benchly

Peardon the "it's" autocorrect, I can't seem to edit on mobile (Harmonic)

There are ways to kill those.

https://www.wikihow.com/Disable-YouTube-Video-Thumbnail-Imag...

The strangest part is after I removed those "shock face" thumbs, I feel like I'm using an entirely different platform. The only time I see them is when I use the YouTube app on my PS4 which is hooked to a large TV, useful for when I'm watching the not-AI-documentary-style creators I like.

This tracks based on my limited contact with LessWrong during the whole Roko's Basilisk thing.

I quickly lost interest in Roko's Basilisk, but that is what brought me in the door and started me looking around the discussions. At first, it was quite seductive. There was a strange fearlessness there, a willingness to say and admit some things about humanity, our limitations and how we tend to think that other great thinkers maybe danced around in the past. After awhile it became clear that while there were a select few individuals who had found some balance between purely rational thinking and how reality actually works, most of the rest had their heads so far up their asses that they'd fart and call it a cool breeze. Reminded me of my brief obsession with Game Theory and realizing that even it's creators knew it's utility was not quite as advertised to the layman (as in it would not really help you predict or plan for anything at all, just model how decisions might be made).

I would be into this. I'm basically trying to teach myself development by doing things with abandoned projects I find interesting. While nothing I do is even remotely production-ready, it would be cool to pair with someone more experienced to gain better understanding and perspective since it seems remarkably hard to find a mentor.

YES. Reich is fantastic :)

Just a heads up, I'm not seeing your playlist when I click the link. Looks like it's linking straight to the track Beauty of Discipline by Gareth Pearson.

Thanks for sharing, I've not seen that site before and this is very much in-line with my own discovery about using music to help with my anxiety. The About blurb really sums it up. Wild, because had anyone presented such claims to me 20 years ago, I would have waved them away as bullpucky peddlers. Now, DnB + other electronic genres are dosed daily while at work through my headphones and I'm better for it.

Interesting that dubstep makes you feel free! I would not describe my experience like that, but it does tend to raise my aggression a bit, so I usually avoid it unless its crunch time. Your comment has me wondering about different experiences than mine. My DnB picks are more soothing to me, but sound too chaotic and "all over the place" for my wife's ADHD.

These replies are fantastic, thanks all.

I recently (last few years) discovered that not only do I like DnB, but there is something about it that keeps the anxiety goblin in my brain occupied the same way one might distract an unruly child with a video game or something equally engaging. Contrast to what the poo-poo'ers say, the organized chaos that it brings to my table actually _helps_ me regain a bit of my higher-order thinking, especially when troubleshooting.

Calibre is a fav, but already mentioned so I offer up another favorite of mine for those looking for something a bit more fluid with a nostalgia kick.

Level Select by Pizza Hotline: https://pizzahotline.bandcamp.com/album/level-select

To be fair, in the US we can still walk into a Best Buy* and purchase a Motorola (my choice), Nokia, or OnePlus. In that environment, however, you will also notice that Samsung and Apple are the dominant device manufacturers, with consumers looking at Google phones as the stable alternative (for some reason).

There's also Amazon, which is often cheaper, but I am a bit old school in the regard that I like to physically use the device before I purchase it.

Either way, the perceived restrictions are more of a self-imposed thing rooted in our consumer conditioning here, which is this weird blend of "customer choice" and "all choices are basically the same" that gets muddy very, very quickly. Most people I talk to, especially the non-technical ones, do not realize that my $150US Moto is serving me just as well as an $600US Samsung would, with my needs being all the common types of communications, reliable 5G, a decent camera and run specific apps I use to control some cloud infrastructure while on the go. It's difficult to feel sympathy when I hear people complain about paying Apple $1000US just to look at TikTok or use Discord. We are guided on what to buy via the marketing machine instead of examining our use-cases and researching a suitable product before purchasing.

It's all silly bullshit, really.

Not the user you asked, but systemd has been controversial for a long time, long enough that I see the topic come up about once a month on various forums. There's a few folks who even consider it a bit fascist, I guess.

I don't particularly mind it myself, but I get where some power users would get irked by it. This article does a decent job of explaining why; https://www.infoworld.com/article/2251761/linux-why-do-peopl...

I think the term is "confabulations" now, which makes a bit more sense to me, but regardless of what we call the hallucinations, it starts with the human knowing how to navigate the process, having at least some basic understanding of the system within which they're using the GenAI (in this case, law/legal) and the skills to cross-reference and verify without using the GenAI itself. If we start using the GenAI to both get the answer and verify it, we're basically creating a feedback loop that probably isn't always going to stand up to scrutiny, despite the fact that GenAI has gotten quite good at these sorts of things.

We're not there, yet, but we will be, probably within our lifetime.

Did you learn anything about navigating such waters? It's not likely the first time you'll have to deal with a grumpy landlord or leasing contract.

I am all for using whatever tools we have at our disposal to get things done. I use GenAI to automate/speed up a few tasks in my personal and professional life as well. However, the danger is plain; if I didn't already know how to do those tasks, I'd be leaving myself in the dark as to how they actually got done. As you can imagine, this just furthers what I call Dependency Culture, where we are at the mercy of having our decisions made for us because we don't understand the process.

There's a lot of (perhaps unfair) poo-pooing on GenAi, and I am guilty of it myself, but the fact remains that while it does make certain things like navigating a complex legal contract accessible to someone who is unfamiliar, the aim should be to use it to get familiar with said subject, ultimately reaching a point where the GenAI is no longer needed.

Hit me up if you ever find yourself overwhelmed with "roast" jobs. Been part of a few development processes now and the part I find most fun is hitting MVP then setting down and asking "why does the world need this and should we bother continuing?" The sobering disillusionment that comes with critical examination of a product is often a huge pivot point.

I suspect consultancy like this is going become a more important service, moving forward into a world where prompt engineering and vibe coding are making development more accessible to non-developers. While some may bring nice things to the table, most will not. Getting outside opinion will help separate the wheat from the chaff.

It's a sensible choice. From a newbie perspective, it's certainly easy to work with and there's no shortage of documentation when I'm trying to figure something out. I'd pull the trigger on one of your devices right now because of that if funds weren't currently an issue (sadly, I am between jobs, atm).

What's a good alternative?

My understanding (which may be wrong, so I am open to being corrected) is that the greatest power consumption you'll see from ESP32 is connecting to a network and uploading data, the idea being less connections mean less power consumption. The ePaper display should be nice and low power consumption, too. I'd expect a common pocket battery bank to power it for a few weeks if one were using it to gather data for later use.

Again, happy to be corrected. It's really fortunate that this post showed up on HN since just last month, I ordered a few components to start making my own air quality sensors, the goal being to create some units that I can strap on my car and gather data while I travel for work (personal curiosity, mostly). There's tons of great projects and info being referenced in this thread.

If I may ask, do you suffer from anxiety and depression?

I do. As part of that whole package, I find it exceedingly difficult to focus on more than one thing at a time. As much as I would love to sit and code a bit while watching tv or listening to an audio book, I simply cannot do it. I've tried many times and find it impossible to focus on my project while my brain is more interested in the easy attention economy of the television.

Conversely, my wife is very talented in the fiber arts. She seems to be able to sew, crochet and knit while watching tv without any effort at all, paying attention to both whatever show we have on and what she's doing. Granted, she's been at it for well over a decade so there's some learned adaptation there, but as far back as I can remember she has never had the same problem I do. She also does not suffer from anxiety and depression on the level that I do.

I've been wondering if there's a correlation for awhile now. Interesting that this popped up on HN and pulled me out of lurk mode.

Scarves and hats are useful, though. Knit sweaters can be very comfortable and look good, if done well.

Granted, I say that as a person who lives in a cold-half-the-year climate, but my point is that, just like coders, there's plenty of shitty knitters out there.

The key with any skill is to approach it as a student, ready to improve. If this is something you wanted to try, get ready to make a few rubbish tea towels before you refine your understanding.

Same. This would work really well for my site, I think, although I worry slightly about latency as it scales and I add more and more photos. That is not so much a problem right now, but it might impose some latency later.