic HID game controller?
lsaferite··on Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license
> you can enumerate as multiple devices if needed

A single physical USB device can enumerate as multiple virtual devices. This lets you easily side-step the limits *if* the game supports input from multiple controllers at the same time. The games I use controllers for allow you to map to multiple controllers, mouse, and keyboard, all at once. The touchpad could simply enumerate as a HID Touchpad. Apparently Windows already has a Touchpad Haptic HID Profile even.

Honestly, if Valve is making you require Steam to fully use the Steam Controller, that's disappointing because, as far as I can tell, nothing it's doing can't be accessed via HID usage.

lsaferite··on Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license
Windows supports Generic HID game controllers with 8 axis and 128 buttons already. And a few hat switches. And if your devices needs more than that, you can enumerate as multiple devices if needed. Not sure if there is a HID type for rumble support though. So, there's no reason a Steam Controller couldn't operate without a special driver. Some functionality may require custom software to support though. I have several Virpil controls and the entire setup will function as a simple set of generic HID devices. The only special bit is some software you can optionally run to control advance per-application remapping. I don't have a Steam Controller, so I have no idea if it can show up as a generic HID controller or not.
lsaferite··on Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license
> literal selling point

Could you perhaps back that claim up with some documentation from Valve?

lsaferite··on Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license
The complaint is that the platform they are using for advertising, distribution and/or community isn't giving them enough free keys? Just want to make sure I understand the relationship and expectations.
lsaferite··on Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs
Using playwright-cli with Claude code is highly effective for debugging locally deployed web apps with essentially zero setup.
lsaferite··on Drone pilot makes US rescind no-fly zones around unmarked, moving ICE vehicles
> obvious and inarguable that the clear intent is to prevent people from following ICE around with drones

Exactly. They desire to prevent their actions from being observed and recorded. They cannot exert physical restraint over a drone like they can a person on the ground. That means they lose the ability to restrict you from recording their activities.

> harass them (which would not be okay if done to anyone)

As I stated before, there are already laws to cover this situation. No need for the hidden, roving, no-fly zones.

> Law enforcement is also entitled to legal protections that the general public is not

You and I disagree here. Law enforcement should be held to higher legal standards in everything they do BECAUSE they are "entrusted with the use of force". That put's them in a position of authority over anyone who isn't entrusted with the same governmental power. They should not be afforded extra legal protections, they should have extra legal obligations. I'm not talking about regulations around scene control for public safety.

> No, there is no such objective

This is either a naive or malicious take. I'll be generous and assume it's naive. They don't want people to surveil them. If you are an individual on the ground you likely are within the "reach out and touch them" space and they absolutely will suppress you if you are in a position to record, in detail, their activities. There are plenty of recorded interactions of just this thing happening. A drone operator can be in a stand-off location recording and less likely to have then physically interrupt the recording. That drone operator has legal restrictions on what they can do and violating those restrictions is already legally enforceable, no hidden, roving, no-fly zone needed.

> if your actual purpose is to show clearly and honestly what the officers are doing, that is better and more easily done from the ground.

This is, again, a naive take. They will obstruct your ability to record their activities as much as possible. On the ground that means they can simply stand between you and what they rest of their group are doing. Or quite likely they will physically harass you until your recording is stopped in one way or another. Recording from the air makes in much harder for them to obstruct your recording. With ground or air you still have to contend with non-purposeful obstructed angles of observation, with air you have less chance of purposeful obstructions.

> No, I am doing nothing of the sort. I'm saying they are trying to know ICE vehicles

As with any group you will always have multiple, sometimes opposing, motivations. I'm positive you can find people who just want to chase around ICE vehicles (or presumed ICE vehicles). But you are using a (smaller) portion of people that are rule breakers already as a rationalization for severe government overreach. And they you are decrying people calling that behavior "fascist" as being out of touch because... drones didn't exist when the term fascist came into use?

What a large chunk of the general populous wants is accountability, proportionality, civility, and respect (for humanity). The tools they have to attempt to forward that agenda are limited as the government has a legal monopoly on use of force. Observation and recording of activities to ensure the government isn't acting improperly, or document when they are, is one of the few tools available. For government agents to do everything in their power to take away that tool is a clear indicator that they are being improper and don't want evidence of that behavior.

> If you have a "final order of removal", that is because the national government has conclusively determined that you have violated the law by entering the country, that you are not legally entitled to be within the country, and that you inherently continue to violate the law by being within the country.

This is a mischaracterization of reality. You can legally entry the country and then have that legal authorization revoked. Being in the country from that point is a civil matter, not criminal. Illegally crossing the border is a criminal matter. The current government makes zero distinction in the level of force used in either matter. Being in the United States illegally doesn't absolve the government from respecting your legal rights as those aren't just for citizens and legal residents. Simple violation of the law does not excuse the excessive force being used here.

> This is, definitionally, not something that can be dealt with by issuing a fine and letting the person stay in the country.

I actually don't disagree. I'm not an advocate for people illegally residing in the United States. I also happen to think that people residing here illegally are subject to the saw protections of law as everyone living here legally. I think they are entitled to basic human dignity. I think they deserve proportional legal enforcement of our immigration laws. I would include compassion, but a government doesn't really mesh with the idea of compassion, that more for the populous or individuals to extend towards their fellow humans.

> This is entirely ignorant of how law enforcement works. Force is deployed as need to be superior to the threat to the operation. If you come at a police officer with a knife, for example, you should expect to get shot. It does not matter that you have not yet caused any injury, nor does it matter why you are being apprehended.

The level of force being applied is in no way proportionate to situation. These are people living here without legal authority and running away from raids. These are not criminal gangs attacking law enforcement. Those ICE officers are individuals exerting legally authorized deadly force against unarmed suspects at an alarming rate. By your logic, the only proper response would be for the oppressed to escalate.

Again, you are missing that the response from officers is disproportionate to the crime. Unless perhaps the "crime" was disrespecting their authority and they seek to teach you the consequences. Shooting someone because you decided to throw yourself in front of their moving car is not a proportionate response to a unarmed, non-violent person trying to get away from an armed and belligerent cluster of government officials.

>> I mean, it may be an issue for some other conversation, but not this one.

> Well, you are the one who brought up levels of force and "civil infractions", so.

You mis-quoted me. I was referring to identification of ICE vehicles. My implication was that having a group of supposed law enforcement who refuse to identify their vehicles, refuse to wear uniforms, wear full face masks, and refuse to properly identify themselves seems like a great way to provoke bad outcomes. It had nothing, directly, to do with discussing "level of force". We were discussing drones and the governments heavy-hands reaction to drones being used against them (they already use them against anyone they deem a target).

It's obvious that you and I have very differing opinions of how a citizen-authorized government should be applying it's legal monopoly on the use of force.

1/3 of this country is quite happy with the level of brutality and malice on display and for that they should be ashamed. Another 1/3 of this country couldn't be bothered to even vote and for that they should be equally, if not more, ashamed.

My personal politics are generally not something I discuss much but perhaps it deserves qualifying here. I think the two major parties in this country are both mostly morally corrupt. They have lost their way and no longer attempt to represent the interests of the populous. Things will never get better with things the way they are as both major parties are fully captured by monied interests. I generally want the government to stay out of my life and simply provide for the common defense, provide shared infrastructure and services, and provide a social safety net for it's citizens. I don't support violence except in self-defense. I think people should be able to make their own decisions about their bodies. I don't personally care about your race, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, or any other label we use to segment people into the ins and the outs. We are all people and we should all respect each others right to self-determination. I think we all have an obligation to each other to preserve Earth as it's our shared home. Anyway, I guess I'm trying to head off the "typical Democrat" or "typical Liberal" counter. I'm neither of those things. But, if we ever took time to actually communicate with one another, we'd see that everyone has nuance and applying labels hides that.

lsaferite··on Drone pilot makes US rescind no-fly zones around unmarked, moving ICE vehicles
To answer your edit, I'd say your framing of those questions is likely considered antagonistic.

   - No one is saying they need to know what vehicles contain ICE agents
   - Not sure your meaning exactly, but there's no expectation for plainclothes officers to be locatable by the general public
   - Concern for whom? Whose mistaken identity?
   - This isn't about "knowing" a vehicle contains ICE agents. 
   - Government officials *should* be held to higher scrutiny than the general public.
   - Their objective was to prevent *legally permitted* public recording of these operations
   - Here you are delving into a fraught space. Given that many people in that status are guilty of *civil* infractions and the level of force being deployed is highly disproportionate, many people are understandably upset. There's a ton to discuss in just this one line item.
The issue is that the restrictions were so ambiguous as to make flying drones legally risky anywhere and anytime. The idea that a pilot should somehow know that a specific vehicle is a roving no-fly zone is ludicrous. You are attempting to flip this on it's head and make it out like people are saying they have to know ICE vehicles and such. That's 100% not the issue. I mean, it may be an issue for some other conversation, but not this one. As far as harassment of ICE agents by drone operators, all existing regulations already cover this and apply equally to a drone operator harassing the general public or government officials. Trying to carve out something special for ICE agents and de-facto making all drone flight a legal gamble is insane.
lsaferite··on What Claude Code's Source Revealed About AI Engineering Culture
In this case it's because they gate subscription access to their agent. If not for that, I wouldn't be using Claude Code. I like Anthropic overall, but it disappoints me that they didn't make CC open source and that they insist on tying subscription use to CC.
lsaferite··on What Claude Code's Source Revealed About AI Engineering Culture
CC is riddled with bugs and poor UI/UX. It's effective in spite of that. Just think what a well-designed agent would do in place of that. I don't use other coding agents currently because the subscription with CC gets me what I need and I don't want to pay retail token rates. I would 100% prefer an open source agent so I could fork it and tweak it to my needs.
lsaferite··on Slightly safer vibecoding by adopting old hacker habits
I've been using unix systems in one way or another for the last 30+ years. I only last week figured out I could use authorized_keys with dedicated commands per key as a way to transparently ssh directly into a container on a remote host.

That ability to transparently start a container and connect it to the SSH pipr is useful for isolation methods for coding agents involving containers and I imagine it would work equally well for things like Firecracker VMs. It's made my experiment working with an "immutable OS" (Universal Blue based) much more ergonomic. Also, it's the only way I've found to let Zed run remotely inside a container without having the container run a ssh server.

lsaferite··on AI singer now occupies eleven spots on iTunes singles chart
Just one comment

> a piece of contemporary art often has very little point in itself. The art is in the artist's process (their point of view, intent, history, etc), not the piece.

I personally find no enjoyment in art where I have to have context for it to be "interesting". Either it is or it isn't interesting on it's own merits. I find all art the same though. If it isn't interesting on it's own, then it's not interesting on the whole (for me).

lsaferite··on Costco sued for seeking refunds on tariffs customers paid
When I say absorbed I don't mean they didn't raise prices. I mean they didn't just transparently pass those extra tariff fees on to customers as a line item. With that increase in base costs they either lower their margins and earnings or they increase prices to keep them in a stable range. They are a for-profit business so it's highly unlikely they'd simply absorb the increased costs and not raise prices. There may have been some initial elasticity where costs rose faster than price rose.
lsaferite··on Costco sued for seeking refunds on tariffs customers paid
It was a conversation about costs driving increases in sales prices. No need to twist my words. I mentioned price in the next quoted sentence even.

It's public because they are publicly traded. How about you venture a guess at how many non-investor customers had any knowledge about that call. Maybe some number caught a news article, but it wouldn't have been an appreciable number.

> false covenant

Seriously? Even if it was a "false covenant", it was to *INVESTORS*! For an investor, it's happy days if they recoup those costs because that's a net increase in revenue.

The company set the price for the good based on their costs. Customers bought the good based on the price advertised. The fact that the company might be able to reclaim some of those costs has ZERO bearing on the price customers paid. That's as far as you need to look. Trying to contort the situation to conflate it with fraud is disingenuous. They didn't lie or defraud anyone.

> Political bias

There's no political bias in discussing the core aspect. Sure, the situation leading to it is politically charged, but the core of the issue is the company made a pricing decision based on their costs, the customers bought the products, and in the future the company might be able to recoup some of their costs.

On your last paragraph, a few things. First, tariffs were paid and have not been refunded. They are still trying to affect that change. Second, they made no promise to customers regarding tariffs. Third, you happened to use the PERFECT word here to explain why your entire argument is flawed. You said "collected in payment of a tariff" with "collected" being the operative word here. Costco did no such thing. If they had, you'd have had a line item stating so, like the one for taxes. Costco is obligated to collect and remit taxes. The importer of record is obligated to pay the tariff (or ensure it has been paid). They didn't say they were increasing prices by adding and collecting tariffs. The raised prices to offset the cost of them having to pay the tariff or to cover the higher cost of purchasing goods from parties that imported the goods and paid the tariff.

This entire lawsuit is flawed at it's core as is this entire line of argument.

lsaferite··on Costco sued for seeking refunds on tariffs customers paid
I don't disagree with you at all on that point.

That being said, we should treat the designated audience of the information as an indicator how the information should be interpreted. Just because an investor shops at Costco and was on the public call doesn't somehow change the messaging on the receipt.

lsaferite··on Costco sued for seeking refunds on tariffs customers paid
Costco was telling it's investors why they had to raise prices. That's a conversation with investors about business costs.

Customers purchasing from them are on the revenue side and there was no line item on receipts listing tariffs, just increased prices. As a customer if you assumed that 100% of a price increase is because the business is paying tariffs, then you are almost certainly mistaken. Even if the price increase was 100% because of the tariff, the business made the decision to internally absorb the fees and not directly involve the customer. They absorbed that extra cost of business by increasing prices as needed to maintain business margins within acceptable ranges.

TL;DR: A customer paid a unit price for a good from a vendor. The cost the vendor paid or any future refunds they may receive on those costs do not factor into the transaction.

lsaferite··on Costco sued for seeking refunds on tariffs customers paid
I'm saying that semantically a business that simply raised base prices to cover their increased costs cannot be attacked by using the logic that "I assumed the price increase was going to the government" unless that was specifically enumerated on your receipts. What you assume is on you.

Had the business been listing tariffs directly on receipts it would be a very different conversation.

lsaferite··on Costco sued for seeking refunds on tariffs customers paid
Did your receipt say anything about a government tariff?

The government was busy telling the hoi polloi that foreign companies were paying the tariff. They fought US companies that wanted to list the tariffs on receipts. They were actively suppressing clarity on the matter to end buyers. Your claim that customers assumed the higher prices was going to the government is specious or simply misinformed.

lsaferite··on Costco sued for seeking refunds on tariffs customers paid
You think a seller has some price obligation to you? If they set a price and you pay the price, what they paid for the good is irrelevant unless you had some cost-plus contract that they violated.
lsaferite··on Costco sued for seeking refunds on tariffs customers paid
If they had listed a line item for tariff fees then I could see the argument and would say that any refunds should go to customers. By not listing a tariff line item, Costco absorbed the additional costs and likely increased prices. In that scenario they, Costco, are the ones that should be entitled to a refund.

This is the same if you walk the chain backwards. Suppliers to Costco that simply raised prices and internally absorbed the tariffs are the ones due a refund, not Costco. Suppliers that sent Costco and invoice with a tariff line item should be on the hook to refund Costco (which means they should be seeking a refund from the US)

lsaferite··on I quit. The clankers won
Why would a company you are consulting for invest in training you up exactly? They are paying a consultant with the expectation that they are bringing the knowledge.
lsaferite··on Show HN: Postgres extension for BM25 relevance-ranked full-text search
You: > "TigerData" is a pernicious entity

TigerData: > pg_textsearch v1.0 is freely available via open source (Postgres license)

They deemed AGPL untenable for their business and decided to create an OSS solution that used a license they were comfortable with and they are somehow "pernicious"? Perhaps take a moment to reflect on your characterization of a group that just contributed an alternative OSS project for a specific task. Not only that, but they used a VERY permissive license. I'd argue that they are being a better OSS community member for selecting a more permissive license.

lsaferite··on CERN uses tiny AI models burned into silicon for real-time LHC data filtering
They aren't using analog circuits, are they?
lsaferite··on Retailer denies memory replacement due to 4x increase in DDR5 pricing
In this specific situation I would say that if the part is under manufacturer warranty, then the retailer should either offer a refund at the price paid or assistance for the customer in getting the manufacturer warranty replacement. Expecting the retailer to replace the faulty unit when the *wholesale* price has changed dramatically is.. unfair. I'm sure many people would scream "cost of business" and perhaps they are right. But, if the retailer is making a good faith effort to resolve the issue in a manner that keeps the customer "whole", that should be the metric for both "legal" and "moral".
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