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soco

5,015 karma · joined March 23, 2020

Non-native English speaker so if it sounded bad maybe I just failed to express it
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soco··on Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database
Sometimes it can happen that the honest company gets a visit from the dedicated contract crony, with the offer to do the real work for like 50% of the contract value. At least the taxpayers get something usable - if that 50% amounts to something usable.
soco··on British Steel taken into public ownership to protect 'vital' UK supply
Last century non-socialist governments caused untold deaths in many Western countries, starting with Germany for a better known example, but the entire list is quite long. So could it be that it wasn't socialism the problem?
soco··on The lost joy of music piracy
Oh but also the good old IRC channels on Undernet or whatever? Not quite warez to get you banned, just gray area with no official support but allowed to stay. Community chat, music recommendations, admin bots and random trivia - #mp3_...
soco··on Sleep regularity is a stronger predictor of mortality risk than sleep duration
I do watch screens in the morning, but reading in bed (though still a screen, Kindle) still knocks me off in max 15 minutes. I would love to know why... I only know it works.
soco··on The Human Cost of DOGE's War on USAID
Also, USAID seems to have been replaced with MAGA-AID: "US to fund Trump-aligned Europeans building ‘civilisational bonds’" https://www.ft.com/content/e2addd88-4361-43f1-94e2-9f0a808dd...
soco··on Show HN: I built a one-prompt hackathon platform, free entry, sponsored prizes
I'm so happy mobile-first is dead. You have two platforms, so build for two platforms - they have different paradigms and doing anything xy-first will break the other.
soco··on European "age verification" "app" forcing everyone to use Android or iOS
It's also replacing all the personal information stores from thousand applications and websites you have previously registered, or would have to. So arguably it's thousand attack vectors less.
soco··on The Human Cost of DOGE's War on USAID
As it looks, the tax dollars came back home and yet every price and cost and younameit continued to increase. Maybe, just maybe, USAID was not the problem? Maybe cutting USAID was just a pretext, a pretext some people still buy in front of the - maybe not clear cut - evidence that it was only a pretext?
soco··on Why write code in 2026
Claude's coding efficiency is largely due to their control plane governing the actual execution of the model - rules, evaluators and basically looping over results. Not related to the model training or fine tuning.
soco··on Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media
I have Facebook and follow about a dozen of journalist accounts. Almost daily I'm asked "should we show you more of this" for their posts - darnit that's THE reason I'm here, why asking me continuously??? And what's the alternative, bimbos doing little content creator dances?
soco··on Why write code in 2026
It's also conveniently forgetting that AI was trained on the whole internet, a corpus of code including every garbage solution in SO wrong answers or random junior blogs. I didn't see any claim AI could select "best practices" from their sources, so putting AI to correct another AI has high chances of statistically selecting the same wrong solution, because that was just a common thread in those old posts they used as reference.
soco··on Irish datacenters now guzzle 23% of the country's electricity
Now where did I hear them called "windmills" again, maybe it was related to golf courses...
soco··on How to read more books
Maybe it's not your problem, but I realized I can only fully pay attention to audiobooks in my native language. Arguably not even then, when there are interruptions, obviously, but listening in any other language I can't even tell why I lost track - I just find myself in some unknown place and I have to rewind. This of course limits a lot the fun, because it's a hassle to constantly have to rewind some literature (also less availability in the first place). Luckily it's less of a problem for a course or technical article where I'd rewind often anyway to think better about some aspect.
soco··on AI-generated videos to maximally drive a target brain region
Don't forget it's not "the platforms" doing this, it's people like you and me, maybe even people reading this message. We, they, are building this, and don't care about anything as long the paycheck comes. This is the reality.
soco··on The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war
One design doesn't mean one factory. And it's not about one design anyway, just the thought of culling the less performing ones.
soco··on Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered in-person final; scores fell 50%
Took me a while to get rid of the mental image of an army of green moustached Luigis crowding a cartoon palace. But maybe it's not even such a bad image after all. Now where are the Marios when you need them?
soco··on Answering "why do you want to relocate?" during interviews
> it seems bizarre that a response on "why do you want to relocate" wouldn't just be some form of "my spouse got a job here, so I will be living here now".

That's no real passion to work for us buddy, byez.

soco··on Answering "why do you want to relocate?" during interviews
What are for you the right reasons for taking a job? Most teams will have enough common sense and healthy relationships to offer something workable, also most software products are a piece of whatever - be it insurance front-ends or package sorting algorithms. I mean yes there will be outliers both ways, like a toxic environment which the candidate can hopefully spot during the talks, or your particular product can spark real passion in people (not likely). But speaking for myself I've never spotted a toxic environment (also never landed in one either) and for the few positions where I was really passionate about they didn't care about my passion. So your comment reads like a lot of theory, or ten-thousand-feet-view if you want, while the candidate reality is that the only stuff which really matters is how good you lie about alignment.
soco··on Tiny data centre used to heat public swimming pool
> It may have been a different story if we had computer hardware able to efficiently operate at 200-300C.

Do I see a market opening here?

soco··on Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again
Cool numbers, so are you making an argument for eating out, for getting take out, or for ordering delivery? Or for moving to Asia? Sorry I don't know what to do with all that information.
soco··on Why skilled workers come to Germany and then leave again
Thinking about my Swiss village, the only takeout worth thinking about is the delicious kebab downhill which doesn't do delivery. Otherwise it would be all eat.ch and similar. Why should I drive when I can get it delivered for no extra cost? I guess it's just a cultural difference, not a drawback (in either direction)
soco··on Chat Control passed first round in EU Parliament
So basically the people we elected will vote yes. How's that undemocratic? Because the majority doesn't vote the way I like it? I'm not even ironic, I truly don't understand those comments. You get what you voted for, garbage in garbage out.
soco··on Sodium-ion "salt" batteries will revolutionize electric-vehicle and grid storage
With a small but significant difference: it's in production already.
soco··on Sodium-ion "salt" batteries will revolutionize electric-vehicle and grid storage
I just realize we have heaps and heaps of seasalt sludge around desalinization units. Dirty sludge, but salty nevertheless, right there at the fingertips. Maybe some of it could be useful?
soco··on Sodium-ion "salt" batteries will revolutionize electric-vehicle and grid storage
Why under the house? It can sit under your yard, no need to bother with so many tons of construction concrete on top of it.
soco··on Car touchscreens are cheap, not good
> Personally none of my cars have a screen and none ever will. I can adjust everything that can be adjusted purely by feel without ever taking my eyes off the road. Clearly that is safer.

You can also have the best of both worlds. I'm not pretending it's an ideal car, but my Audi has plenty of knobs and buttons and switches for about anything I usually need. You only are forced to use the screen for switching between radio and bluetooth music (maybe there's a button for that too and I don't know it), for setting up the navigation and of course the zillion of car settings. So do I have a screen? Yes. Do I depend on it? Really no. So folks, there IS a way, we just have to push for it.

soco··on The AI Marketing Backlash: Why 'AI-First' Brands Are Starting to Fall Flat
The humanness of the music I listen to is given by actual humans composing and playing it. I don't mean little mistakes or whatever signal, but knowing it's made by humans. Otherwise I can't be arsed to listen to it, because probably I only care so much about the music itself. Because why would I? But yeah some people choose a virtual girlfriend too, so I'm probably just not in the right target group for AI productions.

PS: of course they can lie to me. Until I find out.

soco··on Meta loses bid to dismiss US states' claims that FB, Instagram addict children
Nitpicking, I have the feeling that's self-declaration, not self-regulation.
soco··on The first early human eggs from stem cells
But outside the bible, who says we must be more and above replacement rates? Is such a tragedy for humanity if there are only 4 billion humans in 100 years? 4 happier billions? It doesn't HAVE to go up all the time, and between extinction (zero humans) and overcrowding (X billions) there are many unknown ways to go.
soco··on The first early human eggs from stem cells
The history of humanity, I say of hominids even, was defined by humans playing it unsafe - migrating, sailing, inventing bombs, you name it. We played god before even we invented gods, and reached this point in time. Should we say "this is best we can do, let's stop everything"? Nah, not likely.
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