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zdc1

791 karma · joined September 1, 2021

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zdc1··on AI text watermarking and quality loss
In the post-Claudism future, we'd need a transcription -> watermark detection workflow to tell who writes their own stuff
zdc1··on We won't "just hang out"
This article tells us more about the author than anything else really. If they can see themselves spending their infinite leisure time on dopamine maxxing rather than being with humans... well, you do you man. If "work" is the only reason you get out of bed, form relationships, or do anything at all, please feel free to stay in bed.

It's scary but I truly believe that everyone should try and find meaning in life outside of their work (or make their "work" building or creating something they want to see exist in the world). Go step in a stream, pluck some guitar strings, sip a strong cocktail, touch grass...

I find a lot of meaning in my human connections. I will always have these, because I want to have them and put in work to grow and maintain them. I've taken a long career break and loved having time to read, exercise, see friends, and be an overall well-rounded human being. I don't see abundance as a universal problem here.

zdc1··on Someone on Torrent Sites Kept Fucking with My Sonarr
I've found the best way to do private trackers is to seed everything you download, all the time. If you seed enough of the long tail of things, ratio becomes easier. This also helps people get into a show that peaked a few years ago (after most of the seeders have moved on), which can be harder on public trackers.
zdc1··on Bookofjoe's Favorite Thing: Best Pill Splitter
People who have to regularly take half a pill sometimes struggle with breaking the pill into clean halves, or don't like having to use a kitchen knife or whatever and clean it later.
zdc1··on Triple-A Minesweeper
All it's missing is a "Focus, S!"

Edit: I was impatient. I got my "Focus, Sweeper." Life is good.

Edit 2: It's actually impossible to lose the game. This is art.

zdc1··on Can you use autoregressive diffusion to generate market data?
Or, thankfully, for Jane Street: the (eventually) efficient market hypothesis

There's definitely alpha out there, but I wouldn't want to make it my job to look for it

zdc1··on JetBrains reports revenue growth, net financial loss for 2025
Ahh silly me
zdc1··on JetBrains reports revenue growth, net financial loss for 2025
The real surprise is how small their balance sheet is given they're such a well known and loved name. 16m CZK is 0.7m USD annual revenue.

There are companies where you'd rather be the owner, and others where you'd rather be an employee, or a customer. I think the JetBrain's customers are the real winners in this one.

zdc1··on The Tao of Backup
I feel that this made more sense in 1997. Especially in the context of Windows Server and whatever people ran on it.
zdc1··on So you think you could be an electrician?
It seems that both blue and white collar jobs have their share of workplaces where in a do-the-task-or-maybe-get-fired situation, it's up to the employee to enforce their own boundaries and decide when saying no is a safer choice for their long term physical/mental safety. (Of course, sometimes you only realise this when it's too late.)
zdc1··on So you think you could be an electrician?
I had some time and decided to renovate my kitchen. I'm doing everything myself: plasterboard/drywall, flooring, electrical, plumbing, cabinets, painting, etc. I had time to learn the standards and do it all the 'right' way, and I'm almost done.

On one hand it's been incredibly enriching and rewarding. I'll never look at a room the same again. Some areas, like woodworking, also surprisingly required much more deep thinking than I'd anticipated.

On the other hand, I couldn't imagine going through half the nonsense I went though for someone else, especially an ungrateful/fussy/penny-pinching customer.

zdc1··on Court agrees with EFF: Utah's VPN law demands a technical impossibility
They can, but any friction here means less ad revenue, as people will just go to a site with less friction
zdc1··on Newgrounds.com – A community of games, music, and art
Time to play some Nuclear Eagle. It's a game where you're a momma eagle feeding your chicks. Except you're giant and feed them people. And people don't like being eaten, so it has some GTA-style escalation.
zdc1··on September 2026: The world today, as seen by one Polish guy
While there's no magic land of opportunity to flee to, there are still many safe and stable places where one can raise a family and lead a simple life. Especially if you remove the abstraction of countries and look at cities and towns instead. It does depends on what you want and what you're willing to give however, as moving may mean learning a new language and assimilating a new culture. And then there's differences in wealth and earning potential as well, so I guess leaving the USA is more 'bugging out' than 'economic migration'.

OTOH, mobility is a privilege, and it's usually the least privileged who are the most affected by war. So I'm not exactly sure how I feel about my own advice, since it's most useful to those that need it least.

zdc1··on America.gov
This will be a pain for any US folks overseas
zdc1··on Dropbox's Jan 1st 2027 terms of service
This person has over 1000 submissions. Going for the quantity-first approach I guess...

Edit: following up my less productive comment with a productive one: this ToS update was crowd-sourced diff treasure-hunt with, at the end, no treasure to be found. These ToS changes are really quite unremarkable. I wonder which change of terms OP decided were interesting enough to post about.

zdc1··on English: A vs. An
"I go to the dentist every year" implies that you have a usual dentist or some sort of stable routine or plan vs "I go on a trip every year" which implies the journey is yet to be selected/defined from a multitude of options.

So I feel the rule isn't always taken literally, but the vs a is selected based on whether something is up for consideration/substitution rather than something that's well defined and specified.

zdc1··on AI-generated posters don’t have to be horrible
Good "taste" and knowing what you want (and don't want), seem to once again be the trick to success with LLMs.
zdc1··on Waymo in Singapore
Many US/UK/overseas folks won't really understand Singapore's roads because they are such a foreign system. "Traffic" doesn't exist in the western sense of the word there. So because of size, traffic, and all-in vehicle costs, rideshare apps will always be cheaper than owning a car in Singapore.

OTOH, SG's public transport is world class, but could be much better if they gave buses more priority over cars. The door to door experience of buses is already fantastic: they are cheap, accessible (no long walks to platform like the MRT), timely, and well connected. However they are crowded (need more buses) and bus lanes aren't a thing over there.

It's a weird place where they do an amazing job at urban planning but still give as much space to roads as to housing because their richest and most powerful also tend to enjoy driving.

And then there's the culture. Drivers are way too entitled in Singapore. Many have no interest in giving way to pedestrians, and simply aren't interested in "sharing" the road. I'm keen to see less drivers there. It will improve things greatly.

zdc1··on Apple's Dimensional Drawings
You would think this is a great opportunity for Apple to fill a gap in the market (and dogfood their solution too). Guess not...
zdc1··on When anyone can build software, who decides what not to build?
Product design also becomes more important. You can build a new UX every day but your userbase can only handle a new UX or two every year, so creating and validating good ideas and strategies becomes more valuable.
zdc1··on Linux Zoom client proactively reading everything written to X11 clipboard
I recently had to use the browser and was shocked to find there was no option for Gallery View. You were just stuck with one square in the middle that would bounce between different faces. I feel like they have the worst web experience out of all the meeting apps.
zdc1··on The Deathray: A simple way for an untrusted site to freeze a Mac
I remember in the 2000s, Dattebayo fansubs had a custom 404 page (for anyone trying to download an episode before they published it I guess), that would do similar. Endless popups, a really bad full volume audio loop, and every other trick to make it impossible to close the page. Was quite the jumpscare.
zdc1··on We have a year to fix security everywhere
The problem is that lots of people don't want a CMS, they want a platform for development / e-commerce / bookings / whatever. Enforcing vanilla WordPress would push people towards other platforms. Now that could be a good thing, but I doubt WordPress are going to start killing their own marketshare with usage restrictions like that...
zdc1··on PostgreSQL 19 Interactive Tour
Tangential, but the Claude-isms make it a less rewarding read
zdc1··on Splash-free urinals (2025)
I would love to see some Nautilus style urinals because--as a self-interested adult--splashback also hits me if the angle is bad enough. Sometimes I even use the stalls to avoid those porcelain tricksters entirely.
zdc1··on Why are European countries moving their gold out of North America?
Well, why would European gold be stored in America in the first place?
zdc1··on ChatGPT outage – Resolved
Update: I've setup VSCode + Kilo Code + Open Router. It works but it's rough. Amazing how much value a good coding UI brings to the table.

Update 2: Swapped Continue for Kilo Code. It's less rough.

zdc1··on ChatGPT Is Throwing 404
I just gave ChatGPT my $30 because Claude was down...
zdc1··on California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law
Software development is slower in larger, more political organisations (hello Change Advisory Boards) and larger/older/sprawling codebases.

Most governments are huge, highly political, slow moving organisations. It seems to just come with the territory: slower rollout of changes, longer periods to observe the changes in the wild (throw in a few years to see how the law plays in legal cases/challenges), and suddenly you have fewer iterations to get it right.

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