sobchak
@sobchak@programming.dev
- Comment on Solutions for remote access? 15 hours ago:
Port forward/poke holes in firewall + dynamic DNS.
- Comment on Half of the US Now Requires You to Upload Your ID or Scan Your Face to Watch Porn 4 days ago:
I think California recently passed the Digital Age Assurance Act, which was backed by Google,Meta, and OpenAI. I think it goes into effect in 2027.
- Comment on ChatGPT is down worldwide, conversations disappeared for users 4 days ago:
I find it detrimental to my productivity when integrated into an editor/IDE. I’ve found the “autocomplete” causes subtle bugs that I end up overlooking because I’m trying to go fast and putting too much trust in the generated lines/snippets. Tracing down these bugs becomes a huge time-sink. I do use chatbots in the browser for various things; mostly as a kind of “search” for alternative ways of doing things, frameworks, libraries, and algorithms. Agentic vibe-coding is ok for small one-off tools/scripts you wouldn’t need to maintain, IMO.
- Comment on Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out 6 days ago:
Indeed, and I give them credit. China is unironically leading the world in scientific progress. I wouldn’t recommend using their services though, for privacy reasons (same with the US).
- Comment on Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out 1 week ago:
If you’re not paying, you’re the product. Even on Chinese services. Alibaba does train my favorite local models though (Qwen).
- Comment on The cloud is just someone else's computer, but the internet is just someone else's network 1 week ago:
I’ve been going down this rabbit hole myself. Already set up a solar Meshtastic node and MeshCore repeater. Kinda cool, very low bandwidth and pretty unreliable though.
It’s my understanding that encryption is illegal on amateur radio bands. I’m thinking about getting a license anyways; looks fun.
HaLow, BATMAN, Reticulum and stuff like that also look cool, but I haven’t messed around with those yet.
I think radio will always have bandwidth/congestion problems. It’s like everyone within range is using the same “wire.”
I also like overlay networks like Tor and I2P, but it’s possible those will eventually be blocked or made illegal in many countries, if governments keep heading in the direction they seem to be heading.
- Comment on RAM is so expensive that stores are selling it at market prices 1 week ago:
OpenAI just bought the raw wafers? WTF.
- Comment on RAM is so expensive that stores are selling it at market prices 1 week ago:
I think the RAM manufacturers were found to be guilty of colluding/price-fixing in that case (maybe this case too).
- Comment on Nearly a quarter of U.S. households live paycheck to paycheck, report finds 2 weeks ago:
I think you may have a misconception of what the bottom 25% of earners do. Or, maybe I do. I don’t know anyone that does that stuff regularly, not even the high earners I know.
- Comment on Peter Thiel dumps entire Nvidia stake, slashes Tesla holdings amid bubble fears 2 weeks ago:
Not really. TSMC has a near monopoly on the advanced fabrication, and ASML has a near monopoly on the lithographic machines TSMC uses. Nvidia is a fab-less designer. Google has its TPUs, and Amazon has some kind of custom chip too.
- Comment on Trump scraps tariffs on beef, coffee and tropical fruit in a push to lower grocery store prices 3 weeks ago:
I’m guessing he got his bribes.
- Comment on Just seen the latest American Opinion polls. 3 weeks ago:
I think the laws are just meant as a soft-ban. There may be legal complications with outright banning strip clubs. The no physical contact takes away what I think make up stripper’s largest income source, and no nipples and alcohol makes it a less attractive place to go. I had a few hours to waste in a city once, waiting on a flight, and walked into one of these strip clubs. There was only one stripper there, one bartender, and I was the only customer; so I’m guessing it really did hurt the market.
- Comment on Just seen the latest American Opinion polls. 3 weeks ago:
I think that’s changed a bit. Hooters went bankrupt, and many local governments have heavy restrictions on strip clubs, such as no nipples can be shown, no physical contact, no license to serve liquor, etc.
- Comment on Stop cramming everything onto one Pi: treat your home lab like a tiny ISP - hardware, stack, backups and an update plan 3 weeks ago:
You can boot Pis off an USB HDD or SSD. I think there are specific hats for that as well. But yeah, backups, at least of configs, are nice.
- Comment on Why do Republicans hate the poor so much? 3 weeks ago:
The Alt-Right Playboook: Always A Bigger Fish explains that conservatives have a strong preference of hierarchy and order. They have this preference even if they are low on the hierarchy. They reason that maybe they themselves didn’t work hard enough, weren’t smart enough, or whatever, so don’t deserve to be higher up. They gain a sort of comfort from “knowing their place.” Those lower than them on the hierarchy deserve even less.
I think this explanation is spot-on, and is more or less true for every “conservative” I’ve known. I suppose fascism also has this love of hierarchy, which is what the Republican party really is now (or, at least, very similar to it).
- Comment on God ****** dammit, here we go again 4 weeks ago:
I was thinking about this earlier. The password manager browser plugin I use (Proton Pass) defaults to staying unlocked for the entire browser session. If someone physically gained access to my PC while my password manager was unlocked, they’d be able to access absolutely every password I have. I changed the behavior to auto-lock and ask for a 6-digit PIN, but I’m guessing it wouldn’t take an impractical amount of time to brute-force a 6-digit PIN.
Before I started use a password manager, I’d use maybe 3-4 passwords for different “risks,” (bank, email, shopping, stupid shit that made me sign up, etc). Not really sure if a password manager is better (guess it depends on the “threat” you’re worried about).
- Comment on U.S. Tech Layoffs Hit Two-Decade High in October 4 weeks ago:
IDK. Tech companies are bringing in more revenue than ever. The trend seems to be companies reporting great revenue growth, then laying off shortly after, to which the investors seem to reward. In the past, layoffs would usually bring stock prices down, since they have less human capital to generate profit from.
- Comment on The 512KB Club is a collection of performance-focused web pages from across the Internet. To qualify your website must both be actually useful and under 512KB in size. 4 weeks ago:
Interesting, didn’t know that’s how modern browsers worked. Guess my understanding was outdated from the HTTP/1 standard.
- Comment on The 512KB Club is a collection of performance-focused web pages from across the Internet. To qualify your website must both be actually useful and under 512KB in size. 4 weeks ago:
Is it just the HTML that should be under 14kb? I think script, CSS, and image (except embedded SVGs) are separate requests? So these should individually be under 14kb to get the benefit?
- Comment on Death of beloved neighborhood cat sparks outrage against robotaxis in San Francisco 4 weeks ago:
I believe these cars drive on the same roads all day, whereas people are likely to be driving in and out of areas these systems are not familiar with. I suppose a good comparison would be of a taxi driver that only operates in the same area as the driverless cars, if that exists.
- Comment on The Big Short Guy Just Bet $1 Billion That the AI Bubble Pops 4 weeks ago:
His company bought puts. They are less risky, because you don’t need to maintain margin. What you pay to buy them is all you can lose.
- Comment on YSK before you buy a replacement for your cellphone that has stopped charging, buy the $10 cleaning kits and spend the time deep cleaning the phone's charging port. 4 weeks ago:
I used to use these, but I think they contributed to my charging port failing, so I just try to use wireless for everything. I’ve read of other people that had the same issue. I think the cause was electrical arcs when attaching and detaching. Or maybe ferreous shavings getting in the pins. Whatever it was, it damaged in the charging circuit.
- Comment on ICE's 'Frightening' Facial Recognition App is Scanning US Citizens Without Their Consent 5 weeks ago:
The judiciary “interprets” the constitution. Trump filled the judiciary with loyalist or otherwise ideologically aligned judges during this term and his previous. The supreme court ruled last year that the president has immunity, and the president has the ability to pardon people, so it seems the administration is pretty much “above the law.” Even when the courts do push back, they’re acting like they’re powerless, and the admin’s tactics seems to be just ignoring, stalling, or taking the “ain’t no rules says a dog can’t play basketball” approach to working around the courts. Yes, the constitution has been severely weakened, and will probably continue to weaken.
- Comment on Why have so many services started using single-factor passwordless authentication in the last little while? 5 weeks ago:
I think to reduce friction for gaining new users.
- Comment on My collection is growing 5 weeks ago:
- Comment on Microsoft seemingly just revealed that OpenAI lost $11.5B last quarter 5 weeks ago:
Yeah, if I was a demon, I’d probably invest in surveillance, private prison companies, and whatever companies supply law enforcement equipment.
- Comment on How often do you update software on your servers? 5 weeks ago:
Ain’t broke and I can’t be bothered to update. Not accessible publicly either. It also runs some software with very specific and brittle dependencies and I don’t care to risk breaking it. If distro is EOL (probably is) then it’d be a pretty time consuming getting everything set up again.
- Comment on Microsoft seemingly just revealed that OpenAI lost $11.5B last quarter 5 weeks ago:
That would be nice. I don’t know how to do that other than programming it yourself with something like langgraph.
- Comment on Microsoft seemingly just revealed that OpenAI lost $11.5B last quarter 5 weeks ago:
Yeah, IDK. I’m still in gold and dunno what to switch to. Gold will likely fall with stocks if we go into a recession, which I think we will (on the other hand if they print tons of money, which is likely, that’s positive for gold). I don’t see anything I’m comfortable with switching to yet.
- Comment on Microsoft seemingly just revealed that OpenAI lost $11.5B last quarter 5 weeks ago:
I have enough money (for now). Divested from all tech during inauguration funding news, invested in European defence companies, and then just gold because all the crazy uncertainty about everything. Still made pretty good gains, but not as much as if I stayed in tech.
