2024 reading list

Author

ivan commented Aug 31, 2025 •

edited

Loading

One of the reasons that scrolling social media can make life feel a little “flat” is that it takes time for your attention to fully cohere, so if you are switching focus too rapidly, you never reach fully integrated attention.

Part of your attention is still trying to cohere around the thing you saw a moment ago. Residual attention.

https://x.com/phokarlsson/status/1957898437367914590

Author

ivan commented Aug 31, 2025

why haven’t we had a serious anti-AI political movement? I would have expected one by now - “ai is scary”, “humans first” just seem like such obviously winning political slogans. what am I missing?

Most people are not watching AI progress and don't feel threatened by it. It can't compete with culture war and everyday concerns.

https://x.com/astha_bei/status/1957906296415400387

Author

ivan commented Aug 31, 2025 •

edited

Loading

Collaborative projects don't work on pure engineering. There are significant resource management components that basically amount to therapy, psychiatry, and side show entertainment because the most critical resources are human minds.

Excellent engineering management largely isolates engineers from having to deal with this non-engineering stuff (except for the subset that is specifically for their own personal benefit)-- but open source tends to radically flatten organizations that produce software, such that every contributor must also be their own manager to a great degree.

In a well run project you don't necessarily have to be good at or even interested in all the more socially oriented components of the project organization. But if you're not you must be willing to let someone else handle that stuff and go along with their judgements even if they seem suboptimal from the narrower perspective you've adopted. If you can't then from a "collaborative development as a system" view you're a faulty component that doesn't provide the right interface for the system's requirements (and are gonna get removed!). :)

Another way to look at it is that it would be ideal if every technical element were optimal at all times. In small systems with well understood requirements this can be possible or at least close to possible. But in big complex and poorly scoped systems it's just not possible: We have imperfect information, there are conflicting requirements, we have finite time, and so on. The system as a whole will always be far from perfect. If anyone tried to make it all perfect it would just fail to make progress, deadlock, or otherwise. The management of the project is always trying to balance the imperfections. They know that their decisions are often making things worse for a local concern, but they do so with belief that over time the decisions result in a better system overall. Linux has a good reputation in large part due to a long history of making good decisions about the flaws to accept or even introduce, which issues to gloss over vs debate to death.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45074312

Author

ivan commented Sep 2, 2025

wild that this place with all of its literal hate demons is somehow still less annoying than Bluesky

You need the friction. It can't all be people with MA's in English talking about holding space. You need some bad posts.

https://x.com/Not_Cool_Yet/status/1959433802528506015

Author

ivan commented Sep 3, 2025

If you think this is bad...

You can't even have a blog in China without authorization. It doesn't matter if you pay "AWS" for a machine. It won't open port 80 or 443 until you get an ICP recordal. Which you can only do if you are in China, and get the approval. It should also be displayed in the site, like a license plate. The reason "AWS" is in quotes is because it isn't AWS, they got kicked out. In Beijing, it is actually Sinnet, in Nginxia it's NWCD

You can only point to IPs in China from DNS servers in China - if you try to use, say, Route53 in the US and add an A record there, you'll get a nasty email (fail to comply, and your ports get blocked again, possibly for good).

In a nutshell, they not only can shutdown cross border traffic (and that can happen randomly if the Great Firewall gets annoyed at your packets, and it also gets overloaded during China business hours), but they can easily shutdown any website they want.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44959308

Author

ivan commented Sep 3, 2025

This is an oddity that I thought some of you might be curious to know about. Our subreddit is occasionally graced with very high end new light days. Oveready. HDS. LEPs. Record setting lumen or candela mosters. But it is rare that we ever see any high end caving headlamps.

These are special the same way that BLF projects are special. They are made by the people who use them and much design goes into every detail. However people's lives depend on these lights so you see a degree of over engineering that isn't common. And they are also literally made by the people who use them - labor costs are high and I don't think any of these are produced in a traditional factory anywhere.

For the most part they have converged on a fairly similar design. They all mount to helmets. They all have large wired battery packs that either mount on the back of the helmet or the waist. They are encased in a bowl of aluminum with a heavy duty plate bolted to the front. Most have 2 sets of optics for flood and throw. Most use rotary knobs that are easy to operate when wearing gloves. Most have some kind of battery meter that you can read while wearing the lamp. It is fairly common to have independent control over the brightness of the flood and throw LEDs too.

https://old.reddit.com/r/flashlight/comments/i3vot9/the_very_deep_hole_of_caving_headlamps/

Author

ivan commented Sep 7, 2025

if you ever feel bad about what you’re into just go on Bluesky for 2 minutes

https://x.com/luciascarlet/status/1964362886165176753

Author

ivan commented Sep 9, 2025

Whether you realize it yet, achieving your dreams is a race against time.

https://x.com/justinskycak/status/1964918036516786370

Author

ivan commented Sep 9, 2025

For anyone interested in a STEM career, acquiring advanced technical skills early unlocks the most valuable thing in existence.

Something even money can't buy.

TIME.

If you acquire demonstrable, alien-level technical skills, you can get doors opened earlier.

You don't have to wait until college to do research projects under professors, or even paid internships.

If you're intentional about acquiring skills and putting yourself out there, you can kick-start a serious career before most people your age are even taking serious classes.

And once you acquire early junior-level experience, that opens the door to early senior-level experience, and so on.

Compound this virtuous cycle over and over and you end up way ahead.

What's the point of being way ahead?

IT BUYS YOU TIME.

Unfortunately, lots of people misunderstand the point of compressing time.

They think compressing time is about winning a rat race against your peers.

But that's not really what it's about.

There's a race, but the thing you're racing against is much scarier and much more powerful than any other human.

You're racing against TIME ITSELF.

Time is the #1 killer of dreams and aspirations.

When someone gives up on their dream, or gives up on figuring out what that dream is, it's typically a result of them losing the race against time.

Pink Floyd put it best:

“You are young and life is long,
and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find
ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run.
You missed the starting gun.
And you run, and you run,
to catch up with the sun,
but it's sinking.”

Whether you realize it yet, achieving your dreams is a race against time.

Time forces convergence, and premature convergence is what kills dreams.

It's hard to understand this when you're young, before you have any sense of the wrath of time or the meaning of convergence.

But no matter how many times you claim you’ll never settle for something less than ikigai,
-- it won't keep the sun from setting,
-- it won't keep the time from passing,
-- it won't keep you from increasingly desiring things that only a stable life can provide, and
-- it won't keep you from gradually turning the dial from “explore” to “exploit.”

The further time gets ahead of you, the more likely you are to settle into a life that is “fine,” or even “good” -- despite being unable to shake the feeling that you could have found something better if you had more time.

That is the point of compressing time.

That is the point of removing skill bottlenecks early.

It’s about unlocking doors early and running down avenues that you might be interested in exploring, so that:

If you get the feeling the path you're going down has twisted and turned into something that's no longer a great fit for you, you can double back and explore other avenues before doors start locking behind you.

You can spend time trying to break down a wall instead of running through an existing door if that’s something you want to do.

Once you find your path into a land that makes you as happy as you can imagine, you can maximize your time in that land. https://x.com/hamptonism/sta/hamptonism/status/1964806104350888223

Mastering advanced technical skills early isn't really about racing classmates.

It’s about outrunning time itself, the true killer of dreams, which silently forces people to settle into “good enough” lives.

You can compress time by acquiring and demonstrating alien-level skills.

Remove skill bottlenecks --> unlock opportunities --> compound experience far earlier than expected.

Compressing time lets you explore more paths before doors close, double back if you’ve chosen wrong, and maximize your years in the place that makes you happiest.

Beat time now, or risk being beaten by it later.

https://x.com/justinskycak/status/1965215281728352559

Author

ivan commented Sep 10, 2025 •

edited

Loading

Disables pulse width modulation to provide a different way to dim the OLED display, which can create a smoother display output at low brightness levels. Disabling PWM may affect low brightness display performance under certain conditions.

https://www.macrumors.com/2025/09/09/iphone-17-pro-pwm-toggle/

If I understand correctly it will be similar to "DC dimming" but as it use LTPO variable refresh rate, it will use fixed PWM frequency to not create gamma change(seen as "flicker") when the display lower it refresh rate like many QD-oled or WOLED monitors and TV do Most LTPO variable refresh rate have very high modulation but even if they set it to 95 precent with long duty cycle(Around 90 precent) they can achieve high acceptability of flicker even at low level of brightness like the Chinese variant of oneplus 13(when you enable it). The oneplus 13 have high acceptability of flicker until around 17 nits using this mode. The issues that can occur using this kind of dimming is worse uniformity(can be at not acceptable level) and black crush at low brightens level. The black crush issue can be solve by apple by applying different calibration(3dlut) at some lower brightness level but then there will be apparent difference when you lower to this brightness point that can bother some people. I think that good PWM implantation is better solution because of this issues, with good PWM implantation you can still get high acceptability of flicker on low level of brightness. Unfortunately the iPhone 16 pro max have high acceptability of flicker until around 60 nits, which is not low enough for dim environments. It is still far superior to other device like the Samsung s22,23,24,25 (ultra) or pixel 9(all of them) as 60 nits is low enough for most environments. I think that most people prefer to use their phone higher then 60 nits anyway.

https://old.reddit.com/r/PWM_Sensitive/comments/1ncztxn/iphone_17_pro_has_toggle_to_disable_screen/?depth=99

Author

ivan commented Sep 14, 2025

The thing I want most from the iPhone camera system right now is a consistent number of megapixels across all cameras in all shooting situations, with that consistent number being more than 12. 24MP would be fine.

As it stands now, 48MP is actually up to 48MP. Emphasizing that "up to" part is not great for marketing, and if you directly compare it across all shooting situations, you get a clear picture of how inconsistent the iPhone shooting experience is.

On a 16 Pro with your camera set to 48MP ProRAW, you can actually walk away with pictures ranging anywhere from 9MP to 48MP.

13mm ultra wide (0.5x) - up to 48MP but sometimes is 36MP

24mm main camera (1x) - up to 48MP and usually is

28mm zoom (1.3x) - up to 36MP and usually is

35mm zoom (1.5x) - up to 24MP and usually is

48mm (2x) - up to 12MP and usually is

120mm telephoto (5x) - up to 12MP but can be as low as 9MP

https://old.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/1hy3a0y/iphone_17_pro_main_camera_sensor_smaller_than/

Author

ivan commented Sep 19, 2025

You've got a 16 inch Laptop, why are the arrow keys so tiny! And where's the PgUp PgDn Home End Insert Delete cluster? I wish a design-based shop like Framework would have some leadership in the keyboard area

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45033106

Author

ivan commented Sep 23, 2025 •

edited

Loading

This sub doesn't understand PWM at all

Everyone is hyper focused on modulation depth and frequency but not amplitude and duty cycle. Think of these two scenarios when wanting an average brightness of 100 nits.

3000 nit display.... on for 3% at 3000 nits off for 97 percent at 480 Hz

DC dimmed down to 110 nits, on for 95 percent with 5 percent off time for oled refresh dip at 480 hz

Both have the same modulation depth and frequency. 1) Will melt your brain whereas 2) will give some people eye strain and others no strain at all.

Why does this sub treat both as equal? The stupid opple charts everyone puts up don't take this into account.

https://old.reddit.com/r/PWM_Sensitive/comments/1nnqloa/this_sub_doesnt_understand_pwm_at_all/?depth=99

Author

ivan commented Sep 25, 2025

The best disinfectant is sunlight

Have you actually tried to shine sunlight on online misinformation? If you do you will quickly find it doesn't really work.

The problem is simple. It is slower to produce factually correct content. A lot slower. And when you do produce something the people producing the misinformation can quickly change their arguments.

Also, by the time you get your argument out many of the people who saw the piece you are refuting and believed it won't even see your argument. They've moved on to other topics and aren't going to revisit that old one unless it is a topic they are particularly interested in. A large number will have noted the original misinformation, such as some totally unsafe quack cure for some illness that they don't currently have, accepted it as true, and then if they ever find themselves with that illness apply the quack cure without any further thought.

The debunkers used to have a chance. The scammers and bullshitters always had the speed advantage when it came to producing content but widespread distribution used to be slow and expensive. If say a quack medical cure was spreading the mainstream press could ask the CDC or FDA about it, talk to researchers, and talk to doctors dealing with people showing up in emergency rooms from trying the quack cure, and they had the distribution networks to spread this information out much faster than the scammers and bullshitters.

Now everyone has fast and cheap distribution through social media, and a large number of people only get their information from social media and so the bullshitters and scammers now have all the advantages.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45355032

Author

ivan commented Oct 1, 2025

On a semi-related note, one cool prompting technique is to act like part of the prompt has been cut-off and have the prompt begin with something like:
“(cont'd)
In summation, your task is as follows ...”
or
“[MISSING DATA]
To recap everything we have discussed so far, ...”

That way the model treats the prompt as if a much more detailed set of instructions must have come before it.

https://x.com/LokiJulianus/status/1973129252204626112

Author

ivan commented Oct 3, 2025 •

edited

Loading

After migrating a decent amount of their statements to var, they saw an 8% performance improvement across some benchmarks.

https://vincentrolfs.dev/blog/ts-var

Author

ivan commented Oct 5, 2025

Well, Postgres integer primary keys are signed. So there's this WHOLE other half of the 32-bit word that you're not using if you're just auto-incrementing keys. My simple (read stupid) solution, which absolutely worked was to set the sequence on that primary key to -2,147,483,648 and let it continue to auto-increment, taking up the other half of that integer space. It was so dumb that I think we met like three times together with SRE to say things like, "Is it really this simple? Is this really likely to work? Are we really doing something this dumb?" and the conclusion was yes, and that it would buy us up to 3 years of time to migrate, but we would do it within 6-8 months so all IT departments can make alternative arrangements for their API integrations.

https://jeffersonheard.ghost.io/the-best-worst-hack-that-saved-our-bacon/

Author

ivan commented Oct 25, 2025

What tripped me up the one time I really needed to call 911 on a Pixel was it auto-sends the call after the second 1. Any other call, you dial the number, 555-555-5555, then press the green phone button to send the call. Dialing 911, it instantly starts calling, and the send button changes to hangup.

I kept pressing 911 and rapidly pressing where the send key was and moving the phone to my ear to hear silence. Dial 911, press what I thought was send, put it to my ear, silence. The worst sound you want to hear when you're alone and need 911 immediately. Eventually I took a breath and went slow to see what was happening and finally noticed it was automatically sending the call.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45700568

Author

ivan commented Oct 25, 2025

The designers also seem stuck under an assumption the user is operating in an act-look feedback loop. In reality, good tools let you shift your focus away from them once you become proficient - the mechanics of their use becomes second nature and fades into the background allowing you to focus on your task

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45700568

Author

ivan commented Oct 29, 2025

Our older son seems to have picked up some conversation habits from me. He's playing some online multiplayer game with voice chat, and he's politely asking his teammates stuff like "what things were you thinking about when you did [stupid decision]" in a friendly voice

https://x.com/brianluidog/status/1983032568405782886

ivan/2024_reading.md

ivan commented Aug 31, 2025 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

ivan commented Aug 31, 2025

Uh oh!

ivan commented Aug 31, 2025 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

ivan commented Sep 2, 2025

Uh oh!

ivan commented Sep 3, 2025

Uh oh!

ivan commented Sep 3, 2025

Uh oh!

ivan commented Sep 7, 2025

Uh oh!

ivan commented Sep 9, 2025

Uh oh!

ivan commented Sep 9, 2025

Uh oh!

ivan commented Sep 10, 2025 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

ivan commented Sep 14, 2025

Uh oh!

ivan commented Sep 19, 2025

Uh oh!

ivan commented Sep 23, 2025 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

This sub doesn't understand PWM at all

Uh oh!

ivan commented Sep 25, 2025

Uh oh!

ivan commented Oct 1, 2025

Uh oh!

ivan commented Oct 3, 2025 • edited Loading Uh oh! There was an error while loading. Please reload this page.

Uh oh!

Uh oh!

ivan commented Oct 5, 2025

Uh oh!

ivan commented Oct 25, 2025

Uh oh!

ivan commented Oct 25, 2025

Uh oh!

ivan commented Oct 29, 2025

Uh oh!

ivan commented Aug 31, 2025 •

edited

Loading

ivan commented Aug 31, 2025 •

edited

Loading

ivan commented Sep 10, 2025 •

edited

Loading

ivan commented Sep 23, 2025 •

edited

Loading

ivan commented Oct 3, 2025 •

edited

Loading