NomadicCoder's recent activity

  1. Comment on In search of the hypothetical iPhone Duo buyer in ~tech

    NomadicCoder
    Link Parent
    My iPad is 9 years old now, so maybe I'm not the best to answer this question, but at the time I bought the Pro because the audio quality was phenomenal compared to the base model, and I knew I'd...

    My iPad is 9 years old now, so maybe I'm not the best to answer this question, but at the time I bought the Pro because the audio quality was phenomenal compared to the base model, and I knew I'd be using it for media consumption in addition to other uses. It was also the first to offer ProMotion (120Hz), had an anti-glare laminated display, True Tone w/ P3 gamut, and had a larger 10.5 vs 9.7" screen, A10X vs A9, external keyboard smart connector (which I did use), pencil support, better front camera, and double the storage. At the time the Pro iPad was a definite upgrade over the non Pro model.

    I think paying extra at the time is part of why I still find it tolerable to use 9 years later, vs a non-pro model of the same year.

    1 vote

  2. Comment on Apple announces iPhone Duo, its first foldable iPhone in ~tech

    NomadicCoder
    Link Parent
    As somebody who lives in an area where the nearest Apple store is almost 2 hours away and in another country I wish that this wasn't the stock answer. Speaking of which, I broke my screen last...

    As somebody who lives in an area where the nearest Apple store is almost 2 hours away and in another country I wish that this wasn't the stock answer.

    Speaking of which, I broke my screen last week while in that other country, but still far from an Apple store, and had to stop into a local repair shop to get a refurb screen installed to be able to navigate, use translation, etc. And even though it's a real Apple display, the phone still warns me that it's been replaced and the startup animation is not as smooth (I accidentally cancelled the option to finish setup and pair the new display, and cannot get back into it).

    5 votes

  3. Comment on LG smart TVs caught logging audio with screen off and snooping on local devices in ~tech

    NomadicCoder
    Link Parent
    Ugh, seriously? Way to ruin my day. Seriously considering just giving up on technology in general. Anybody want to start an off-grid commune? :)

    Ugh, seriously? Way to ruin my day.

    Seriously considering just giving up on technology in general. Anybody want to start an off-grid commune? :)

    1 vote

  4. Comment on LG smart TVs caught logging audio with screen off and snooping on local devices in ~tech

    NomadicCoder
    Link Parent
    Yeah, and they could also do mesh networking to connect to neighbors' TVs. I hate this dystopia.

    Yeah, and they could also do mesh networking to connect to neighbors' TVs. I hate this dystopia.

    2 votes

  5. Comment on I made a chill minimal 3D golf game that fits in 13 kilobytes - Sunshine Golf Classic in ~creative

    NomadicCoder
    Link Parent
    It is much-much faster, and therefore cheaper, to write applications that rely on existing frameworks, which brings in a lot of additional dependencies that bloat the code. It also takes a lot of...

    Why the hell we need so much RAM and storage these days when you are able to make such a great thing in such a small package?

    It is much-much faster, and therefore cheaper, to write applications that rely on existing frameworks, which brings in a lot of additional dependencies that bloat the code. It also takes a lot of time and effort to minimize code so dramatically, delaying releases. Moreover, minimized code is very hard to maintain, and more likely to break when adding or modifying functionality -- maintenance is more expensive than the initial authorship.

    3 votes

  6. Comment on Stop Killing The Internet: No digital ID and no age verification in ~tech

    NomadicCoder
    Link Parent
    I'm sure I can easily find much worse on the Internet, but I recall a fair bit of bestiality and gore being in the more seedy magazines that were randomly encountered.

    I'm sure I can easily find much worse on the Internet, but I recall a fair bit of bestiality and gore being in the more seedy magazines that were randomly encountered.

  7. Comment on LG smart TVs caught logging audio with screen off and snooping on local devices in ~tech

    NomadicCoder
    Link
    Glad that I never once connected my LG TV to the Internet, I've always used it as just a monitor for my Roku (which so far I've yet to hear anything dystopian about them, I hope nobody dashes my...

    Glad that I never once connected my LG TV to the Internet, I've always used it as just a monitor for my Roku (which so far I've yet to hear anything dystopian about them, I hope nobody dashes my naiveté) -- that also means I need to strike LG off of my future consideration list.

    11 votes

  8. Comment on Software engineers / programmers: how’s it going? in ~comp

    NomadicCoder
    (edited )
    Link
    I'm kind of busy right now, so I'm not going to write much, but I've found that LLMs really help with the tedious parts of my job and speed up my work in areas that I'm not as familiar. EDIT: To...

    I'm kind of busy right now, so I'm not going to write much, but I've found that LLMs really help with the tedious parts of my job and speed up my work in areas that I'm not as familiar.

    EDIT: To answer the question -- I'm at a very small startup where I was originally the only developer along with a CTO who did a little bit of development -- we now have a few additional developers/testers/etc, but still a very small team.

    As an example... today I was adding a new feature that needed to comply with a standard protocol. I wrote it without much LLM help (just CoPilot as a fancy auto-complete, but it's still basically my code when I use that, it's just inferring where I'm going and finishing the lines for me). When I was done I needed to update a public facing document that described the edit, so I gave my code snippet to the LLM that my company licenses and the previous draft of the document (the boring parts of my job) and asked it which sections needed to be updated.

    1. It noticed that I'd completely forgotten to implement an important section of the standard!
    2. It told me which sections of the documents that I needed to edit. I didn't ask it for exact text, just a pointer to all of the locations that needed to be updated.

    --

    #1 could have gone months without being noticed, because I'm one of the few at my company (or anywhere) that knows that standard, and it would have likely had an urgent turnaround when a customer complained - and we're in a regulated industry where patches are a big deal with a lot of overhead.

    #2 saved me a lot of drudgery, making the document edit a lot less tedious, probably saved me 4 or 5 hours.

    I never ask an LLM to write production code from whole-cloth (I do sometimes ask it for scripts for automation tasks that I can review before running them), but I do sometimes ask it to review blocks or help me interface with a library I don't understand, etc. It has been extremely helpful for stuff like that and makes my work a LOT faster and makes the tedious parts go faster.

    --

    One other thing before I go, I've found it to be very good for code reviews. Giving it a piece of existing code and asking it to find race conditions, security holes, potential sources of a crash, etc... HUGE time saver and it has definitely prevented me from shipping some bad code more than once.

    3 votes

  9. Comment on Stop Killing The Internet: No digital ID and no age verification in ~tech

    NomadicCoder
    Link Parent
    I was a child in the early 80s and I also saw some really messed up things without seeking them out too -- back then you'd stumbled across some really hard-core magazines in the rain gutters, in a...

    I was a child in the early 80s and I also saw some really messed up things without seeking them out too -- back then you'd stumbled across some really hard-core magazines in the rain gutters, in a cavity of a tree, behind a large rock, etc, on your walk home from school or while out exploring with your friends, and I guarantee you that curious children were passing them around.

    The Internet makes it easier, but you might be surprised how frequent it was back then. You almost never see it anymore because such magazines have basically been replaced, so it might be hard to fathom just how common it was.

    6 votes

  10. Comment on What is the oldest file you still have? in ~tech

    NomadicCoder
    Link
    I have some 5.25 floppy disks from the 80s that I keep, even though I don't have any way to read them, mostly because they have some of the early programs I wrote... my first programs were all...

    I have some 5.25 floppy disks from the 80s that I keep, even though I don't have any way to read them, mostly because they have some of the early programs I wrote... my first programs were all stored on cassette and are long gone.

    ...but the oldest file that I have that I still USE, daily, is my .vimrc file, some lines of which are older than my oldest child, who is nearing 30. :) I've been loosely maintaining that file so long that I honestly don't even remember a good portion of what's in its 1600+ lines.

    1 vote

  11. Comment on Router recommendations? in ~comp

    NomadicCoder
    Link Parent
    I use UniFi at home, and also did the same for the small startup I'm working at where I was there from day 1 and needed to set up an office network. I use the UDR, which is an all in one unit with...

    I use UniFi at home, and also did the same for the small startup I'm working at where I was there from day 1 and needed to set up an office network. I use the UDR, which is an all in one unit with a switch, router, and wifi access point. I didn't find the configuration to be any harder than any of the consumer grade routers.

    I have both an OpenVPN and WireGuard VPN server running on both configurations and I get security notifications pushed to my phone for the office network.

    Interestingly my home configuration is more complex since my house is bigger than our one room office, so I have two PoE wifi access points. They're in my basement since the basement has a drop ceiling and it was easy to run the wire, and they have nice brackets to mount to the drop ceiling cross-bars. I get good coverage both upstairs and downstairs, each floor is about 1600 sq ft.

    1 vote

  12. Comment on Are others finding themselves spending less and less time online? in ~tech

    NomadicCoder
    Link Parent
    And, sadly, the physical towns were demolished to build that town, so we no longer have third-spaces to return to.

    The town has been demolished, mostly. Some roads are still there but not too many anymore and i think i've become tired to look for them :)

    And, sadly, the physical towns were demolished to build that town, so we no longer have third-spaces to return to.

    7 votes

  13. Comment on Are others finding themselves spending less and less time online? in ~tech

    NomadicCoder
    Link Parent
    Number 1 perfectly describes my feelings. My suggestion feed feels like 100 copies of the exact same video, and the same exact video it was the last 100 times I looked. I have to work hard to find...

    Number 1 perfectly describes my feelings. My suggestion feed feels like 100 copies of the exact same video, and the same exact video it was the last 100 times I looked. I have to work hard to find anything new and interesting. I just don't enjoy opening youtube anymore. Nebula is better (though lacking in some UX features), but for some reason I still find myself opening the YouTube app first.

    Reddit is trash now. The new UI is insufferable, old reddit is dying a slow death, and I feel dirty for even using the site. Unfortunately there's a few niche subreddits where I cannot find anything equivalent (local subreddits, device specific forums, etc), so I find myself still using it. That said, I do enjoy taking every opportunity to dunk on Trump. :)

    9 votes

  14. Comment on Why am I left-handed? in ~science

    NomadicCoder
    Link
    I'd probably be classified as a right-hander, but I find that I also have a lot of mixed dominance. I have noticed that taught skills (writing, using utensils, guitar, etc) I tend to do...

    I'd probably be classified as a right-hander, but I find that I also have a lot of mixed dominance. I have noticed that taught skills (writing, using utensils, guitar, etc) I tend to do right-handed, but almost everything else I do left handed or go back and forth freely -- including the easier to re-learn taught skills, like using utensils. I often keep two computer mice on my desk, and use whichever is more convenient at the moment depending on what I'm doing on the keyboard at the time and also switch back and forth to avoid wrist strain.

    Some things, like using a cell-phone, I do almost exclusively left-handed.

    4 votes

  15. Comment on American Red Cross declares second-ever national blood supply crisis, urges immediate blood donations in ~health

    NomadicCoder
    Link Parent
    I way a lot of dark leafy greens, gardened, foraged, and otherwise, but it still isn’t keeping up. I added an iron supplement recently, but it didn’t make a huge difference, so my doctor...

    I way a lot of dark leafy greens, gardened, foraged, and otherwise, but it still isn’t keeping up.

    I added an iron supplement recently, but it didn’t make a huge difference, so my doctor recommended every other day — surprisingly there’s evidence that it might improve uptake.

    1 vote

  16. Comment on American Red Cross declares second-ever national blood supply crisis, urges immediate blood donations in ~health

    NomadicCoder
    Link Parent
    I recently learned that my iron is low, and supplementation hasn’t helped much after a few months so I definitely won’t be able to donate any time soon. I’ve been vegetarian for a long while and...

    I recently learned that my iron is low, and supplementation hasn’t helped much after a few months so I definitely won’t be able to donate any time soon. I’ve been vegetarian for a long while and wasn’t supplementing enough, so all of the ones harder to get with a vegetarian diet were low (creatine, b12, and iron) so I’ve been much more consistent lately.

    1 vote

  17. Comment on Which privacy-friendly home appliances exist? e.g. robot vacuum cleaners. in ~tech

    NomadicCoder
    Link
    I just don’t connect my robot vacuum to the network and start it manually — which is my preference anyhow. It still navigates just fine, I just can’t specify a specific room. It’s a Dereeme (sp?),...

    I just don’t connect my robot vacuum to the network and start it manually — which is my preference anyhow. It still navigates just fine, I just can’t specify a specific room. It’s a Dereeme (sp?), with lidar and camera.

    4 votes

  18. Comment on Firefox for iOS now has a native adblocker in ~tech

    NomadicCoder
    Link Parent
    Yeah. That’s what I thought, which is why I never bothered trying others.

    Yeah. That’s what I thought, which is why I never bothered trying others.

  19. Comment on Firefox for iOS now has a native adblocker in ~tech

    NomadicCoder
    Link Parent
    I have the AdGuard extension installed and opened the website in Safari and it is just fine. While I would probably trust Firefox's adblock more than AdGuard, you can still block ads in Safari....

    I have the AdGuard extension installed and opened the website in Safari and it is just fine. While I would probably trust Firefox's adblock more than AdGuard, you can still block ads in Safari. That said, Apple claims that their extension design does prevent the extension from knowing your browsing history.

  20. Comment on Firefox for iOS now has a native adblocker in ~tech

    NomadicCoder
    Link Parent
    How is the experience using Firefox (or any alternative browser) on iOS? I feel like there's some cookie sharing between the web views in apps and the main browser, which can be either good or bad...

    How is the experience using Firefox (or any alternative browser) on iOS? I feel like there's some cookie sharing between the web views in apps and the main browser, which can be either good or bad depending on context. Also, it used to be that alternative browsers were forced to use the Safari rendering engine anyhow, so I didn't see much reason to switch -- is that still true? (I guess I could DDG it, but I figured I'd ask you since I'm more curious about the experience than the technical details).