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danluu

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danluu, to random
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"Unfortunately, a recent software update was not successful. Your vehicle cannot be driven.

Please call customer support"

danluu, to random
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How web bloat impacts users with slow devices:

https://danluu.com/slow-device/

danluu, to random
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Interesting to see the rise of ChatGPT-enabled Github spam.

The screenshots below are from one account, but if you search a bit it's very easy to find other examples.

Github doesn't appear to be on top of this at all, e.g., the account mentioned in https://github.com/swarna1101/VeChain-Thor/issues/1 has been spamming repos since last year and hasn't been banned (I reported a bad account once and got no response and nothing happened and haven't bothered since).

I hope this message finds you well. I wanted to reach out to you regarding my recent pull request to your repository. I have made several improvements to the code, which I believe would benefit the project as a whole. Firstly, I have included unit tests, added try-catch blocks, and simplified the multimap-by function to enhance the code's reliability and prevent potential errors. I also have added docstrings to make the code more understandable and easier to navigate. Moreover, I have used a threaded ->> macro to simplify the code and replace the println statement with proper logging to improve the code's readability. Finally, I have enhanced the code's modularity and conciseness, making it more maintainable and easier to modify in the future. I believe that these changes would greatly improve the project's overall quality, and I would be honored if you could review my pull request and consider accepting it. Thank you for your time and consideration. ... tonsky Apr 3, 2023 Here you just delay printing warnings, adding extra data structure that’s passed between widths and its call site. That’s one more thing to keep in mind, which makes it harder to follow ... tonsky Apr 3, 2023 Giving name to #{"0" 0 1200} is good. I would’ve move it inside the function with let, though, to keep everything local ... tonsky Apr 3, 2023 I think java will fail and die on trying to open file anyway, giving you adequate enough exception. But the code remains simple ...
What is path-seq? Did you use ChatGPT to generate this path? ... Why would you suppress exception like this? It is kind of important ... ZoneId/UTC does not exist. Is this really ChatGPT? Have you even run this code? ... I did a review, but overall quality is very bad, sorry. Code uses non-existing functions, which indicates you didn’t even run it, and probably generated it with ChatGPT?
KennethCho-CKH commented Mar 25, 2023 I made several changes to improve the code: Defined constants for file names to make the code more maintainable. Used with statements to ensure files are closed properly when deleting them. Used pathlib consistently throughout the code for better readability and to avoid errors. Added comments to explain the purpose of the code and functions. Reformatted the code to comply with PEP 8 style guidelines for better readability. Moved the imports to the top of the file for better organization. It would be very helpful if you could test the code I write, as I am not entirely certain if everything is working as it should. ------ Nifury left a comment I can't find any with statement in the code 😂 ... It's necessary to add this path to ensure filescfg and _common are imported properly. ... - # We need to remove these files, or they'll end up in the zip files that will be generated. Member @Nifury Nifury Mar 25, 2023 I think this comment is pretty important. ...

danluu, to random
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danluu, to random
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How bad are search results? Let's compare Google, Bing, Marginalia, Kagi, Mwmbl, and ChatGPT:

https://danluu.com/seo-spam/

danluu, to random
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Apparently the Digg "algorithm", back when it worked, was one human being?

I've seen a few lists of "do things that don't scale" success stories, because VCs and founders love to bandy about survivorship bias success stories, but I'd be much more interested in a collection that included both successes and failures so that you could at least attempt to figure out what differentiated the successes and the failures.

danluu, to random
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I wonder why programming culture is (on average) so enamoured with smartness over reasonableness.

It's particularly striking if you hang out with people who have the opposite values (e.g., trades, which, on average, strongly value reasonableness over smartness). By contrast, programming culture seems quite ridiculous?

For example, valuing "very smart" complex stuff that add little value (often negative value) over simple solutions that add a lot of value, e.g., https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1129519032783200256.

danluu, (edited ) to random
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It's amazing how little many of the people who set tech policy understand about tech.

E.g., here's Senator Orin Hatch bragging about chairing the Senate High-Tech Task Force and then, puzzled, asking Zuckerberg how the company could possibly sustain a business if they don't charge users.

Zuck, caught off guard, takes a long pause and responds, "Senator, we run ads" (Zuck and the two FB staffers behind him, a VP and a lobbyist, hold in their laughter, with varying degrees of success).

danluu, to random
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Interesting to see users working around the lack of tactile buttons in some modern cars:

danluu, to random
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A friend of mine listens to various sounds to help her fall asleep in an app that has various "sleep sounds" (ocean, wildlife, etc.)

As a former semi-serious sailor, she was excited to see that there were sailing sounds, so she started them up and immediately fell asleep. She then had rigging-related sailing nightmares all night because the soundtrack has the sounds ropes make when they're under an unsafe level of tension.

danluu, to random
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I feel like people consistently underestimate the size of "web scale" things unless they've had specific exposure to it. I'm curious if other people have noticed this or if this is some kind of bias on my end.

Some examples below (I can't think of any examples going the other direction off the top of my head):

At Google orientation in 2013, an instructor asked people to guess how many servers Google had, and no one was even close (everyone guessed quite low; I didn't guess but wish I did!).

danluu, to random
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As a follow-up to https://mastodon.social/@danluu/109798007902048311, I wonder why there isn't a serious, well-funded, attempt to create a modern forum

If you look at Wikipedia's list of forum software, it's all ancient except discourse, and discourse seems unlikely to ever be something great for users

Its performance is famously terrible. People often point out how unusable it is unless you have a fast phone and the founder's response to this has been to rant about how Qualcomm sucks and need to make faster processors

danluu, to random
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Every once in a while, I think about going to work in the game industry.

danluu, (edited ) to random
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This exchange reminds me of the debate I had with Jeff Atwood on whether or not servers should use ECC memory a decade ago. Jeff said no and I disagreed and said yes in https://danluu.com/why-ecc/.

At the time, there was one argument that could've, theoretically, been overturned by progress: Jeff argued that commodity non-ECC memory was becoming more reliable and was highly reliable. This was not true at the time, and it turns out this still isn't true a decade later.

danluu, to random
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I wonder when (if?) driver behavior will get back to normal. Despite barely driving, most of the most reckless driving I've ever seen has been since the pandemic.

You can see this in the data: 2019-2021 had the biggest (%) increase in U.S. per capita motor vehicle fatalities over a two year period since 1944-1946, which was due to people coming back from the war. Normalized for miles travelled, 2019-2021 had the largest increase over a two year period as far back as there's data (1921).

danluu, (edited ) to random
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Why it's impossible to agree on what's allowed:

https://danluu.com/impossible-agree/

danluu, to random
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It's amazing how often, when I look into why something turned to junk (consumer products, tools, etc.), it turns out that it's because a PE firm or a PE-like software company acquired the thing and then made an extremely short-term optimized move that wiped out most of the value and potential revenue of the thing, e.g., I was looking into why a formerly active automotive forum is now a ghost town and it turned out they got bought by VerticalScope, which has apparently killed ~1k forums?

mbg0001: Their model is to sell the forum user data on the data exchange platforms like DataLogix (now part of Oracle). The idea is that participation in a specialty forum is a huge signal of intent and interest, which is highly valuable to marketers. Even more valuable, if it ties to PII like emails or phone #'s. To VerticalScope, the value is the user database; that's what gives them the reach on the marketing platforms. They don't particularly care about the content of the forum, or forum as an ongoing concern. Scout was another company that was making that play, but thankfully they folded into 247 Sports and got out of that business. wm69: Yeah the guy who set up one of the "replacement forums" is a retired tech nerd, and it wasn't until he set up the new board that he filled us in on all of the shady ass stuff that VS does with user info. At first I thought he was a bit paranoid, but then after talking to the owner of a small Jeep forum and hearing of the strong arm tactics they used on him to try to make him sell, I realized just how fucking scummy they are. It sucks because the forums are a much better way to search for "how to" and help on mechanical stuff than anywhere else, and VS has bought up and pretty much killed of a ton of the old forums. It doesn't cost much at all for a forum either. I'm a mod on one and our total avg monthly cost is about $150. That will grow as our content and members grow, but when you look at what VS is bringing in via a...
I was a vendor on MR2OC, as was my employer (separately), when Verticalscope bought the forum. We hung out for a while and watched VS do their damnedest to take down everything that made that forum special and replace it with everything that generated ad revenue, all the while telling us how much they just loved everything about the forum and how they really wanted to keep everything just as they found it. They'd do something dumb, like inserting viglink keyword links into our posts, and then tell us, gee, gosh, whoops, we sure didn't mean for that to happen, fellas, and I'll make sure my technical team takes care of that right away. Riiiiight. Rinse and repeat ad nauseam. Annual sponsorship bills came due. VS graciously offered existing vendors special "preferred rates" that were something like six or eight times what we were paying the previous owner. When I declined, one of a series of sales reps did a sort of "let me talk to the manager" used-car shuffle and came back with rates that were only nominally less ludicrous. I again declined and quietly walked away from the forum. It seemed like as good a time as any for the old Irish exit. Summary: Verticalscope bad. ... hybridmomentspass: I didnt know about the ad rates, that freaking sucks that's how they do things. Now there are no vendors on there...well, yes, there is one (that I know of) - some LED company that will spam about 4 threads every few months/holidays. I know there are people who sell things that ...
Over the past 7 years, Threadloom has provided enterprise-grade Search and Newsletter services to over 2,000 forums. Threadloom Search was the first forum search engine with threaded results, image search, spell correction, and more, resulting in over 40% click-through rates. Threadloom Newsletter was the first service to automate content curation, sender verification, spam trap navigation, GDPR management, and more. Since acquiring Threadloom last year, our parent company VerticalScope has fully supported our commitment to the forum community. During this time, our team has maintained Threadloom services while contributing to new efforts. Over time, however, it's become clear that we will soon be unable to deliver the quality of service and innovation we initially committed to. As a result, the Threadloom team has made the difficult decision to retire our services. On November 2, 2022, we will turn down all Threadloom services, including Search, Newsletter, List Builder, Insights, Primary Login, and Primary Explorer, and delete all customer data within 30 days of this date. We recommend that customers backup their site and database prior to uninstalling our add-ons, in order to mitigate any potential data loss. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at support@threadloom.com. On behalf of the entire team, thank you for your support. It has been a privilege to serve and help grow your communities. Paul

danluu, to random
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Something I really enjoy is seeing how products signal their quality in funny ways to appease consumer preferences. A few examples below, but if you have other examples, I'd love to hear them.

A simple example is any kind of handheld product that's deliberately made to be heavy because consumers associate heft with quality. In extreme cases, adding a weight for no other purpose than to signal that the item feels "well built" or "solid" or whatever it is people like about heavier items.

danluu, to random
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Saw a headline about how an MIT student used Playground AI with the prompt "Was trying to get a linkedin profile photo with AI editing & this is what it gave me" and it made her white. Tried this with my profile photo and the result reproduced and I became white.

Using a summer photo where I've had more sun exposure, it often turns me South Asian or African. Occasionally (maybe 1 time in 10), I'll become East Asian, but I never stayed Vietnamese or turned into any sort of Southeast Asian.

Output from Playground AI, turns me into a white person.
Another profile photo, this time with short hair and a bit of a tan.
Output from Playground AI with tanned photo; usually turns me into a South Asian person.

danluu, to random
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I wonder why some people find that GPT-4 is a huge productivity boost when doing programming projects outside of their normal domain (e.g., person with no web experience doing a web project) and some people find it to be worse than having no help at all.

I've seen quite a few people publicly report huge gains, but on private slacks/discords I'm on, I've mostly seen people get stuck when they end up with a mess they don't understand when GPT-4's suggestions don't fix their issues.

danluu, to random
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This mobile-first C editor is incredible:

https://medc.mark.dev/

I hope I never have a use for this, but the editor has a lot of interesting ideas, some of which I'd love to see in desktop editors.

danluu, to random
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A site with ranked feed has somehow decided that I want to see viral UX/designer content.

In every viral UX comparison I've seen so far, the "good" version looks more "modern" but is also less legible / usable. E.g., below, the contrast is lower and legibility is sacrificed for cleanness.

When designers have free reign to do things how they want, the result is often quite unusable: https://twitter.com/danluu/status/1211782987664113664, https://twitter.com/danluu/status/919423128895442944, etc.

Comparison where "good" version is low contrast and and critical information is hard to read.

danluu,
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Reminds me of this story where automotive engineers had to fight designers to get headlights that illuminated the road. They were actually losing the fight until Consumer Reports started testing headlights for function, which created enough of a stink that engineers were able to push for headlights that actually work over headlights that follow modern design principles: https://danluu.com/why-benchmark/

And sure, , but this is a problem that goes back decades across multiple industries.

danluu,
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Long-time Microsoft employees explain changes in Windows:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30019307

Designers were handed full control over UX. Engineers who fought for usability over a slick-looking interface burned out and left after repeatedly being overruled.

danluu, (edited ) to random
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Wow, people really don't like iTerm2 adding an optional AI integration which requires you to enter your OpenAI key to use, calling it "no longer fit for purpose", etc.

Someone pointed out that this feature is optional and not only has to be enabled, but it requires you to enter a key to use. That user was, apparently, reported on gitlab and is now blocked.

https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/-/issues/11470

It reminds me a bit of how some people don't like "algorithms", as in https://x.com/danluu/status/983466330320965632.

danluu, (edited ) to random
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I'm doing mobile performance benchmarking on various slow phones (ones sold in "developing" countries), on a low-latency high-speed internet connection (a computer on WiFi in the same location gets ~1Gbps with a few ms latency).

Using default themes, which blogging platform do you predict has the BEST performance?

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