Hacker News: dvduval

New comment by dvduval in "Shift will clean homes for free to train future robots"

dvduval — Sat, 30 May 2026 15:37:37 +0000

It seems to me, they could train the bot to do most tasks like the laundry and vacuuming and dusting and so forth without needing a large sample of homes. And we have the situation where one robot can train all the others so you need the robot in the home not a human unless it’s just supervising the robot.

New comment by dvduval in "GitHub Actions down again today"

dvduval — Tue, 26 May 2026 13:15:50 +0000

Yes, Thais can be be really frustrating when you’re trying to get work done. There needs to be more competition and better alternatives and the LLMs need to offer easier connection to these alternatives.

New comment by dvduval in "Shipping a laptop to a refugee camp in Uganda"

dvduval — Sat, 23 May 2026 18:34:58 +0000

OK, that’s great, I don’t know the logistics part real well either but I think if we talk to her, we could work everything out. I also don’t know how to contact you but you’ll see if there is a domain name listed in my profile, and if you go to the info address for email on that domain, you can message me there and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. I was just talking to her just now and she said she would love to show her kids and teach them how to use it. She’s been here for I believe 12 years in the camp and came from Syria.

New comment by dvduval in "Shipping a laptop to a refugee camp in Uganda"

dvduval — Fri, 22 May 2026 23:36:24 +0000

I know a lady with four children who’s in a refugee camp in Jordan and could really use a laptop. It would allow her to teach language online and maybe get some side jobs and I think it could help her get out of the camp. If anybody has any ideas or wants to send her one please let me know.

New comment by dvduval in "AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale"

dvduval — Thu, 21 May 2026 14:09:22 +0000

The broader problem of original sources not being given credit in a way that rewards them remains. Websites owners are paying to host their content so that spiders can come and crawl them and index it into the AI and then if they’re lucky, they might get a citation, but otherwise there’s very little reward for being a provider of content. And of course, this is something that’s getting worse and worse. Why look at a website when it’s all in AI? And then the counter to that is maybe we need to start closing the website to crawlers and put everything behind a login.

New comment by dvduval in "GitLab Announces Workforce Reduction and End of Their CREDIT Values"

dvduval — Mon, 11 May 2026 22:13:20 +0000

I recently switched everything from bitbucket to GitHub mostly just because GitHub is more integrated with the AI tools I use. I feel like they’re probably still pretty big in Europe, but they’re losing in some markets more than before.

New comment by dvduval in "Canada's parliament votes to label China's persecution of Uighurs as genocide"

dvduval — Wed, 24 Feb 2021 19:49:12 +0000

They have been relocating Uighurs to different parts of China. I've talked to a number of different friends who live in China about this. So it seems that at the end of the re-education, they reintroduced them at other locations so it likely limits their ability to organize.

because I've been studying Chinese and speaking with Chinese people online for the last few years, I've also met quite a few Uighurs who were studying English. They are fluent in Chinese plus a couple of other languages, and as best as I can tell, I have been reintroduced as they say. This is not a topic I was able to discuss with them, but they seems like nice people that were living a decent life.

Now what happened in the past and maybe what still continues to happen in these camps is surely something that will be discussed for years, and China will have a better reputation. I just study what's happening and I'm hoping that there will be some good that comes out of it too.

Ask HN: Can I get enough UV through a window screen to produce Vitamin D?

dvduval — Fri, 01 Jan 2021 21:12:55 +0000

I'm basically living my days in one room due to the need to isolate myself. Can I get vitamin D through the screen? Or will this somehow break up the UV rays?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25607203

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by dvduval in "Nuclear weapons agency breached amid massive cyber onslaught"

dvduval — Fri, 18 Dec 2020 04:07:56 +0000

I have to wonder how many corporations have been hacked but we will never know, because they are worried about the value of their stock. This could actually be a much greater threat to hobbling our infrastructure or blackmailing wealthy people to do their bidding.

New comment by dvduval in "U.S. Used Patriot Act to Gather Logs of Website Visitors"

dvduval — Wed, 09 Dec 2020 05:08:50 +0000

Okay, I'm editing this post because I guess Google incognito mode just doesn't include the history on my own device, but I assume that means that it's fair game for the government. So that means the government is getting info from my ISP sort of like they do in China, right?

New comment by dvduval in "Glucose metabolism responds to perceived sugar intake more than actual intake"

dvduval — Fri, 27 Nov 2020 19:55:30 +0000

And having been like this for a few years, it even seems strange to me that fruit wouldn't be the first thing you would think of when it comes to getting sugar. And I'm not directing this at you. I'm just saying I used to drink soft drinks a lot too and now it doesn't even cross my mind. I do drink wine and beer and I know there's some sugar in those.

New comment by dvduval in "Glucose metabolism responds to perceived sugar intake more than actual intake"

dvduval — Fri, 27 Nov 2020 16:03:37 +0000

And neither artificial sugar or real sugar are necessary additives and our taste buds are adaptive. I tend to get my sugar from fruit.

New comment by dvduval in "hCaptcha now runs on fifteen percent of the internet"

dvduval — Wed, 25 Nov 2020 19:37:25 +0000

I appreciate at least having a good option that doesn't involve putting a Google product on my website. We tried to use our own captcha back in the day, and then used some third party, and they just weren't good enough. I'm glad to see them getting this market share because it means that they will get the opportunity to improve based on a large set of users similar to how Google is able to make their products so good.

New comment by dvduval in "YouTube-dl's repository has been restored"

dvduval — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 03:55:25 +0000

If I can watch a video on my computer for free, it's not too difficult to capture it. There is software I can download. There are browser plugins. This is just one of many options available.

I do fear though that this is going to lead some more and more paywall content and less and less publicly available content.

New comment by dvduval in "YouTube Down"

dvduval — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 01:54:00 +0000

I was trying to load a workout video, and it worked on my phone but I wanted to cast it to my TV. I turned off/on my router and Wi-Fi, reset chromecast, restart the phone, restarted the laptop. I was about to just try to do it from my laptop, did a quick survey of the home network, and then the TV started working again. Haha my workout was delayed about 20 or 30 minutes

New comment by dvduval in "Taking screenshots isn't allowed by the app after upgrading to Android 11"

dvduval — Sun, 08 Nov 2020 19:41:01 +0000

I will especially hate this when I'm trying to translate something. If I can't copy and paste text into a translate app, the next step would be to take a screenshot and then use OCR. Of course if I'm really determined there are ways to still do a translation. I can only imagine what sort of problem is mighy arise for someone with accessibility issues.

New comment by dvduval in "First AI model that translates 100 languages without relying on English"

dvduval — Fri, 23 Oct 2020 00:00:49 +0000

Not currently possessing the skill necessary to get that library up and running, is there a way I can just test it and see how it translates?

New comment by dvduval in "The businesses where Google is biggest and the ones where it isn’t"

dvduval — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 16:48:59 +0000

And when Google has another product that competes against mine, I have to pay Google to advertise against Google. How fair of a playing field is that?

New comment by dvduval in "United States vs. Google"

dvduval — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 15:56:56 +0000

I have to pay Google to compete against Google. I'm in education. And Google has a product for educators and students. So do I. Now Google's going to be able to smartly know who to advertise to and get their product in front of Google's customers better than I will be able to. They're just naturally a big bully.

New comment by dvduval in "U.S. Accuses Google of Illegally Protecting Monopoly"

dvduval — Tue, 20 Oct 2020 20:18:47 +0000

If search weren't part of the equation I could see how that might benefit some small businesses but definitely there is a clear Monopoly on search. Don't you agree?