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09:4409:44, 11 February 2026 Steve Yegge's Platform Rant (hist | edit) [26,977 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "{{HistoricalArchive |message=This was accidentally posted publicly and then archived since |source_url=https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611/ }} == Stevey's Google Platforms Rant == I was at Amazon for about six and a half years, and now I've been at Google for that long. One thing that struck me immediately about the two companies -- an impression that has been reinforced almost daily -- is that Amazon does everything wrong, and Google does everything right. Sure...")

07:2507:25, 8 February 2026 Blog/2026-02-08/Nominative Inversion (hist | edit) [2,378 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "frame|center|upright=999|Yosemite valley would never be called Death Valley, but the latter could have been called Valley of Eternal Rainfall Have you noticed that famous places with names that City of Joy or City of God are going to be depressing places? No one ever names an actually fun place City of Joy, and no one ever names a truly divine city City of God. Those nice places will have names like Malibu or Mon...")

01:1401:14, 6 February 2026 Semantic Inflation (hist | edit) [2,333 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Semantic Inflation is the phenomenon experienced by words intended to represent extremes where overuse reduces their significance until references to those extremes have to be raised even higher in order to recreate the same emotional strength. == Examples == Heavy-handed immigration enforcement that harms people might once have been described as unethical, but later as authoritarian, then evil, then fascist, until in 2026 it is often described as "genocide and eth...")

09:3209:32, 31 January 2026 Apply HN for YCombinator S16F3 (hist | edit) [11,449 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "About ten years, Y Combinator attempted to have the Hacker News community pick a startup for them to fund for one of that summer's Fellowship Three. Some users warned that the thing would be gamed, moderators decided to proceed knowing that because it would be too hard to anti-game, the winner was one of the top users on the website causing a few days of drama on the website as he was not awarded and other top users either opposed or supported him. Finally, Apply HN was...")

01:4201:42, 30 January 2026 List of Veriphenic Bugs (hist | edit) [1,140 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "There is much Internet folklore about bugs where the issues seem like they could not be real or are simply a lay user mistakenly drawing relations between things incorrectly where these relationships are nonetheless borne out to be true. This is a list of such 'veriphenic bugs' * [https://web.mit.edu/jemorris/humor/500-miles We can't send mail more than 500 miles] * [https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cupsys/+bug/255161/comments/28 Open Office can...")
01:1601:16, 30 January 2026 Veriphenia (hist | edit) [587 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Veriphenia is a phenomenon where a pattern that appears to be coincidental or superstitious turns out to be genuine. From Latin veritas (truth) and Greek phainein (to appear): "true appearing." === Contrast With Apophenia === Apophenia is the tendency to spot patterns between unrelated things. Veriphenia could be, in some sense, "appears to be Apophenia but later proves not to be". Category:Concepts")

23:2223:22, 28 January 2026 Real ID Cancellation (hist | edit) [3,169 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "thumb|The email I got sent. The letter is similar. A few weeks ago, I received a letter from the DMV explaining why they were going to cancel my Real ID in a few weeks. The letter explained that they incorrectly listed the expiration on my license as much later than it actually was. This isn't the first time that California has made a mistake with Real ID implementation. Many years earlier I received...")

23:3023:30, 27 January 2026 Blog/2026-01-27/The Obvious Isn't Obvious (hist | edit) [5,236 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "When you live in San Francisco and around the Silicon Valley ecosystem, a mantra that everyone repeats is 'iteration'. Attempting to reach product-market fit is traditionally, here, described as an iterative process where you put out a minimum viable product and then work on it in response to customer feedback. This is so ingrained in the psyche here that if you were to say it, you sound like a freshma...")
23:1323:13, 27 January 2026 Iteration Dogma (hist | edit) [1,136 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "The Iteration Dogma is the belief that adapting to evidence is far superior to picking the right prior. It is commonly employed in the startup-mindset of searching for Product-market fit where it is considered boringly true. == Examples == * Searching for product-market fit is the primary example. * Bayesian updating under prior-support, distinguishability of hypotheses (particularly truth from alternatives in the wikipedia:Kullb...")
02:2302:23, 27 January 2026 Blog/2026-01-27/Life Is Intense (hist | edit) [4,665 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "thumb|Not the best knife work or care but good enough for the point I recently took a few of our knives to [https://www.google.com/maps/place/Bernal+Cutlery/@37.7606847,-122.4244035,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x808f7e5bfe0b4d43:0x13c52491a71d9de0!8m2!3d37.7606847!4d-122.4218286!16s%2Fg%2F1233dpk4k?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDEyMS4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D Bernal Cutlery] to get them sharpened. == The Knives == When Juli...")

18:5118:51, 26 January 2026 Bambu P1S (hist | edit) [3,005 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "We have a [https://wiki.bambulab.com/en/p1 Bambu P1S] to print with and a [https://us.store.bambulab.com/products/ams-2-pro Bambu AMS 2 Pro] to store and swap filament. This is a home 3D printer that is pretty easy to use and is at the level of Ikea to set up and use. There are a few catches to the thing, though. == Bambu Studio Model For Filament == The model that Bambu Studio has for your projects and your printer is that your printer and AMS<ref name=ams/> have a s...")

00:1000:10, 21 January 2026 Blog/2026-01-20/An Old Acquaintance (hist | edit) [1,573 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "thumb|I don't actually look less nerdy than this in real life I went by Julie's place of work today to see if a friend of hers, Ben M., could help me with some rails on a server of mine. He could and that was nice, but I stayed for lunch and while walking back to my table after grabbing my meal I spotted a guy who seemed familiar. I suppose it's not that much of a surprise that any two people in tech could end up interacting in a...")

08:1308:13, 17 January 2026 Blog/2026-01-17/Citogenesis (hist | edit) [4,636 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "thumb|By the time you view the end result, you see only citations to other papers, making it appear like science Randall Munroe coined Citogenesis to reference the common tactic of putting something in Wikipedia, having reporters use it as a source un-cited, and then use that reporting to cite the Wikipedia article thereby closing the loop and making something seem real....")

23:2923:29, 16 January 2026 Blog/2026-01-16/Otoscope (hist | edit) [1,584 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "thumb|Pretty simple device Recently, someone on the Internet mentioned a cheap otoscope. It's billed on [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09KZ8TS7L?th=1 Amazon as a ear wax removal tool with a camera attached] but what it really works well as is a little camera with a handle that you can point places you can't get to: like under the sink or behind a desk. You can then take a look there and see what's going on behind the scenes that will require y...")

08:1208:12, 15 January 2026 Blog/2026-01-15/Modeling Without Claude (hist | edit) [1,940 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "right My wife, Julie, and I both use our Bambu P1S for stuff around the house. Today she was telling me about a particular project she was working on: a set of wall-mounted blocks to attach the baby fence to. The fence we have is [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DJBN95TL one of those unremarkable Amazon products from China from a brand that is a large number of consonants in a row] but it's meant to close in to...")

06:3506:35, 11 January 2026 Blog/2026-01-11/Modeling With Claude (hist | edit) [5,699 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "thumb|The little magnets allow you to connect the different sections temporarily We've been playing quite a bit of [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2651/power-grid Power Grid] and one of the things that annoys me is when you have to pick up a power plant or move them around. I always have trouble picking one up from the second row and putting it in the first or picking up a plant because I can't put my fi...")

01:2301:23, 10 January 2026 Shiri's Scissor (hist | edit) [860 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Shiri's Scissor is a fictional device that constructs maximally controversial statements. It is the primary macguffin in a (popular among rationalists and adjacents) science-fiction story on Slate Star Codex. In the story, scissor statements can cause otherwise aligned people to have strongly opposing views. The first example provided is that of some code quality statement where one half think that it is tautological and the other half think that it is absurd. Peop...")
01:1101:11, 10 January 2026 Blog/2026-01-10/The Impact of Fake Video is Overrated (hist | edit) [6,110 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "A common belief that people used to have is that people would use fake video to create outrage in the world. I was of the belief that a substantial enough amount of fake video would convince people to not trust online content and they would simply ignore it. However, neither of us was correct. In practice, there are enough human beings right now, with sufficient recording devices for us to obtain sufficient scissor incidents that intelligent people can take exactly the...")

21:4621:46, 6 January 2026 Blog/2026-01-06/Is The Internet Dead? (hist | edit) [6,434 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "The Dead Internet theory claims that all Internet content is now posted by bots and so on in order to control the population and whatnot. I don't think the population is particularly controlled, but I do think that a lot of re-runs happen and I think that's structural. == Does This Happen? == Reddit is a pretty big social network and it's pretty public so you can pick out a top post on the front page and try to find its origin. All th...")

23:3323:33, 3 January 2026 Blog/2026-01-03/Why I Like Joe Rogan (hist | edit) [2,637 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "thumb|Amusingly accurate I don't listen to too many podcasts, but a few times I've put the Joe Rogan Experience on while I'm driving down to the South Bay. The most typical two complaints about Joe Rogan are that he platforms terrible people and that he doesn't challenge them on their views. I'm somewhat philosophically opposed to the idea that people with reprehensible views should hav...")
23:0623:06, 3 January 2026 Blog/2026-01-03/Claude Management (hist | edit) [1,621 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "thumb|`gum` is pretty neat for terminal niceness. I use it in `concode` Recently, like many others I've found that Opus 4.5 is the most useful model for me. It's accurate, can talk about sensitive subjects intelligently, and its use in the Claude Code agent flow makes it far more usable than the web interface. The only problem with it is that one Claude is not...")

22:1222:12, 23 December 2025 Slop slop (hist | edit) [2,018 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Slop slop is text that repetitively calls things slop. Because of the popularity of the word slop<ref name=mw/> to refer to AI generated text, it is now used to derisively refer to text online that one dislikes. Because human tastes differ greatly, almost every piece of work is likely to be declared 'slop' by someone at some point of time. The repetitive use of the word 'slop' to describe a text negatively rather than to use descriptive verbiage that clarifies why a...")

05:5705:57, 15 December 2025 Blog/2025-12-11/LLMs Excel At Easy Verification Problems (hist | edit) [2,680 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "In Blog/2025-12-01/Grounding Your Agent I talked about how grounding your agent allows it to make better decisions. This is akin to the approach you would take if you were to debug code. The core device in debugging is the structure of the discovery loop. To reproduce the issue, we go through a loop that looks like: # Enter loop # If condition true, reduce example # Else terminate The end of this provides a wikipedia:Minimal Reproducible Example|Minimal Reproduc...")
05:4805:48, 15 December 2025 Tractables (hist | edit) [585 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Tractables are problems that are easy to solve. In Computer Science, this would be problems in P. Programmers and the like do use 'tractable' to describe non-programming straightforward-to-solve things, so this is not unusual. == See Also == Checkables Category:Concepts")
05:4705:47, 15 December 2025 Checkables (hist | edit) [378 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Checkables are things that are easy to verify. In Computer Science, the rigorous idea is the class of problems in NP. But normal English makes this wordy. Category:Concepts")

20:5120:51, 12 December 2025 Setting Up A New Mac (hist | edit) [1,856 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Every now and then I set up a new Mac and I forget all the things I do. This is a list so that setup is fast. == Initial Environment == # [https://www.google.com/chrome/ Google Chrome] # [https://brew.sh/ Homebrew] == Shell == # [https://ghostty.org/docs/install/binary Ghostty] since it's a super-fast terminal emulator ##Ghostty Configuration # [https://ohmyz.sh/ oh-my-zsh] to make zsh enjoyable # [https://github.com/junegunn/fzf fzf] # [https://github.com/BurntS...")
07:2607:26, 12 December 2025 Blog/2025-12-12/Spaghettification (hist | edit) [4,245 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "thumb|Spaghetti - not happy to see this I ruined my hotend nozzle this week and had to replace it. == How To Destroy Your Bambu P1S Hotend == thumb|This is catastrophic Bambu Studio reloads all your filament settings when you load a <code>3mf</code> file. What I didn't notice was that it also changes what each slot on your AMS2 is mapped to. So, if your AMS2 had PETG in the A3 slot,...")

06:5806:58, 10 December 2025 Blog/2025-12-10/Trespass (hist | edit) [3,174 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "The word "trespass" is interesting in what it has changed to. Like many other words in the law enforcement or legal space, "I will charge you with X-ing" or "I will eject you for Y" has become "I will X you" or "I will Y you". 'Trespass' is particularly interesting because it was already a transitive verb<ref name=also-noun/> which has caused me some confusion when reading other people's texts. Here's a typical use that someone might make. {{Reddit | url = https://...")

08:4308:43, 5 December 2025 Blog/2025-12-04/Coders And Conversationalists Switch Places (hist | edit) [4,864 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "thumb|ChatGPT's safety circuits are on a hair trigger In previous iterations of mainstream chatbots, ChatGPT was the wild one you could get anything out of and Claude was the one that would keep hitting safety guardrails. When Claude Code came out, I started using Claude for code primarily and ChatGPT for discussion, but with the arrival of GPT-5.1 and Opus-4.5 the positions seem to have switched. <co...")

21:0521:05, 3 December 2025 Blog/2025-12-03/Why Get Rich (hist | edit) [3,531 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "The point of getting rich is to be able to do more things. The people who I like and admire seem to all have this trait. For them, the amount of things you want to do is usually far larger than the things you have the resources to do. In fact, if I look among my friends, I suspect all of them have this same thing in mind. {{Tweet | name = p19k | username = peteralexbizjak | text = Genuine question: how do you plan on building revenue with your OS? If you answered this s...")

09:1209:12, 2 December 2025 Blog/2025-12-01/Grounding Your Agent (hist | edit) [4,030 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "thumb|A trivial test bar Julie and I got a Bambu Studio recently and it's been fairly useful, providing us with a cover for some balcony lights, and a little holder for a toilet-reading book. These are models you can find online that other people have kindly provided. But one thing I've wanted is to be able to mount our Eufy E21 baby monitor at an angle so that it can look into the baby bed that is on the floor...")

23:4423:44, 29 November 2025 Blog/2025-11-29/Things Do Last (hist | edit) [1,877 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Something that's common these days is for people to talk about how things don't last and so on and so forth, but in my experience things do last a really long time. I only recently gave away a 4790k-based system that's some 10 years old and it still works. It's just not particularly power-efficient or fast compared to a present day machine. But the thing that most struck me is this microfiber blanket I bought from Big Lots, a home goods store in North Carolina, when I m...")
18:4818:48, 29 November 2025 Blog/2025-11-28/A Better Class of Thief (hist | edit) [4,476 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "thumb|The brown Radpower Radster Trail I now have. I recently bought a Radpower Radster Trail since it was on sale for something like $850 post tax. That's not the cheapest thing in the world, but I did want an e-bike that I could use, be willing to lose, and that would accept a child's seat in the back at some future time. File:Line Drawing (Ikea-style) of Riese and Muller style cargo e-bike.webp|thumb|A typical R&M bike. It can a...")
08:5508:55, 29 November 2025 Motorcycle Theft (hist | edit) [8,766 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "thumb|A beautiful bike Many years ago, I used to ride a Ducati 695 - an elegant tool from a more civilized age. Sadly, after an unfortunate meeting with an Uber driver in a Toyota Prius the vehicle had to be retired<ref name=julie/>. But by the time of that incident, it was already a Mad Max / Borderlands looking vehicle. And the reason for that was that it was stolen. == How == I didn't have a garage back in th...")

07:3907:39, 22 November 2025 Blog/2025-11-22/Wage Compression (hist | edit) [6,901 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "thumb The incomes of the poor have increased faster since COVID-19 than any other group. This frequently leads to laments that everything has changed and gotten more expensive since COVID-19. If one were to listen to what most people like to say about poverty, this income increase should be accompanied by celebration. It's hard to pin down why it's not, but one can guess that it is because most people thought they were i...")
01:2201:22, 22 November 2025 Blog/2025-11-22/Smart Charities Tax Non-Believers (hist | edit) [3,793 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "A big difference between my personal belief system and that espoused by many online is that I think charities should accept the money of people they dislike. This allows them to trade their reputation (ultimately a substitutable and cheap quality) for money that can achieve the outcome they desire. A highly effectively altruist organization should attempt to transform even an opponent's money<ref name=wework/> into progress on the organization's aim assuming, of course,...")

21:5421:54, 20 November 2025 Overmod (hist | edit) [7,228 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "thumb [https://overmod.org Overmod] is a small program and directory that allows blocking and highlighting users on Hacker News. Other users can subscribe to my blocklist or create new ones if they so desire. == Why == I often find myself annoyed by people on social media who post repetitive comments that are mostly about one culture war item or another. For instance, comments like the following are not particularly interesting to...")

23:4823:48, 18 November 2025 Geneva Plant Slag Dumping Youtube Comment (hist | edit) [3,072 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "This is a wonderful story from a guy posting on YouTube about his experience as a steelworker. I never manage to find it when I want to, so I'm mirroring it here: {{Quote |text=Great video clip. I had a job once at the US Steel Pipe Works, Geneva Plant, Utah where I took "slag temperatures" before they sprayed "devils liquor" sump water on it to cool it down. I wore wooden shoe "clogs" to protect my shoes from melting (the same kind coke oven operators wear when servici...")

10:4410:44, 14 November 2025 Work Amplification (hist | edit) [3,424 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "Work Amplification occurs when a request takes a much smaller effort to make than a response. This is a problem in interactions both in the software client/server and in a human context. Any low-effort ask that requires a high-effort response could be work amplification. == Software == In software, a host of techniques exist to reduce the scope of the problem: * caching - cut subsequent response costs at the price of freshness * debouncing - assist with accidental...")

08:0708:07, 13 November 2025 Snoo Bassinet (hist | edit) [2,063 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "thumb|The Snoo is a godsend If there is any money you spend on baby sleep related things, spend it on [https://www.happiestbaby.com/products/snoo-smart-bassinet the Snoo]. We got ours from our friends Charles and Anne, and we gave it back to them in case they wanted a second child. Astra fit in it until she was 27 weeks old, but the last few weeks of those we stopped using the Snoo's rocking functionality. The pr...")
07:4407:44, 13 November 2025 UppaBaby Travel System (hist | edit) [6,052 bytes] Roshan (talk | contribs) (Created page with "thumb|The Uppababy Mesa car seat: the base is usually in the car and then you just lift the seat off and put it in the stroller and away you go thumb|The LATCH attachment points are usually hidden behind some seat protection stuff but you want your car seat's base to attach to those. The tethers at the back of the seat are really hard to use by contrast The term for a car...")

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