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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • With these sorts of tasks models really seem to suffer from not knowing what packages or conventions have been deprecated. This is really obvious with an immature ecosystem like nix.

    This is where custom setups will start to shine.

    https://github.com/upstash/context7 - Pull version specific package documentation.

    https://github.com/utensils/mcp-nixos - Similar to above but for nix (including version specific queries) with more sources.

    https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/servers/tree/main/src/sequentialthinking - Break down problems into multiple steps instead of trying to solve it all at once. Helps isolate important information per step so “the bigger picture” of the entire prompt doesn’t pollute the results. Sort of simulates reasoning. Instead of finding the best match for all keywords, it breaks the queries down to find the best matches per step and then assembles the final response.

    https://github.com/CaviraOSS/OpenMemory - Long conversations tend to suffer as the working memory (context) fills up so it compresses and details are lost. With this (and many other similar tools) you can have it remember and recall things with or without a human in the loop to validate what’s stored. Great for complex planning or recalling of details. I essentially have a loop setup with global instructions to periodically emit reinforced codified instructions to a file (e.g., AGENTS.md) with human review. Combined with sequential thinking it will identify contradictions and prompt me to resolve any ambiguity.

    The quality of the output is like going from 80% to damn near 100% as your knowledge base grows from external memory and codified instructions in files. I’m still lazy sometimes and will use something like Kagi assistant for a quick question or web search, but they have a pretty good baseline setup with sequential thinking in their online tooling.



  • It’s really not that different from a traditional web search under the hood. It’s basically a giant index and my input navigates the results based on probability of relevance. It’s not “thinking” about me or deciding what I should see. When I say a good assistant setup, I mean I don’t use Gemini or ChatGPT or any of the prepackaged stuff that tries to build a profile on you. I run my own setup, pick my own models, and control what context they get. If you check my post history I’m heavily privacy conscious, I’m not handing that over to Google or OpenAI.

    The summary helps me evaluate if my input was good and the results are actually relevant to what I’m after without wading through 20 minutes of SEO garbage to get there. For me it’s like getting the quality results you used to get before search got enshitified. It actually surfaces stuff that doesn’t even show up on the front page of a traditional search anymore.


  • I’m in software development and land on both sides of this argument.

    Having to review or maintain AI slop is infuriating.

    That said, it has replaced traditional web searching for me. A good assistant setup can run multiple web searches for me, distill the useful info cutting through the blog spam and ads, run follow up searches for additional info if needed, and summarize the results in seconds with references if I want to validate its output.

    There was a post a couple days ago about it solving a hard math problem with guidance from a mathematician. Sparked a discussion about AI being a powerful tool in the right hands.




  • Firefox Nightly + arkenfox userjs + uBlock Origin + Bitwarden as my daily driver.

    Been a couple years since I checked up on arkenfox still being good. I get flagged as a bot all the time and constantly get popups about WebGL (GPU fingerprinting) so I assume its working as intended for my threat model.

    Tails when I really care.

    Mullvad VPN as my regular VPN with ProtonVPN for torrents.

    GrapheneOS / NixOS as my OS.

    Proton Visionary for most cloud services except passwords and I don’t really use Proton Drive. I do use ProtonPass for unique emails to every provider.

    Kagi for searches / AI.

    Etesync for contacts because Proton didn’t sync with the OS last I checked.

    Backblaze B2 for cloud storage with my own encryption via rclone (Round Sync on GrapheneOS)

    Keypass for a few things like my XMR wallets and master passwords I don’t even trust in Bitwarden.

    https://jmp.chat/ for my mobile provider.

    Pihole with encrypted DNS to Quad9.

    https://onlykey.io/ for the second half of my sensitive passwords (Bitwarden, LUKS, Keypass, OS login). First half memorized.

    Its a lot. I burned myself out a couple years ago keeping up with optimizing privacy and this setup has served me well for 2 years without really changing anything. The cloud services are grey areas in terms of privacy but the few ads that leak through uBlock have zero relevance to anything about me.




  • Toooo real. Its like companies have taken the worst of everything and just call it agile. List out every task and estimate them so we have timelines, but don’t actually architect anything as that’s waterfall. Fake waterfall, with fake dates, but fingers will be pointed like they were real commitments, and spend a month doing it for this executive power point instead of fucking off so devs can build the damn thing.



  • I ended up just building a box after looking for the perfect NAS and finding it didn’t exist. The software is usually just crap or the hardware is underwhelming. Got a Node 804 case to slap in plenty of HDD space. Running NixOS so I’m in control of the software. In retrospect I wish I had gotten a rackmount type case. Tossed in an Arc GPU for better transcoding shortly after the initial setup.


  • If half your employees aren’t acting the way they do in private, they’re putting on a mask and not being their true selves

    But you’re making this point in defense of someone aligning themselves with a group who targets trans, women, and whoever else they can bully not like them for being their true selves… Do you not see the hypocrisy of such a point given the context of the quote?



  • You probably don’t want the entire terminal rendered in your UI for the reason you gave that it is intended for monospace.

    Rather, you want the buffer which is markdown and contextual info like cursor position.

    You might hit some challenges like how to handle style elements. For example:

    <cursor>*bold*
    

    Moving the cursor to the right of the b will take two key presses in nvim but would typically be one key press in a WYSIWYG editor.

    There are probably many ways to handle this in nvim through the plugin system, but both paths of embedding vs emulating nvim has a good chunk of dev work to be completed.

    Emulating will likely be more rewarding at the start as you can get incremental improvements pretty quickly.

    Embedding is a cool idea, but likely a ton of upfront work to get your first tangible results.

    You might be interested in reviewing https://github.com/MeanderingProgrammer/render-markdown.nvim which attempts to render Markdown in the terminal. They have logic for rendering things like the bold example in bold while hiding the markup.

    I personally just use https://github.com/iamcco/markdown-preview.nvim to render in a different window when render-markdown.nvim isn’t enough.


  • Ultimately we don’t know the implementation. I’ve seen some bad sites like stealth truncating on the registration form but leaving the login form unbounded so the password you pasted in both times doesn’t work.

    Separate issue from truncating, I get suspicious when I see passwords capped to 16-20 chars for the reason you gave that they should be stored as fixed length hashes.



  • Also suggests the user may be reusing the same prefix if only the changed bits are getting truncated.

    Should use different random passwords every time. Completely random or a random string of words. While it doesn’t solve the cleartext password storage issue, a data breach won’t compromise all your other accounts to same degree.

    Doesn’t hurt to also randomize usernames, emails, and even security question answers.

    edit: or my new favorite passkeys, just make sure you trust whatever tool is managing your private keys.