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TrisMcC

232 karma · joined July 28, 2009

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TrisMcC··on SpaceX to buy Cursor for $60B
I use cursor (through a work subscription), only the cli (https://cursor.com/cli), and mostly using Composer 2.5, but I freely change the model when the need arises.

Most comments here seem to think there is no command line client? I have never used the editor.

For my personal projects, I use a heavily modified pi. I also have access to a claude code account through work (bedrock), but I don't use it much. It always seems to be down.

The cursor cli (`agent`) is fine.

TrisMcC··on Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI?
I've made 3 that use pi as the primary interaction, with custom tools and scripts.

1. family tree based on wikitree format. Transcribe records, verify/edit, then incorporate them into the tree with full citations and biographies. This one is the big one. It includes a tree browser and best genealogical practices.

2. Pool Math replacement. Log pool chemistry tests to markdown files and suggest the right amount of chemicals to balance.

3. Calorie counter. Log calories to a markdown file, look up foods and amounts in online databases, sync with garmin connect for exercise calories.

All of these are written with AI but also are interacting with pi and telegram, mostly using deepseek v4 flash.

TrisMcC··on How dairy robots are changing work for cows and farmers
Cows only produce milk as a result of being pregnant.
TrisMcC··on Met Police smash down door of Quaker meeting house to arrest activists
We have those, too.
TrisMcC··on Apple has locked me in the same cage Microsoft's built for Windows 10 users
WSL is fine for some purposes. It just never got better.

I just wiped my 4-year install on my work thinkpad for direct Linux after wrestling with WSL2 which broke in numerous ways in every update:

- WSLg is a pile of crap, and it feels like no development was done on it after it was initially released. It is so easy to crash the display server. It still does not resume from sleep reliably. Anything that quickly opens windows or does any sort of automation (like selenium/cypress tests) are prone to breakage.

- Networking works until it doesn't. Sometimes updates break DNS. Sometimes the bridged networking just fails.

The second problem here is why I finally threw in the towel. I could not get networking working reliably in the VM after a routine Windows update. Everything feels completely hacked together.

TrisMcC··on Google releases smart watch for kids
I only have to charge my kid's bounce every 2 days, 2.5 days usually. I do not turn on the "Live Tracking" very often but location updates, boundary fence notifications, voice/canned messages work great.
TrisMcC··on Tiny in size, a Cupertino home is selling for big bucks: $1.7M
> What’s also drawing people’s attention is the size of the lot the home sits on: nearly 7,900 square feet.

Is that a big lot for that neighborhood? 0.18 acres?

Makes my 0.33 acre lot seem overly spacious.

TrisMcC··on Firefox Sync actually works
I like maintaining a work/clean profile and a personal one. It is very annoying to mix histories when something like screensharing happens are you do not want to advertise what sort of messageboards or forums you post on.
TrisMcC··on Firefox Sync actually works
Firefox has its own profiles, which are separate from containers.

`about:profiles` shows you a window for creating and switching to a different one. I add that as a bookmark on the bookmarks toolbar of the two profiles I use

I believe there is a `-P` option to open a new window with a specific profile. I do not use it. I usually just open the browser and then go to the aforementioned bookmark and open the other profile.

I use different colorways to differentiate the windows between the two profiles.

There may be addons that alleviate a few of the pain-points with Firefox profiles. I have not tried to find any.

TrisMcC··on Home Assistant blocked from integrating with Garage Door opener API
I use opengarage. https://opengarage.io/
TrisMcC··on TinyWM – A tiny window manager in around 50 lines of C
From looking at the Issues on GitHub, it seems that someone ported it to XCB:

https://github.com/rtyler/tinywm-ada/blob/master/tinywm-xcb....

TrisMcC··on Thoughts on the potato diet
> We normally coach people to eat 1 g of protein per pound of lean muscle mass. So for 150 pound person that would be 150 g of protein per day or approximately 600 cal from protein.

"Lean muscle mass" excludes the fat on the body, right? A 150lb person should have less than 150lb of lean muscle mass.

USDA recommends 54g using their calculator. Don't forget the 38 grams of fiber! :)

TrisMcC··on Thoughts on the potato diet
Yes, there's not a lot of variety in just eating potatoes. Maybe some people don't need variety.

People lose a lot of weight this way. Insulin sensitivity increases. Insulin-lowering medicines can be reduced or stopped. Bad cholesterol drops to the floor.

If you go beyond monomeals of potatoes and add in tasty vegetables (like you do in keto) and limit the fat you add to the meal, you will have all the benefits of the potato diet without the mind-numbing boredom.

Variety in the keto approach? There are only so many ways to dress up chicken/beef/pork and cheese.

TrisMcC··on Thoughts on the potato diet
Potatoes have protein and fats. Enough protein and fats for fat-soluble vitamins and preventing dying of protein malnutrition. Potatoes are not just carbs.

No libido? I'd like to see the source of that claim.

The western world has become "addicted" to protein and the claims on how much is necessary and recommended are extremely exaggerated.

TrisMcC··on Thoughts on the potato diet
Calorie density is not something made up. You are redefining a very well-known term. Many legumes, grains, and root vegetables are made up of copious amounts of water in their prepared form.

Calorie density is also not the only metric for recommendation. Everyone agrees that liquid calories are not "felt" by the body in the same way as solid foods.

TrisMcC··on Thoughts on the potato diet
> Potatoes are calorie dense.

No.

https://gurmeet.net/Images/food/calorie_density/CalorieDensi...

Boiled potatoes are 870 kcal per kilogram.

1 kilogram of potatoes is a lot.

TrisMcC··on Thoughts on the potato diet
Do you really believe that the obesity epidemic was caused by people eating 90% carbohydrate diets?

The "high carb meals" at McDonald's, Burger King, Pizza Hut... are all also (and more per calorie) high in fat.

Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil to your mixed-green salad? That has turned into a high fat salad. Most people cannot avoid cheese or nuts on salad, either.

Eating the potato diet with sour cream/butter/cheese: High fat.

TrisMcC··on AirPods don't “just work”
Not quite related to airpods, but is Apple's Bluetooth stack awful?

I got three pairs of iClever BTH-02s and they all connect fine to our hand-me-down LG android phones, but they fail to connect to a brand new (but low end model) iPad. It says they connect, but the upper left corner does not show the headset icon and the sound goes through the external speakers.

It's awful.

TrisMcC··on Maine voters reject Quebec hydropower transmission line
Do you mean you voted 'yes' to reject? :)
TrisMcC··on Maine voters reject Quebec hydropower transmission line
This is a warped view of Maine's demographics and pretty insulting.
TrisMcC··on Maine voters reject Quebec hydropower transmission line
Mainers HATE Central Maine Power. Anything that hurts them is seen as a positive. The lease they got on the land for transmission lines was ruled illegal.

We have tried (and still are trying) to create a public utility to replace CMP called Pine Tree Power. It was passed in the legislature but vetoed by our governor this year.

There was also a story about the First Nations of Quebec not having their voices heard regarding the transmission lines that pass through their lands.

TrisMcC··on U.S. Kids Are Getting Nearly 70% of Their Calories from 'Ultra-Processed' Foods
This is bullshit. Rows and rows of frozen vegetables in every grocery store have nothing added. No salt, no sugar.

You need to get pre-seasoned/ready-to-eat "20 minute dinner" trash to find added salt and sugar.

TrisMcC··on Why electric cars will take over sooner than you think
Well, the use-case I mentioned above was not a road-trip but just driving around Austin doing errands. Many places in Texas are routinely 30+ miles away from each other.
TrisMcC··on Why electric cars will take over sooner than you think
The charging story is still far from ideal. Even if a large-scale supercharger network is developed and deployed it still takes far too long and needs to happen far too frequently to be convenient is many places in the USA.

I was idly watching a Hasan Piker Twitch stream this weekend when he was in Austin, TX and most of the time in a rented Tesla they were very concerned with finding charging stations and the range predictions were dropping far quicker than expected in the hot Texas sun. Also, due to it being a livestream, the supercharging stations were a liability because of the time needed to charge and how "fans" could locate and cause security problems. Gas stations even 100 years ago operated faster than superchargers promise to in the foreseeable future.

TrisMcC··on From Vim to Emacs in fourteen days (2015)
I was a vim user for 16 years (very proficient -- other developers in whatever office I was in would ask me vim questions) when I switched to emacs about 8 years ago. I switched for curiousity and to check out evil mode and magit.

A couple years ago during a lull in a dev cycle I built a neovim setup to see the state of that art but I didn't stick with it.

I've rewritten my emacs configuration many times, swapped between spacemacs, vanilla, and doom. I am currently on doom emacs with my customizations.

I also do not use evil mode anymore. Default emacs bindings make a lot of sense to me. I can still use vim with muscle memory, but I reach for "mg" if I need a quick edit more often than not.

TrisMcC··on Toward a “modern” Emacs
I don't think a starter pack that completely disables the "Customize" interface would be a good candidate for default.

https://github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs/blob/a2a5038b970df20e...

"Doom doesn't support `customize' and it never will. It's a clumsy interface"

I find the Customize interface very useful.

TrisMcC··on Mac keyboard shortcuts
For GTK/Gnome you can enable Emacs input.

For in gnome-tweak-tool it is under "Keyboard & Mouse".

TrisMcC··on Switching from Chrome to Firefox
I have a bookmark to "about:profiles" on my main toolbar (not my bookmark toolbar, I hide that) in Firefox to launch my Work profile and Personal profile. I never use the commandline "-P" option.

My Work profile has a few key bookmarks and extensions in it, but history and cache are never saved and is not linked to a Sync account.

TrisMcC··on America’s largest milk producer files for bankruptcy
Vitamin D is lacking in all diets. The only meat that has any measurable D is some fish but one cannot maintain an optimal level on fish alone.

Dairy milk is commonly fortified with Vitamin D. Some mushrooms, if left in the sun, also have vitamin D.

Vitamin D comes from the sun.

TrisMcC··on Firefox about:config privacy settings
Create a bookmark with a easily type-able name. The bar will autocomplete your bookmarks.
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