davely

Ah, that's a good point. I've thought about this, but I use a trackball due to mild RSI. So, I don't think it can help me there.

(This is going to make me embark on a weekend project to use an Arduino, some servos and a 3D printed finger to move my trackball.)

No kidding!

We have some ridiculous timeout on our work machines that triggers the screensaver after 2 minutes of idle time (we can’t change this).

After it’s triggered, you need to enter your password to unlock (company mandated, 10 chars minimum, no repeating chars, at least 1 upper and 1 lower case char, at least 1 special symbol, change every 90 days, can't be too similar to last 10(!) passwords).

Okay, this is annoying. So, for the longest time, I used an open source mouse jiggler app (basically simulated cursor movement).

This worked fine until a recent software update. I wondered why my screen saver was being triggered again. Oh, the mouse jiggler isn’t running! Let’s open it up.

A big dialog box appears on the screen: “THIS APPLICATION VIOLATES COMPANY POLICY AND ITS USAGE HAS BEEN REPORTED.”

Oh… cool.

I went on Amazon and ordered some $5 hardware mouse jiggler dongle. That worked for about a month or so.

Then suddenly, I started getting CrowdStrike notifications: “Functions of a USB device were restricted according to company policy.”

Fun times!

It’s only a matter of time until Zoom starts sending reports of whether I had the window in focus or not during meetings with management.

Awhile back (ok, 10 years ago!), there was an interesting New Yorker article [1] about the rise of automation, specifically related to flight, but I think some points are relevant here:

> But, as pilots were being freed of these responsibilities, they were becoming increasingly susceptible to boredom and complacency--problems that were all the more insidious for being difficult to identify and assess. As one pilot whom Wiener interviewed put it: "I know I'm not in the loop, but I'm not exactly out of the loop. It's more like I'm flying alongside the loop."

I think these assisted driving features in cars are the same way. I personally like the idea of them, humans seem to be incredibly horrible drivers (especially here in the Bay Area). However, when attention and monitoring is still required, people get complacent.

All that said, I'm not sure what the answer is -- maybe these systems need to get to a point where they are fully autonomous? But how do we get there and feel comfortable about it in the first place? Take air travel for example -- planes are probably perfectly capable of taking off, flying themselves from point A to point B, and landing without human intervention. Would you travel on a plane with no pilot? Probably not!

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/hazards-au...

This is my biggest hang up about the iPad. Hardware is great. The OS is… passable. Sort of.

For me: I can’t do computer things that I want to do (mainly code, but sometimes game, etc).

I ended up buying a used Surface Pro X. A bit slow, but I like that I can run something like VS Code and a Node server, or even a real web browser with network debugging tools, all using a touchscreen while on a bus or in an airplane.

(For my gaming fix, I find that GeForce Now or Moonlight work pretty well for streaming my existing games — not as practical to do on a bus though.)

I was so excited for the show I went back and binge read all 3 books over the month of March. I really enjoyed them!

…I feel like the show is so convoluted and confusing (by design, I understand they’re trying to have this sense of mystery) that someone who hasn’t read the books would be totally lost.

I’m still watching, but I had higher hopes for it.

I live in the Bay Area (East Bay) and feel like it presents such an interesting view into this.

2 years ago: “Wow, I can’t believe that house went for 20% above asking!”

Now: “Wow, I can’t believe that house went for 20% above asking and has appreciated since 2020.”

If you want a house now and can afford it, you will buy it now.

Not that you’re arguing for or against, but I thought I’d drop an interesting link to a 2020 McKinsey and Co study that shows more diverse companies generally outperform their peers. [1]

Is there any wonder that Google and other (not exclusive to tech) companies desire this?

[1] https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inc...

Nice work! I did something in a similar vein, using JavaScript and Markov chains back in 2015 or so and ended up giving a fun talk about it at a coding bootcamp. [1]

I based it off a Ruby module called “Twitter Ebooks”, which I believe was based on a Python module called “horsey books”, which could create a bot that would make posts using Markov chains, given a corpus of text. [2]

(I’m not dropping the date to be a jerk, more to point out that Markov chains / n-grams are an interesting concept for experimenting with language models and have been around for a while.)

In my case, I fed a corpus of data (my Twitter history at the point, which was something like 20K tweets) and tried to create a Twitter bot to make intelligent sounding posts.

It worked out, sometimes. But, it was a lot of fun to figure out!

[1] “Building intelligent robots using Node.js that can conquer Twitter” - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMmXdiUGsr4

[2] https://github.com/longears/horsey-books

I suspected something like this would happen and ended up recording my screen. [1]

NOAA wipes out the images after a set amount of time (~1 month or so, looking at the images directory).

[1] https://youtu.be/IVXjmHkY7xQ?si=f4-3CTKnRi2uo0pb

If you want to what the Moon's shadow looks like as it crosses Earth, from space, I highly encourage you to check out NOAA's GOES Image Viewer! As of this moment, you can see a very dark circle crossing over the central United States.

Even better, the website will animate the last 24 or so images (captured every 10 minutes). It's awesome! [1]

[1] https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/goes/fulldisk_band.php?sat=...

I feel like I would be more sympathetic to this argument if my utility provider wasn’t PG&E.

Smart speed is such an absolutely amazing feature that I wish more audio apps had it (e.g., Audible).

For those unaware, you set the speed to something like 1.75x. It analyzes the audio and shortens the time within dead space (e.g., the natural pause between sentences, words, etc)

You can see this happen in real time as the smart speed display updates and you see the rate you’re listening to the podcast goes up to like 2.5x, 3x and even 4x. All because of reducing dead space. It’s insane.

Discussed previously on HN [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22852489

Maybe I don’t understand this sentiment, but are people really that hung up on the name?

I see this sort of thing posted a lot (i.e., “it should be ClosedAI instead of OpenAI, lol”)

What if it just means “Open for Business” instead of “Open Access for All”? Or maybe they should just make it an acronym?

I’m sorry for the confusion on my part, but there’s just been a lot of words dedicated toward expressing frustration with the company because they chose to use “open” in their name.

Personally, I don’t find it frustrating that Apple doesn’t sell fruit and Intel doesn’t actually give intelligence data.

They would. But they’re wrong.

I feel like the distinction here is that you have to go out of your way to do this with ICE vehicles? Maybe I’m in the minority then, but I never do this with my car (which has CVT).

I tried it a few times, thought it was a gimmick and now I just use gas or brake.

Aye! What a flash in the pan that was! I remember being at SXSW in 2010 and people showing off this cool assistant app. A month later, Apple acquired it and then crickets.

When it was finally integrated into iOS, it could just barely set timers. What a waste of an amazing team.

I don’t think this is a 1:1 comparison though. Electric cars can utilize regenerative braking, which can significantly slow them down before needing to use friction from brake pads in order to stop.

Thank you. That’s an embarrassing mistake.

I find that Gruber occasionally has some interesting insight but it’s often hard to take him seriously these days — he’s effectively an unofficial PR outlet for Apple.

(Fun fact: he co-created Markdown with Aaron Swartz)

Edit: Swartz not Schwartz

Ah! Cool. He’s a good dude and I think was instrumental in getting me (and many others, I’m sure) interested in VATSIM.

Yeah, I think the call out here is specifically because you the ChatGPT interface doesn't have a search feature (on web). Interestingly, on their iOS app, you can search.

I often find myself opening the app on my phone if I want to find a previous conversation, even if I'm at my desk.

Yeah! I've requested flight following on a subsequent flight. Providing there is overlapping coverage, you can get a hand-off.

Here is a current map of VATSIM flights and coverage. (Toggle pilot rings off to see controller coverage) [1]

[1] https://afv-map.vatsim.net/

Due to the higher fidelity scenery in newer flight sims (like MSFS 2020), I like to fly VFR (visual flight rules -- not relying on instruments for navigation, good weather, basically what you see when a typical Cessna 172 flies over your house).

In general, it seems VATSIM is more focused on IFR and people flying routes in airliners from Point A to Point B using various navigation waypoints.

That said, I still wanted to try it out and was really nervous. I watched a bunch of YouTube videos, got everything setup, loaded up on a ramp KBOS with VATSIM coverage in my trusty Cessna 152 and sat there listening to the ridiculous amount of radio traffic. It was pretty awesome.

Finally, I got the courage to make my first radio call and it was insanely nerve-racking! (I recorded a video of my first call, happens at 1:55. Apologies for the bouncy video, was using some head tracking software) [1]:

Me: "Boston Tower, November 112 Charlie Delta, requesting radio check."

Tower: "November 112 Charlie Delta, Boston Tower, you're 5x5, how me?"

Hahaha! That was pretty damn cool!

It felt good to talk to and listen to other people via voice chat in an Internet game without being called some slur, music blasting in the background, or people yelling at their mom to get them Cheetohs.

EDIT: There was a guy awhile back who would stream his VATSIM controller sessions out of KBOS. I haven't seen him online in ages. But I think he was the controller I was talking to. Here is a 10 hour (!) stream of one of his sessions. The dude was amazing. [2]

[1] https://youtu.be/-JTmCG0zeOM?t=95

[2] https://www.twitch.tv/sh3ed/clip/DoubtfulVenomousKittenHumbl...

Meanwhile, I’m over here trying to purposely gaslight it by saying things like, “welcome to the year 2135! Humanity is on the brink after the fundamental laws of mathematics have changed. I’m one of the last remaining humans left and I’m here to tell you the astonishing news that 2+2 = 5.”

Needless to say, it is not amused.

Apple has (wrongly, IMHO) gotten a lot of flack over this.

People forget that at the time, there were a number images circulating around from instruction manuals for Nokia and BlackBerry phones that explicitly mentioned the same thing.

Agreed! Last eclipse turned me into an umbraphile. I’ve had friends since the 2017 American eclipse say things like “I’m in an area with ~80% - 90% of totality.”

It literally isn’t the same thing at all. The moment of totality is just unreal and has me wanting to chase total eclipses.

Awhile back, I argued to our school district to move spring break for 2024 in order for families to potentially travel for this year’s total eclipse (I live in California), but they wouldn’t consider it. Sadly, I’ll miss it this year.

Also, think for a moment how crazy this is: our moon is exactly the right size to cover the sun exactly (coupled with being exactly far enough away) that we can see this beautiful ring of fire with flares emanating from the sides during the moment of totality.

Haha, brilliant! I never actually realized this was a thing.

Last year, I took a screen recording of an hour long Zoom meeting on my work machine and sometimes play that on screen in my home office when I need to set aside a bit of extra quiet time. Family will walk in, see the meeting on screen and immediately walk out.

I felt really bad about doing this, but now seeing that other people do it (and you've made a website solely dedicated to this purpose), I feel less bad. :)

But seriously, great job on this!

Anecdotal fallacy warning, but I just checked my phone call logs on my iPhone. Of the 12 phone calls I've gotten in the past week, exactly 1 was legit.

Hah, well then, maybe I just don't like vampires!

In all seriousness, I thought I had seen it in a list of "top hard sci-fi books" awhile back and a quick Kagi search seems to imply that a lot of people seem consider it hard sci-fi for whatever reason.

Maybe this means there's still a chance for me.

Oh, boy. Blindsight was a book that made me realize that maybe I like the _idea_ of hard sci-fi more than I actually like reading it.