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progbits

5,907 karma · joined June 4, 2021

Opinions are not my own, I stole them from you.

Contact info: Don't.

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progbits··on Terence Tao's ChatGPT conversation about the Jacobian Conjecture counterexample
From the prompt:

> You should do a breakthrough

This is just as funny and ridiculous as those "make no mistake" prompts.

progbits··on I found a WordPress RCEs with GPT5.6 and $25
https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/commit/3a640e1c5e39aa...

String concatenation SQL injection in the year 2026.

progbits··on Half a Second – a book about the XZ backdoor
Not taking it away.

I hate those arguments "it has emdash therefore AI", of course humans also write that way.

But poor and excessive usage of them is a pretty strong red flag, also together with other tells.

progbits··on Half a Second – a book about the XZ backdoor
In last month or two I noticed semicolons getting used where previously it would be em-dash, in both cases excessively and often incorrectly.

I assumed some of my coworkers added "replace all em-dashes with semicolons" into their CLAUDE.md as a really crappy attempt at hiding their inability to write a single sentence without assistance.

progbits··on Madame Semver Will See You Now
This reminded me a lot of Aphyr's interview series.
progbits··on StreetComplete: Fixing OpenStreetMap, one tiny quest at a time
Thank you!

Is that a new feature? I have over a thousand contributions on StreetComplete (casually using it during walks) and somehow I never noticed that button.

progbits··on Agentic coding notes from Galapagos Island
Realizing he's just using it to mean remote place in terms of AI bubble (Vancouver! What does that make all the other places that are not major tech hubs?) was a bummer.

Who cares about AI, I wanted to read about living in Galapagos

progbits··on Show HN: ZeroFS – A log-structured filesystem for S3
I see this all the time in code reviews at work. Extremely verbose comments that teach the clueless author how things work but have no place in the final code: aside from codebase not being a coding tutorial, they are also incredibly specific and would become stale and incorrect in matter of weeks.
progbits··on Pollen tried to remove my article and Google is assisting with it
> So imagine my surprise when I was notified that Google removed the article from its search results

You know you can just read the linked articles, right?

Edit: parent has edited their post, it used to say something like "google has never notified anyone about such things".

progbits··on Doing a masters while working in Spain
This comment is little abrasive but there is truth to it.

I've seen many people who are quite competent under close supervision but completely clueless on their own.

We could debate if academia would be better off with different approach though.

progbits··on Help I accidentally a wigglegram
https://github.com/jyjblrd/wigglegramLens

This is one option, trading ease of use and low cost for lower picture quality and less light.

progbits··on Apple reveals new AI architecture built around Google Gemini models
> EU regulators’ extreme interpretation of the DMA

It's not extreme interpretation, it's the intent.

Just say it would break your vendor lock-in.

progbits··on Accidentally deleted subscriptions for chat integrations (Slack and MS Teams)
Huh, this is an incident now?

Our github->slack subscription breaks every few months, they never acknowledged it before. At this point we have a doc with the list of repos and settings, whenever someone notices that things are awfully quiet we just go through it and resubscribe.

progbits··on Changing how we develop Ladybird
I've experienced the following sequence more than once at work, and I remain baffled by it each time:

- Receive a huge vibecoded PR for complicated new feature.

- Complain that this needs some design doc to figure out the right approach first.

- Author says no need for design doc, easier to have vibed implementation and discuss the concrete code instead of abstract document.

- I disagree (obviously), but review the PR with feedback along the lines: this entire approach is flawed, throw this out and start over.

- Author gets defensive, says "but this is already working and ready, let's just merge".

- I tell them there is no chance in hell this is getting merged. They go sulk to their manager that I'm not interested in helping them launch.

progbits··on The IsUpMap lets you check the status of over 100 major sites at once
And github has 100% uptime while cloudflare has 20%. Yeah, right.
progbits··on Ten Basic Clouds
If you enjoy this you might like https://cloudappreciationsociety.org/

They have forums where people post neat cloud photos and if you sign up for membership they will send you an identification chart plus a journal for keeping track of the types you have seen.

Makes for a nice gift for that person you know who always goes "oh look at that cloud!" :)

progbits··on Ten Basic Clouds
Thought so too and I think it's a sign I need a break.
progbits··on YouTube to automatically label AI-generated videos
> carefully sourced and labelled like Spotify

I wish I had your Spotify.

Over the last few months they have served me multiple slop tracks in the discover weekly playlist. Probably more I didn't notice when just listening without focus, but several had generic artist name without bio and dozens of nearly identical tracks.

progbits··on Gemini, Gophers, and Fingers. Oh My Alternative Internets Beyond HTTPS
Yes that's absolute shit thing to do.

It's also on completely different OSI layer.

I don't see the difference between your comment and a statement like "I don't like email so let's stop using TCP".

progbits··on I'm Tired of Talking to AI
Since the tool's quality strongly depends on the abilities of the user, I think I prefer:

Garbage Invoker, Garbage Output

progbits··on Gemini, Gophers, and Fingers. Oh My Alternative Internets Beyond HTTPS
Why is it that every gemini/gopher discussion throws out the baby with the bathwater?

> Chrome alone controls roughly 73% of global desktop browser market share.

> More and more, the webdevs of the world test and develop for Chrome only.

> It doesn't need to be this way. https:// is not the only way to connect and interface with the Internet

These are completely unrelated concepts! Google/Chrome doesn't control HTTP nor HTTPS. There is nothing wrong with the protocols, you can just make your website plaintext file if you like.

progbits··on Predicting the 2026 Bristol Bay and Kodiak Salmon Runs
AI slop
progbits··on OpenAI Adopts Google's SynthID Watermark for AI Images with Verification Tool
Completely different things.

C2PA is basically a signature that serves to prove it came from certain source.

It's useful in case you want to prove you got an image from AI model to someone who doesn't believe you.

It's trivially removable and not useful against people trying to pass off generated images as real.

progbits··on Show HN: I made a 3D pose maker for artists
It's a checkbox in the "..." menu. Off by default for some reason.
progbits··on Show HN: I made a 3D pose maker for artists
Yes. Instead of having to figure out the bone angles one by one you can drag eg a finger and the rest will follow as much as constraints allow.
progbits··on Rewrite Bun in Rust has been merged
> too cautious

No, you are perfectly normal.

The people who in one week decided to replace the whole codebase for a widely used tool with code no human has seen are the crazy ones.

progbits··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2026)
If the order is always the same maybe "goes before" or "goes after" would work too, but I like the ambiguity, and it's more .. I dunno, poetic?
progbits··on Killed by Apple
I'm disappointed these keep making it to the front page, but clearly most people here have no taste or standards.
progbits··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2026)
How about "Goes with dress, day or flower"?
progbits··on I’ve banned query strings
> sees significant traffic from xyz.com in the ref query string, and considers advertising

Why? Already getting traffic for free.

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