>The real tragedy is not that Hims exists, but that it works so perfectly. Every day, thousands of people choose their compounded weight-loss drugs over FDA-approved alternatives, their combination ED pills over established single-ingredient treatments, their algorithmic consultations over actual medical care. They make these choices not because the products are better, but because the entire experience has been optimized to feel more like shopping and less like confronting the mortality and vulnerability that define the human condition.
Strongly disagree with almost everything in this article, but specifically this. The reason people make these choices is not because of slick marketing working against them, it's because the existing process to get medical treatment is paternalistic, hard to navigate and often expensive.
If you want safe and really high quality medical care you should absolutely have a personal physician you have a personal relationship with, who understands your lifestyle, your risk factors for side effects, and your medical needs deeply. How many Americans have that? Maybe a few dozen? The market has responded to just how terrible the existing system is.
If you use this, all of your code data will be sent to Google. From their terms:
https://developers.google.com/gemini-code-assist/resources/p...
When you use Gemini Code Assist for individuals, Google collects your prompts, related code, generated output, code edits, related feature usage information, and your feedback to provide, improve, and develop Google products and services and machine learning technologies.
To help with quality and improve our products (such as generative machine-learning models), human reviewers may read, annotate, and process the data collected above. We take steps to protect your privacy as part of this process. This includes disconnecting the data from your Google Account before reviewers see or annotate it, and storing those disconnected copies for up to 18 months. Please don't submit confidential information or any data you wouldn't want a reviewer to see or Google to use to improve our products, services, and machine-learning technologies.
With transcribing a talk by Andrej, you already picked the most challenging case possible, speed-wise. His natural talking speed is already >=1.5x that of a normal human. One of the people you absolutely have to set your YouTube speed back down to 1x when listening to follow what's going on.
In the idea of making more of an OpenAI minute, don't send it any silence.
E.g.
ffmpeg -i video-audio.m4a \
-af "silenceremove=start_periods=1:start_duration=0:start_threshold=-50dB:\
stop_periods=-1:stop_duration=0.02:stop_threshold=-50dB,\
apad=pad_dur=0.02" \
-c:a aac -b:a 128k output_minpause.m4a -y
Hi - I work on this. Uptake is a steep curve right now, spare a thought for the TPUs today.
Appreciate all the takes so far, the team is reading this thread for feedback. Feel free to pile on with bugs or feature requests we'll all be reading.
I love how fragmented Google's Gemini offerings are. I'm a Pro subscriber, but I now learn I should be a "Gemini Code Assist Standard or Enterprise" user to get additional usage. I didn't even know that existed! As a run of the mill Google user I get a generous usage tier but paying them specifically for "Gemini" doesn't get me anything when it comes to "Gemini CLI". Delightful!
All the bickering about the validity of this specific story and the “if you don’t like it don’t ever leave home to go anywhere ever” misses the crux of the issue that these articles are trying to raise:
* Do we agree that a law enforcement arm of any country should be allowed to perform warrantless searches of electronic devices?
* Do we find it acceptable that persons with critical views are denied entry to countries that profess protection of speech for its citizens?
* If we find either of the above objectionable, what should we be doing to stop it?
The reality is that this is on the rise, not just in the USA but globally, and we should be having frank discussions on whether this is acceptable or not given its repercussions.
For context, despite my critique of an unnamed EMEA government, they’ve happily let me into their country repeatedly to do work for an employer, associate with my colleagues, and perform volunteer work within its borders. On the flip side, I have serious doubts about my ability to enter authoritarian regimes like China because of my outspoken critique of government policies, regardless of my intentions within their borders.
This [broader issue] is what we should be discussing, not nuanced specifics over a single incident.
> "placed in a cell"
I think the title is deficient and should be based on this higher-weighted fact, over the weaker phrasing "refused entry".
"Tourist jailed without trial for possessing political cartoon"
Wonder what the "political correctness is bad" "nobody is allowed to crack jokes anymore" "cancel culture is out of control" crowd will say about this one...
Copying from another post. I’m very puzzled on why people don’t talk more about essential complexity of specifying systems any more:
In No Silver Bullet, Fred Brooks argues that the hard part of software engineering lies in essential complexity - understanding, specifying, and modeling the problem space - while accidental complexity like tool limitations is secondary. His point was that no tool or methodology would "magically" eliminate the difficulty of software development because the core challenge is conceptual, not syntactic. Fast forward to today: there's a lot of talk about AI agents replacing engineers by writing entire codebases from natural language prompts. But that seems to assume the specification problem is somehow solved or simplified. In reality, turning vague ideas into detailed, robust systems still feels like the core job of engineers.
If someone provides detailed specs and iteratively works with an AI to build software, aren’t they just using AI to eliminate accidental complexity—like how we moved from assembly to high-level languages? That doesn’t replace engineers; it boosts our productivity. If anything, it should increase opportunities by lowering the cost of iteration and scaling our impact.
So how do we reconcile this? If an agent writes a product from a prompt, that only works because someone else has already fully specified the system—implicitly or explicitly. And if we’re just using AI to replicate existing products, then we’re not solving technical problems anymore; we’re just competing on distribution or cost. That’s not an engineering disruption—it’s a business one.
What am I missing here?
I think this is pretty consistent with the old school 1950s views of the current administration. Companies can prioritize profits over people again. Yeah, dump in the rivers, dump in the woods, just drive around in circles dumping in an empty lot. You don’t need masks- give everyone cancer and blow some shit up, maybe get some acid burns. Super-fund sites? When was the last one we had anyway- we need more of ‘em- lots more! Let’s let the kids eat the lead paint and complain of the smells wafting into their cars from the chemical, paper, etc. plants on road trips, just like the olden days!
You have to check out their incredible safety investigation videos on youtube. I don't know how well-organized or efficient they are but clearly their role needs to be played by someone - and as a taxpayer I appreciate that they are doing it in a way that educates and informs.
Just a few months back I said I would never use uv. I was already used to venv and pip. No need for another tool I thought.
I now use uv for everything Python. The reason for the switch was a shared server where I did not have root and there were all sorts of broken packages/drivers and I needed pytorch. Nothing was working and pip was taking ages. Each user had 10GB of storage allocated and pip's cache was taking up a ton of space & not letting me change the location properly. Switched to uv and everything just worked
If you're still holding out, really just spend 5 minutes trying it out, you won't regret it.
They mention the Pixel and I just got to say, I wish someone would bring back the fingerprint reader on the back of the phone. That was seriously the best solution. Fastest way to unlock your phone, because no matter how slow the fingerprint reader is you activate it while pulling it out of your pocket. I honestly don't get why people like Face ID more (what I currently use). Someone, please bring this back
Amazon remains totally complacent of these issues which are now professionally hacked by China based providers day in and out. Tons of vitamins are now fake and downright harmful. A lot of books, even small scale ones, are also fake and very low quality.
I tried to move my purchases to Walmart and surprisingly, even after 25 years, they haven’t got act together. Walmart even haven’t recognized that they should jump on this problem by prominently showing authentic brand logo or something.
I also tried to move all my books purchasing to B&N and again, surprisingly, they haven’t learned any real lesson in past 25 years. Their website is clunky, they charge $7 delivery fee, they can’t even deliver to my nearest their own shop for free!
Amazon is definitely riding on this utterly deficient competitors and that’s why they get to be so complacent.
Distracting yourself from distractions by building an overly complex system to help you do that, and writing an article about it, is certainly a very HN-ish thing to do.
Patrick's "salary negotiation" piece has made the rounds here a number of times, and I always have the same reaction to it: It probably works, if you are already a software celebrity like Patrick, or some other highly sought after Captain of the software engineering industry. For us rank-and-file employee number 12887's, I just don't see it working--I've really never negotiated compensation significantly successfully in my 25+ year career. Here's how salary negotiation usually goes if you're not someone like John Carmack:
Them: We'd love to have you join the team! Here's your compensation letter, please get back to us within the next 2 weeks and we'll move forward.
You: Thank you, I believe my background and skills would suggest a compensation of $1.5X instead of $X. Is this possible with your hiring budget?
Them: The offer is for $X and we believe it is appropriate for your level.
You: Maybe my level should be higher then?
Them: Ha Ha
You: Looking at [website A, B, C] I see the average compensation for this role is $1.25X. Surely there is room to move this upward.
Them: We don't agree with that data. The offer is for $X. Shall we move forward?
You: What about equity or bonus, is there any flexibility with those numbers, or vacation time, or...?
Them: The offer is for $X. If you don't want the job, we can move on to one of our other 20 candidates who are in the pipeline for the role.
That's basically how salary negotiations went for almost the entirety of my career. If your results have been different, I'm kind of envious!
> I think Netanyahu belongs in prison
For those who didn't know: There are multiple charges of corruption against him, which he is probably guilty of. But as long as he can lead Israel in a state of emergency, he can have those delayed, or perhaps even work around them.
This new war against Iran also diverts attention away from what is happening in Gaza. The starvation has entered a new critical phase. The populace has been concentrated, so they can no longer work the fields. The number of sites that are handing out food aid have been greatly reduced, and dozens of people are killed every day by Israeli soldiers while they are trying to get to the sites.
That's an all around bad move for the US. Getting dragged into an Israeli war and probably having to carry the can for the next few years alone after getting into a mess not of our own making (well directly anyway).
This is going to hit gas prices, the markets and US security considerations all in order to help keep the current Israeli leadership out of Israeli prisons. Bad move.
> unauthorized
It's a weird one. I don't disagree with your post, still, what is "approved" nukes? A bunch of countries got them, then decided that no one else is allowed them. Then Israel also got them, also "unauthorized", but countries who don't mind pretend they don't know.
In the end there is no authorized and unauthorized nukes, only a calculus of power.
I think Netanyahu belongs in prison, and Trump, the less said the better, but: couldn't have happened to a nicer unauthorized weapons-grade uranium enrichment facility dug into the side of a mountain hours outside of population centers.
If you haven't already, I highly recommend reading up on the GBU-57 "bunker buster" bomb, because it is some Merrie Melodies Acme brand munitions. It's deliberately as heavy as they can make a bomb, not with explosives but just with mass. They should have shaped it like a giant piano.
I think the Chinese law is effective in this regard: in order to maintain any non-competition agreement, the company must continue to pay you a monthly compensation amount equal to 30% of your total monthly income when you were at the company. Whenever the payment stops, the non-competition agreement is automatically void.
Modern app bloat in one analogy:
Business logic size: ~20 bytes Total app size: ~47 MB = 47,000,000 bytes
Bloat factor: 47,000,000 / 20 = 2,350,000
Let’s scale this up and say the business logic is 1 pound.
Then the whole app would weigh: 1 lb × 2,350,000 = 2,350,000 pounds
What weighs ~2.35 million pounds?
- A fully loaded Boeing 747-8: ~987,000 lbs
- Another fully loaded 747-8: ~987,000 lbs
- A blue whale: ~330,000 lbs
The business logic is like shipping a 1 lb object (a book, a flash drive, whatever) by loading it into two fully loaded 747s and strapping a blue whale on top.
Just to run 20 bytes of logic.
200 bytes for the business logic.
47MB for the UI & boilerplate around the business logic.
I get that this may be the easiest way to develop and publish an application today, but it's sad that this is the direction we have taken in recent years.
Alternatively, if you don't want to run the whole Electron app, the money is this line:
sudo.exec("/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport en0 -z && ifconfig en0 ether `openssl rand -hex 6 | sed 's/\(..\)/\1:/g; s/.$//'`",>> Casper Klynge, a former Danish and European Union diplomat who worked for Microsoft, said the episode was in many ways the “smoking gun that many Europeans had been looking for.”
Damn right. Strong evidence that Europe should look after their own, and not rely on the good old US of A. Written by an Australian who thinks we should do the same down here.
> The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is their irrelevance.
That's not true. We don't hate billboards because of their irrelevancy. We hate billboards because they're giant ugly attention grabbers that make the world look worse for everybody in exchange for making someone money. If the billboards were all about driving-related products, they'd still suck.
The YouTube ads are hated because that's the whole point. YouTube has something we want (the video), and they're keeping it from us until they we do something we don't want to do (watch an ad). We dislike these ads almost by definition. If we liked them, we'd seek them out, and we'd call them something else, like "movie trailers" or "Super Bowl ads."
The primary thing that makes advertisements disagreeable is their irrelevance. That’s not to say whether or not the advertisement is for a product or service for which the viewer is interested in purchasing but how it relates to the context in which it is viewed.
People complain about billboards next to a countryside highway because it is entirely irrelevant to driving through the countryside. Actual complaints may be about how the billboards block a scenic view but that also seems like another way of complaining about the irrelevance. Similarly, if I am watching a Youtube video, I am never thinking that a disruptive message from a commercial business is relevant to my current activities (uh, passivities?). No advertisement is relevant, not even in-video direct sponsorships, hence SponsorBlock.
If I go to Costco and see an advertisement for tires... well, I’m at Costco, where I buy stuff. Things are sold at Costco and people go there to have things sold to them. I might need tires and realize I can get that taken care of while I’m at Costco. Nearly every advertisement I see at Costco is relevant because it’s selling something I can buy in the same building, indeed usually something juxtaposed close to the advertisement.
I don’t complain about advertisements at Costco because that would be insane. I complain about the advertisements on Youtube because they’re irrelevant and weird but somehow normalized.
making it nearly impossible for regular users to uninstall it without root access, which voids warranties and poses security risks
Stop parroting the corporate propaganda that put us into this stupid situation in the first place. Having root access on devices you own should be a fundamental right, as otherwise it's not ownership.
I suspect a strong link between mass surveillance (by corporations for advertising or by states for intelligence purposes) and the very recent targeting of the senior Iranian nuclear scientist and military officers at their homes in Iran.
Wherever you are from or whatever side of the conflict you are on, I think we can all agree that it’s never been easier to infer so much about a person from “semi-public” sources such as companies selling customer data and built-in apps that spy on their users and call home. It allows intelligence agencies to outsource intelligence gathering to the market, which is probably cheaper and a lot more convenient than traditional methods.
“Privacy is a human right” landed on deaf ears but hopefully politicians will soon realise that it’s a matter of national security too.
Thank you for your important work fighting this battle, it must be exhausting.
The more Google insists on forcing advertising on us, the more we should look closely at the wildly inappropriate and downright scammy ads they are hosting. If they can't leave well enough alone and look the other way on ad blocking, (which is the only way to avoid exposing myself and family to these dangerous ads), they need to be under a lot more scrutiny for the ads they choose to run.
"The reason why we have Linux, and BSDs, and XNU is that they all provide the same baseline API, which was defined from the outside [by POSIX]. The coordination problem was pre-solved, and what remained is just filling-in the implementation."
But that is not at all how Posix operates or has operated. Posix standardises common denominators between existing implementations. The fact that we now have strlcpy(3) and strlcat(3) in Posix 2024, is not because Posix designed and stipulated them. Rather, they appeared in OpenBSD in 1998, were found useful by other *nix-es over time, spread, and were finally taken aboard by Posix that standardised what was already out there and being used! This to me is the very opposite of the point the author is trying to make!