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snailmailman

1,588 karma · joined March 16, 2016

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snailmailman··on Have you restarted your computer this week?
Yeah, i just simply don't trust the sleep functionality to not be buggy. I walk away with processes running a decent amount of the time and its unclear to me what things can prevent sleep from triggering and what cant.

If i do need to have something persist overnight I use hibernate. And I haven't encountered issues with that. But ive had enough issues with sleep states on my laptops that i just dont bother on my desktop. The monitor goes to sleep if i walk away but the PC doesn't sleep.

snailmailman··on Have you restarted your computer this week?
I'm confident this will mostly fix my problem but its such a minor thing its not worth disassembling my PC for. But I will likely swap it out next time I disassemble it for any other reason.

It seems to me like this problem can be entirely solved in software if the OS more frequently resynced the clock. I checked just now and it last did a sync 2 days ago? I dont think my PC bios even saves sub-second accuracy, and IMO it should be resyncing after every boot.

The CMOS battery on my ~10yr old linux laptop is also dead, and its a complete non-issue there. The bios complains occasionally and shows me the time is wrong and then i boot in and the OS fixes the clock immediately.

snailmailman··on Have you restarted your computer this week?
I shut down my desktop every night. No reason to keep it on. I can save my work, all my tabs persist, it’s fine.

My main complaint is that my PC seems to have crazy clock drift? And windows just doesn’t seem to care? It doesn’t actually cause problems but I will check and see that it’s off by >5 seconds and that just shouldn’t ever happen. My phone is always accurate to <0.05s and same in Linux. Idk why windows isn’t.

snailmailman··on Researchers have developed pixels that can emit and analyse light together
I definitely had some cheap PC speakers in the mid 2000s that worked as a shitty microphone if you plugged the cable into the microphone port instead of the speaker port. You basically had to yell into them, and the sound quality was atrocious, but it did ‘work’.

A surprising amount of circuits work like this. Generators and motors are basically the same as well, and spinning a fan by hand will induce current into the wire. I assume most circuits are designed to properly handle that happening, but I still worry when blowing the dust out of my PC and will manually prevent the fans from spinning when I blow compressed air at them.

snailmailman··on Choosing a Public DNS Resolver
I run an instance of smokeping locally for this purpose. It pings a variety of DNS servers (including my ISPs DNS) and several of the top websites. I periodically update my local DNS server’s upstream accordingly.

All the big DNS servers are in the 5-6ms range for me, but that hasn’t always been the case. My ISPs DNS is about the same but with crazy variance and spikes of up to 50ms, even though they should be able to be the fastest.

snailmailman··on There are no instances in ATProto
This is the real strength of ActivityPub compared to ATProto. I follow a lot of accounts on mastodon, and only a handful of them are on mastodon.social. Globally though looks like 1/4 of the accounts are there.

If the instance goes down, the network stays up and continues to work, minus only the accounts on mastodon.social. This is not the case on bluesky afaik. They got DDosed a few months ago and the whole network was down because of it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47802330

In ATProto there aren't 'instances', and its technically 'decentralized' but theres really only bluesky.

snailmailman··on Nextcloud Hub 26 Spring: Built together, designed for the future
They have an “all in one” container that supposedly works out of the box.

I didn’t want to give it access to the docker socket, with the ability to spawn its own containers. So instead I just use the nextcloud container directly. (With several other containers, like DB, reverse proxy, collabora, etc) It’s a mess to configure, hence their recommendation to use their “all in one” setup. All sorts of weird defaults with documentation that says “this is the default but you should absolutely change it to do X instead so that it performs better”. Things like setting up a service to generate thumbnails, setting up redis, etc.

Once configured though, it mostly just works. You can’t let it auto update between major versions, but you probably should be doing that anyway. There are usually breaking changes and you have to manually run a command or two between major updates. That doesn’t happen too frequently though.

I can’t speak to the quality of the all-in-one setup. It’s likely easier than what I did - but also what’s the point of putting it in docker and also giving it control of docker? Seems to defeat the point of containerization.

snailmailman··on Nextcloud Hub 26 Spring: Built together, designed for the future
I use nextcloud all the time, my private instance works great and does everything I need it to. But I keep it behind a VPN. It’s got a lot of parts, and thus a lot of surface area. It may be secure but I just assume it isn’t. I rely on the VPN to be the security boundary.
snailmailman··on A €0.01 bank transfer could compromise a banking AI agent
How is the second LLM not also vulnerable from prompt injection? In order to supervise the first, it must receive data (presumably output from the first LLM?). All generated output after the user input is in the context should be considered possibly compromised/prompt injected. Having a second LLM just adds more obfuscation, but prompt injection could be chained.
snailmailman··on German ruling declares Google liable for false answers in AI Overviews
I’ve seen it directly contradict the citation so many times that i disregard the text and just click the citation or scroll past every single time. Just today i caught it making up the date for an event, and the citation had accurate information when clicked through.

It’s super easy to catch on dates and numbers, but it gets other details wrong all the time too. But so many people won’t be double checking the results.

snailmailman··on Company Will Add Phone, AirPod, and Smartwatch Trackers to ALPRs
I thought most modern Bluetooth devices essentially randomize the Bluetooth MAC address periodically, specifically to prevent this sort of tracking? And random MAC addresses too on WiFi.
snailmailman··on The ways we contain Claude across products
I had a problem recently where I ran a script with the wrong set of permissions, and accidentally screwed up the ownership of a random mix of files spread across my entire drive. This broke several pieces of software and made the system unusable.

I had enough information to reconstruct what files exactly got screwed up, and while I didn’t have a backup, I had a similar enough system I could pull “known good” file permissions from. I knew a simple script could find the problematic files and fix all of them.

I tried getting an AI to solve this. And it repeatedly gave me scripts that ignored all the details and intricacies of my issue and were functionally just "chown -R user:user /". (A command that will functionally nuke a drive, breaking ownership on every file)

The ai-provided scripts were reasonably complex and did a pretty decent job of obfuscating the disastrous outcomes the scripts would have inflicted on my drive.

After reading the man pages myself I wrote a simple enough script by hand and fixed the issue myself. AI wasted more time than it saved.

snailmailman··on Roku LT Operating System open source distribution
On my rokus, I am able to use my phone as a remote via the roku app. This includes typing on mobile via my phone's keyboard. Makes logging into things much easier.
snailmailman··on Texas adds another solar farm as ERCOT grid demand soars
While Texas is quite red. Renewables are surprisingly popular. Why should a farmer in the middle of nowhere have to rely on Texas’ power grid, when they can install a few solar panels and a battery. Especially when storms can take out power lines, or take out the entire grid.

I’m near a big city in Texas, and before any big storms here, generators frequently sell out at stores. Power outages are basically expected during any storms. Lots of people buying into solar (or backup generators/batteries) just for independence from the power grid. Especially after the huge winter storm a few years ago left people without power for days in the cold.

snailmailman··on Texas adds another solar farm as ERCOT grid demand soars
While fossil fuels are huge in Texas, solar and wind are too. Especially out in west Texas where there’s a lot of wide open space, wind turbines are surprisingly frequent. Texas produces the most wind power out of any state. And solar works just about anywhere in Texas. Lots of sun in the summers.
snailmailman··on EY Canada published a cybersecurity report and most citations were hallucinated
I eventually managed to get far enough into the article that I thought I saw the main stat - the stat that 26% of the citations were hallucinated. Then the scroll threw me back to the top again and I gave up entirely on reading from my phone.

Coming back later on desktop, I see that the percentage keeps climbing the further you manage to make it down the page. The real stat is 60% of the citations were hallucinated.

snailmailman··on EY Canada published a cybersecurity report and most citations were hallucinated
On mobile, It’s hijacking my scroll in such a way that I literally cannot move further down the page. And “reader mode” is only showing me the first paragraph or so.

I’ll have to try again later on desktop. The content looks interesting but it’s literally impossible to read. I cannot get past the section that introduces Ernst and Young.

snailmailman··on Google changes its search box
LLMs are so frequently inaccurate its crazy to think of it fully replacing search.

I've been trying to use LLMs for things and it makes mistakes all the time. Just this week i had multiple instances of various LLMs basically saying "just run the software with --flag-that-fixes-your-problem" or "edit the config and add solve-your-issue=true" hallucinating non-existant options. Even if i manually link the relevant documentation pages it will still just make basic mistakes. and if im having to read the documentation myself anyway to fix the AI's mistakes, why is the AI even in the loop.

its infecting search too, because blogspam/slop articles are managing to make their way into search results by just making up untrue information, claiming software can do things it cant, or has options that don't exist.

snailmailman··on Bun Rust rewrite: "codebase fails basic miri checks, allows for UB in safe rust"
This case is wild and seems to perfectly encapsulate all the problems people complain about with vibecoded projects.

The "rewrite it in rust" commit is +1M lines of code. Humans haven't looked at that in depth. In about a week, they saw the tests passed and pushed it to main. Now people have started to look through it and are pointing out glaring issues. And the solution is just going to be "feed it to another AI and ask it to fix it".

The entire codebase is slop now. Nobody knows what it does. It manages to pass some tests, but its largely a black box just on the basis of humans haven't read it yet. The code isn't guaranteed to be anything close to 1:1 with the old codebase. Its probably vaguely shaped like the old codebase, but new bugs could be there, old bugs could be there, nobody knows anything yet.

Its going to be interesting to see how recoverable this is. They are almost certainly going to just hand every file to an AI, say "look for soundness issues and fix them" and then what? If AI is making huge, sweeping changes to the code so frequently that humans can't keep up, is that really maintainable? The only solution appears to be "even more AI" while anybody that looks closely gets scared away by the too-large-to-comprehend-and-entirely-slop codebase.

This kind of thing has been happening with many smaller projects already, but now its a larger project and happening in a much more public way, with the intent to replace human-written, mostly-understood code with slop. I suspect the same thing, with the same problems, is happening inside all the largest companies, just not quite as obviously.

snailmailman··on Restore full BambuNetwork support for Bambu Lab printers
The mobile app is quite nice. Print error and print finish notifications. Webcam view when I’m not near my printer. The ability to pause it remotely if something looks off.

I use LAN mode, plus a home assistant plugin to restore the lost functionality. The default webcam is pretty bad so I’ve also mounted a better one to my printer for a live video view that’s at more than 1fps.

The main thing I’ve lost by using lan mode is printing from my phone? I think there are ways to do that. But OrcaSlicer has so many options that are frequently worth adjusting over random presets other creators used; it’s a strictly better experience compared to printing on mobile.

I think there is some niche “cancel printing of one specific object” feature that I dont know how to use without the mobile app. If you are printing many objects at once, and one fails, you can cancel a specific part/object using the mobile app. Not sure how to do that with OrcaSlicer + lan mode, or if it’s even possible. (Edit: OrcaSlicer doesn’t support it. The home assistant plugin might? Bambu studio in lan mode doesn’t support it either, it requires the mobile app)

snailmailman··on Louis Rossmann offers to pay legal fees for a threatened OrcaSlicer developer
I’ve been meaning to look into what the network plugin does more.

I see in my dns logs lots of repeated blocked requests to a Bambu labs domain whenever I have orcaslicer open. I assume it’s so many because it’s getting blocked and retrying.

I just print over lan though. Not using the Bambu servers (or the fork mentioned in OP) It works flawlessly.

snailmailman··on Google Cloud Fraud Defence is just WEI repackaged
richard stallman
snailmailman··on Diskless Linux boot using ZFS, iSCSI and PXE
It is relatively easy to configure. Just install Linux after windows, and Linux will generally automatically setup a boot-selection screen for you. The installer should detect windows and even shrink the partitions for you.

You can install a prettier looking boot selection menu like rEFInd, but the default works just as well, and I think the mainstream distros all setup secure boot too. On my pc it was very easy, on my (8yr old) laptop I had to add some secure boot keys and the bios was very confusing, using terms that didn’t seem to match what they should have been.

My setup has worked almost entirely flawlessly and survived updates from both OSes. Only issue being “larger” windows feature updates putting windows back as the first OS in the list, but that happens maybe once or twice a year? And it’s a quick bios change to fix the order.

snailmailman··on Google Cloud fraud defense, the next evolution of reCAPTCHA
It’s a common thing for malware. But people are going to be more likely to fall for it when mainstream sites ask you to complete weird tasks with your phone to verify your identity.
snailmailman··on Google Cloud fraud defense, the next evolution of reCAPTCHA
I’m already sick and tired of seeing cloudflares “making sure you aren’t a bot” checkbox everywhere. Sometimes it locks me out entirely and decides I don’t get to view pages.

I see recaptcha less frequently but it’s much more annoying, with all the clicking of crosswalks, or busses, or whatever. I am not looking forward to a web where google can not only lock me out of my email, but also large sections of the previously public internet. Occasionally google decides I don’t get to do searches, and that’s not too much of an inconvenience, there are other search engines.

snailmailman··on Empty Screenings – Finds AMC movie screenings with few or no tickets sold
I want to enjoy the movie theater experience. It should be a better screen than the one in my home. It should be a better audio setup, with full surround sound. It should be great, a premium experience.

The last few movies I’ve seen in theaters have not been that. Two of the last 3 movies I’ve seen had audio mixing problems, and dialogue was inaudible in some scenes. (I heard this got fixed later for one of the movies) In all of them, I could hear bass from the adjacent theaters in some scenes. In the last two movies I went to see, both had someone in the audience bring an intermittently crying baby to the movie.

Im done with watching movies in theaters. It’s a better experience to watch at home, with headphones, a blanket, and the ability to pause for bathroom breaks.

snailmailman··on Issue links now open in a popup
Now, when you click a link in GitHub, the current page doesnt change. I want to look at the linked issue on its own page. That doesn’t occur anymore.

The page i wanted to go to pops up in a small overlay on the right hand side. The body text and content that I wanted to view is in a new, weird location, with the old page still behind it in the normal spot. It’s very unintuitive.

Thankfully either the behavior has reverted or I’m no longer in the A/B test. I can’t get the popup to happen anymore for me. (edit, nvm, behavior varies depending on repo or something? it acts completely differently on different pages, sometimes links are normal and sometimes they open in a popup. extremely annoying)

snailmailman··on Tell HN: An app is silently installing itself on my iPhone every day
I don’t think carriers have the ability to install apps on iOS. I’ve always thought it’s weird that they can do that on android.
snailmailman··on Tell HN: An app is silently installing itself on my iPhone every day
Regarding the telegram app I’d check iOS settings->apps->telegram->search and make sure “show app in search” is checked

You can intentionally hide apps from search. If you did this, it’s not very obvious that its hidden from search unless you dig for the setting. Similarly, “hidden” apps refuse to show up in search results anywhere, even in settings.

snailmailman··on Incident with multple GitHub services
I've been running my own private forgejo instance for a while now. I host all my own private side projects and stuff there. Its a much more pleasant experience than github, if only because it has higher than 90% uptime. The UI is mostly identical otherwise.

The number of consistent issues i've had with anything github-related lately is crazy. Even just browsing their site is difficult sometimes with slow loads that often just hang entirely.

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