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raychis

126 karma · joined June 13, 2026

Engineer, building Raychis (offline plant identification). raychis.app
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raychis··on 'VPNs are lawful technical tools,' says EU Court in landmark copyright ruling
Hurray and good. A technology shouldn’t be treated as unlawful simply because it can be used to bypass restrictions. Restrictions which are stupid in the first place in the majority.

I hope VPNs are not becoming the next battleground between online safety and civil liberties. I'm sick of the current ongoing attacks on civil liberties in the Western World under the fake veil of online safety.

raychis··on Show HN: XY – A Fast, composable, GPU-accelerated interactive plotting library
Interesting approach to large scale visualisation. Moving reduction into Rust and sending screen bounded data to WebGL seems much more sensible than pushing millions of raw points into the browser. How does it perform with real time updates? I am assuming it is much more performant? Any plans for a prod deployment?
raychis··on No Stack Overflow, No Autocomplete: What Coding Felt Like in the 80s
This period lasted quite some time. In the mid 00s it was still like this. I remember writing code in notepad and vim. Version managers like tortoiseSVN were a total game changer when it came to collaborating. I still think learning like this is the best way to truly understand things. Neovim still my favourite IDE.
raychis··on Git rebase -I is not that scary
Nice balance of practical examples and mental models. One question though, how do you decide when to use interactive rebase versus relying on squash merges in platforms like GitHub.
raychis··on EU fines Google $1B over its search and Play Store
$1B sounds like a serious fine, but for a company the size of Google I’m not sure it changes much. Hopefully the rules create room for more competitors, we'll have to see if it has any impact.
raychis··on How much energy do data centers and artificial intelligence use?
I wonder if we made tech billionaires choose between keeping their golf courses or building more AI data centres what they would go for.
raychis··on Never Enough
This really captures the danger of turning every technological gain into a new expectation. AI may save us time, but if we simply reinvest that time into working harder and competing more, what have we actually gained?

Throughout history there have been predictions that the next technological breakthrough will lead to us working less and living more fulfilled lives, that has never happened. Same seems to be happening with AI, people are just working more rather than less.

raychis··on Top American AI Execs Sound Alarm on Chinese Models
I know, but it just seems that so much journalism is propaganda (as you put it) at the moment. It is really sad and a big shame that is holding back proper needed debates and discussion. Especially on an important emerging tech like AI.
raychis··on Top American AI Execs Sound Alarm on Chinese Models
This blanket assumption that Chinese AI models are a threat is really silly. We need to be able to separate security concerns with concerns about competition. The media at large seems unable to distinguish this and it is really annoying.

AI policy should not focus on where a model is developed. It should focus on its capabilities, transparency, and deployment risks.

raychis··on EU to force Google to share search data and open up AI on Android
Could be a major test of whether regulation can create real competition. Opening Android to rival AI assistants makes sense and would be good, but sharing search data is what is really needed for those assistants to be useful.
raychis··on The Moment Steven Bartlett Realizes His Podcast Is Compromised [video]
It does raise uncomfortable questions. I've felt this a long time about long form interviews, they are less honest conversation and more polished PR half the time.

There are some serious issues the video raises, but I don't think they are automatic proof Steven Bartlett is knowingly trying to deceive his audience. I don't think he 'realizes his postcast is compromised' not least because I think he lacks the self awareness to realise such a thing and does not have that level of self reflection.

raychis··on Vint Cerf, “father of the Internet”, is retiring
Thought this was about Tim Berners-Lee, he is the only father I know.
raychis··on The tech of 'Terminator 2' – an oral history (2017)
This was a fantastic read. I had no idea how much of Terminator 2 had to be invented from scratch. It's amazing to think that a lot of the tools and ideas that shaped modern VFX started with engineers just trying to solve one impossible problem after another.

Some films really do stand the test of time, I'm not really sure that contemporary CGI will really age as well.

raychis··on GPT‑Live
You know, when I wrote that comment I was actually thinking of the ending of Inception. Still makes me very uncomfortable though.
raychis··on GPT‑Live
This looks very cool. An AI that can listen and speak and handle tasks without breaking the flow of conversation would solve some big annoyances with current tools.

The concern is though as these get better will people struggle to distinguish these with real human connections?

raychis··on SpaceX Shares Stumble in Nasdaq-100 Debut
Interesting that even Nasdaq-100 inclusion could not keep SpaceX shares up. Probably the expected boost from index-fund buying was already priced in.

I hope that investors are finally looking beyond the hype, the valuation was massively over in my opinion. It is hard not to be conspiratorial about it given all the bending over backwards they did for the listing.

raychis··on US manufacturers' energy costs soar because of AI data center demand
AI is being pushed as a productivity revolution. Sure, it is very good. But, the costs of it are astronomical and manufacturers and customers are left paying the whooping bills, in this case from energy. Who is really benefiting from this revolution?
raychis··on Re: I'm Begging You to Leave Your AI Note-Taker at Home
I don't think the issue AI note-taking per se. It is whether a conversation can still be candid and confidential once everyone knows it may become permanent, searchable, and shareable. Big tech companies don't exactly have a clean record on privacy.

Just saying no sounds simple enough. But social pressure makes that very difficult.

The normalisation of constant recording really has me worried, everything is so monitored now. Privacy just keep get more and more eroded for the sake of minor convenient features and products. At what point do we start deciding these trade off are no longer worth it? And is it even too late to make that decision?

raychis··on Arrokoth Overview (the most distant object explored by a spacecraft)
The idea that its two lobes joined through a slow, gentle collision is really cool. It could hold clues of how planets first began forming billions of years ago. Really interesting object.
raychis··on FCC to end Biden-era rule that forces ISPs to list all their fees
Do you remember that terrible meme of a guy Ajit Pai? Somehow the current clown show have made him look like a pretty reasonable guy in comparison.
raychis··on DeepSeek V4 Is Earning Agentic Token Share
What stands out to me is how quickly developers switched once they perceived the model became good enough for agents.

It may not be the best model overall but at that price it doesn’t need to be. OpenAI and Anthropic need to get their act together to bring down their eye-watering prices down or they will end up having their dinner eaten by competitors.

raychis··on Tripadvisor AI summaries give glowing reviews to dangerous hotels
This is exactly why AI summaries shouldn’t be trusted blindly, especially when safety concerns can be buried under hundreds of positive reviews.

It is a big problem that the uncertainty in the text produced by LLMs isn't surfaced to users. It is also a big problem that companies think that shoehorning AI summaries everywhere is a good idea.

raychis··on But what is quantum computing? (3blue1brown 2025)
Watched this when it first came out last year. I think it is the clearest explanation of quantum computing I’ve seen. It is especially good at tackling the myth about trying every answer at once. 3blue1brown videos are always absolutely top quality.
raychis··on EV Batteries Are Defying Expectations After Miles
EV batteries may be lasting far longer than most buyers expected but are consumers really going to trust the data over the headlines? There has been such a propaganda attack on EVs that it will take a long time to overcome that.
raychis··on Could the next great novel be written by AI?
Fascinating read. The bit I’m worried about is not AI writing a novel, it’s the possibility of culture drowning in endless polished, but average writing. To be fair we’ve been on a similar cultural trajectory without AI, everything feels samey.
raychis··on Soatok's Informal Guide to Threat Models
Really enjoyed this framing of threat modelling as a way to make assumptions explicit and not just a compliance checklist. It was also quite amusing and sassy. Well done to the author, great piece! The point that secure is meaningless without defining the adversary and assets is especially important. One thing it doesn't tackle that I would like to know more about is how do teams keep these assumptions and threat models current as the system and its environment evolve? I think that is a massive challenge.
raychis··on US residents angry datacenters 'shoved down our throats' are recalling officials
People aren’t mad about technology. They’re mad about being told after the fact that their town might lose water, power, quiet, or tax revenue to a project they didn't have a say in.

Build the future, sure. But don’t sneak it past the people who have to live next to it. If you have to sneak it like that, then maybe it is not worth having.

Get sick of all the shady behaviour and lying. These companies, owners, and CEOs need to be taken down a peg.

raychis··on Virginia bans sale of precise geolocation data
Honestly, it’s wild that selling people’s precise location data was ever treated like a normal business model.

We already know massive data harvesting has happened. Laws like this are just the bare minimum for catching up.

Would be nice if they could bring in laws that would punish these companies out of existence, but I doubt it.

raychis··on Spotify Confirms Streaming Fraud After Kalshi Trader Cries Foul
This is where prediction markets get messy. The moment a ranking has a payout attached to it, people start looking for ways to move the ranking. These markets are going to create more toxic incentives. Their boosters aren't going to acknowledge that.
raychis··on Swedish court says Google is to pay $1.5B to Klarna in antitrust damages
$1.5B is significant, but the bigger question is whether this actually changes how dominant platforms rank their own services.

Is this real accountability for anti-competitive behaviour, or just another cost of doing business for Big Tech?

My cynicism is tell me that unfortunately it is the latter.

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