- Grok: ideas: how much did it cost? input a github repo, and we analyze LoC and commits and estimate what it would have cost on different AI providers (API, subscription) to build it.
- Gemini Pro 3.1: Hey bud i like this , but is this really getting the LOC accurate? And the commit count? Ideally I'd like to cost it on number of lines changed per commit, you know? But that could be fucking too many requests. So...I think we can use a mathematical model that assumes lines grow over time, and also to get to a commit might take so many iterations. <snip ... grok's attempt>
Wow. That sucks. hcloud was great for ages and highly competitively priced.
Vultr may be a good alternative. If you want to search VPS prices across the 6 major clouds (gcloud, aws-cli, hcloud, az, doctl, and vultr-cli) I made a wrapper TUI that lets you search, sort, and rent VPS.
I feel like a huge selling point of Hetzner is that they're based in Europe, and they're themselves citing that as the reason for a huge uptick in sales and new users. In that context, I don't Vultr is a realistic alternative.
Obviously the US pushing absolutely everyone away and making EU and Europe the new enemy, so now we here want to reciprocate that and feel the need to move away from US infrastructure ASAP.
Personally I've been on a personal quest to minimize my usage of US-based services for many years already, but right now it's even part of the mainstream conversations, so seems to be ramping up, finally.
For clients, I just do what they wish to do, and a bunch of them want to move to European infrastructure because they've seen what can happen when you rely on US infrastructure today, and don't want it to happen to them. Only one so far cited regulatory reasons, and I think they were misinformed, but helped them out anyways with it.
Personally I do it because it's better aligned with what kind of future I want, and not wanting to support hyper-captalism environments anymore.
Cloud Act directly conflicts with GDPR. To really rub salt in the wound Trump overtly threatening to invade the EU (Greenland) basically turned the whole of Europe off seeing the US as a reliable ally. I don't think Americans have caught up to how much damage he has done to the image of the US amongst allies. They seem blissfully unaware of what's happening. Of course there are plenty of astute Americans who are aware but not the public at large.
This is it. Hetzner has always been very price competitive in its existence. Given the private ownership, I din‘t expect this to be a sudden outburst of greed, but to actually reflect rising costs.
If a provider has higher margins, they may choose to eat some of the cost. But I would not expect that to be the case across the board
At least we now know that everyone working in classified programs is above reproach and cleaner than clean. It's a good thing too, because working without accountability in secret would definitely be abused, but thankfully that's not the case because the people hired are too pure and good.
It's also a very good filter for high openness and creativity, ensuring that the most sensitive works attracts the most brilliant creative geniuses. Truly these nations know how to develop their advantages in the best way.
Right. And I don't think the abuse of the vetting people is by accident. I think it's a vulnerability, where people in positions of "collecting dirt" on others, often end up fabricating the dirt, and doing other very bad things because the power imbalance of asymmetric information corrupts.
COme to think of it, maybe that's why priests who take confessions are also correlated with abuse. Something about having this assymetry over many others maybe scrambles their moral circuitry...The Catholic conneciton is just a theory that surfaced now tho, haven't thought it more than that. But the badness of the vetting people is certain. Sad that governments have to tarnish their good names employing such miscreants.
This is because the vagus nerve interfaces with the parasympathetic nervous system, the responses of which are what the instrument measures. And the vagus nerve terminates in the...you know. And so that's one way that you can get control over the metrics.
Perhaps the point is it's "confession theatre". You're put in a stress position, worried that the "magical machine" can read your darkest secrets, and told that everything will go easier if you're just honest, and so that's why you're inclined to spill them. Which is what they are trying to get you to do.
This is not the concern for me. I thought the risk was obvious to everyone. Tho I've been tempted because it means I'll "have more interactions" or whatever LinkedIn pitches with, I didn't want to put a public signal out there with yes: "This is my real name, real job, real city" - to me it's like a pre-vetted database of marks for identity theft criminals or whatnot. You know?
I thought everyone, at least in security would be somewhat concerned about this, but they're not. I get the benefits, and I want to enjoy those benefits too. I'd much prefer if I could privately confirm my name using IDs (zero problem with that) but then not have to show it or an exact profile photo. I'm sure there's a cryptographic way for my identity to be proven to any who I chose to prove it to who required such bona fides. I dislike the surface of "proven identity for everyone". You know?
This to me is the far more important thing than: "security focused biometric company processed my data, therefore being rational and modern I will now have a meltdown." Everytime you drive, use a payment method linked to your name, use your plan phone, your laptop, go to a venue that ID scans, make a rental, catch a flight, cross a border, etc, your ID (or telemetric equivalents sufficient to ID you) is processed by some digital entity. If you will revolt against the principle of "my government issued and not-truly-mine-anyway ID documents, or other provided bona fides are being read by digital entities contracted to do that", it seems nonsensical.
I think the bigger risk is always taking a photo of your passport and putting it on the internet, which is basically what the current LI verification means. Casual OSINT on a verified profile likely reveals the exact birthday (or cross-referenced on other platforms), via "happy birthday" type posts. How old am I type image AI can give you rough years.
> I'm sure there's a cryptographic way for my identity to be proven to any who I chose to prove it to
There is. The pattern is: generate a keypair locally, derive a DID (decentralized identifier) from the public key, and then selectively prove your identity to specific verifiers using digital signatures. No central authority ever holds your private key.
The key difference from the LinkedIn model: you never hand biometric data to a third party. Instead, you hold a cryptographic identity that you control. If someone needs to verify you, they check a signature — not a database. You can prove you're the same entity across interactions without revealing anything about who you are in the physical world.
This is exactly the approach behind things like W3C DIDs and Verifiable Credentials. The crypto has been solved for years; the adoption problem is that platforms like LinkedIn have no incentive to give users self-sovereign identity when the current model lets them be the middleman.
I've been building an open implementation of this for AI agents (where the identity problem is arguably even worse — there's no passport to scan): https://github.com/The-Nexus-Guard/aip. But the same cryptographic primitives apply to human identity too.
I like this but want to marry it with real world, too. How would you do that? LinkedIn would verify biometrics and then sign your DID? ANd you'd use that biometric-attested ID to prove to who you want?
I guess from a psychological and UX point of view tho, large platforms like LI have lots of "trust" in people's eyes (accurate or not) and so if LI says "verified" we can trust that. It's not just a conspiracy for linkedin to intermediate themselves, it's human sociology. I would just like LI to remove the "self-dox pwn" from verified badges, attest but let me redact.
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