Hacker News Reader

AriedKon The GitHub wiki is an anti-pattern (2022)

I took the same approach. Every merge into main triggers the GH Action to sync /docs with the wiki. The advantages of a wiki over /docs are tiny but the single click, navigation sidebar with all headings was enough for me to deal with the GH Actions hassle. GH Pages was no option because we are not on Enterprise and parts need to remain private.

AriedKon Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)

The power savings are minor btweeen LED and low presssure sodium lamps. The LED streetlights emit light along the full spectrum, the sodium lamps only at 589 nm. The LEDs are more controllable so smart dimming ( when there are no cars) is a perceived advantage.

AriedKon The pleasures of poor product design

This gets quite close to chindogu, the Japanese art of designing objects that kind of serve a very niche purpose, but then without being useful. https://www.tofugu.com/japan/chindogu-japanese-inventions/

AriedKon I have a GPS bike computer

Here in the Netherlands we’ve got ‘fietsknooppunten’. Numbered junctions with proper bike paths linking them up, and clear signage pointing you to your next number. https://www.fietsknoop.nl/planner Just remembering, or writing down a couple of numbers gets you a long way. As a backup I have OsmAndMaps for pre-loading gpx files to my phone.

AriedKon The patterns of elites who conceal their assets offshore

There’s a fun documentary that explores this concept:

The Town That Took On The Tax Man https://youtu.be/ipV_GU7YaQg

It’s about a Welsh town that set out to do just this. Recommended watch.

AriedKon Series of posts on HTTP status codes (2018)

I read the url as: ever t-pot, as a reference to 418. Turns out it's the author's actual name.

AriedKon Precious Plastic is in trouble

That's a bit of a cynical take in my opinion. For a community focused initiative, I'd say they deserve a bit more slack in terms of expectations of professionality, scale and sustainability. They now leave it up to the community to decide to pursue that or abandon altogether. Fair thing to do I'd say.

Also: the original forums aren't suddenly deleted: https://davehakkens.nl/community/forums/index.html He explains the process of migrating into 'One Army': https://davehakkens.nl/index.html

AriedKon Cuss: Map of profane words to a rating of sureness

Helpful tool for car makers.

Would have probably saved them from the Mitsibishi Pajero, Ford Pinto, Mazda Laputa

Downside is, it doesn’t analyze phonetics afaict. The hebrew Volkswagen Beetle (Hipushit) would have passed as fine.

AriedKon The Art of Fugue – Contrapunctus I (2021)

Ah yes, Vulfmon! Jack Stratton seems to love his Fugues.

In case you haven't already: check out Vulfpeck /// Bach Vision Test; a really nice visualization of Contrapunctus IX a 4 alla duodecima.

https://youtu.be/vJfiOuDdetg?si=GF1mbszFHOky2QVd

AriedKon Google is burying the web alive

So how long do we have until companies can pay to be in the system prompt to be recommended for certain queries?

AriedKon Show HN: Whippy Term - GUI terminal for embedded development (Linux and Windows)

This is neat. The send buffers and live display give it a nice edge over something like Tera Term. One nitpick: I couldn't find the option to disable autoscroll on incoming serial streams. Like 'Auto scroll only in bottom line' in Tera Term. Thanks!

AriedKon Slugs on a Cube: An Interactive Animation

That’s a fun coincidence. I was at a museum recently that featured work of Sema Bekirovic. One of her works was that of 3 snails crawling over a grid cube so from then on they were the artists. https://www.semabekirovic.nl/grid/

AriedKon More than 140 Kenya Facebook moderators sue after diagnoses of PTSD

At first glance you may have a point. Thing is they’re often recruited with very promising job titles and descriptions, training on mild cases. Once they fully realize what they got themselves into the damage has been done. If they’re unlucky, quitting also means losing their house. This may help empathize a bit with their side of this argument.

AriedKon Unlocking the power of time-series data with multimodal models

They mention using a IMU dataset that is collected using an APDM Opal. https://www.apdm.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Opal-Publica... This publication mentions a paper on p. 5839 (p 13 of the pdf) where a single sensor on the waist (as used in the Google research) would lead to an f1 score of 0.77 if I did my math correctly. In other words, pretty close to a >1 shot plot analysis of gpt4o and gemini pro1.5.

I would also be interested how the llm's would hold up to the free-fall interrupt that's built in to some consumer grade IMU's (BMA253 for instance), anyone here with experience in this usecase?

AriedKon Three hundred words you can spell on a calculator [pdf]

They could add an appendix with word math like 707 + 707 = 1414

AriedKon A common urban intersection in the Netherlands (2018)

Yeah these ‘predictors’ only make sense if they can give a countdown at a constant rate. The idea is nice but often they countdown at say 1dot/sonly to have the last 5 dots disappear in the last second so they miss their purpose. on the other hand, a consequence on predictable ones is that people will start cycling on the last 2 dots or so instead of waiting for the green light.

AriedKon 'Shoe doping' changed marathon times in ways we still don't understand

I’m curious how this will find acceptance, regulation or rejection. Acceptance like the clap skate in speed skating (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clap_skate) or if they will be regulated like the swim suits in competitive swimming (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-technology_swimwear)

AriedKon Smart Goose Deterrent System

I had a similar issue with geese on a patch of grass in front of the house where the kids played. Flocks of geese in the 10s would ruin it in half a day.

I found a 532nm green laser to be extremely effective. Let the dot approach them and shine near their feet for best effect. (Of course avoid the eyes and keep the laser power down so the reflection doesn’t harm them either!). It took some time to get into the flocks psyche. You had to get the entire group distress level to a certain level before they would take off and leave.

The next step I got to was building a turret for the pointer. Goose detection image recognition was underway to make the system autonomous but I haven’t been able to finish it and have moved in the mean time so it’s not likely I’ll finish it.

If anyone else wants to have a go at it let me know.

AriedKon I designed a Dieter Rams-inspired iPhone dock

On the finishing: “Of course because I 3D Printed it with a PLA filamanet, it's not as shiny and glossy compared to actuall electronic devices. People use acetone and various solutions to make it shiny.”

The acetone (vapour) approach only works on ABS and is pretty nasty. For PLA your best bet is sanding. You could add some putty to make it a bit easier and get better results. You will then also need to paint it. All in all if the print quality is good enough best stick with that.

AriedKon A Stock Prius just drove across America averaging 93.158 MPG

Exactly. My prius gen2 gets me 4.2l/100km (56 mpg) on regular rides. How manages to stretch it to 93 is quite an achievement.

AriedKon Launch HN: CodeViz (YC S24) – Visual maps of your codebase in VS Code

Was looking for that too. The only way I found out was installing it, create a call graph, and the first click took me to a payment page. $19,95/month iirc I too would prefer to have this information upfront.

Also, not being able to click past the first layer in the free version is a bit too limited in my opinion.

Sounds promising, but having to fill out my payment details for a trial version is a a hard no for me.

AriedKon FCC seek comments on NextNav petition for rulemaking on lower 900MHz ISM band

From the article: “ NextNav asks that the Commission reconfigure the Lower 900 MHz Band by creating a 5-megahertz uplink in the 902-907 MHz band paired with a 10-megahertz downlink in the 918-928 MHz band, shifting all the remaining non-M-LMS licensees to the 907-918 MHz portion of the band. Petition at 28–30.”

So at least all LoRa based applications seem unaffected by this. Though I don’t know how much traffic in the proposed NetNav bands will migrate to 915 MHz bands, crowding the spectrum.

AriedKon Real-Time Settlers of Catan

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamecategory/1037/real-time/l...

Not The most popular though, according to this list. From the top 10 I only played Galaxy Truckers and Space Alert, both of which I really enjoyed.

AriedKon I keep a WTF notebook (2021)

It's a fine line. Maybe it isn't necessarily manipulation, but it does come off as disingenuous to me.

To take your marriage example. The genuine motivation would be: "I acknowledge my flaws and I'm willing to put in the effort to change myself for the benefit of my wife". If the motivation is to just tweak your wife's views of you, that may not be manipulation but it's not very loving either.

People will be able to sniff out if the goal of his behaviour is to have people think of him a certain way, versus having the goal of wanting to bring beneficial change and helping a team out. The behaviour may be the same on the surface, but the intent is very different. I would be very wary of judging people's motivations, but the fact that the author explicitly mentions it bothers me.

AriedKon Ask HN: How can I learn about manufacturing?

HowToMakeAlmostAnything may have some helpful starting points. https://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/863.20/

AriedKon Netherlands is the second-largest exporter of agricultural products

Since there was such an emphasis on quantity, the Dutch tomatoes became known in the 80s as Wasserbomben in Germany. Taste has become more of a priority after we saw exports diminish. If you’re really interested: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/...

AriedKon Realtime telemetry from ISS internal components

Can anyone explain what the number before the timestamp is? GMT 66 / 43 / 41

AriedKon Show HN: I made an app to use local AI as daily driver

Looks great, though the fact that you have to ignore your anti-virus warning during installation, and the fact that it phones home (to insights.msty.app) directly after launch despite the line in the FAQ on not collecting any data makes me a little skittish.

AriedKon Clean your codebase with basic information theory

I like how https://hemingwayapp.com/ approached this for text. It highlights complex sentences, unnecessary adverbs and voicing issues.

AriedKon SQLite-Web: Web-based SQLite database browser written in Python

Another great browser for SQLite - DB Browser for SQLite (DB4S) project (https://github.com/sqlitebrowser/sqlitebrowser). An amazing piece of software for interacting with SQLite databases. Supports inspecting and modifying data, full query support, integrated plotting functions.