Hacker News: dado3212

New comment by dado3212 in "Image generation has come a long way since August 2022"

dado3212 — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 05:14:56 +0000

Wrote up a blog entry super recently about the nostalgia of the flaws - https://blog.alexbeals.com/posts/i-miss-crappy-ai-art

New comment by dado3212 in "Meta ordered to pay $25B penalty in New Mexico Cambridge Analytica case"

dado3212 — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 16:35:04 +0000

With regards to facial recognition, the opt-out checkbox disappeared because the functionality was fully scrapped in 2021. [1] The feature where they auto-suggest who to tag hasn't existed in 5 years, I'm not surprised they don't have a checkbox anymore.

[1]. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/02/technology/facebook-facia...

I miss crappy AI art

dado3212 — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 15:47:17 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.alexbeals.com/posts/i-miss-crappy-ai-art

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50119876

Points: 3

# Comments: 3

New comment by dado3212 in "Apple's hostile App Store rating system"

dado3212 — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 16:22:27 +0000

Most apps are above a 3.0 because they implement the "nagware" to prompt normal happy users to leave reviews, rather than just relying on people reviewing out of the goodness of their hearts. Unfortunately this makes nagging table stakes to not end up with an abysmally low score.

New comment by dado3212 in "Ask HN: What are your favorite blogs not about AI?"

dado3212 — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 00:58:10 +0000

I write a blog that’s not about AI, though is very technical.[1] For non-self promotion I’m a big fan of Jenn’s, who I got introduced by the first Inkhaven cohort.[2]

[1]. https://blog.alexbeals.com/ [2]. https://jenn.site/

The footgun of right-to-left decorative characters

dado3212 — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 03:04:46 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.alexbeals.com/posts/the-footgun-of-right-to-left-decorative-characters

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48813246

Points: 44

# Comments: 21

Extracting sound effects from a Switch game

dado3212 — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 04:27:46 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.alexbeals.com/posts/extracting-sound-effects-from-a-switch-game

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48714803

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by dado3212 in "The three lines of CSS that saved me 40kb and might do the same for you"

dado3212 — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 20:58:53 +0000

You can also strip unused characters from fonts! I use Prism to render code blocks on my blog, which pulls in FontAwesome for only two characters. Stripping all but those two characters reduced the font file size from 160kb to 680 bytes.[0]

[0]. https://blog.alexbeals.com/posts/remove-unused-characters-fo...

New comment by dado3212 in "Meta's ships facial recognition on smart glasses"

dado3212 — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 03:33:57 +0000

Isn’t this offline? Where do you see that it’s online?

New comment by dado3212 in "The sigmoids won't save you"

dado3212 — Fri, 15 May 2026 22:23:24 +0000

But if you met an alien who said they'd been alive for 100 years you wouldn't assume they're on the verge of dropping dead: you would assume they live longer. It's a rough rule for when you don't have other information, and if you're arguing against it you need to specify what other information you're using to make that argument.

New comment by dado3212 in "AI uses less water than the public thinks"

dado3212 — Fri, 01 May 2026 17:28:34 +0000

This is a bit of a dead horse, but the magnitude of how off the public is on this continues to amaze me. Pete Buttigieg did a Tulsa town hall a week or so ago where someone cited it taking "10,000 gallons of water just to generate one photo".[0]

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCc-ipWVShY&t=1h5m43s

New comment by dado3212 in "US debt is now bigger than the economy for first time since World War II"

dado3212 — Fri, 01 May 2026 16:26:19 +0000

I feel like economists have drawn so many lines in the sand for “it all goes downhill here” that we blow through and keep chugging that the public’s inured to debt news. We won’t solve this until it’s already unsolvable.

Why my macOS Messages badge lied to me (and the one-line fix)

dado3212 — Fri, 01 May 2026 16:24:36 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.alexbeals.com/posts/macos-broken-messages-notification-badge

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47976602

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Parental Controls

dado3212 — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 01:02:50 +0000

Article URL: https://www.tumblr.com/luminousalicorn/814990078758830080/parental-controls

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47916604

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by dado3212 in "Metatextual Literacy"

dado3212 — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 15:09:52 +0000

She’s describing something much more specific than subliteracy.

New comment by dado3212 in "NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers"

dado3212 — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 22:37:42 +0000

I think it's more relevant for quantum computing. The ions we choose for ion trap quantum computers are in part due to what wavelengths are excitable by modified telecom lasers, because they're the wavelengths that are easiest to produce and where the most research/stability/miniaturization has been focused. If the laser wavelength is configurable to this degree then it no longer becomes a constraint, and maybe you can choose single ions with different characteristics.

Metatextual Literacy

dado3212 — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 19:18:38 +0000

Article URL: https://www.jenn.site/metatextual-literacy/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47783890

Points: 56

# Comments: 13

Turning a Chinese IoT camera into an owl livestream

dado3212 — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 19:17:34 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.alexbeals.com/posts/owl-cam

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47783878

Points: 26

# Comments: 0

New comment by dado3212 in "Ask HN: Share your personal website"

dado3212 — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 19:18:41 +0000

https://blog.alexbeals.com

New comment by dado3212 in "Adding insular script like it's 1626"

dado3212 — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 01:38:49 +0000

Love this and was my first introduction to the HTML element (this feels like a great expanded use case). Also couldn't agree more re: your point on the resurrection of "old internet" blogs, it's a trend I'm very much enjoying.