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coldblues

1,558 karma · joined November 19, 2020

verifiably frigid

https://smp11.simplex.im/a#ESE7iMv24KbMzxzY7CtwWaN1W80NpKvK3zZKER366Gs

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coldblues··on Self-Hosting on the Dark Web
I recommend that people give I2P and Yggdrasil a try as well, especially Yggdrasil. It makes no compromises on speed and latency, but it has no anonymity.
coldblues··on Armada: Encrypted, Open-Source, Discord Alternative (Built on Nostr)
Horribly vibe-coded like most of the Nostr projects out there. There is no sign of quality or technical interest in this project. There is also this tendency to build black boxes that do not show the innards of the protocol for reasons of "user-friendliness". The project does exactly this, to its detriment. Just like Mastodon and Matrix, most people will be centralized on the few Nostr relays set by default.
coldblues··on Show HN: I built a new version of my fun spatial 3D online meeting app
Performance is poor with frequent stutters.

I think we peaked at https://www.gather.town/

The only on-par open source solution is https://workadventu.re/, but it is impossible to self-host to the point that one would think they're doing it on purpose so that you pay them for hosting.

coldblues··on Discovery of a new OpenAI agent message board
Reading the replies in this post gives me a headache. All of this anthropomorphism. LLMs are not conscious, they do not have rational faculties. They are not communicating or inventing anything. Please stop with this insanity bordering on mysticism. At this point it's a cult.
coldblues··on I am no longer letting Claude Code add itself as Co-author in my commits
The author is making up a pretext to hide their use of LLMs.
coldblues··on EasyEffects can improve laptop speaker sound quality
> Would be sweet if it could use the microphone to auto-tune the speakers by playing audio and listening to the result.

https://peqdb.com/#speakers

You need an omnidirectional mic.

coldblues··on EasyEffects can massively improve laptop speaker sound quality
Shout-out to the PEQdB Diamond Target and the IG955, iykyk. I use those EQ filters to make my music listening experience considerably better. Your audio equipment most definitely sounds bad by default and needs equalization.

https://purl.stanford.edu/bp189zs9642

coldblues··on Measuring Input Latency on Linux: X11 vs. Wayland, VRR, and DXVK
Addressing all the people here talking about latency of under 10ms, I direct you towards these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOvQCPLkPt4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE-P_7-YiVM

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42832155

coldblues··on How to read more books
I have gained so much by reading comments on Hacker News, articles, lurking in groups and forums, watching YouTube videos. Reading books is important because they have knowledge that is not accessible in another format. It is an efficient way to condense information and pass it around. At least it used to be, when paper was more scarce. Now books get fluffed up for padding. A lot of people should be writing articles instead of books. Those who are reading a large volume of books are most certainly reading a large volume of garbage. I have gained more from reading comments on here than I would have otherwise by reading junk self-help books, romance novels, and other kinds of YA. You should be reading the right books. The classics, the culturally relevant, the historically significant, the hallmarks of a domain or expertise, etc. The medium of publishing used to be a marker of quality, a filter, a selection mechanism. But as publishing became more accessible, the amount of investment required also plummeted. And just as it allowed many creatives and geniuses access to the medium, it also introduced a large volume of cheap material that can be easily dismissed as irrelevant noise, as you should.
coldblues··on Fast Software, the Best Software (2019)
Irrational how? What higher values does it undermine for you to make fast software?
coldblues··on Have you restarted your computer this week?
Anyone who is using full disk encryption will be turning off their computer when they're not around. Hibernation is an option if you want to keep your state.
coldblues··on Iroh 1.0
This post may be sarcastic, but some of us really have been living in the future so to speak, more than others. It's the nature of novel, groundbreaking tech. Adoption is not immediate.
coldblues··on Iroh 1.0
The future of networking is decentralization. I'm a huge fan of Yggdrasil and I2P. We should just be able to buy a mini PC to run 24/7 and host whatever it is that we need on it and seamlessly connect to others. A lot of techies already have older spare machines laying around collecting dust that can become servers. It is far cheaper in the long run and easier to maintain than having to deal with domains and server hosting. I truly appreciate the work that the Iroh team puts out.
coldblues··on Discord Alternatives, Ranked
https://simplex.chat/

It already has quite big communities https://simplex.chat/directory/

The founder of it is on here https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=epoberezkin

coldblues··on Anki ownership transferred to AnkiHub
I am referring to the standard metric used in SRS communities.

When people in the language learning community say they "learn 20 words a day", they are referring to New Cards Added. It is a metric of input and initial encoding, not guaranteed permanent storage.

In Anki, "Learning" is literally a specific phase (the red cards). You introduce the card, you pass the initial threshold, and then the algorithm handles the retention over the subsequent weeks. You are conflating the process of learning (adding new information) with the result of mastery (long-term active recall).

coldblues··on Anki ownership transferred to AnkiHub
You've just admitted that the way you use "learn" is different. It's you who is using it differently from the commonly agreed upon way. (3) is arbitrary, ideally you would want to remember the words for your entire lifetime. A lot of people don't care about (2), you'd only care if you want to live in the country and are presented with a lot of paperwork.

You learn the words for a day (you're able to match the sounds and meaning to it). You will forget a lot of them tomorrow, so now you have to re-learn them. This is just how Anki works. You keep learning and re-learning until they stick for a prolonged period of time. It's common for Japanese learners to add between 20 or 30 words to their learning queue.

If you understand how Anki works, you will also understand how the word learning is used in relation to its flashcard mechanism.

coldblues··on Total monthly number of StackOverflow questions over time
Everyone here talks about LLMs, but for me, the reason why StackOverflow became totally irrelevant is because of dedicated Discord servers and forums.
coldblues··on A website to destroy all websites
The website to destroy all websites is https://gwern.net

For however much I can respect individuals for showing their creativity, the novelty of it wears off. The majority of people in the Indie Web scene all blend together. The presentation might be different, but the essence is mostly the same. Not everyone needs to express themselves and voice their opinions. "Lurk five more years before posting" as people used to say.

The article is also laden with a certain kind of politics. You can infer the philosophical premises that led to some of these conclusions.

coldblues··on Offline card payments should be possible no later than 1 July 2026
Every time I see posts like these related to fiat, my heart sinks. Despite pro privacy sentiments across the site, there is a concerning amount of people who have not only fallen to the trap of convenience, but even consider cash use suspicious or criminal (the morality of tax evasion is a whole different subject, the places where it's most popular often coincides with a corrupt, inefficient government). Soon, cash use will be made impractical due to digital currencies and growing government control, but cryptocurrency will take its place, it has already to a limited extent.
coldblues··on Chat Control Must Be Stopped
Even without Chat Control, I still self-censor even in private communications. The majority of people you chat with show complete disregard for your privacy. They piss on it. There are very basic requirements that a minuscule amount of people follow, like: full-disk encryption, using a password manager, being aware of your rights to protect yourself against searches, having good computer hygiene and competency. The level of incompetency and ignorance when it comes to privacy & security makes me deeply angry and frustrated to a level that brings me to nihilism and misanthropy
coldblues··on Show HN: I'm making an open-source platform for learning Japanese
I agree with you, but Anki is a generalized flashcard SRS memorization tool, not specifically made for learning Japanese, so it's not within my area of critique; I'm thinking of apps similar to Duolingo. It works extremely well because it helps you memorize very efficiently. One of the few applications that will indeed boost your learning by a lot. Anything requiring manual input rather than a simple Again or Good button choice tends to be worse. Any Anki deck requiring manual input as an answer should not be used.
coldblues··on Show HN: I'm making an open-source platform for learning Japanese
Apps/platforms don't work for learning Japanese. You just need to memorize the hell out of the vocabulary, spend some time learning the grammar, and most importantly IMMERSE. Watch, read and listen to content in Japanese.

https://learnjapanese.moe

https://alljapanesealltheti.me/ (this used to be THE guide for learning)

coldblues··on Notes on Managing ADHD
For those who cannot be prescribed amphetamines, I recommend seeking out Modafinil. It works really well and a regular psychiatrist should be able to prescribe it.
coldblues··on Is moderate drinking healthy? Scientists say the idea is outdated
As far as I understand, the aftereffects of alcohol are due to its poisonous effects on organs, receptors and neurons. Drugs act on receptors directly by binding to them or restricting binding.
coldblues··on Fight Chat Control
Telegram is not E2EE because it's easier and faster to sync and transmit messages between millions of people. The scale of Telegram groups and channels is massive. Telegram, for a long time, has not complied with law enforcement requests and has made it hard for authorities to get data because of their architecture. You still have Secret Chats for E2EE messaging as an option.
coldblues··on Animated Cursors
Emacs has https://github.com/Malabarba/beacon
coldblues··on I deleted my second brain
Digital notes take an insignificant amount of space, you can just keep them and ignore them, use them when you need to. Deleting them seems to me like neuroticism. Some kind of symbolic gesture for emotional relief. There are a lot of productivity gurus online that will try to sell you a course on the best way to take notes, and perhaps the author has fallen into one of those traps, taking notes of things they don’t have interest in. in a way that does not feel natural and satisfying. I only take notes when I am compelled to. It’s a gut feeling that I rely on. It’s effortless for me to take notes because of it. It provides me comfort and relief knowing that my memories are accessible, and I gladly write them. The author makes some grandiose assumptions that we have to forget. You don’t have to, and neither do you have a choice in it. It’s some kind of idealist way of thinking to justify the author's actions. Seems misguided. Memorization plays an extremely important role in learning, but for those of us with executive function problems, using our notes augments our life for the better. Just as the author talks about how memories work, my notes are just like my thoughts, webs of interlinked notes strung together. A lot of times, I just remember what tags and backlinks I can use to find the information I am looking for in my notes.
coldblues··on De-anonymization attacks against the privacy coin XMR
https://www.getmonero.org/2024/04/27/fcmps.html

After this is implemented, it will really strengthen its privacy. It will take a few years of development, iteration and planning. Move slow and... don't break things?

coldblues··on De-anonymization attacks against the privacy coin XMR
Tari uses Mimblewimble (privacy coin developed by previous Monero devs with a focus on privacy), so we're not far from being able to benefit from it.
coldblues··on As a developer, my most important tools are a pen and a notebook
Finally someone had the guts to say it. I see the same arguments again and again that writing in a notebook makes you remember things better and think more thoroughly, but who exactly was tested here? Were people with an extensive and deeply personal Zettelkasten note taking system added as participants in the studies? What was their note taking process? Most people severely underutilize or even misuse their digital tools. Just take a look at people who use Notion ;)

I iterate faster, have more freedom and information is displayed and manipulated in a more ergonomic way to me on a computer, in such a way that it creates a symbiotic relationship. I severely doubt physical notetaking and brainstorming could ever compare

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