Just last year, browser extension Honey suffered an infamous scandal. Now owned by PayPal, the extension promised to find the best deal, including finding the best coupon codes. The exposé revealed Honey’s business model focused more on being a man in the middle in both security and transaction. And it also reveals a gap, a bias between what buyers think they do and what they actually do.
From Op-ed
The Case of the ‘Indulgent’ Subscription
Bit of context before I get into the whole fiasco. The choke point of physical ownership is real estate. Everyone who has ever tried owning every contents would know this. At some point, medium takes up more space than the media: books, movies, musics, video games, just about all of them. Movies, especially, would hit close at home for most of us. VHS, Betamax, DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-ray, the list of mediums are keep growing for the same movie. And some of the mediums haven’t even survived its own era. Streaming has solved this, albeit at a price.
Raspberry Pi, RAM, and Home Labs
Most of my Raspberry Pis have been decommissioned. I had used Docker and Docker only on Pis, so much of the effort was on focused compatibility and reliability of single machine (Synology NAS) doing all the work. For the record, Synology couldn’t do everything off the shelves. I had to upgrade the RAM from default 4 GB to 20 GB. And I am running most of the DBs on m.2 drives to ensure faster read and write. The question I have now is simple. What will I do with Pi boards?
Closed Captioning is a Must
For the life of me, I do not know why YouTube still doesn’t officially support closed captioning on PiP. As much as I appreciate overall better audio qualities even from a beginner YouTuber, the problem stands. Unless I am watching a podcast video uploaded onto YouTube, a video of people talking in perfectly sterilized studio, there is bound to be some background noises, some other audios mixing in. It’s only natural, even big time Hollywood movies and TV shows suffer from it. The difference I am pointing out is how these platforms handle the problem. Of which, YouTube is slowly…
Olympus Air, Caira, and Photography
Before some may assume I must be talking of photography in commercial or professional sense, I am not. Just recently, I was searching for a better way to scan my old books, only to find the “real” solution used in archiving was DSLR or Mirrorless cameras on tripods with professional softwares. It is a solution, but it is not the solution for home or for the hobbyists. Though it is far from photography, my interest in telescopes almost always comes back to bite in a same way — the most pro models and pro conventions are not always the answer.
Resurrecting Abandoned Projects with Vibe Coding
Open source projects always had a huge caveat in its system. If it’s too rigid and far too common, it is less likely to be given enough attention for maintenance until it breaks. If it’s too early in the development and quite niche, it is also less likely to be given enough attention. The projects I usually encounter and enjoy reading are usually in the later category. Coming from that very same niche, — that’s how I ended up googling for it — I understand the desire to come up with an algorithm. These abandoned projects never come to fruition,…
Are LLMs Terrible at Gauging Efficiency?
A theory that I had for sometime, originally not for LLMs, but for those who believe LLMs can write perfect codes. LLMs care little about the environment on which the codes will run on. I know the statement alone makes no sense — how can it be considered coding, if it doesn’t work on the environment? It’s not that it won’t run, it’s just that it will run extremely poorly.
LLM, Subscriptions, and Tokens
As I have previously said, I don’t see Claude replacing a proper programmer’s job anytime soon. I am subscribing to meager Pro tier, and that’s nowhere near enough to replace my hobbyist’s job. Granted, there is the joy of not needing to fiddle with technicalities. Being able to implement new algorithm and upgrade existing core algorithm to a new one like blocks falling into places feels like a vindication. But this is from a hobbyist’s perspective.
Rechargeable Battery and Electric Door Lock in Korea
It’s customary to look for rechargeable batteries for price or for environment or otherwise. My go-to guide on the matter thus far: rechargeable battery is like LED light bulbs of AAs, high upfront but cheaper in the long run. AA or AAA batteries go into remotes are less an issue — they tend to last a lot longer than common household appliances. Perhaps children’s toys, mouse and keyboard, if they are not USB based yet, are few household items that can take real advantage of rechargeable batteries.
How Safe is Memorable Password?
Number one rule of any password is: the weakest link is human. xkcd often puts out great educational comic strips on the subject. One I am thinking of, as no doubt you could have seen in the generator post, is the legendary “correct horse battery staple”, only that he did rigged the game to prove his point. Tr0ub4dor&3 is a bad password, because it is essentially troubadour in Leet. But it’s only 11 characters long, fit for most sadistic password policies out there. correcthorsebatterystaple is one long password with 25 characters. You cannot use this in any of the websites…
What Happened to Neckband Headphones?
Recently, I use my AirPods Pro more frequently than I would have worn my Max. AirPods Max gets a bad rap for its weight, but it’s not the weight that counts. It’s the distribution of those weights; how breathable the materials and overall design is; the clamping force from the form factor (e.g. U-shaped around the head), and so on. I won’t pretend to know about the science behind the ergonomics. There are testers and reviewers who write more in-depth literature on the subject than I do.
How AI Hallucination Affects You
The hallucination in AI, or LLM hallucination, is real. I have read some op-eds and online discussions whether or not hallucinations affect real world use cases — average users making mundane queries. I was on the side of “garbage in, garbage out” camp; hallucination is an expected side effect of the algorithm, and it is up to the user to double check the answers. Now I am wondering if it merits double checking at all.
Coding with Gemini was Fun Short-Lived
During my migration from Pi to NAS via all things Docker, one of the problems I immediately faced was how I was going to handle my aging databases. All these eBooks, magazines, articles, and etc. I have accumulated since high school had to go somewhere. I know there would be some people shouting I should simply throw them out like the 90s memorabilia in the attic. But I took this on as my personal DIY project.
1Password is Raising Price
Just last year I covered the very issue of leaving 1Password. Long story short, Apple Passwords, a free alternative for iOS and MacOS, has come a long way. With iOS 26, some argue it is now a suitable free alternative among many others. Not that I am suggesting everyone should jump ship, but I believe there is an argument to be made against where 1Password stands and why it is losing grip.
Where Is Poppy Playtime Going with the Factory?
This piece has been sitting in the back burner for some time now. The Chapter 1, though it had some fancy gadgets for a toy factory, it stayed a toy factory (with theme) with toy monsters. Compare that to what is going on in current chapters, the players are well past the point of factory floors. In fact, few assembly lines we do see in Chapter 5 don’t resemble anything like the special toy factory we had seen on the surface.