The radio API and firmware is open; I have no ire for people who choose to make software closed source so that it can be monetized when there are SO many other options that in many cases supersede the functionality of the closed source option.

https://github.com/jkingsman/Remote-Terminal-for-MeshCore

Prompts: https://gist.github.com/jkingsman/30a61882917c68c114ee28fe5f...

Also, I say "prior to public release" and obviously, this codebase is super publicly released, but that doesn't matter -- what I'm doing in the prompt is priming my agents for a this matters tone. I have no opinions I'd state publicly on the consciousness argument, but I generally dislike deception; in this case, I find declaring this to be our last ditch review before public release puts it in a context state to be more details-oriented than other primers I tried ("this is our final release" led to too many interoperability/future-proof finds; "this codebase has subtle bugs introduced by an adversarial engineer" had too many security false positives or true-but-absurd positives; "please be detailed and carefully dig deep" just wasn't as good. Plus, the "public release" paradigm helped it to do innate classification of "gotta fix before release" vs. "fix soon after" vs. "fix when able" which maps pretty well to my personal taste in the severity of bugs it's found I've evaluated, so I've kept it).

LLM-driven develop lets me have the thing built without needing to build the thing, and at the same time I get to exercise some ways-to-build I don't use as often (management, spec writing, spec editing, proactive unblocking, etc.). I have no doubt my work with LLMs has strengthened mental muscles that are also be helpful in technical management contexts/senior+principal-level technical work.

I sick Opus, GPT5.4, and Gemini on it, have them write their own hitlists, and then have a warden Opus instance go and try to counterprove the findings, and compose a final hitlist for me, then a fresh context instance to go fix the hitlist.

They always find some little niggling thing, or inconsistency, or code organization improvement. They absolutely introduce more churn than is necessary into the codebase, but the things they catch are still a net positive, and I validate each item on the final hitlist (often editing things out if they're being overeager or have found a one in a million bug that's just not worth the fix (lately, one agent keeps getting hung up on "what if the device returns invalid serial output" in which case "yeah, we crash" is a perfectly fine response)).

Crazily, I only stumbled upon this because I ordered some discount blood labs and the requisition had Health Gorilla on the letterhead, which I found an absurd company name, so I googled them, and found the lawsuit which was filed the day prior. Absolute chance.

Essentially, Epic, a massive healthcare company running the majority of electronic healthcare/medical record systems for hospitals/etc. makes data available to various data brokers, who then subcontract to other healthcare providers. The goal of this subcontracting is that if you e.g. come into an emergency department unconscious, but with identification, doctors can pull data from the broker, solemnly swear that they're treating you, and gain access to your whole medical record. Generally, good actors in this space will seek signed consent paperwork, or have policies in place with narrow carve-outs for emergency access, but there is (to my understanding) not a centralized, standardized system of access request, patient approval, and auditing.

There have been many issues in the past with shady providers who are, indeed, treating the patients, also turning around to sell the data they have to legal firms looking for plantiffs for lawsuits under the guise of "we're helping the patient by potentially giving them access to lawsuits that will advocate for them."

This current lawsuit alleges that the data brokers this time were simply turning a blind eye to completely fraudulent actors who never had the patient under their care, and that their access was knowingly used to bulk-mine patient data for lawsuit opportunities.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46622326

Points: 6

# Comments: 3

I love making friends with strangers, but usually rely on the "handshake protocol" of a casual observation or small talk that is then accepted (with a similar slight-deepening or extension of the thought) or rejected (casual assent or no response at all), until the bandwidth opens and I can foster a more meaningful moment of connection with a pivot like "Oh awesome that you do $THING for work. Do you enjoy what you do?" or "Oh I don't know much about $LOCATION_YOURE_FROM. Good spot for a vacation, or good spot to drive straight through?"

As somewhere between "thinks like an engineer" and "on the spectrum," I really enjoy hearing others' strategies or optimizations (optimizing for quality, connection, warmth) for social situations.

It used to be a general rule of thumb that you could build a computer of roughly equivalent power for the cost of a game console, or a little more — now the memory costs more than the whole console.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46033158

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

HIPAA's scope is actually basically nonexistent once you get away from healthcare providers, insurance companies, and the people that handle their data/they do business with. Talking with someone (even a company) about health conditions, mental health, etc. does not make them a medical provider.