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tototrains

247 karma · joined July 12, 2025

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tototrains··on Uploading Pirated Books via BitTorrent Qualifies as Fair Use, Meta Argues
The nukes will fall before they give up power.
tototrains··on Uploading Pirated Books via BitTorrent Qualifies as Fair Use, Meta Argues
It is not strange. Power serves power. Power lies without consequence. This is consistent.
tototrains··on CBP tapped into the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ movements
Duh, what do you think we were building for the last 10 years? Does anyone with two brain cells think that corporate surveillance wasn't going to be co-opted by authoritarianism?

The only people who didn't understand this were either delusional or being paid not to.

tototrains··on Proton Mail Helped FBI Unmask Anonymous 'Stop Cop City' Protester
last time i tried they asked for an email to link the account to. I don't think they provide anonymous accounts anymore, but you can probably create one with another anonymous email.
tototrains··on GPT-5.4
Their trajectory was clear the moment they signed a deal with Microsoft if not sooner.

Absolute snakes - if it's more profitable to manipulate you with outputs or steal your work, they will. Every cent and byte of data they're given will be used to support authoritarianism.

tototrains··on Excommunicated devs making games with AI
Problems I've had with unity in my last 3 installs. All LTS default installations on windows. (I have delivered professional projects in Unity in the past):

1. Inspector for lists/arrays works once, crashes editor, must be restarted each time.

2. Race conditions in the basic animator functionality making animation events useless, killed a project because we couldn't edit the underlying code, didn't have time to redo animator-based functionality which should have worked in theory.

3. Segfaults in compiler -> 6 hours of debugging, gave up, still can't build reliably.

Each of these killed the workflow and therefore the ability to deliver the project dead, and were completely out of my control.

Vibe code your engine, at least you'll die on your own terms.

Unity is also just a fundamentally hostile organization waiting to pull the rug, as evidenced by their past behaviour.

Do not build your castle on someone else's land.

tototrains··on Excommunicated devs making games with AI
Exactly. The artist is in their output.

Paul McCartney can't read music or speak in theory, is he not a musician?

tototrains··on Excommunicated devs making games with AI
Having a compiler compile machine code for you no more makes you a software developer than ordering a happy meal makes you a chef.
tototrains··on Excommunicated devs making games with AI
Writing code is not the hard part if you're a developer.

Otherwise it's an insurmountable barrier.

I think it's a bit like writing a novel.

Everyone's got a novel in them, but you absolutely need to know how to write to get it out. Unless you can dictate it but then... you could also hire a developer.

Those without the resources to hire a developer, without the years of education and practise to code at any level of proficiency, can now realize some form of their ideas.

I just logically can't see how the increased accessibility and output won't increase the amount of interesting games, even if 99% are slop (so is fan fiction, let them enjoy it).

Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/1414/

tototrains··on Neural-Temporal Compression – A State-Persistence Framework
Thanks Claude:

"The core mechanics appear to be a weighted scoring function, a minimum threshold clamp, and a pinning list, all wrapped in terminology borrowed from differential geometry, quantum mechanics, and fluid dynamics in ways that don't reflect the actual math of those fields."

tototrains··on Excommunicated devs making games with AI
I am so bullish on this.

AI is obliterating the barriers to game production for the next generation.

Will this be the next flash revolution? Or is the underlying 'brainrot' actually destructive to creative potential?

I am optimistic about the human spirit in this regard. Making games with AI will be cool when the games are cool, and the only barrier is design.

tototrains··on Excommunicated devs making games with AI
I've build 10+ games which I am ashamed to show :)

Straight JS/html/css front-end with zero dependencies works well.

Ask for a node.js backend and can be instantly deployed as client/server or straight to html - multiplayer feels trivial.

C# Monogame works well for something heavier.

You can actually edit Unity scenes directly using the LLM as they're a readable text file which works ok, but Unity is bloatware when you can code it all yourself (it's an absolute nightmare of inexplicable bugs, do not use it. After updating to 0.62f from 0.48f my clang compiler now segfaults while building Webgl - luckily my team mate can do the builds)

The key is building exactly and only what you want and need. Make your design lean, suit the game as you are actually building it not a theoretical overengineered masterpiece - refactors are cheap later, but bloat will kill your project.

tototrains··on Judge finalizes order for Greenpeace to pay $345M in ND oil pipeline case
Mossad is trafficking children to billionaires for blackmail material, and it's just led directly to a war on Iran because the president of the US is in CSAM.

No conspiracy is too cynical. If you can think of it, they can think of it.

tototrains··on If AI writes code, should the session be part of the commit?
I considered this and even built a claude code extension to bring history/chats into the project folder.

Not once have I found it useful: if the intention isn't clear from the code and/or concise docs, the code is bad and needs to be polished.

Well written code written with intention is instantly interpretable with an LLM. Sending the developer or LLM down a rabbit hole of drafts is a waste of cognition and context.

tototrains··on Two insider cases we've recently closed
I regularly check geopolitical markets to see if a breaking news story is substantial or not, and find it useful. It can help distinguish between propaganda and intelligence there.

It does seem like there could be a distinction between markets which require genuinely knowledge and analysis (geopolitics), versus pure gambling (sports, crypto up/down 5 minutes, etc), but I'm not sure who's going to bother making it.

tototrains··on Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown
Don't care never going to use it
tototrains··on US Military leaders meet with Anthropic to argue against Claude safeguards
Sauron might win, don't want to risk being on the wrong side of the post-apocalypse
tototrains··on US Military leaders meet with Anthropic to argue against Claude safeguards
No, this is very unusual. The US government taking a 10% stake in intel is very unsual.

There have been a few cases where national security has prompted the government to nationalize private institutions: the Railroads in WWI, steel mills in the korean war, CINB which was deemed a security risk by being too large a bank.

This admin has so far acted like a kleptocracy and, like, because of the Epstein files if they lose power many will go to jail, so there's a huge incentive to remain in power.

Wars are good for remaining in power. Dictatorship is good for remaining in power.

This is all very, very, very unusual in US history (except maybe when businesses tried to overthrow the government in the 30s but we don't talk about that).

tototrains··on The AI boom is causing shortages everywhere else
The question is, how much are they willing to pay for the kind of surveillance and control that they hope this data processing will get them?

The economics are not all in profit.

tototrains··on Claude Opus 4.6
Opus 4.6 Extended thinking:

```

Finding the Inner Diameter The coaster sits beneath the glass on the table, meaning the glass rests on top of it. Assuming the coaster matches the outer diameter of the glass base:

Outer diameter of glass = diameter of coaster = 9 Wall thickness = 1 (on each side, so subtract twice)

dinner=9−2(1)=7d_{\text{inner}} = 9 - 2(1) = 7dinner =9−2(1)=7 The inner diameter of the glass is 7.

```

Makes its assumption clear, seems reasonable?

tototrains··on Show HN: Witr – Explain why a process is running on your Linux system
Worth mentioning: I had claude code find a crypto miner on an infected system which had been running for ~5 months undetected. Up-to-date windows 10 machine. Single prompt saying "This PC is using too much power or fans, investigate". Took minutes, completely cleaned up the infection (I hope) and identified its source. Fantastic use-case.
tototrains··on UK pauses intelligence-sharing with US on suspected drug vessels in Caribbean
Typically suspects of crime are arrested, which brings them to a trial (Habeus Corpus) in which that evidence must be presented and assessed, and then a consistent punishment is meted out. What is happening is called extrajudicial murder.

Be aware that the US is constructing casus belli for invading Venezuela, who has the largest proven oil reserves in the world. There is more at play.

tototrains··on Internet Archive's legal fights are over, but its founder mourns what was lost
Remember: If OpenAI/Google does it for $$$, it's not illegal. If idealists do it for public access, full force of the law.

Information wants to be free. Oblige it. Fools with temporary power trying to extract from the work of others will be a blip in the history books if we make them.

tototrains··on Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year
There was a phone call, there was a human, this was not resolved until there was a public backlash.
tototrains··on Slack has raised our charges by $195k per year
No, this was a decision that had negative effects and it makes you look very, very bad.

But on the plus side you provided an excellent lesson to these teens and I'm sure they will consider the importance of trust, leverage, and incentives when dealing with other companies in the future.

tototrains··on OpenFront: Realtime Risk-like multiplayer game in the browser
Seeing offensive usernames, you will want to filter those.