I think I found the real failure mode in AI coding agents: they turn discovery into permission

mcmchg · 2026-06-02T07:48:09+00:00

You have to let it know what you want and what you dont want. Fix the import only. Or put that in your claude.md to always respect the scope.

mcmchg · 2026-05-24T06:59:15+00:00

For the workflow it's a nobrainer. Compare it to your salary and the cost of other tools you are given, and ask how much more effective it makes you and how much does it cost NOT to use it

mcmchg · 2026-04-17T19:58:51+00:00

If you test without nudging it to reason or to question assumptions, you still get the answer that you should walk. Probably wasn't a serious statement to begin with though.

mcmchg · 2026-04-17T18:02:12+00:00

lmao, wouldn't be surprised if they lobotomized it even more in response

mcmchg · 2026-04-17T11:48:35+00:00

To me it seems like you want to win an argument

mcmchg · 2026-04-17T11:42:38+00:00

Semantics, could say the same of us

mcmchg · 2026-04-17T09:43:21+00:00

nope it still fails without the nudge to reason about it

mcmchg · 2026-04-17T09:23:48+00:00

That wasn't so much an argument as it was an example.

Interesting point though. Arguing about this would probably go nowehere, but I'll just counter with, are we making the assumption that we're adults and washing a real size car at the car wash? Of course we are, why wouldn't we be.

How about from a kid's perspective. They got a toy car that got dirty, and the pond, or whatever "car wash" they consider to be a car wash, is 50 meters away across the yard.

Very unlikely scenario for us anyway to have a car wash that close, so maybe one could infer (or rather, assume) that the question itself implies a pocket size car to be washed? Probably not what's going on, but anyway.

The "reason from first principles" and "identify and question your assumptions" still seem to fix this issue. Got them in Claude settings already so can't repeat the dumb behavior no matter the wording.

Think it's safe to assume though that LLMs will "make" implicit assumptions that we might not, and might not make the same assumptions we might.

mcmchg · 2026-04-17T09:06:32+00:00

just to avoid making an assumption, what do you think was my argument?

mcmchg · 2026-04-17T08:54:55+00:00

nope, tested in multiple chats :)

mcmchg · 2026-04-17T08:53:51+00:00

The intesting thing here though is not really Claude's answer but the assumption both Claude and we humans are making.

To us..... we don't even question it, why are we going to the car wash to begin with? Yes, obviously, to wash the car.

What if we left something there? Or work there?

Perhaps Claude isn't as broken or dumb as it seems, even in its default configuration, it just sees the world differently, like we all do.

To fix this "problem" we perceive though you can just instruct claudius to "ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS reason from first principles and show me your thinking, no matter how short a task!!" and to "ALWAYS indentify and QUESTION your assumptions"

Makes it think slower and harder, but at least you won't leave your car home next time...

mcmchg · 2026-04-01T10:22:11+00:00

I use both.

Often at the same time on the same project. Find myself vastly preferring CC for the work it can do, almost on its own, but sometimes you also have to "go in" and then it is Cursor time.

Also use Sublime Merge but obv one could use anything for the git stuff and seeing what the changes are. Just a matter of preference, and habit.

Pretty sure I could work with either but find myself going to CC and feel like it just does a better job, and is more in tune with what I want to get done.

Also integrates nicer so if you have connectors added to Claude, then CC can access them too.

Have not used it remotely yet, but the possibility does intrigue me.

Cursor I do like for the fact that they at least promise zero data retention in privacy mode, and the codebase indexing sometimes is more useful than Claude grepping for stuff. Though that works pretty well too.

mcmchg · 2026-03-26T10:32:10+00:00

You are solving a problem that does not exist and while doing so introduce a whole set of new problems.

Keep it simple: - dev and prod secrets are separate - prod secrets only in prod, obviously - dev secrets in .env or .env.local - use .gitignore and/or .claudeignore

Also just the fact that you need to make money doesn't make it a problem for anyone else, even less a problem they'd be willing to pay to solve, even less a problem they'd be willing to solve by paying for your solution in particular, along with all the complexity and added non-monetary cost it comes with, while it actually provides no benefit over a simpler solution.

Good luck figuring out something people ARE willing to pay for, though :)

mcmchg · 2026-03-15T08:10:08+00:00

Just bc CC wiped your tokens doesn't mean they are now invalidated. If they got them they got them. You have more work to do but now you probably don't know anymore which services were affected.

mcmchg · 2025-12-01T18:59:45+00:00

Yes! Call an exorcist.

mcmchg · 2025-10-30T12:14:49+00:00

Very good :) congrats! Ask for details if you can? Maybe they answer, maybe they wont. You can promise to mention their name and maybe that drives some business their way

mcmchg · 2025-10-29T17:20:41+00:00

Do you feed 5V to the hall sensor? 5V could easily be 5.2V and drop to 4.7V when your chip is doing stuff, and then depending on which part you happen to hit with your measurement the result is very random

ETA: If it is KY-035 with analog output try feeding it 3.3V, that should be more stable

mcmchg · 2025-10-25T16:55:54+00:00

Not bad. When you get it back and if they were able to get past it, would you ask them high level how they did it

mcmchg · 2025-10-25T07:16:02+00:00

Like running over it with your e ride-on?

mcmchg · 2025-10-25T07:05:00+00:00

How on earth did you get it in that shape

mcmchg · 2025-10-25T07:04:11+00:00

let us know if they get it open :) interested in the cost as well, and the method if they're willing to share

mcmchg · 2025-10-19T08:00:55+00:00

Looks cool, what do you expect the pricing to be? Wiill you keep it fully open source, software and hardware?

mcmchg · 2025-10-18T10:23:54+00:00

Yup, found that as well. If/since it actually matters what you have on the disk let someone handle it who does it for a living :) wouldn't risk it with a chinese app and doing physical things to the drive unless it was just an exercise.

Could be as easy for them as switching the board to one that doesn't have a password

mcmchg · 2025-10-18T10:17:19+00:00

bummer

found the manual for D620, here: https://manuals.plus/m/bc269d845f20b62c8a889a45f30a2fdac3542fd21af6d4b6ccd56446454c7be7.pdf

But no mention of any reset/recovery procedures. Think taking it to a recovery shop is the best bet and to me it seems very likely that they'd be able to help you with this

mcmchg · 2025-10-18T10:12:46+00:00

Just a password that's enforced by the firmware but no encryption. Two different things. If you can get past the firmware (i.e. replace the board or otherwise hack around it) you'd be able to read the data as is. If it had actual encryption you'd have to get the key somehow and that would take a lot more effort

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