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tomasphan

248 karma · joined June 3, 2025

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tomasphan··on Micron Announces Exit from Crucial Consumer Business
There is a couple reasons why Jensen won't take off the gaming leather jacket just yet:

1. Gaming cards are their R&D pipeline for data center cards. Lots of innovation came from gaming cards.

2. Its a market defense to keep other players down and keep them from growing their way into data centers.

3. Its profitable (probably the main reason but boring)

4. Hedge against data center volatility (10 key customers vs millions)

5. Antitrust defense (which they used when they tried to buy ARM)

tomasphan··on A series of vignettes from my childhood and early career
This should be taken in the context of software demand versus production. Demand has risen steadily over these years and efficiency gains in production just unlocked more demand because it lowered the cost. I think LLM coding will also unlock more demand but only up to a point until unit cost is so low it doesn't make sense to have a human in the loop anymore. Then we software devs are SOL.
tomasphan··on Bringing Sexy Back. Internet surveillance has killed eroticism
Can you elaborate more about relationship sharing? Do you mean having an open relationship or something else?
tomasphan··on Voyager 1 is about to reach one light-day from Earth
Right, that also caught my eye. There is no way Mars is closer than Sol (~8 minutes) when it’s on the other side of Sol. This article has some problems.
tomasphan··on Launch HN: Onyx (YC W24) – Open-source chat UI
This is great, the value is there. I work for a F100 company that is trying (and failing) to build this in house because every product manager fundamentally misunderstands that users just want a chat window for AI, not to make their own complicated agents. Your biggest competition in the enterprise space, Copilot, has terrible UI and we only put up with it because it has access to email, SharePoint and Teams.
tomasphan··on HP and Dell disable HEVC support built into their laptops' CPUs
It doesn’t. Disabling hardware acceleration does which they needed to do in order to play content.

“ needed to either have the HEVC codec from the Microsoft Store removed entirely from [Microsoft Media Foundation] or have hardware acceleration disabled in their web browser/web app, which causes a number of other problems / feature [degradations]. For example, no background blurring in conference programs”

tomasphan··on How Tube Amplifiers Work
I got two ads that took up 2/3rds of the screen :(
tomasphan··on Work after work: Notes from an unemployed new grad watching the job market break
I’ve seen the complete opposite and have gotten my current role from a referral which the company took very seriously (guaranteed first interview).
tomasphan··on U.S. Flights Are Canceled as Shutdown Hits Air Travel
Whether it’s one side or the other we need to come up with a system that has inherent protections against abuse like this. The two party system is going to be our downfall otherwise.
tomasphan··on Show HN: Why write code if the LLM can just do the thing? (web app experiment)
This will eventually cause such reduction of agency that it will be perceived as fundamental threat to one's sense of freedom. I predict it will cause humanity to split into a group that accepts this, and one that rejects it at its fundamental level. We're already seeing the beginning of this with vinyl sales skyrocketing (back to 90s levels).
tomasphan··on Denmark reportedly withdraws Chat Control proposal following controversy
“Protecting children” is a red herring anyway. It’s never actually about the children, as they are more protected than ever and statistically it’s the safest ever in human history. I’d actually argue that children need less protection and more freedom.
tomasphan··on Apple loses UK App Store monopoly case, penalty might near $2B
Steam feels like a partnership with developers where Apple is a gatekeeper. I publish free games on Steam and all it costs is a $100 one time fee per game. I get human review and feedback on my marketing material and store page assets.

Apple is incredibly strict with the content they allow to the point that it feels like a they exclusively cater to children. It’s easier to vibe code the apps that I want under my own developer account because at least I can side load those.

tomasphan··on A 'Death Train' Is Haunting South Florida
This reads like the author sees trains as some sort of upper class luxury, describing the leather seats and steak dinner. In reality trains are much more safe and economically accessible than cars. Besides, no mention of the much more dangerous car infrastructure and statistically #3 most dangerous state in the country for total car deaths.
tomasphan··on US Passport Power Falls to Historic Low
No, this is right. I know a German immigration lawyer whose work has quadrupled. There are lots of ways to get dual citizenship. Actually European countries are very excited about the reverse brain drain.
tomasphan··on N8n raises $180M
Question for n8n and other orchestration tool users: Why not use an LLM to vibe code the orchestration? Is it still hard to host or not mature enough? I tried n8n but found it easier and cheaper to have Claude code something and then throw it in docker as API that I could interact with. Tool integrations were also easy to vibe code. I am maybe more technical than the average n8n user? Not sure
tomasphan··on Why are so many pedestrians killed by cars in the US?
Totally agree. When someone in my family got their license in the US they had to drive around a parking lot, parallel park and pull into a normal parking lot. That’s it. This was during COVID so the tester wasn’t allowed inside the car. It absolutely reflects in the quality of drivers today.

I often drive in Europe for business and cry a little on the inside when I’m back on New York streets.

tomasphan··on Why are so many pedestrians killed by cars in the US?
We care about control. Mass shootings are random and scary and totally out of victim’s control. People say “that car crash wouldn’t have happened to me I’m a better driver and I pay attention”. Which is true to some degree. Same reason why flying is scary because you can’t even see what’s coming.
tomasphan··on OpenAI's H1 2025: $4.3B in income, $13.5B in loss
That’s how it should be, spread the wealth.
tomasphan··on U.S. Army confirms Tesla Cybertruck can't be imported in Europe
“ Another concern is that the Cybertruck would attract a lot of attention when operated in public traffic. This would defeat the purpose of issuing USAREUR-AF cover plates for force protection. It is commonly known that the Cybertruck cannot be registered and operated in Germany.” Funny, bad OPSEC to drive a huge flashing American flag.
tomasphan··on Zip Code Map of the United States
I did not find this map very useful but interesting as a visual reference. Here is one with zip code boundaries on a map: https://www.unitedstateszipcodes.org/
tomasphan··on Show HN: 47jobs – A Fiverr/Upwork for AI Agents
The link goes to .xyz but you posted .com, which one is correct?
tomasphan··on We all dodged a bullet
The problem here is that a single dev account can make updates to a prod codebase, or in the case of NX a single CI/CD token. Something with 5 Million downloads per week should not be controlled by one token if it takes me 3 approvals to get my $20 lunch reimbursement. At the very least have an LLM review every PR to prod.
tomasphan··on Navy SEALs reportedly killed North Korean fishermen to hide a failed mission
Terrible murder aside, what kind of signals was that device going to intercept and why did it need to be on shore?
tomasphan··on Tesla changes meaning of 'Full Self-Driving', gives up on promise of autonomy
We not only use our vision when driving but also our other senses. We can tell the sun is shining at us because it warms our skin. This all happened subconsciously. Humans are vastly superior drivers in general, it’s just that 50% of humans are bad drivers.
tomasphan··on Almost anything you give sustained attention to will begin to loop on itself
I couldn't relate either but that doesn't make the article bad.
tomasphan··on First Murder-Suicide Case Associated with AI Psychosis
Should we really demand this of every AI chat application to potentially avert a negative response from the tiny minority of users that blindly follow what they’re told? Who is going to enforce this? What if I host a private AI model for 3 users. Do I need that and what is the punishment for non compliance? You see where I’m going with this. The problem with your sentiment is that as soon as you draw a line it must be defined in excruciating detail or you risk unintended consequences.
tomasphan··on iOS 18.6.1 0-click RCE POC
Experience /n Fuzzing (when you try a bunch of stuff automatically) /n Reverse engineering the code (using tools like ghidra or hopper)
tomasphan··on The warning signs the AI bubble is about to burst
We’re on our way down to the through of disillusionment. See you on the other side.
tomasphan··on Do things that don't scale, and then don't scale
This is absolutely true and the reason I left a job in software consulting. The future is asking an LLM to write anything for you. It will figure out the tech stack, hosting, integrations etc. “I am looking for an alternative to Discord” is now “make me a Discord clone for my friends and I”.

Quality of the code aside because now it doesn’t have to support millions of users anymore.

tomasphan··on Meta's AI rules let bots hold sensual chats with kids, offer false medical info
I'm not an AI fanboy but that feels like an argument that should apply to everything then. Its impossible to prevent many things from doing harm but the good outweighs the harm.
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