Welcome to Hell Developer

procone•about 1 hour ago

I found this really hard to read due to the Claude-isms. "Classic" chicken and egg problem? 39 em-dashes, random numbered lists, etc.

If you're not going to even bother to take the time to write an article, why should I waste my time reading it?

Jtarii•12 minutes ago

Started reading, saw "That was it, That was the whole reason", closed the page.

542458•about 1 hour ago

I mainly object to AI writing when it’s excessively verbose. This was pretty information dense, a few AI-isms didn’t make it a waste of my time to read.

XorNot•1 minute ago

I'd rather just read the prompt.

hmcamp•about 1 hour ago

I read it and found it useful

\_(^ ^)_/

debo_•20 minutes ago

Welcome to Hell, Reader.

(I liked the article, personally.)

kjhughes•about 2 hours ago

There seems to be a debugging pattern that arises when problems are in proximity to a poorly understood, highly complex part of the system: We tend to think that's where the problem probably is. And we can lose an inordinate amount of time looking for it there. It's like an inverse streetlight effect.

I've seen coding LLMs do it too. I have a well-tested, but complex, subsystem that constantly draws their attention when something non-obvious elsewhere goes wrong.

amarant•about 1 hour ago

I can't help imagining someone trying to debug this rigging their laptop to their bicycle handlebars, connecting to the ride computer and then going for a ride to get live data for the debug session.

It would be very hard not to die in a traffic accident while debugging in this way.

Welcome to hell, developer!

lostlogin•13 minutes ago

Tying to get a bike computer to work while riding is incredibly painful.

I’m a Garmin user and it blows my mind that the interface was chosen. Buttons and touch screen and confusion.

Not helped by both Garmin and Strava not putting enough arrows on the path of travel on their maps.

If you have a route the uses the same road in both directions (eg you ride to somewhere then back along the same path) it isn’t possible to tell when to turn off. Why can’t there be arrows indicating direction of travel?

And that’s when it’s working. Garmin seem to break shit on software updates and then sync stops working, the radar disconnects, it won’t lock on a satellite etc.

Can Apple make a bike computer please? Or at least play nice and sync their watch with Garmin properly?

rmast•40 minutes ago

That just brought a whole new meaning to that message… and writing up a post-mortem.

xp84•42 minutes ago

It’s frustrating that this isn’t completely typical. As the writeup pointed out, this “exploit” can only be performed by the device owner anyway, so nobody is harmed by the unlockability. But 95% of devices that are sold, besides non-Mac PCs, and SBCs, are locked down completely, prohibiting anyone from using the device as they like.

rmast•33 minutes ago

Agreed, many types of devices don’t need to be locked down so much.

I imagine the companies making the devices think they are “protecting” their secrets from competitors, though now it might be easier to ask an LLM for whatever feature they want to copy.

hmcamp•about 1 hour ago

I love reading these kinds of stories!

ChrisArchitect•about 1 hour ago

Title is: How a Broken Bike Sync Led Me to Reverse Engineering My Wahoo's Hidden Debug Mode

denysvitali•about 1 hour ago

Yes, less fun, sorry for the lack of 1:1 match

debo_•20 minutes ago

How dare you have fun

otikik•about 3 hours ago

Love the punchline

davidw•about 1 hour ago

That's pretty interesting; I've always wondered about the internals of those things, as I stared at mine while pedaling up some steep grade.

I'm also curious about what the electronic derailleurs and shifters run.

lostlogin•8 minutes ago

That’s a really good point.

They also never seem to fail (unless the batteries are flat).

Fun fact: my non e-bike has lots of batteries.

2 in the shifters 2 in the derailleurs 1 in the front light 1 in the rear light/radar 1 in the computer + phone AirPods (transparency mode!).

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Discussion (19 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews