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tomnipotent

4,354 karma · joined August 11, 2014

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tomnipotent··on Grok 4
This is a classic car salesman tactic. The idea is that a buyer that's completed paperwork will be more likely to agree to a last minute price increase "because my manager won't let me sell it for $X". It's a total bullshit move. It's so common it's even mentioned in the book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.
tomnipotent··on Recovering from AI addiction
> between atheist and agnostic

Sounds like you're both. They're complimentary labels. It's also possible to be an agnostic theist.

tomnipotent··on Exploiting the IKKO Activebuds “AI powered” earbuds (2024)
Because he's prolific writer on the subject with a history of thoughtful content and contributions, including datasette and the useful Python llm CLI package.
tomnipotent··on JavaScript Trademark Update
MariaDB has seen decent adoption, but it's still an order of magnitude less than MySQL.
tomnipotent··on Copilot Chat in VS Code is now open source
I'm not sure I see the problem. The number of merged PR's looks on the high side for a FOSS project.

https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclo...

tomnipotent··on OpenAI slams court order to save all ChatGPT logs, including deleted chats
> Should they hand it over just because they have it?

Not unless LEO sues OpenAI while it's preserving data from the first discovery, otherwise they cannot be compelled to give up data. Nor are they allowed to violate their TOS and use the data outside of retention, despite the FUD you want to spread about it.

> Having the data means it's possible

No, it doesn't. That's not how any of this works.

tomnipotent··on My AI skeptic friends are all nuts
That quote doesn't even remotely align with your previous comment. You have to do some serious mental gymnastics and intentionally interpret with bad intentions to reach the conclusion you did.

> but it's clearly the ones founded

Clearly in your imagination, since you're just putting words in his mouth.

tomnipotent··on OpenAI slams court order to save all ChatGPT logs, including deleted chats
Preserving data for a judicial hold does not give them leeway to use that data for other purposes, but don't let facts get in the way of your FUD.
tomnipotent··on My AI skeptic friends are all nuts
> but instead trying to use the IP-hostile conduct of Google and certain startups (like Scribd or GrooveShark) to smear all developers

I challenge you to point out the language in his post making this claim. Otherwise you're just making stuff up.

He's specifically addressing high-level arguments used against LLM's, and this case he's calling out the fact that one group of people are railing against LLM providers for "IP theft" while simultaneously encouraging and using pirated content. It's perfectly reasonable to call out the hypocrisy in these contradictory positions, to demonstrate that the "IP theft" argument is mostly virtue signaling.

tomnipotent··on My AI skeptic friends are all nuts
> non-sociopathic developers have no right to complain

The very same developers that advocate pirating from Netflix or Disney?

He's pointing out the hypocrisy in a class of people (generally, tech-savvy programmers) that have no problem advocating for piracy and gleefully thwarting the concrete IP rights of businesses on one hand, while defending and bemoaning the abstract IP rights of other content creators on the other hand.

My take away is that he's saying IP rights is a weak argument to use to defend a personal position for not adopting LLM's in your workflow, especially given the context of modern piracy.

tomnipotent··on Conformance checking at MongoDB: Testing that our code matches our TLA+ specs
The original storage engine was terrible, but they wised up and later acquired and adopted WiredTiger as the default. It was sort of their InnoDB moment and went a long way to improving performance, reliability, replication, and other "enterprisey" features.
tomnipotent··on Every wondered how Facebook spoofs Gmail message list snippet text?
This is called preview text/preview header and is even supported by email service providers like Mailchimp or Klaviyo. It's been common practice for going on fifteen years.
tomnipotent··on Open Source Society University – Path to a free self-taught education in CS
> you might otherwise never get the chance to apply for

It kind of reminds me of the whole "luck is not a strategy, but increasing your number of attempts is". Having a network increases the number of chances you have to get lucky. I have a friend that joined a work softball league, and that network eventually led him to a role with another company participating in the league.

tomnipotent··on Open Source Society University – Path to a free self-taught education in CS
> I have never once seen anyone utilize their school network

I've only seen it at one company in Los Angeles where the founders were from USC and several USC students ended up interning with us through their networking program, a few of which joined the company full time later on. It's been the exception so far.

tomnipotent··on Postgres IDE in VS Code
It's not about "thinking of the poor company". It's about lazy low-effort, low-quality comments from people that are sharing their "opinions" that are really just regurgitated interpretations from other low-quality comments. Turtles all the way down.
tomnipotent··on Postgres IDE in VS Code
You forgot to quote this important part:

> The new, free language server

Pylance isn't the same extension as what was originally shipped, it's an entirely different product. Your link backs up my argument, not yours. Releasing an open source project doesn't not obligate them to continue supporting that project indefinitely, and the decision to migrate to a closed-source plugin is a perfectly valid and reasonable decision. Disagreeing with it doesn't mean they've somehow magically violated some implicit obligation you think they owe "the community".

> MS started closing vscode and the extensions years

They never "started". The plugin marketplace and vscode - the proprietary version of "Code - OSS" - has always been proprietary and closed. At no point did they give you something and take it away. Deciding to release a closed-source replacement for an open-source tool is not the same thing, and it's bad faith to argue otherwise to fit your fundamentally flawed argument.

> This was their business model all along get adoption in partly by leveraging the open source community

>Consider MS launch announcement that focuses on open source, extensibility, open community

You're relying on hand-wavy assertions without any evidence to back it up.

> Except they weren't open and did a u-turn on the community a few years later.

Where's the u-turn? I don't see anything in this post that's not true in 2025. Microsoft offers a curated plugin marketplace that's proprietary to vscode, and they provide distribution and hosting for free without requiring anything from creators and users. Pylance continues to be free but closed, Code - OSS continues to be FOSS, vscode continues to be a proprietary version of Code - OSS, plugin authors continue to upload products free-of-charge, and users continue to benefit from that community that Microsoft has fostered.

They've firmly established what their role is in this relationship. There's never been ambiguity between what's vscode closed-source and what's code - oss, unless you've not put in the effort to find out.

Point to an actual, concrete example of where they've acted in bad faith, did a "u-turn", or reneged on a public statement rather than hand-wavy generalizations. It's on you if you've relied on second-hand HN comments and news headlines to build your opinion, and relying on misunderstanding of context isn't a convincing argument.

tomnipotent··on Postgres IDE in VS Code
How can this be described as anything other than business? Local governments making concessions to businesses generating jobs and SALT is par for the course and Microsoft isn't special here.

> One of these is that Microsoft was a pretty bad actor when nobody reigned them in, and I was around at the time.

So was I (was working in Redmond at the time), and their behavior was no worse than what Apple or Google are up to today. The anti-trust case itself was 90% theater, Microsoft was let off with a slap on the wrist but somehow popular culture has decided it was much more devastating than it really was because it reinforces their "M$ bad" bias. It's hard for me not to chalk comments like this to the "borrowed" bucket rather than researched and well-informed opinion, and it just convinces me further than when it comes to Microsoft people are borrowing their opinions rather than earning them.

Yes, Microsoft made some dick moves over 25 years ago and paid for it. They continue to operate like every other business in 2025 despite being the largest company in the world by market cap. At some point folks can't keep pulling up this card like it's a wildcard-win-all.

tomnipotent··on Postgres IDE in VS Code
> It would have been fine if MS had started with their Python extension being proprietary

Except that never happened. Pyright was released first and was and continues to be open source. Pylance was built on Pyright but has never been open source. No promises or commitments were made otherwise. Deprecating the open source Python Language Server in favor of Pylance is also a perfectly reasonable and valid decision - the community was more than welcome to continue maintaining it, but most people I know continue to rely on Pylance.

> Instead, they lured folks in

Saying this doesn't make it true.

> Instead, they lured folks in (no small part due to open source), and once it became popular, they started turning the screws and making things proprietary and locking it down.

Microsoft has not once backtracked on anything vscode-related that's been open sourced. Trying to villianize them for not making everything open source is an argument with no legs.

> I don't think it is unreasonable to ask someone to make their intentions known up front do you?

They have. Point me to a single actual example of Microsoft operating in bad faith, that isn't them deciding to keep some parts of the ecosystem proprietary while 99% remains FOSS.

> Vscodium is an entirely free and open source fork

Microsoft and the vscode team is not making long-term decisions with vscodium in mind. But they are probably worried about Windsurf and Cursor, the latter of which (a billion-dollar company) was caught violating MS's TOS around the plugin ecosystem.

Microsoft has spent over a decade investing in, curating, and improving the vscode first-party plugin ecosystem and being a rather good steward. I think they're perfectly reasonable in keeping it to themselves. Creators are free to upload their plugins to any alternative marketplace. I don't see any arguments being made that can diminish the open source contribution they've made with code - oss just because parts of the branded vscode are proprietary.

> They released the Python stack as fully open source.

Again, no they didn't. Pyright open source. Pylance always closed source. PLS deprecated. But you're entitled to what you borrowed.

tomnipotent··on Postgres IDE in VS Code
> VSCode's marketing

Point to this marketing. Here's the blog announcement on the 1.0 releases - what I can't find are any examples of Microsoft over-promising.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160422123116/https://code.visu...

> MS locked things down... and MS has artificially prevented vscode forks from using those extensions

Or like any growing and maturing project they established boundaries - one of which was that the plugin marketplace was proprietary, which is a perfectly reasonable position. Their existing and continued contributions to vscode are significant, so I think they can be allowed to keep some cards up their sleeves like the plugin marketplace or their Python extension. I'm just flabbergasted at this idea that somehow we're entitled to everything vscode-adjacent "just because", or that Microsoft is obligated to subsidize other billion-dollar business by giving them free features for their vscode forks.

> A bait and switch if I've ever seen one.

Where's the bait? Where's the switch? If the best you have is that they released a closed source plugin I'm going to bucket this as another borrowed opinion.

tomnipotent··on Postgres IDE in VS Code
> Microsoft has a long history of dishonest behavior

Can you point out such recent behavior that isn't just echoing other peoples opinions from the anti-trust case from over two decades ago? It's been my experience that many people seem to "borrow" their opinion about Microsoft from things they've read rather than personal experience so we keep getting the same low-effort criticism ad nauseam.

tomnipotent··on Postgres IDE in VS Code
Those features/tools are still part of SSMS today.
tomnipotent··on Plain Vanilla Web
You err on the side of what's best for your business given known constraints. Usually frameworks make teams more productive, and that's worth more than "simplicity", whatever that means to you.
tomnipotent··on EPA Plans to Shut Down the Energy Star Program
It's not a regulation, but an opt-in voluntary program.
tomnipotent··on OpenAI reaches agreement to buy Windsurf for $3B
Do you consider the Microsoft-managed plug-in marketplace and infrastructure to be a private or public resource? From my understanding Microsoft has never been vague on the position that the plugin marketplace is exclusive to the official VS Code distribution, and the TOS specifically forbids forks from doing so.

Cursor and other forks have decided to circumvent this, some even going so far as to use proxies to bypass restrictions.

I'm not convinced Microsoft owes other billion dollar companies free access to a product they've built, curated, and supported for over a decade. Plug-in authors are not restricted from publishing their products on competing marketplaces.

tomnipotent··on Evolving OpenAI's Structure
There's a canyon of a difference between excitement and buzz vs. hype. There was buzz in 2022, there was hype in 2023. No one was spending billions in this space until a public demarcation point that, not coincidentally, happened right after ChatGPT.
tomnipotent··on Evolving OpenAI's Structure
> LLM AI was being reported on all over the place.

No, it wasn't.

As a proxy, here's HN results prior to November, 2022 - 13 results.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1667260800&dateRange=custom&...

Here's Google Trends, showing a clear uptick May 2023, and basically no search volume before (the small increase Feb. 2023 probably Meta's Llama).

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge...

As another proxy, compare Nvidia revenues - $26.91bln in 2022, $26.97bln in 2023, $60bln 2024, $130bln 2025. I think it's clear the hype didn't start until 2023.

You're welcome to point out articles and stores before this time period "hyping" LLM's, but what I remember is that before ChatGPT there was very little conversation around LLM's.

tomnipotent··on Evolving OpenAI's Structure
ChatGPT was not released to the general public until November 2022, and the mobile apps were not released until May 2023. For most of the world LLM's did not exist before those dates.
tomnipotent··on A PostgreSQL planner semi-join gotcha with CTE, LIMIT, and RETURNING
Could be a generational thing. There was a time not every query planner would properly eliminate columns based on the final projection and any intermediary copies required more I/O if you included everything. Even now I still find myself following "best practices" for things that haven't been relevant in a decade.
tomnipotent··on We fell out of love with Next.js and back in love with Ruby on Rails
I can remember vastly more instances where I've been frustrated as a user of an app or website by losing state, than remember state.
tomnipotent··on DuckDB is probably the most important geospatial software of the last decade
DuckDB doesn't require a running server. I run duckdb in a terminal, query 10,000 CSV or parquet files and run SQL on them while joining to data hosted in sqlite, a separate duckdb file using its native format, or even Postgres.
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