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hexmiles

663 karma · joined December 28, 2016

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hexmiles··on AI-generated posters don’t have to be horrible
To me, it seems more to be something about the colors, but other than saying that they are often oversaturated, I can't quite place exactly what it is. I sometimes try to open them with an image editor and zoom in, or use other tools to try to "discover" what it is that I'm seeing, but without success so far. It doesn't help that graphics is not something I have experience with.
hexmiles··on AI-generated posters don’t have to be horrible
Hi, thanks.

Yes, I agree that disclosure is important, and yes, some of it is just “habits” of the model and we are a pattern-matching machine.

I still find it fascinating that, in my group of friends with somewhat diverse backgrounds, we are all pretty good at spotting AI-generated images (and also text to a lesser extent), but none of us can quite describe how. Some of the tells are more obvious, but I would love to see someone do a more systematic exploration of AI art to unearth the less common ones. Sometimes it almost makes me feel “crazy” that, to me, something is clearly AI, but I would not have any idea how to explain to someone who can’t recognize it how.

This is a bit of a problem for me when, for example, I try to explain to my parents how to spot it, and I can only show a list of AI images and say, “You know… like that,” instead of giving a real explanation.

hexmiles··on AI-generated posters don’t have to be horrible
Is there an explanation for why AI images, or posters, look "AI"? What I mean is that even some of the better ones, that I quite like, have a distinct AI look that I can’t quite put my finger on.

Some elements are, the very saturated color or being overly busy, but not all images have these tells, and not all of them.

For a while I thought it was that sort of very subtle dithering/texture that a lot of the images have, but again not all of them.

Looking online, most seem to focus on things like the wrong number of fingers, things merging into one another, details that don't make sense, etc., but that’s not what I’m talking about.

Does anyone have an explanation for why they are this easy to recognize as AI even when they are decent?

hexmiles··on Tiny $70 Xteink X3 e-reader
The Pro has a nice backlight that is useful when reading at night. The only downside is the lack of a USB-C port, so you have to use their magnetic dongle to charge. Also, if you want one, I recommend buying from the official site to avoid getting one with the firmware locked (there may be a way to unlock it, but I'm not sure). Lastly, look at the competition: I'm happy with my X4 Pro, but there are a couple of others with different feature sets that are still compatible with Crosspoint and may be of interest if you want to use it for more than just reading.
hexmiles··on Tiny $70 Xteink X3 e-reader
The fact that you can use it one-handed is the killer feature for me, both for reading and as a generic dashboard/remote control for stuff in my home.
hexmiles··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)
I'm working on TTZ, a sort of, pardon the expression, next-gen terminal protocol.

I wanted a middle ground between web apps and Terminal UI that allows for things like raster images, vector graphics, simple audio support and file transfer; to let me move more apps and workflows from web apps to a lighter experience.

I have an old laptop that I love and is very nice to use, but since it has only 2 GB of RAM, using multiple web apps is out of the question. I live on the terminal and SSH, but it has its own limitations, like spotty support for images, no audio at all, and ReGis (for vector graphics) support is not available in a lot of terminals.

I've recently finished implementing both client and server libraries for multiple languages (with the help of AI), and right now I'm in the process of fully testing and squashing all bugs and inconsistencies. Next, I will port a couple of applications as a proof of concept.

I plan to publish the source code very soon to receive feedback.

hexmiles··on 8086 Segmented Memory was a good idea
What is the difference between the segmentation model used by Intel and the banking model used by a lot of consoles? I've worked with the code of a couple of NES and GBC games, and while banking could be annoying, I never saw it as a particularly difficult model to follow and use. It did require more planning for the various functionality, but it wasn't even the most complex or difficult thing about developing for consoles.
hexmiles··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2026)
I'm working on two projects:

- TTZ: A sort of next-gen protocol for terminals. The basic idea is to create a dedicated terminal protocol that allows for more features and less legacy cruft (text and commands are cleanly separated). Right now, I’ve defined the protocol and have a couple of implementations ready. It already supports pictures, vector graphics, and file and audio streaming. I love terminals and TUIs, but I found programming and developing UIs against the standard terminal protocols frustrating, so I tried to design a more "modern" version.

- KingD (temp name): A Linux-based OS that tries to unify the roles of router, NAS, and virtualization platform with a single user interface. In my day job, I need to manage multiple FreeNAS, OPNsense, and Proxmox installations, and I wanted something that "encoded" the common workflows I keep repeating and provided a single centralized platform. I’ve been working on this for a while, and I hope to be able to do a Show HN by the end of the summer.

hexmiles··on Show HN: Drive any macOS app in the background without stealing the cursor
I did something similar on Windows by creating a "virtual desktop," where I can give the app focus without stealing it from another one. The idea was to basically reimplement RemoteApp without needing a dedicated Windows server. However, in that case, the app is not visible to the user unless you use "connect" to the virtual desktop; to do it, I implemented (WIP) a simple VNC server in C#.
hexmiles··on Fully Featured Audio DSP Firmware for the Raspberry Pi Pico
Thanks for the suggestion. I was hoping for something cheaper since I don't need really high quality. For now, I'm using a bunch of cheap USB soundcards that are good enough, but having multiple USB devices makes routing hell.
hexmiles··on Fully Featured Audio DSP Firmware for the Raspberry Pi Pico
I wonder if you could do the same thing in reverse and have a cheap way to get multiple inputs. I would love a cheap way to add 8–16 inputs to my PC; all the audio interfaces I found cost quite a bit.
hexmiles··on Google Broke Its Promise to Me. Now ICE Has My Data
Personally, I deleted everything I could but kept the Gmail account for a couple of years with a forward to my new account, and after that, I also deleted it. Google Takeout is a very useful way to quickly create a backup of everything Google.
hexmiles··on Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP
Sorry, I wasn't clear. By old hardware, I meant peripherals connected to the computer via serial or USB. We are at a level of performance where running an entire VM as a driver is kind of feasible, if wasteful.
hexmiles··on Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP
I know that it is a heavyweight solution, but it could be useful for some situations with old driver/devices/applications. I have some old hardware that is compatible only with pre-WinNT OS, and I could do something similar to provide a simple solution for the end user.
hexmiles··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2026)
For a moment, I thought it was a game about finding chickens and was confused yet intrigued.
hexmiles··on A web server on a single floppy disk
Or a Sony Mavica, I love those
hexmiles··on OpenMANET Wi-Fi HaLow open-source project for Raspberry Pi–based MANET radios
All modules seem to be us-only. Is there a modules usable in eu frequency?
hexmiles··on Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
Do you know of any games downloaded from Steam that work even once Steam is removed? I tried to search a bit, but I couldn't find any.

I would like to test it for myself to confirm it.

hexmiles··on Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
I tried to search if it's possible for a dev studio to release a game on Steam that works without it, by which I mean that if I uninstall Steam, the games keep working; I wasn't able to confirm, but it seems to be theoretically possible...

None of the games I have in my library work like that, but online some people suggest that some games work even without Steam, once installed.

Your point, however, still stands.

hexmiles··on Mastercard deflects blame for NSFW games being taken down
All (most?) Steam games have a very simple DRM that is extremely easy to bypass, and you can find examples on github.

However, a lot of games add their own DRM and/or protection scheme that complicates things.

EDIT: technically there are two distinct component: the actual DRM, called steamstub, and the steamwork library, that does not work without steam but it is not considered drm. Both can be easily bypassed/emulated.

hexmiles··on 'A black hole': New graduates discover a dismal job market
You can't dictate it, but you can influence it.

Imagine if we teach from primary school student to clean their own classroom and bathroom so that everyone must do at least once every x days/week, it think it would help reconsider how we view this jobs. This is just an example, but I think there are plenty of ways for a government to incentivize desirable behavior (even social).

hexmiles··on Qwen3-Coder: Agentic coding in the world
In case of holiday/sick leave do i need to find someone to feed the agentic pet from my ip address? Or is my manager responsability?
hexmiles··on A technical look at Iran's internet shutdowns
How easy is detecting a transmitting starlink terminal? I assume is pretty easy but i don't know if the phased array antenna and beamforming make detecting from ground harder. Could i detect it with a SDR while driving around, wardriving-style?
hexmiles··on Qwen VLo: From "Understanding" the World to "Depicting" It
While looking at the examples of editing the bear image, I noticed that the model seemed to change more things than were strictly asked.

As an example, when asked to change the background, it also completely changed the bear (it has the same shirt but the fur and face are clearly different), and also: when it turned the bear in a balloon, it changed the background (removing the pavement) and lost the left seed in the watermelon.

It is something that can be fixed with better prompting, or is it a limitation of the model/architecture?

hexmiles··on Linux kernel WireGuard can go 'fast' on decent hardware
I also did use tinc in the past, and while it was very robust it was not as reliable/fast on roaming as wireguard, BUT to be fair it may have been user error.
hexmiles··on Linux kernel WireGuard can go 'fast' on decent hardware
In addition to been faster it is also the only vpn that reliably handle roaming, without interrupting active connections.
hexmiles··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2025)
the link for https://github.com/falrm/BeatScratch-Flutter return a 404 for me. (maybe it's private?)
hexmiles··on Ditching Obsidian and building my own
In my case I simply create two wireguard tunnels (one called "vpn", the other called "guest") and use firewall rules to block all traffic from the "guest" tunnel to all service except the one that should be "public" (in my case a minecraft server).

I think you could technically do it with a single tunnel by using firewall rules that refer to the IP address of the single peer but it's less convenient.

NOTE: I also added a dedicated dnsmasq instance only for the "guest" tunnel so that they have DNS working and can use hostnames instead of IP address.

This setup is trivial with both OpenWrt and OpnSense, but it should be doable also with manual setup

hexmiles··on Ollama's new engine for multimodal models
If I understood it correctly: this time no, it is actually new engine builded by the ollama team indipendent from llama.cpp
hexmiles··on Blue95: a desktop for your childhood home's computer room
From the look i suspect it is gitg: a git frontend for gnome.

https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Gitg

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