Benjamin_Dobell
Joined 13 years ago
Karma
4,175
Submissions
768
Member since
Jul 28
Recent submissions
Comment · 7 days ago
Probably worth noting, yes, I'm aware if you're running atop their cloud infrastructure, OpenAI already technically have access to whatever they like. How would you feel about VPS providers enforcing this same policy?
Yes, I'm also aware that if your data goes to their models for processing, you're of course already sending them your private data too. However, you may have noticed, Codex and the like actually go to pretty great lengths NOT to upload things like secrets to the model. This is the polar opposite approach.
Isn't the idea of having a cloud computer meant to be that it's more than just a model? It provides compute, so it can run scripts locally to filter data etc.
Comment · 18 days ago
What browser are you using? IE6?
Just kidding. But you must have clicked somewhere. Audio autoplay hasn't been a thing on the web for years (thankfully).
Comment · 24 days ago
It's extremely useful if your distribution platform is the web. However, I find it much more valuable as a type checker than a compiler. I use TypeScript extensively (in several projects) for defining schemas types.
For example, in the Breaka Club (https://breaka.club/) editor, which is not presently exposed to kids yet, we define behaviors for characters, props, mosaics (terrain tiles) and items in JSON. But the JSON has type checking and real-time completion as you type. Not naive property auto-suggestion, we have effect types and they're context aware in that you can refer to targets introduced higher in parent constructs of the JSON — and they're fully type checked. If you refer to a target that does not exist in a context, it won't validate and you cannot save the schema.
We use tsgo for development, but the editor (runtime schema validation) is presently stuck on TypeScript 6 because there's no WASM support.
Now, is it nutty that we're using TypeScript for JSON validation? A little. But it's extremely powerful. We're going far beyond what's capable with Zod or ArkType.
Comment · 25 days ago
Professional looking product / page. However, the shaders themselves are extremely odd. They're just swirling patterns. I think the creator of this would do well to look at games for inspiration. Games use shaders for all sorts of effects, for a reason.
In particular, I'd expect there to be shaders making use of textures. I was expecting buttons with a laser finished metallic look that actually changes with lighting on the page. Or hero images that combine photography with masks to produce interesting effects highlighting products with auras etc. These all appear to be screensavers.
Comment · 1 month ago
The context window is configurable. I've been using ~600k for months. No, not API pricing, on a Codex sub.
~/.codex/config.toml
model = "gpt-6.1-sol"
model_context_window = 700000
model_auto_compact_token_limit = 630000Comment · 1 month ago
I'm definitely getting more than 4 hours of Astra usage (medium or high, typically). However, I predominantly use Sol or Luna because Astra simply isn't (or shouldn't be) necessary for every task.
That said, I'm not able to get anything useful done in those hours. The exception is when I swap back to 5.6 Sol/Luna, which seem to be working as they used to.
Mostly, I've just given up and am using Opus 5.5 for all the important tasks now. Which is odd for me say, because I cancelled my Anthropic sub a few months back because I couldn't stand Opus 4.6 < x < 5.5. 5.5 feels great though, like Astra did when it first released.
Comment · 1 month ago
Codex GPT-6 models are so congested and slow at the moment it is difficult to get through the current 20x plan anyway.
Comment · 1 month ago
Yeah, I tried to read this because I'm genuinely interested in this topic. I assumed going in LLMs would be involved, and I don't mind at all. But my gosh reading the article is such a slog. I couldn't do it
Comment · 1 month ago
Phwoar! Thank you. It's 2026, and had it not been for your high quality informative comments. I would have not known anything about this them there Facebook. You saved me.
I don't know what conversation you think you're having here, but it's not that.
If you'd bothered to read... and then ready for it... stop, take a breath, and process the information. You'd have noticed I was pointing out you can use a Quest headset WITHOUT providing them your personal ID OR having a Facebook account. Almost as if, you know, I was highlighting that giving the company your personal info isn't required. Woe me though for pointing that out.
I'm sorry for interrupting the indignant rants. Please continue.
Comment · 1 month ago
Well, I was going to point out the distinction between products. But I guess if people like you are able to turn HN into Reddit, anything is possible.
Comment · 1 month ago
They have Meta accounts now, which are also not Facebook accounts. I went straight from an Oculus account to Meta account. Might be location based, but I most certainly haven't been asked to upload any ID.
Comment · 1 month ago
Still plugging away teaching kids to code and hand draw their own computer games:
https://breaka.club/blog/why-were-building-clubs-for-kids
Have been running an in-school pilot over the last school term. Has been super insightful and led to a heap of changes to optimize UX. However, the biggest challenge has been delivery in this environment.
Trying to run a game in a browser on school iPads powered by really locked down networks has been challenging. Some school iPads will crash (out of memory) when launching the camera view, whilst others run flawlessly. We use a fork of Godot, and are constantly fighting to strike a balance between UX (increased parallelism) and browser device constraints i.e. a limit on how many web workers we can fit in memory.
In addition to our main (build and play your own RPG) experience, we also stream games direct to iPad. In particular a modded version of Overcooked! 2 that teaches kids to code — Overcooked itself was never even released on iPad. We've built our own Kubernetes system that spins up (a license limited number of) games/pods on demand backed by (time sliced) NVidia GPUs. This is literally running out of my home office. Despite the complexity of building all that, the Kubernetes and GPU time slicing wasn't even the largest hurdle. Turns out UDP is a no-go on the school network, so direct WebRTC was out the window. Instead we're using Cloudflare's TURN relay with TCP. Which much to my surprise, is holding up quite well.
Definitely a learning experience. However, kids are having a blast. Can't wait to roll this out further!
Comment · 1 month ago
Not based on an official Blockly implementation. But you can add keyboard navigation to Blockly(-like) scripting reasonably easily:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITWSL5lTLig
The video above shows keyboard, but the main motivation for the key-based navigation was actually gamepad.
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Building something in the education space for kids: https://breaka.club
Also:
Consultant @ Berserk Games - https://tabletopsimulator.com/
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Formerly:
Head of Engineering @ Ender - https://joinender.com/
Head of Engineering @ Prequel - https://www.joinprequel.com/
CTO @ Kangaroo Interactive
CTO @ Snaploader (acquired by Archistar) - https://www.archistar.ai/
Director @ Glass Echidna - https://glassechidna.com.au/