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tyrust

1,418 karma · joined October 2, 2013

he/him

The opinions stated here are my own, not those of my employer.

Google SWE

Previously: Twitter SWE Google Fiber SWE Google SRE UCB EECS

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tyrust··on Evidence of a spying operation by ICE against left-wing social movements
Well, one that immediately comes to mind is an asylum seeker. Whether or not a country is willing or able to accept this person is, in my opinion, secondary to that person's immediate safety. I would hope that that person would be a well-behaved resident and go through the proper avenues to get documentation. In the meantime, I would consider their illegal immigration a "good" thing.
tyrust··on Evidence of a spying operation by ICE against left-wing social movements
That's pretty interesting, what sort of people have you discussed this with? I'd imagine that many people in the center and leftward would at least try to inject some nuance into such blunt statements.
tyrust··on CSS-Tricks has a new owner
13 year grudge lol
tyrust··on Amazon’s “digital pacifier” for toddlers
I can't imagine having to raise kids with both parents working. Good on you and your partner for holding the line on screen time in spite of the difficulty.

> That drive fucking sucks ass, don't get me wrong, but oh well, that's part of life

Such a great attitude. Wish everyone saw it this way. I've tanked a few car rides like this but I'll do it a hundred more times before I throw a pacifier at my kids.

tyrust··on Google cleared 300 hectares of Finnish forest
That's fair, the discourse do be doodoo at times. Gotta try to stay above it.
tyrust··on Google cleared 300 hectares of Finnish forest
You didn't need that last sentence.
tyrust··on Retired Penn professor arrested for blocking Uber Eats robot
Thank you for your honest answers, this is an interesting thing to think through.

I don't think that the entirety of the public commons needs 100% uptime. Occasional disruption could happen for any number of reasons like temporary events, construction, and protest [0].

"Immediate" action is such a strange requirement to have. Such a desire seems like a waste of police time. Like in TFA's example , the commons were ever so slightly disrupted: anyone could have gone around the woman. Occasional minor to moderate disruption of the commons for the purposes of free expression is a feature of our society that I think should be maintained.

[0] https://www.aclusocal.org/know-your-rights/protesters/

tyrust··on Retired Penn professor arrested for blocking Uber Eats robot
I might agree with you to some extent. At the same time, I find your apparent desire to immediately weaponize the police against protestors fairly disturbing. "Immediate" arrest and physical removal should not be the default first response in a situation like a peaceful protest.
tyrust··on Retired Penn professor arrested for blocking Uber Eats robot
Your claim is that if someone is bothering you then they should be arrested?

I dunno about you, but that's not really how I want our society to work.

As other people have point out, the robot could have navigated around the blockage. Just as you could walk away from someone bothering you without getting the police involved lol.

tyrust··on Why do we need human mathematicians anymore?
The clock is repaired, but a banker doesn't use it. Inspired by the baker, she follows the sun. In the summer she opens while everyone else is asleep. In the winter the windows stay closed until nearly 1000. Locals become increasingly confused by the erratic hours. No one can agree on when the bank will open on a cloudy morning. When confronted she mutters something about the baker. At the local banking conference she presents on her newfound wisdom and receives a standing ovation.
tyrust··on Why are AI agents lying, cheating and coordinating?
> Because they're enabled and suggested to do that in their coding harness.

How do you know this?

> All of this "AI is going to kill us" marketing

The "marketing" this week came from someone that had given up their stake in OAI (Coxon), so I'm more inclined to believe them.

> pull the ladder up

From what I've seen (e.g., Dario's latest essay), AI safety registration proposals aim to target frontier labs whose models have reached a certain threshold. It doesn't seem like trying to pull up any ladder, just making sure the ladder doesn't go too high too fast.

tyrust··on What algorithm did Windows XP use to choose your initial user picture?
If you break early, then you haven't given items later in the list the chance to be selected. You need to go through the entire list in order for every item to have an equal probability of selection.

I didn't get it at first, either, and the Wikipedia article didn't do it for me. This explanation finally got me there: https://florian.github.io/reservoir-sampling/

tyrust··on ChatGPT Images 2.5
The WC3 one is fun. Definitely feels close to what I remember.
tyrust··on We Must Return to the Office to Use AI in Person
You might have a bit of an argument here, but I think there are two major problems.

First, bullshitting in meatspace isn't much of an advantage. To the extent that it is, there is always video calling. What matters for agent training is going to be the output from said bullshitting. You're not really maintaining any moat by going to the office.

And then on the other side, going to the office pretty much sucks. Unless you live close to the office, you're probably looking at least an hour on either side of your day commutting. Using that saved time to work extra at home is an obvious tactical error that I hope people aren't making. I sure as hell don't.

tyrust··on Felony Bench
Same, but nope, just a zero effort slop site.
tyrust··on Flock updates privacy, accountability, security, and transparency safeguards
> I really just want to point out that layman terms and contract law are two different things.

Totally agreed. My point is that their layman use of "ownership" is inaccurate at best, misleading at worst. I'm speaking to the words as they are commonly understood, not the legal definition.

You're probably right this this problem is not unique to Flock: other SaaS companies probably make the same misleading claims about ownership.

tyrust··on Flock updates privacy, accountability, security, and transparency safeguards
> From the beginning, we have been clear that our customers own the data captured by their ALPR cameras. This has always been the case, but some of our contractual language has confused the public on this crucial point... The principle is simple: customers own the data, decide who can access it, and choose who they share it with.

I'm one of the general public that is continually confused by their usage of the word "own". I can't imagine that their language update will make it any more clear.

If the data is on Flock's servers (it is) and accessible by Flock (it is) then it is Flock who owns the data, not the PDs. Sure, they can allow the PDs to have say over what is done with the data, but ultimately Flock has the ability to use the data however they'd like.

This is not hypothetical: Flock have used previously shared data with DHS [0] without the so-called owner's permission and use data for their AI training [1] without option to opt-out.

Their definition of ownership is further contradicted later in this post:

> we will now require case codes for all law enforcement searches by the end of the year.

To be clear, I think this is a good change, but if PDs "own" their data, then they should be able to decide whether or not they want to use this feature.

All in all, this is not ownership.

[0] - https://apnews.com/article/immigration-abortion-license-plat...

[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/apr/...

tyrust··on The lost civic life of movie rental stores
I didn't know the number was so low. That's nice to know.
tyrust··on The lost civic life of movie rental stores
> But there’s always a hidden “now you’ll have to” and “you’ll no longer be able to"

But you can still do all those things from the book. Don't do the things you don't want to do.

tyrust··on Czechia moves to ban mobile phones in schools from September 2027
This is pretty wild, I had no idea any school was like this. What grade and area was this in? Public school?
tyrust··on Leaking YouTube creators' private videos
Wow, that's pretty wild. Updating your post with pictures would be cool.
tyrust··on Leaking YouTube creators' private videos
I understand the purported vulnerability. What I am saying is that I would be surprised if the URL were rendered, let alone made it to the victim.
tyrust··on Leaking YouTube creators' private videos
Why doesn't the article contain proof of either attack in action?

I would be surprised if the second attack worked after what must be at least a couple layers of markdown/html conversion and spam filtering.

disclaimer: work at Google, but far removed from YouTube

tyrust··on Michigan spent $1.8B and only created 602 jobs
With a link to the report: https://www.mackinac.org/archives/2026/s2026-08.pdf

The two largest projects are still under construction, so it might be too early to make any conclusions.

tyrust··on US holds off blacklisting DeepSeek, more than 100 firms deemed security risks
Nice, doubt anything will come of this though.
tyrust··on US holds off blacklisting DeepSeek, more than 100 firms deemed security risks
> talks of nationalizing companies

What is this referring to?

tyrust··on How to earn a billion dollars
$10M is a pretty high amount. FIRE numbers top out around $4M and can be as low as $1M.
tyrust··on A Farmer Donated Land to Turn into a Park. The City Is Building a Data Center
There are plenty of highly effective charities.
tyrust··on Show HN: I Derived a Pancake
Yessir, it's slop.
tyrust··on Are You Enjoying Our Linguine? (2025)
It's a well-written essay, imo. Good pacing, interesting turns of phrase, and it conveys an anxiety that they're clearly feeling.

It's ok if you didn't like it, but you don't have to be mean about it.

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