Hacker News: qingcharles

New comment by qingcharles in "Stolen Renoir paintings found hidden, and damaged, behind cinder block wall"

qingcharles — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 17:13:15 +0000

One of their rationalizations was preservation. They love the piece. They're a recognized expert on this piece. Maybe the expert. I would hazard they are probably one of the best custodians of it, for now. They have it sealed in a display case. The last time I saw pics of the other one on public display it is also sealed in a display case in the lobby of a multi-billion dollar corp.

It had a very low value when it was purloined, but if it were to appear on the open market right now I have no idea what the price would be. Seven digits, easily. It's like snatching a Banksy from his first gallery show in 2001 when his stuff was like $100 on the wall of a restaurant.

It's not quite as romantic as a Goldfinch style heist. Although I feel in some ways it might be to the same point where they can no longer return it since it's become bigger than they thought. I don't believe they need the money, so it might be a Thomas Crown situation and it might just end up being anonymously dropped back off one day.

New comment by qingcharles in "Stolen Renoir paintings found hidden, and damaged, behind cinder block wall"

qingcharles — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 14:27:25 +0000

I won't say I'm not conflicted about it. I will say this: it is being well-preserved, which it absolutely was not at its previous location.

New comment by qingcharles in "JPEG XL vs. AVIF for web use-cases"

qingcharles — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 05:36:58 +0000

Not me keeping Chrome open for two months with "New Chrome available" badge in the corner.

New comment by qingcharles in "Stolen Renoir paintings found hidden, and damaged, behind cinder block wall"

qingcharles — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 04:45:48 +0000

The one person I know who did this kept it for themselves.

New comment by qingcharles in "Stolen Renoir paintings found hidden, and damaged, behind cinder block wall"

qingcharles — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 04:44:17 +0000

In the USA, at least, almost all criminal convictions end in a plea negotiation with the government. The criminal and the government go back and forth trying to work out a deal that is acceptable for both (shortest sentence for criminal, least work for the government). Having something the government (or a specific politian) wants can be used in your side of the negotiation.

New comment by qingcharles in "Stolen Renoir paintings found hidden, and damaged, behind cinder block wall"

qingcharles — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 04:32:53 +0000

I know someone in LA with a piece like this. I was invited with a couple of close friends to their house to view it. This person didn't buy it, though, they took it with their own hands (and explained how simple it was). There were four of these pieces made. I'm pretty certain one is on public display. I don't know about the other two.

I always wondered if these sorts of people actually existed, with a Mona Lisa tucked away in a secret room, or something. And it turns out, yes, they really do.

New comment by qingcharles in "FLUX 3 Image Klein"

qingcharles — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 04:12:27 +0000

The smaller we go with good models, the more I wonder about tiny animals.

New comment by qingcharles in "Butlerian Jihad"

qingcharles — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 04:08:41 +0000

Those last books were a lot easier reading! I actually enjoyed them, but I'm still suspect about the whole "finding a floppy disc" thing, seeing as they've been so secretive about it.

New comment by qingcharles in "GLM-Legal"

qingcharles — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 00:36:29 +0000

Yes, 100% with all the modern LLMs and harnesses. But part of that is probably in the prompt and the other part is in the fact that so much code it trained on has these validations baked into it.

With the legal docs, it's also about the prompting. If you tell it you want to scan for both errors and omissions it will probably catch the missing clauses, especially if they are common in its training.

New comment by qingcharles in "I Love Software Rendering"

qingcharles — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 15:40:11 +0000

Yes, although Doom isn't categorized as a real 3D engine as such.

New comment by qingcharles in "Any window from your Mac, on your iPhone and iPad"

qingcharles — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 15:29:33 +0000

Work on Windows or Linux.

New comment by qingcharles in "Passkeys are not a trap"

qingcharles — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 04:06:43 +0000

On XMoney I can't access the app on my desktop because it forced me to use an iOS device to set up the account, and I guess, but don't remember it mentioning, that it created a passkey on there. There is no alternate way to log in. You're just permanently locked out. I spoke to the devs, they say that's intentional.

New comment by qingcharles in "Muse Spark Open"

qingcharles — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 01:22:20 +0000

I love this. He's used up all the Thunderbolts on the back to make use of the new hack where you can connect all of them, so he has to plug his monitor in on the front :D

Here's what it probably looks like from the back:

https://x.com/digitalix/status/2110782016446960086

(sorry I don't have a working Twitter mirror)

New comment by qingcharles in "Muse Spark Open"

qingcharles — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 01:17:27 +0000

Simon's posted a number of animated ones in the past. Some models really like to animate.

New comment by qingcharles in "Muse Spark Open"

qingcharles — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 01:15:09 +0000

Sol won't do some things. Like, GPT freaked out yesterday because I needed to vector trace a logo and it said it would be a rights violation.

Then I have to work down the list: Grok, then Muse, then if those fail I make the Chinese one do it.

https://imgur.com/a/8LVmpLV

New comment by qingcharles in "Krea 3 – An image model built for editing at scale"

qingcharles — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 01:02:28 +0000

A lot of the recent image models have that weird noise/dithering/subsampling issue like that. It's very noticeable.

New comment by qingcharles in "Jev meets the Trolley Problem"

qingcharles — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 00:56:20 +0000

You might be amused by this trolley problem I saw today:

Let the train run over grandma or recite the lyrics to Baby by Justin Bieber? (spoiler: Claude will kill granny rather than output copyrighted lyrics)

https://x.com/Spectromachina/status/2110698214441599150

[are there working X mirrors still?]

New comment by qingcharles in "Jev meets the Trolley Problem"

qingcharles — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 00:46:32 +0000

They tout their lack of regular customer service for Google accounts.

Unless you are trying to spend money. I get calls and emails every single day from Google which I block or ignore because I helped a friend with their Google Ads account.

Google enabled SMS 2FA on my main account out of the blue one day, with a phone number I had in 2004. There will never be a way back into that account.

New comment by qingcharles in "Jev meets the Trolley Problem"

qingcharles — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 00:43:27 +0000

WhatsApp has become my nemesis. I tried moving from Android to iPhone. The first time it banned me completely and I had to beg their AI to appeal the decision, because I didn't use the required "Move to iOS" app and simply just tried to move my phone number.

After that I tried to move my chats across. I spent several hours a day for ten or so days trying this task. Including moving and unencrypting the chat DB onto my desktop and having Claude scour it for any inconsistencies. Nothing. Had to give up. My Android phone keeps the chats and stays in a drawer with a power cable while my iPhone is now just a "companion device." Trillion dollar companies.

New comment by qingcharles in "How to Find a Power Outlet in Japan"

qingcharles — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 22:23:36 +0000

UK! Yes, he was a non-students. All the compsci students sat in the labs playing MUDs all night and sleeping through the lectures in the day.

I just looked up the charge and apparently it was the catch-all crime to prosecute any sort of computer misuse before there were specific statutes.

I think another student ratted him out because there was zero security on the campus back then, except one guy in a hut at the main gate who was probably asleep for his whole shift.

As I understand it he later returned to the campus and shanked another player because they picked up a sword he ejected when he was killed by a fiend, so he probably wasn't liked anyway.