• 11 Posts
  • 323 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 15th, 2023

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  • When you log into Windows with a Microsoft account, your recovery key is often automatically uploaded to Microsoft’s servers as a backup in case you forget your password. Legally, this means Microsoft owns the key and must surrender it under the U.S. CLOUD Act.

    I find that really quite shocking, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

    Given the legal and technical risks, the advice for business travelers is clear: do not carry data.

    The US really is a hostile surveillance state.




  • Yeah, that’s why I’d like them to build more social housing.

    The lifecycle of social housing projects like these, as I understand them, is meant to be that you continue to build them, and as the old ones reach the end of their lifetime (around 60 years?) you demolish them and move the people into the new ones.

    In practice, most places are not continuously building them as they should, so many of them are reaching the end of their lives without a plan for where to move people afterwards. This shows a lack of foresight and long-term planning.

    Of course, politics are a fickle thing so the latest government can choose to decide that actually, poor people should be punished for the failures of the system and long-term initiatives fail.





  • Social housing typically doesn’t look as good as high-end apartments, but it doesn’t have to look terrible. Here’s some pretty neat looking social housing in south Paris.

    It’s kind of the China Town of Paris.

    It’s right next to an accessible tram station, has green spaces and social areas spread around, a couple of malls with great independent restaurants right next door. There are cycle lanes all around the place.

    If you’re curious, here it is on Google Maps

    I’d live here. I only wish there were more neighbourhoods like this.






  • Been using it for about 7 months.

    After about 2 months I decided to completely move away from Google Photos and now I only use Immich.

    This was a big move for me. I have over 90 000 photos and 1000 videos totalling over 200GB.

    The performance is great even on spinning rust, though I am running it on a Ryzen 2700X and 32GB RAM. That said it’s only when the machine learning background tasks take off that that CPU horsepower is used. You really don’t need that much. The recommended specs are fairly small.

    Since I first installed it, they’ve added an auto-OCR feature which is a godsend. I can search my entire library for text on a screenshot and it works really well.

    Weirdly, the missing feature that really pissed me off on Google Photos and got me to move over was the lack of the ability to search for images not currently in any album. The search functionality is much better on Immich.

    I think the only feature I’m missing from Google Photos is the non-destructive editor, and that’s coming real soon (the PR is already merged as of last week).








  • That’s a fair point. I think some of our interviewers have said that they don’t mind the candidate using a LLM, as long as they are up-front that they are doing so.

    I’d say the kind of use is important. If they are using it as a form of advanced auto-complete, that’s fine. If they are using it uncritically, or to avoid thinking about the problem, I doubt I’d hire them.

    We need engineers who can solve problems, not a salaried middle-man to an LLM.