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dsmmcken

679 karma · joined September 20, 2021

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dsmmcken··on Show HN: Agent-skills-eval – Test whether Agent Skills improve outputs
The claude provided skill-creator provides a decent jumping off point. It is easy enough to start with, but unless the skill is really simple I found it best to consider it a scaffold for building more tailored evals and reports.

The report leaves out a lot of detail. Several changes I found useful were: Pair with/without on same screen as left/right for easier viewing, token count for skill consumed, token used per run, time, pass rate, estimated cost, detailed aggregate stats, a parsed version of the conversation log (capturing the jsonl with each run, sometimes reading the log is the only way to find out why it's screwing up), work output logging (in my case screenshots and outputted script code), better formatting (syntax highlighting, log formatting).

Finally, I think the most useful thing was adding a self-reflection pass. After an eval is done, another agent looks at everything from that eval and tries to evaluate what went wrong along the way and what should be added to the skill, and conversely, from the without skill run what was in the skill that didn't need to be. It produces a skill change recommendation file for each eval. A further summary agent aggregates up all those recommendations in a way I can feed back to an agent.

dsmmcken··on How we rebuilt Next.js with AI in one week
fwiw, I just tried running the agent-skill they provide for fun to migrate an app-router based next 15 site and the end result is it entirely failed to start.

Vite just hangs when running vinext dev, with no output in logs whatsoever beyond printing`vinext dev (Vite 7.3.1)`.

dsmmcken··on Show HN: isometric.nyc – giant isometric pixel art map of NYC
Just curious, about how long did this project take you? I don't see that mentioned in the article.
dsmmcken··on Fizz Buzz in CSS
144, using css variables, with fallback and p instead of li

https://codepen.io/dsmmcken/pen/WbwYOEQ?editors=0100

p{counter-increment:n;--n:counter(n)}p:nth-child(3n){--f:"Fizz"}p:nth-child(5n){--b:"Buzz";--n:''}p::after{content:var(--f,var(--n))var(--b,'')}

dsmmcken··on I’m Not a Robot
Level 48 is the last level, and you get a pdf certificate proving you are human.
dsmmcken··on Aspects of modern HTML/CSS you may not be familiar with
Two of those wishlists css features already exist as specs:

> n-th child variable

See sibiling-index() and sibling-count() https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/sibling-ind...

> Reusable blocks

See @function and @mixin draft spec, https://drafts.csswg.org/css-mixins-1/ and https://css-tricks.com/functions-in-css/

Both are available in chrome already.

dsmmcken··on Is the doc bot docs, or not?
The tool we use for our docs AI answers lets you mine that data for feature requests. It generates a report of what it didn't have answers for and summarizes them as potential feature gaps. (Or at least what it is aware it didn't have answers for).

People seem more willing to ask an AI about certain things then be judged by asking the same question of a human, so in that regard it does seem to surface slightly different feature requests then we hear when talking to customers directly.

We use inkeep.com (not affiliated, just a customer).

dsmmcken··on Show HN: CodeVideo – Two years in the making to build an event-sourced IDE
FYI the "watch video" button in the hero of https://codevideo.io/ doesn't work, missing the video ID.
dsmmcken··on Mark Carney is the new leader of the Liberal Party of Canada
And Bloomberg https://www.bloomberg.com/company/press/bloomberg-announces-...
dsmmcken··on A couple CSS tricks for HTML Dialog elements
scrollbar-gutter: stable; to those unfamiliar. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/scrollbar-g...
dsmmcken··on Diátaxis – A systematic approach to technical documentation authoring
I feel like I should be writing with the goal that the end reader is actually an LLM. The LLM will be the one spitting out the answers to the actual users via things like co-pilot, but I am not sure how that should change my approach to structure or level of detail in docs. Heavier on the number of code examples?
dsmmcken··on Meta Quest 3S
Link is gated behind a facebook/meta account.
dsmmcken··on Printing Music with CSS Grid
> align parts across different grids

Maybe a CSS `subgrid` would help? Subgrid is newly available. (I know nothing about music notation, and basing this entirely off that statement).

dsmmcken··on Tailwind color palette generator
See also https://leonardocolor.io/theme.html
dsmmcken··on Apple Maps wrongly lists restaurant permanently closed, costing owner thousands
I have the reverse problem with a bank atm in my city on google maps. I've marked it permanently closed several times. It will get marked permanently closed, then months later appear open again. The first time that happened, I actually went back thinking maybe they re-opened it, but nope still just a vacant wall with a bunch of 1 star reviews.
dsmmcken··on Ask HN: Can the black border atop the HN mourning header link to who died?
It's oddly similar to seeing a flag at half-mast in real life. Sometimes you know who it's for, sometimes you don't.
dsmmcken··on What Bed Linen Can Teach Us About Usability
I only buy fitted sheets with length-wise oriented vertical patterns, such as stripes. Much easier than trying to find the worlds smallest tag.
dsmmcken··on Clicks – Physical keyboard for iPhone
Typo's keyboard was very much a copy and probably infringed on even more then was listed.

I can't think of any of their design patents this would interfere with. There's a small chance of some internal mechanical or light guide related patents, but that would be pretty unlikely. Even more unlikely would be BlackBerry having anyone around still that would even know what to look for.

dsmmcken··on Pixelating Live with SVG
Here's the closest I could come up with: https://codepen.io/dsmmcken/pen/rNRaOJE

It does a subtle blur, then a subtle sharpen, then repeats the middle pixel of a 3x3 grid. Happy holidays!

Doesn't work on mobile, probably needs some pixel scaling math.

dsmmcken··on My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter
You can find many fake "UL certified" products on Amazon, with a counterfeit UL logo and all. I think the problem is companies like Amazon not being held liable for what they sell.
dsmmcken··on FDA approves a CRISPR-based medicine for treatment of sickle cell disease
Cricket protein can trigger shellfish allergies, fyi.
dsmmcken··on Show HN: AI Generated SVG's
Demo of this feature from the most recent Adobe Max conference: https://www.youtube.com/live/1tbrJNP5Cjk?si=tZegLn1-kXE1axDq...

The style transfer is really impressive (watch past the underwhelming first example of the airplane).

dsmmcken··on Stable Video Diffusion
Adobe is doing some great work here in my opinion in terms of building AI tools that make sense for artist workflows. This "sneak peak" demo from the recent Adobe Max conference is pretty much exactly what you described, actually better because you can just click on an object in the image and drag it.

See video: https://www.adobe.com/max/2023/sessions/project-stardust-gs6...

dsmmcken··on You don't need a CRDT to build a collaborative experience
> How long is the lock held?

For however long the user has a browser focus state on the element seems like a reasonable answer, and submit changes as they are made. However, I don't know how you resolve conflicts of two users simultaneously attempting to acquire a lock.

dsmmcken··on The negative impact of mobile-first web design on desktop
This study doesn't make any practical sense. These pages weren't designed to convey the maximal amount of information in the least amount of space, they were designed to sell a product. It's impossible to claim if these designs have a negative impact due to content dispersion or not unless you are measuring them against the purpose they were designed for.

They explicitly studied ecommerce/product pages here. The relevant metrics are which page had a higher perceived product value? Which page had a higher conversion ratio? Which page resulted in a higher NPS? Which page created a more positive brand affinity?

You don't sell portable speakers using specs, you sell it with aspirational images of it being used on a beach. Of course expanding an accordion of product details then asking "On a scale from 1-7, How well do you feel you understood the offering communicated on the page?" results in a higher survey score. If you said the more dense page converted better, then I would be surprised.

It's like designing a study on the negative impact of hard F1 race car seats, adding a bunch of foam, testing which is more comfortable, then proclaiming one is better than the other because it was rated more comfortable, when the only metric they were designed for is lap time.

dsmmcken··on When I have a slower publishing cadence my blog grows faster
You grow as a writer with practice, but you grow readership with quality. The incentive between quantity and quality can be at odds for a personal blog. I think it comes down to what your goals are for your writing. Personal growth or professional recognition.
dsmmcken··on MdBook – A command line tool to create books with Markdown
Thanks, I hadn't heard of Antora, but the behaviours of assembling docs from multiple repos and using branches for versioning is exactly what I want. Too bad it's not using MDX though, as all our existing docs are markdown + interactive react components.
dsmmcken··on Making Figma better for developers with Dev Mode
Can I import variables from an existing css file? Can I export variables back?
dsmmcken··on Netflix loses 1M users in Spain over password policing
I agree, I like 1.1 speed. The playback dropdown actually has a "custom" button in the top right of the dropdown on the desktop view of the site. You can set 1.05 and 1.1 playback speeds with it. It's a little annoying to use on mobile, as you have to switch to "desktop" view in the browser and can't use the app.
dsmmcken··on Perspective: Open Source WebAssembly-Powered BI
Menu aside, what is a a screen reader supposed to do with a table changing at 100 msg/s?
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