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DarmokJalad1701

1,732 karma · joined February 3, 2019

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DarmokJalad1701··on Tiny, removable "mini SSD" could eventually be a big deal for gaming handhelds
> I could care less about your explanation!

Maybe you should care less about it then.

DarmokJalad1701··on Multimodal WFH setup: flight SIM, EE lab, and music studio in 60sqft/5.5M²
Sick flight sim setup!

I basically never sim now because of how much of a hassle it is to get the whole thing setup. And then it just sits taking up space on the desk and I don't use the desktop for anything else for a while.

DarmokJalad1701··on How Does a Blind Model See the Earth?
Fascinating experiment!
DarmokJalad1701··on Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Instruct
These are the MLX versions:

https://huggingface.co/mlx-community/Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3B-Ins...

https://huggingface.co/lmstudio-community/Qwen3-Coder-30B-A3...

The one you linked is not the "coder" model.

DarmokJalad1701··on An unprecedented window into how diseases take hold years before symptoms appear
Well, it doesn't have to "depend" on the health insurance plans. But there are definitely ones that reward you in some way for doing some/all of these. Mine literally gives me cash back for doing an annual physical.
DarmokJalad1701··on Rust running on every GPU
> That has been already done successfully by Java applets in 1995.

The first video card with a programmable pixel shader was the Nvidia GeForce 3, released in 2001. How would Java applets be running on GPUs in 1995?

Besides, Java cannot even be compiled for GPUs as far as I know.

DarmokJalad1701··on An unprecedented window into how diseases take hold years before symptoms appear
My insurance covers annual bloodwork/physicals as well as immunizations. I am pretty sure most health insurance policies do.
DarmokJalad1701··on Show HN: Cactus – Ollama for Smartphones
I would say that while Google's MediaPipe can technically run any tflite model, it turned out to be a lot more difficult to do in practice with third-party models compared to the "officially supported" models like Gemma-3n. I was trying to set up a VLM inference pipeline using a SmolVLM model. Even after converting it to a tfilte-compatible binary, I struggled to get it working and then once it did work, it was super slow and was obviously missing some hardware acceleration.

I have not looked at OP's work yet, but if it makes the task easier, I would opt for that instead of Google's "MediaPipe" API.

DarmokJalad1701··on How renewables are saving Texans billions
None. The point is not to shut off oil as a energy source instantly before alternatives exist. We should quickly move off of oil as a fuel/energy and build out alternatives as we go (as we are in most parts of the world). Using solar/nuclear/wind for energy does not mean people suddenly start starving. This may surprise you, but your food will be just as nutritious even if it was not delivered to you by burning oil products.

Keep the oil infrastructure for petrochemicals which cannot be easily replaced in the near term.

DarmokJalad1701··on How renewables are saving Texans billions
> the pervasive petrochemicals in the modern world are not easily replaceable

Then let's use the finite amount of oil for that, instead of burning it.

DarmokJalad1701··on Ask HN: What cool skill or project interests you, but feels out of reach?
Electronics - I recently bought a decent DSO, the "Pinecil" soldering iron, a whole bunch of components. I had some ideas but then sort of hit a wall and lost interest. So now I have a workbench with tools that I will hopefully get back to some day. I think my starting projects were either too difficult, or not that interesting after I implemented them on a breadboard.

Plasma simulation - I really want to understand how fusion and advanced propulsion systems can be simulated and maybe even contribute in some way. E.g. The fusion propulsion being developed by Helicity Space is very interesting. I wish I knew enough to understand their work and maybe do some simulations myself. I tried doing this "Particle In Cell" course I found online but quickly lost interest after a week or so.

I guess I just have a wide variety of interests that come and go. Some of these just seem to be passing interests. I have sort of learned to live with that.

DarmokJalad1701··on Launch HN: Vassar Robotics (YC X25) – $219 robot arm that learns new skills
Ordered. I haven't even watched the video. Let's see how this goes. Lol
DarmokJalad1701··on Las Vegas is embracing a simple climate solution: More trees
> Maybe if it wasnt suck by funding hyperinflated bogus military tech… there would trees.

US military spending for 2024 was approximately $850 billion. Let's say we put all of that money into one of those $1-per-tree charities. That is 850 billion trees taking up around 7.98 million km^2 at typical planting densities. This is about 2/3 of total US land area. Maybe we can get some more value for money at scale and plant 1.275 trillion trees covering the entire US land area instead.

Once all those trees are grown, they would absorb anywhere from 10kg-25kg of CO2 per year. That's about 12 to 31 gigatons per year for all of the US land area.

The world currently generates ~41 gigatons of CO2 per year.

The just-plant-trees "solution" doesn't really work.

DarmokJalad1701··on LLMs are cheap
Who is "they"? It makes no sense for Openrouter to allow providers that do not conform to the API. They profit from the commission from the fees and not providing inference.
DarmokJalad1701··on A practical guide to building agents [pdf]
Depending on the capability or context size of the model, it is easy to imagine a situation where specifying too many tools (or MCPs) can overwhelm it, affecting the accuracy.
DarmokJalad1701··on My AI skeptic friends are all nuts
> It took less time to hand-edit one based on reading the docs.

You can give it the docs as an "artifact" in a project - this feature has been available for almost one year now.

Or better yet, use the desktop version + a filesystem MCP server pointing to a folder containing your docs. Tell it to look at the docs and refactor as necessary. It is extremely effective at this. It might also work if you just give it a link to the docs.

DarmokJalad1701··on The unreasonable effectiveness of an LLM agent loop with tool use
Was the workshop recorded?
DarmokJalad1701··on I built a native Windows Todo app in pure C (278 KB, no frameworks)
hutch was a legend. RIP.

https://forum.exetools.com/showthread.php?p=127834

DarmokJalad1701··on I genuinely don't understand why some people are still bullish about LLMs
Some of the more modern tools do exactly that. If you upload a CSV to Claude, it will not (or at least not anymore) try to process the whole thing. It will read the header, and then ask you what you want. It will then write the appropriate Javascript code and run it to process the data and figure out the stats/whatever you asked it for.

I recently did this with a (pretty large) exported CSV of calories/exercise data from MyFitnessPal and asked it to evaluate it against my goals/past bloodwork etc (which I have in a "Claude Project" so that it has access to all that information + info I had it condense and add to the project context from previous convos).

It wrote a script to extract out extremely relevant metrics (like ratio of macronutrients on a daily basis for example), then ran it and proceeded to talk about the result, correlating it with past context.

Use the tools properly and you will get the desired results.

DarmokJalad1701··on 4o Image Generation
You should try it out yourself.
DarmokJalad1701··on Stockpile 72 hours of supplies in case of disaster or attack, EU tells citizens
> bread go stale

Freeze loaves in chest freezer

> milk go sour

Ultra-pasteurized milk cartons have a shelf life of months (some even unrefrigerated) when unopened. Once open, they need to be used within a week or so, but that is doable with 1.5 gallon cartons.

> eggs go spoiled

Not really. At least the ones we get here, can last a long while in the fridge. Easily a couple of weeks if not more.

> fruits and veggies

Some veggies can be frozen e.g. carrots. Others can be fried/roasted and then frozen. Fruits do go bad fast yes. Some of the fruits can be bought frozen as well.

> Where I live nobody enjoys yesterdays bread and

Frozen bread thawed at room temperature tastes surprisingly fresh IMO. And no, it's not the "flour-based product" you refer to. I have made home-made bread and frozen with no issues and then thawed it out later.

> we don’t cook meat or chicken if it’s been in the fridge for more than about five days.

I don't eat meat, but I think the answer is again a chest freezer that sits at -20 C or so. A 10 cu.ft freezer is super compact and cheap and can store a lot of food.

DarmokJalad1701··on Blue Ghost lander captures sunset shots on moon before falling silent
> Meanwhile voyager is beyond the solar system

Which is powered by Pu-238 - something which is in short supply nowadays, extremely expensive and pretty much inaccessible for a private company like Firefly who built the Blue Ghost lander.

> I don’t see why they didn’t use something that’s not solar

Cost. NASA paid Firefly $101.5M for the Blue-Ghost 1 contract [1]. Just the RTG used on the MSL Mars Lander cost $109M [2] (not counting the R&D costs).

> so they aren’t just littering the moon

Well, right now it is harming no one. They can only be seen by cameras orbiting the moon. If and when humanity starts living on the moon, these landers will go in museums and will no longer be "litter".

[1] https://spaceflightnow.com/2025/03/18/firefly-aerospaces-blu...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-mission_radioisotope_the...

DarmokJalad1701··on Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
> It has an "app" user interface, requiring both a cellular connection and the service remaining in business. Plus it wants WiFi so it can receive "software updates". What could possibly go wrong?

Do not be so dismissive so fast without reading. The FAQs and the website says that they have a local interface and requires no internet for controlling it. E.g from https://pilaenergy.com/tech-specs

"While we think you’ll love the Pila App, you’re welcome to connect your own monitoring platform with our free local APIs. We embrace and actively support open standards like Home Assistant, Matter, and Thread for local data streaming from Pila Batteries — Because your data should always stay yours. Local API documentation coming soon. "

"Pila does not require internet to provide backup power, monitoring, or smart energy management features. The Pila Battery Mesh Network keeps all batteries working together, even when your home Internet goes out. The Pila App includes a Local Connection Mode for reliable battery control and monitoring without internet.

For reliable Remote Monitoring, all Pila batteries are equipped with a cellular 4G LTE radio for backup communication when home Wi-Fi fails.

However, we highly recommend keeping Pila batteries connected to Wi-Fi to receive the latest software updates and unlock new features, enhancements, and performance improvements—ensuring your system gets smarter and more capable over time."

DarmokJalad1701··on Show HN: We built a Plug-in Home Battery for the 99.7% of us without Powerwalls
> ... connect your own monitoring platform with our free local APIs. We embrace and actively support open standards like Home Assistant, Matter, and Thread for local data streaming from Pila Batteries

Love this! I am tentatively interested. I might put down a deposit after a bit more research.

DarmokJalad1701··on Ariane 6 performs first commercial flight with launch of CSO-3 satellite
> green hydrogen fuel

It is manufactured by steam reforming of natural gas which produces CO2 as a byproduct.

DarmokJalad1701··on Show HN: I built an app to get daily wisdom from Mr. Worldwide
Who is Dale?
DarmokJalad1701··on Why Vermont farmers are using urine on their crops
> nit discreet

Or maybe fifticon's pee comes out as quantized packets of a fixed size.

DarmokJalad1701··on MongoDB acquires Voyage AI
Because they are web-scale obviously.
DarmokJalad1701··on I found a backdoor into my bed
I have one of these bed covers. I bought it before the subscription crap started and I am very satisfied with the product. The dual-zone cooling/heating is super good and has been a big improvement to my quality of life/sleep. Especially considering that my wife has different ideas than me about temperature and what constitutes hot/cold. Yes, it would be nice if I had local control but I am willing to ignore that as long as I don't have to pay more.

But I wouldn't recommend anyone buy it now because of the subscription.

It is good to know that there is an option to continue using it if the company decided to no longer grandfather in people who bought before the subscription crap started.

DarmokJalad1701··on Lox – Oxidized Astrodynamics – A safe, ergonomic astrodynamics library
There is also ANISE made by the same author: https://github.com/nyx-space/anise
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