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haxel

165 karma · joined August 18, 2012

Infinitely creative full-stack developer who's done it for decades now.

https://haxel.ca

steve@

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haxel··on Building for an audience of one: starting and finishing side projects with AI
Consider Tiny Tool Town? "A place for stupid-delightful tools made with love."

https://www.tinytooltown.com/

haxel··on Intermittent fasting may make little difference to weight loss, review finds
I also ride bike, and used to bonk, but it didn't take long for my body to adapt to using fat as fuel. Half the battle was mental: accepting that I truly didn't need to eat anything; my body already had all the fuel it needed.

Then I could wake up, ride hard for hours (hilly terrain), and feel no need to eat until the afternoon.

haxel··on What I learned building an opinionated and minimal coding agent
There's a fair chunk of irony here in that Mario is being both anti-memetic with his naming choices and contrarian in his design decisions, and yet he still finds himself dunked in the muck of popularity as the backbone of OpenClaw.
haxel··on What I learned building an opinionated and minimal coding agent
It's batteries-not-included, by design. Here's what it looks like with batteries (and note who owns this repo):

https://github.com/mitsuhiko/agent-stuff/tree/main

Perhaps benchmarks aren't the best judge.

haxel··on What I learned building an opinionated and minimal coding agent
AI studio also has a bug that continuously counts the tokens, typing or not, with 100% CPU usage.

Sometimes I wonder who is drawing more power, my laptop or the TPU cluster on the other side.

haxel··on What I learned building an opinionated and minimal coding agent
The creator is very aware. Its original name was "shitty coding agent".

https://shittycodingagent.ai/

haxel··on Ask HN: What do you do with Local LLMs?
Indeed. Currently, my primary concerns are a) surprise b) accessibility c) efficiency and d) self-containment.

Surprise, because that draws my attention better. Not interested in guardrails here.

Accessibility, because I can involve my sons without friction.

Efficiency, because using Discord lets me skip building or finding a component (for now).

And I still get a degree of self-containment because Discord is the only piece I'll need to swap out. Bonus that it doesn't have a recurring cost until then.

Yet privacy still matters to me. Despite being Discord-compromised, the detailed personal context within the prompts remains private. The data that determines the timing and topic of each message remains private as well.

haxel··on Ask HN: What do you do with Local LLMs?
I use Mistral (7B v0.2 instruct, 6-bit quantized) to generate the title-text for messages that I send to myself via a Discord bot.

Right now, I'm prompting Mistral to generate these titles in "clickbait" style. I fold the topic of the message and other context into the prompt.

My intention is to shift my attention to the message, which shifts my attention to something else I need to do, because I tend to over-focus on whatever I'm doing at the moment.

It doesn't matter whether what I'm doing at the moment is "good" or "bad". Based on probability, I should almost always switch my attention when I receive such a message because I should have switched an hour ago.

To guarantee consistent JSON output, I use a llama.cpp grammar (converted from JSON schema)

Generation is via CPU (Ryzen 5800) because it's an async background operation and also because my 1070 GPU is being used by Stable Diffusion XL Turbo to generate the image that goes along with the message.

haxel··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (February 2024)
SEEKING WORK - Mostly remote

Location: West coast Canada. Remote: Yes (occasional Vancouver onsites OK).

Frontend: SolidJS, React, Material UI, and more.

Backend: FastAPI, Flask, and more (mostly Python)

Services: PostgreSQL, OpenZFS, GlusterFS, Redis, Docker Swarm, Kubernetes, and more.

Additional: Article writing, report writing, diagramming, research, conceptual communication, and more.

I have decades of experience at all levels of the tech stack, from provisioning hardware up through services, backends, frontends, and including architecture, app design, and UIs from scratch.

When necessary, I will synthesize and implement a novel solution (while making the most of existing components).

I've been brought in multiple times as an emergency fixer and executed the rescues successfully.

I've also taken on high-level roles requiring decision-making, planning, and communication skills to go along with demonstrated high integrity.

Willing to take a crack at anything substantial.

Email: clyde6@gmail.com

haxel··on Show HN: I wrote an entire book to build a mouseless dev environment
Not OP, but I swapped over to Regolith a couple of months ago on my laptop and now it's on my main workstation too. Coming from Ubunutu MATE on both. Very happy with it.

It's my first time using i3 or any tiling WM for that matter. Took about a day to get used to the basics (sane defaults), and that's mostly all I've needed so far.

My one attempt to use the dedicated installer didn't work properly so instead I installed Ubuntu and then Regolith from PPA.

haxel··on Show HN: Measure and compare your viral risk the easy way
Developer statement

IMPORTANT: Android + Chrome only! (for now)

They say you can't manage what you don't measure.

This is a system to help people who feel fine but are worried about becoming infected by COVID-19 or any other dangerous virus. If this is you, now you can actively measure your risk and see a live dashboard in your Android phone's notification bar.

Your regularly refreshed dashboard shows your own risk pattern and compares it with your recent past as well as the risk patterns of other people. This makes it easier for you to manage both your behavior patterns and your mental health.

It's an early release by a single developer, extended from an existing platform. Please don't expect perfection.

Geographical awareness is an obvious next step. Infection/symptom awareness is another.

Feedback welcome!

haxel··on Ask HN: What projects are you working on now?
I'm building a way to roughly (and simply) track your own viral risk in real-time and compare it with others.

https://howfunctional.com/viral-risk

Android-only right now. Precision is not the intention. Getting the ball rolling is.

The tracker is currently in prototype form so it may look or act a bit odd, not least because I quickly extended an existing platform.

haxel··on Show HN: Track and share your viral risk (experimental prototype)
Submission statement:

Android-only right now.

This is an experiment in roughly measuring your own viral risk as simply as possible, then comparing that with other people. Precision is not the intention. Getting the ball rolling is.

The tracker is currently in prototype form so it may look or act a bit odd, not least because I quickly extended an existing platform.

haxel··on I'm releasing my AGI Kernel on Feb 17. Unstoppable and perfectly safe
Proof of AGI kernel is on its way. Promise.
haxel··on Ask HN: How do you get over the initial fear of learning something hard or new?
Thanks for the heads up. There's literally no ads or trackers and everything served from my domain.

I haven't tested in Firefox Focus though (haven't even heard of it), and I'm wondering if it might be because of overly tight security headers.

haxel··on Ask HN: How do you get over the initial fear of learning something hard or new?
The other half of #1 is keep going. You have to do it every day. You have to do it for a long time. As long as you keep going, you'll naturally grow. Your mind won't stand for doing the same thing every day.

If anyone needs help getting started or keeping going, that's exactly what my project Functional helps with:

https://howfunctional.com/try/read-X-for-10-min

haxel··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking Freelancer? (February 2019)
SEEKING WORK | Full-Stack Developer & Architect | Remote

Location: Coastal BC, Canada (Pacific time zone).

Technologies: Python, JavaScript (ES6+), Linux, ReactJS, Postgres, and Redis lately. Many others in the past.

My long-term side project: https://howfunctional.com

Email: steve@haxel.ca

I've been doing web development and backend services for 20 years now, with an aptitude for transforming projects from abstract concepts into reality. Capable of stepping in to help in a wide variety of situations, including rescue scenarios. Experience with licensed gaming systems and certification via GLI.

Available for short-term hourly or longer-term engagements.

haxel··on Ask HN: How is Ubuntu as a daily driver?
I've used Ubuntu daily for over a decade now. My two boys use it too. Right now I'm using the MATE variant. It just works.

No issues with privacy for me because I simply uninstall the relevant packages when the time comes, if it comes.

Highly recommended!

haxel··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (December 2018)
SEEKING WORK | Full-Stack Developer & Architect | Remote

Location: Coastal BC, Canada (Pacific time zone).

Technologies: Python, JavaScript (ES6+), Linux, ReactJS, Postgres, and Redis lately. Many others in the past.

My long-term side project: https://functional.benome.ca

Email: steve@haxel.ca

I've been doing web development and backend services for 20 years now, with an aptitude for transforming projects from abstract concepts into reality. Capable of stepping in to help in a wide variety of situations, including rescue scenarios. Experience with licensed gaming systems and certification via GLI.

Available for short-term hourly or longer-term engagements.

haxel··on Ask HN: Tips on hiring a “life manager” or coach to be productive?
Right now, unfortunately yes. I'll be sure to mention that limitation in the future. Supporting regions outside of Canada/US is too much of an overhead for me right now.

While the system does support non-SMS communication channels, it looks like the regulatory overhead (GDPRS, etc) means I'd need a fair bit of funding before expanding to Europe.

haxel··on Ask HN: Tips on hiring a “life manager” or coach to be productive?
The website is indeed not ready for public consumption, so if there's anything I can clarify for you, I'd be happy to do so.

Edit: does this help?

The basic idea is that to solve a problem, you must take the right kind of action more often. Yet what compels us to take these actions when we are not self-motivated? Functional does, by taking it social.

1. Identify your problem or interest

2. Join or create a group whose topic is that problem or interest. The group may provide seed activities. Each activity has a target frequency (e.g. once per week)

3. Optional: add more activities you'd like to do more often

4. Tell the Functional when you do those activities

5. Everyone in your group gets to see how you're doing. Nobody gets to see what you're doing.

6. If you fall behind on an activity, you'll receive a message to do that activity from someone in your group.

The system is designed to be persuasive so that those simple messages (and other stuff) are as compelling as possible.

haxel··on Ask HN: Tips on hiring a “life manager” or coach to be productive?
Take a peek at Functional, https://functional.benome.ca, a side project of mine that's in beta-testing that aims directly at your problem. Because it's also my problem, as a remote worker, and it definitely helps keep me on track.

If you're interested, I'll create a "remote-worker" group for us so we can help motivate each other from a distance.

Any other remote workers are welcome to join too, email me at steve at haxel.ca and I'll hook you up.

haxel··on Fixing the Facebook Problem with the Pilot Wave Protocol
A benefit, rather than an incentive, would be that instead of being advertised things they don't want and when they don't want them (the vast majority of the time), they could be advertised a deal on peanut butter almost exactly when they need peanut butter, or a bike tuneup a day or two before their next bike ride, and so on.
haxel··on The Fight to Mine Your Data and Sell It to Your Boss
There's a positive framing of the idea of mining (or collecting) information about yourself and selling it to your boss: it can help get you raises and promotions.

After all, when you ask for a raise you're in a wonderful negotiating position when your value is clearly quantified. When you mine/collect the information yourself, you get to choose how and when you present it. Thus you are selling the information to your boss and reaping the rewards yourself.

haxel··on To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they're right
This seems to underscore the need for criticisms to seem credible in order to be accepted.

For example, if I write an article and I get a drive-by critical comment that offers no substantial detail drawn from the article itself, I have no idea whether or not the critique is based on a misunderstanding of what I wrote. I'm likely to dismiss the critique because it lacks credibility. I achieve nothing by reacting to a random person's hallucination of what I wrote.

But when there's a clear indication of understanding (or misunderstanding) in the critique, which to me also indicates respect, I'm happy to receive the criticism, respond to it, and perhaps adapt to it. Because then it's a real thing from a real person who cares at least a little bit about both the ideas I've expressed and me as a person.

haxel··on Three laws to fix online advertising
Thanks, I appreciate your kind words. Perhaps one day I, or someone else who runs with these laws, will be credible enough for a talk like that. Right now I'm focused on developing software to let us abide by Law 1.
haxel··on Three laws to fix online advertising
Good point, I appreciate your feedback.

I wonder if fixing the rest of online advertising would suffocate this technique. If, by adhering to these three laws, we gradually develop a vastly superior way to connect sellers with buyers, then destructive methods like native advertising (and I'm sure there's more) might be much less appealing to sellers.

haxel··on Make elites compete: Why the 1% earn so much and what to do about it
I've been working on this problem for quite some time now, and I've distilled a basis for solving the problem of advertising - connecting sellers with buyers - into three "laws":

Law 1: Individuals must digitize their own behavior in prediction-friendly form.

Law 2: Individuals retain the exclusive right to share or sell their information.

Law 3: Sellers or middlemen who connect with buyers must compete openly for all information.

The idea is that as we adhere more and more to these laws (which we don't at all right now), we gradually solve the problems of online advertising. Many other problems too.

Blog post here: https://haxel.ca/three-laws-to-fix-online-advertising.html

haxel··on Google says self-driving car hits municipal bus in minor crash
There is a way to get the best of both worlds: variably-autonomous swarming vehicles. The larger the swarm, the more autonomy the car has. The smaller the swarm, the less autonomy.

Large swarms on the highway, small swarms (or solitary driving) elsewhere. Best of both!

haxel··on The road not taken: How we found and lost the dream of Personal Rapid Transit
Yeah, I would think that such a herd or swarm would be fully backward and forward compatible. Traditional cars could keep doing what they do - swarms would react intelligently to them as swarms tend to do - and there wouldn't be any need for specialized infrastructure to support pure automation.
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