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jcims

15,739 karma · joined March 6, 2014

jcims at crandal.org
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jcims··on My Journey to a reliable and enjoyable locally hosted voice assistant (2025)
I have a feeling beamforming microphone arrays might help here, something like this could improve the audio being processed substantially - https://www.minidsp.com/products/usb-audio-interface/uma-8-m....
jcims··on Electric motor scaling laws and inertia in robot actuators
I did a bit of a deep dive into motor control and actuators in building a two axis gimbal for tracking satellites with an RF antenna (with the eventual goal of building a mount for optical tracking).

Ben's vids were kind of mind-blowing for me at that time. I couldn't believe some of the control that was possible with relatively pedestrian electronics. Aaed's vids do a wonderful job of making it accessible in an applied way.

It's something I think a lot of the folks on HN would find interesting to tinker with. Nice mix of software and hardware that actually does work in physical reality. It also gives me a level of appreciation for the advances in humanoid robots that I don't think I would have had otherwise. (If you *do* get into it, I'd highly recommend getting into field oriented control with brushless motors and encoders. Small hobby servos are fun but they encapsulate a lot of the interesting parts and tend to have limited options available for things like the capstan vid linked above)

jcims··on Bus travel from Lima to Rio de Janeiro
I’d always fancied myself a decent driver. Riding in buses across parts of Peru recalibrated my standards. I couldn’t believed what they could do with those clapped out tour buses, some *truly* skilled folks at the wheel.
jcims··on Launch HN: Spine Swarm (YC S23) – AI agents that collaborate on a visual canvas
Got some great results for a rather broad domain in the first pass.

HN is going to tend towards negative/constructive feedback, for me the only issue is that the mouse interaction is a bit wonky. Took me a minute to realize that i could select different mouse modes. With that I'd say I'd echo TheTaytay's comment about mouse interaction and for me generating docx (which was the output of my agents, haven't even explored explicitly asking for something else) creates a bit of a barrier to use the content for me. Markdown or even HTML would be helpful.

But these are just minor nits, love the concept and great execution.

jcims··on Personal Computer by Perplexity
From the blog post (https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/everything-is-computer)

>Personal Computer runs on a dedicated Mac mini that can run 24/7, connected to your local apps and Perplexity’s secure servers.

jcims··on 5,200 holes carved into a Peruvian mountain left by an ancient economy
>Why climb the large mountain to store your grain there just to have haul it back down later?

Yes and after going on a trip to Machu Picchu a few years ago, the locals don't seem to feel gravity quite the same way most of us do these days. There was a gal on our 4 day hike that got hit pretty hard with altitude sickness a day in. A local porter about her size carried her on his shoulders for the rest of the trip, in flip flops, and the only reason he stayed back with our slow asses was so she could talk to her husband along the way.

It's the most visceral experience I've had in the levels upon levels of human capability. Really wild to see in person.

Also Peru is phenomenal.

jcims··on Google closes deal to acquire Wiz
Wiz customer here, when fully implemented it provides an incredibly detailed and comprehensive view of your infrastructure.

I'm curious how much of that information is going to pass between Wiz and Google Cloud product/sales. It's effectively x-ray vision into some huge workloads running on their competitors.

jcims··on CT Scans of Health Wearables
My daughter is T1 as well. This bothers me every time I think about it. You are probably already aware but if your wife is using the dexcom there’s an app called follow that she can add you to to get alerts if things go awry (highs or lows).

She probably won’t want to use it but if she worries about that at all it might provide some peace of mind.

jcims··on CT Scans of Health Wearables
mikeselectricstuff on YouTube did a teardown on the Omnipod wearable pump a while back, very cool mechanism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2MQUUkubgs

Insulin is incredibly potent and can easily result in life-altering if not fatal consequences at relatively low ratios of the therapeutic dose, so these things need to be dialed in and extremely reliable.

jcims··on Pentagon formally labels Anthropic supply-chain risk
Been going on for a long time

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

jcims··on Claude's Cycles [pdf]
Prove it.
jcims··on New iPad Air, powered by M4
This sums up my entire experience with technology progress over the past 40 years.
jcims··on Layoffs at Block
>If the profits are still up and growing, why on earth would you evict 40% of the company, to send them into this job market?

To avoid laying them off in next year's job market.

Dripping a 10% cut every year for the next four years when you *know* that you're going to do it is cowardice.

jcims··on Layoffs at Block
I noticed that as well and it oddly made me sit for a minute to think about it. I ended up deciding that it landed a bit more 'real' and unfiltered. Could be interpreted many ways. Nobody knows the actual why but (possibly) Jack.
jcims··on What Claude Code chooses
Interesting to me that Opus 4.6 was described as forward looking. I haven't *really* paid attention, but after using 4.5 heavily for a month, the first greenfield project I gave Opus 4.6 resulted in it doing a web search for latest and greatest in the domain as part of the planning phase. It was the first time I'd seen it, and it stuck out enough that I'm talking about it now.

Probably confirmation bias, but I'm generally of the opinion that the models are basically good enough now to do great things in the context of the right orchestration and division of effort. That's the hard part, which will be made less difficult as the models improve.

jcims··on Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid
White Sands Missile Range alone is ~3200 square miles.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2f/Wh...

If you dedicated a single (average sized) county per state to solar you'd ~3-5x the land you need for current consumption.

jcims··on Bus stop balancing is fast, cheap, and effective
Typing this from a suburb of Columbus now.

COTA provides decent service to get around in the downtown and directly adjacent neighborhoods, but it drops off sharply as soon as you get outside of that area.

Part of the problem is the typical US sprawl of the place. The area inside the beltway is ~200 square miles - https://urbandecisiongroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/fc...

I live just outside the beltway. Driving to the OSU stadium just north of downtown would take me about 25 minutes. According to Google maps, the nearest COTA stop is a 20 minute walk away, then it's an hour and ten minutes to get to the stadium.

Agreed it would be lovely to be able to hop on a bus or train and get somewhere within a reasonable amount of time.

jcims··on Mac mini will be made at a new facility in Houston
It’s worked for the automotive industry for decades.
jcims··on Magical Mushroom – Europe's first industrial-scale mycelium packaging producer
It's a bit of trouble but not onerous. I'm temporarily relocated for about a year and haven't restarted b/c I don't have all the equipment here with me, but will likely restart here before long.

There are some sterile procedures you need to follow, pretty easy.

You need sterilized/pasteurized grain spawn and substrate. You can just buy those from a vendor (eg North Spore) to start. (Once you DIY it though it's much cheaper) Biggest challenge is getting

You need spores. You can order those online (syringes are the way to go to start). Once you know how to culture them you can easily get them anywhere. Put a mushroom cap on a piece of aluminum foil and let it sit for a week. Pick it up and there are your spores.

Takes 2-3 months end to end for any particular batch.

jcims··on Magical Mushroom – Europe's first industrial-scale mycelium packaging producer
Couple of pics of lions mane and pink oyster that I had sitting around - https://imgur.com/a/ubI3eWt
jcims··on Magical Mushroom – Europe's first industrial-scale mycelium packaging producer
Certain species do better in different substrates, but for the ones I've grown coco coir (also suggested by holly01) works great. There are some additional bits you can add to improve results but it starts there. You can hydrate it with hot water in a 5 gallon bucket. There's lots of tutorials on YouTube.
jcims··on Magical Mushroom – Europe's first industrial-scale mycelium packaging producer
I agree with the replies so far in that there isn't a major risk of the mushrooms spreading.

That said, it's not completely risk free and I think it's important for folks who decide to get into the hobby at least take a moment to think about it. If you have someone in the household that has respiratory issues, I think it would be worthwhile ensuring that you have good containment to prevent spores from circulating the home (or do it elsewhere). This is particularly true if you decide to scale up (which is natural once you have some success, it truly is fun).

Also the growing environment is subject to infection from whatever environmental molds/fungus/etc are around, so reasonable precautions should be taken when handling/disposing. Once you get your procedures down this is less of an issue but still something to keep in mind.

Personally I didn't do anything but very basic precautions and never had an issue.

jcims··on Show HN: AI Timeline – 171 LLMs from Transformer (2017) to GPT-5.3 (2026)
I was born in 1973. My grandson was born in 2022. He won't know a world without 'AI' much like my kids didn't know a world without the Internet and I didn't know a world without refrigerators.

One thing I regret to say that I learned very late in my children's development was the value of boredom and difficult challenges. However I think I've successfully passed these lessons on to my kids as they raise their own. I have no idea what to say about 'AI' and the rapid reconfiguration of our relationship with the world that's going to happen as a result. All I can tell them is that we're in this together and we'll try to figure it out as we go.

Good luck everybody!

jcims··on Magical Mushroom – Europe's first industrial-scale mycelium packaging producer
Just a side note. I started growing mushrooms a couple of years ago.

Very interesting and fulfilling hobby, they are incredibly interesting critters. Takes a little bit of dedication to get started but once you start seeing them fruit and making your own substrate it's quite inexpensive and a lot of fun. I have a feeling lots of folks in this community would really like it.

Basic starter package is a 'monotub', selection of spores, grain for spawning, substrate for fruiting and miscellaneous bits and bobs for handling, hydrating, maintaining temps and cultivating. North Spore and Midwest Grow Kits are both reputable and reliable suppliers.

Tons of resources on YouTube as you might expect. One of my favorites is Southwest Mushrooms - https://www.youtube.com/@SouthwestMushrooms

jcims··on Minions: Stripe’s one-shot, end-to-end coding agents
I don’t know enough about either but if their approach was to make it substantially more opinionated, which is likely in the case of an org that’s subject to audits, it would make sense to keep it separate.
jcims··on CERN rebuilt the original browser from 1989 (2019)
I worked at an EDI company in the mid 90s. X.25 was the wild west. We had a router set up on it that would happily stand up a ppp session to anyone that knew the node name. No password, right on the core network lol.
jcims··on Gemini 3.1 Pro
Here's the chat I used for the drawing - https://aistudio.google.com/app/prompts?state=%7B%22ids%22:%...

Save the xml, import to drawio

jcims··on Gemini 3.1 Pro
Sometimes it helps to also provide a drawio file that has the elements you wan't (eg. cloud service icons or whatever), but you just feed it the content you want diagrammed and let it eat.

Even if it's not completely correct, it usually creates something that's much closer to complete than a blank page.

jcims··on Gemini 3.1 Pro
Pelican on a bicycle in drawio - https://imgur.com/a/tNgITTR

(FWIW I'm finding a lot of utility in LLMs doing diagrams in tools like drawio)

jcims··on Sizing chaos
It's a great point that I think the article also touches on. Bodies are of many shapes, so the sizing question is as much about, possibly more about, shape as it is mapping any particular dimension to a scale.
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