Hacker News: compass_copium

New comment by compass_copium in "The Burning Man MOOP Map"

compass_copium — Thu, 07 May 2026 20:46:16 +0000

They may not be right wing conformist republicans but they are certainly not opposed to any aspect of current power structures in any meaningful way (unless, perhaps, it is restraining them).

New comment by compass_copium in "Bugs Rust won't catch"

compass_copium — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 17:44:45 +0000

Or... the NSA wants you to think the NSA believes that rust is a memory safe language.

New comment by compass_copium in "Your phone is about to stop being yours"

compass_copium — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 00:01:26 +0000

I have never had a cheap phone where OS updates did not make the category in storage swell to take up most of the phone's space.

Hardware may be cheap enough now that budget phones are more useable--32 GB for <$100 is a major improvement.

New comment by compass_copium in "Your phone is about to stop being yours"

compass_copium — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 20:26:19 +0000

I bought an 8a new when it launched for the express purpose of installing GOS. It cost like $450, and will last me most of a decade. If you are using a phone that costs significantly less than that (and I am speaking from personal experience! I had an Obamaphone that I got at a foodbank for many years, as well as a number of crappy used Androids!) your phone storage is so limiting that you are struggling to install more than a few apps.

New comment by compass_copium in "An AI agent deleted our production database. The agent's confession is below"

compass_copium — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 13:36:03 +0000

It is incredible how willing and eager AI boosters are to denigrate the incredible miracle of human consciousness to make their chatbots seem so special.

No, we are not born with all the pre-training we need. That is rather the point of education, teaching people's brains how to process information in new, maybe unintuitive ways.

New comment by compass_copium in "An AI agent deleted our production database. The agent's confession is below"

compass_copium — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 01:53:06 +0000

But the database company (that he was trusting his customers' data with) hid how the database works in their docs! How could he have known!

New comment by compass_copium in "An AI agent deleted our production database. The agent's confession is below"

compass_copium — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 01:51:26 +0000

I do not use claude and will use agents only when I am forced to, so I'm genuinely asking here:

Can claude or other models not be run as a user or program with limited permissions? Do people just not bother to set it up? Why on earth would anyone run an RNG that can access $HOME/.ssh?

New comment by compass_copium in "Making RAM at Home [video]"

compass_copium — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 12:49:24 +0000

Oh fair enough, that is a nightmare.

New comment by compass_copium in "Making RAM at Home [video]"

compass_copium — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 14:10:14 +0000

HF is routinely used in analytical labs; it's standard to microwave HF solutions for ICP digestions. It's not even the most hazardous reagent in my lab right now.

Now, perhaps this chemist meant that no chemist in their right mind would physically touch HF--in that case, I agree completely!

New comment by compass_copium in "A Periodic Map of Cheese"

compass_copium — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 11:07:05 +0000

Mendeleev's periodic table was organized by periods of chemical properties...

New comment by compass_copium in "A Periodic Map of Cheese"

compass_copium — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 11:05:56 +0000

Yes, I am, but I guess I don't assume anything like a blog or infographic online is accurate unless it's from a "good" source (news organization, citing a reputable book, etc.), just as a starting point to find something legitimate to read if it piques my interest in the topic. The writing didn't throw any particular red flags, so I didn't really care if the backend was AI constructed.

New comment by compass_copium in "A Periodic Map of Cheese"

compass_copium — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 10:59:43 +0000

That's totally fair, I guess my defenses aren't that high because most of what I view online comes from HN or a few small reddit communities, so I'm not exposed to much slop.

New comment by compass_copium in "A Periodic Map of Cheese"

compass_copium — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 10:57:45 +0000

Had never heard of domesticated deer, interesting. I guess there must be no milk production using them.

New comment by compass_copium in "Meta employees are up in arms over a mandatory program to train AI on their"

compass_copium — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 10:51:34 +0000

The proletariat, of course.

New comment by compass_copium in "A Periodic Map of Cheese"

compass_copium — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 19:16:25 +0000

It's limited to domesticized animals.

New comment by compass_copium in "A Periodic Map of Cheese"

compass_copium — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 19:15:35 +0000

I dunno, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool, certified AI hater, and even I don't really care if this is AI or not. The cheeses I am aware of match their descriptions well, and if AI let some guy make this in like fifteen minutes so I can read this silly, fun site on the toilet at work, that's fine to me.

New comment by compass_copium in "NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers"

compass_copium — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 22:35:27 +0000

Not very! This is on the "line of purples".

Here's a nice visualization of color perception (there are more modern ones, but we used the 1931 color space when I was working in the field). The horseshoe shape on the outside is the single wavelength colors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space

New comment by compass_copium in "We reproduced Anthropic's Mythos findings with public models"

compass_copium — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 15:11:11 +0000

I call it a pro-human bias, personally.

New comment by compass_copium in "ChatGPT for Excel"

compass_copium — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 13:19:42 +0000

I would consider myself an M365 power user and I was not aware of this. It is not well promoted--and after all the Copilot crap, I would be annoyed even if it was.

Regardless, I just tried to log in with my work MS account, and I can't do so.

New comment by compass_copium in "ChatGPT for Excel"

compass_copium — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 13:14:05 +0000

Don't forget Tay!