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lywald

29 karma · joined July 24, 2011

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lywald··on AI makes you boring
I had found this rebuttal: Ideas are cheap only if you have cheap ideas.

I would argue good ideas are not so easy to find. It is harder than it seems to fit the market, and that is why most of apps fail. At the end of the day, everyone is blinded by hubris and ignorance... I do include myself in that.

lywald··on Show HN: I used my book generator to generate a catalog of books it can generate
Hey HN, Pierre here. I’m the solo creator of EbookForge.

I know the skepticism around AI-generated content (and "slop") is high right now. I share it. But I built this tool because I found that for self-education and structuring ideas, LLMs are actually incredible.

I used EbookForge itself to generate a massive, 150-page catalog containing 1,000+ book concepts. This goes beyond concept: we can then recursively generate those books fully with EbookForge. This is incredible.

Every title in the catalogue is a deep-link! If you click a book idea in the PDF, it recursively opens the EbookForge, pre-loaded via URL parameters, ready to generate anew. (you get a full 30-pages eBook within about 3 minutes)

HOW IT WAS MADE: it is basically turtles, all the way down... This is vibe-coding about vibe-coding, with Grok requests for speed and cost. Grok is amazing when it comes to the dollar. Note: Claude was down so I used Gemini CLI and it turns out it is quite capable also.

I hope you will find it useful. I am biased BUT I think it is amazing! One slop to slop them all...

PS: 3 ebooks for free if you login; if this goes down, you can use your own key client-side. If that goes down too, well then you, have the catalogue. This is the extent of my guarantee. I am not a marketing genius. Let's call it a day!

lywald··on Why I Quit Being So Accommodating (1922)
Simple example: Daughter wants a iPhone, you want a new car. Some neighbor needs help to pay healthcare bills. You don't buy the shiny things, and help the neighbor instead.

Another example: You own apartments, and some poor immigrant student can't afford the rent in the city with his university. You lower the rent, because a happy PhD is worth more than $100/month. Yes, even if you don't know him and won't gain anything from it.

Another example: You're the personnel at that top university. You agree to be paid less than you deserve so more can afford the education.

Another example: You can get in Google because of a friend. But you know someone else more qualified wants the job too. You let him have it. Because it is best for society that everyone gets the job he deserves, and that important jobs are done efficiently, instead of cheating for your own sake.

Another example: You know you can increase sales dramatically by using gamification and abusing psychology to get your users addicted to reward mechanisms. You don't do it, because it's best for society that clueless people don't waste their time/resources with bad MMOs and Farmville, despite the interests of your company.

Another example: You can get a lot of profit by hiding poor products under shiny overpriced cases, then throwing money at marketing. You don't do it because it's not in the interests of the people.

Another example: You don't use your marketing/SEO skills to sell a fancy software which already exists as a superior FOSS alternative. (Broken window fallacy)

Another example: Don't pull out the mote from your eye, but the beam in your neighbor's eye instead (no, I'm not religious)

Another example: You agree to pay taxes so that the sick and poor stop dying and starving on the street.

Final example: You can help people around you, but you're going to appear weak and it will hurt your social status... Oh terrible... You do it anyway.

Some of these examples are poor, but I could write a book about it, and the point is obvious, isn't it? Really I can't believe I have to argue about it.

Of course that's hopelessly idealist and unpractical. But only because everyone else is selfish and shortsighted in the first place. I'm just saying this is how it would work in a perfect world, and this is how Reason says we should strive to act. Optimization requires resources to go where they are needed most. If you disagree with this statement, use arguments, and good luck. "Me first", "my family first", "my company first", "my country first" is not good enough. It's chaos. All the evil in the world rests on these "good" intentions. People get slaughtered for the sake of others' families. Do it if you want, but don't downvote me then pretend it's the moral thing to do, when it's obviously not.

Anyway I'm done with this site, constantly obsessed with personal "success" to the point of biased and blind amorality... A faithful portrayal of the modern world.

One of these days we will drop the ego, and the sooner the better.

lywald··on Why I Quit Being So Accommodating (1922)
Putting society above all is the only path to true harmony and perfection.

When every subgroup is fighting for itself we get... What we have today. Chaos.

lywald··on Cards Against Humanity: Results of "pay what you want"
I'll bite: this is immoral, isn't it? To charge more than what you think it's worth. Because that's taking money you don't think you deserve. Anyway, this whole community seems oblivious to morals... I can almost feel the nihilism through the internet.
lywald··on Kung Fu Typing - Keyboard Finger Movement Diagrams
I'm also between PointersThumb and "VonStyle". And I learned touch typing but I don't like it.

I reached 110wpm touchtyping instead of 100, but it requires a far more rigid and precise posture (hands in front and parallel). It's not comfortable when I'm standing at the side, bending over the keyboard, or when I'm slouching lazily in my chair. I guess it's better for serious typing work, but for everyday use I prefer my style.

lywald··on How I went from $100-an-hour programming to $X0,000-a-week consulting
I like the design but that automatic slideshow changing every 2 seconds is annoying... That close to the text it disrupts reading, and I don't even have enough time to watch the image (I can pause with mouse but by the time I learn that I'm already annoyed).

Reminds me of this thread "Don’t Use Automatic Image Sliders or Carousels": http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4595026

lywald··on Silk — Interactive generative art
Made an angel too (tried to do Tyrael but can't pull it off) http://new.weavesilk.com/?d9he
lywald··on Neil deGrasse Tyson: If I Were President...
A laughably small number of americans vote in presidential

I'm sorry but it's not logical to waste time with something which has no impact. If there was any incentive, people would come. Like $5 or tax reductions, I don't know. It's not rocket science to increase the participation. But I guess the vote of the pragmatic is not desired. Actually the fact there is no incentive at all shows they want as few people to vote as possible, globally.

Maybe it's because opposition mobilizing themselves more is what allows the country to alternate leadership easily instead of being stuck in the same ideology forever, at the expense of the other 48%. Or maybe the alternate leadership is like our beating heart, a constant source of ideological thought, instead of the slumbering effect of an eternal monolithic party like in China. Be careful what you wish for.

Anyway when the choice you have is Blue or Red, "educating the masses" has little impact. But maybe masses having little impact is actually perfection...

lywald··on NASA rover yet to find methane on Mars
Putting viable life on Mars would be such an important threshold. It would guarantee life to survive even the destruction of Earth. Important stuff. Like Raid1 for data redundancy.

Not many things could destroy both Earth and Mars, except the expanding of the Sun in 5 billion years and maybe the fusion Andromeda/MilkyWay in 4 billion years if we're not lucky. Also aliens.

lywald··on My IQ
being intelligent has no intrinsic value

Loving what we are has to be worth something, or why bother with progress?

lywald··on Facebook, I want my friends back
But if nobody agreed to share their subscriptions, then how would advertisers get word of mouth?

By people talking with each other naturally?

lywald··on Meet the Man Who Built a 30-Story Building in 15 Days
Why is the whole page refreshed when I click to see another picture?

And it seems all Wired articles behave the same. Annoying.

lywald··on Quantified Self: My Online Life in the last 8 Months
The ISO standard recommends using a small space instead.

Numbers consisting of long sequences of digits can be made more readable by separating them into groups, preferably groups of three, separated by a small space. For this reason, ISO 31-0 specifies that such groups of digits should never be separated by a comma or point, as these are reserved for use as the decimal sign.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_31-0#Numbers

lywald··on Fresco - A Beautiful Responsive Lightbox
I think he means we can't even Right click -> Copy Image URL, at least not in Chrome

So there's no way to access the raw image without searching in source code (unless I'm missing something).

In any case that's what I don't really like about it.

lywald··on Rick Falkvinge: Why free speech is harmed by the ban on child porn
The abused kid has a right to privacy...

A moral right. Legally, I don't know.

But it is morally wrong to override that right.

Even if it means saving more kids (and I don't believe it does).

Just... Find another solution.

lywald··on Show HN: MemStash - Commit things to memory
Whether your learning a foreign language

In the front page, it's "you're"

lywald··on Leap
Seems developers can candidate for a free Leap+SDK if they like your project idea and think you can deliver.

>How can I get a free developer kit?

>We’re distributing thousands of kits to qualified developers, [...] register to get the SDK and a free Leap device first, and then wow us.

Apply here: https://live.leapmotion.com/developers.html

I like the small size and reasonable price. Might be cool as a 3rd input device, or for specialized terminals.

lywald··on Why time appears to speed up with age
I'm trying this... Here's the C# code to SpeechSynthesis the time every 5min http://pastebin.com/MxTh3zHH Add reference System.Speech
lywald··on Visual Studio '11' Announced
SaveAll is Ctrl-Shift-S on most programs.
lywald··on A roundabout way of turning on a light. See the explanation b4 reading
It seems to me like the goal is to lure jews into studying their religion intensively by giving them forced free time. And if that's the case then switching a light on indirectly is still wrong because you are wasting time and focus trying to switch it. A better alternative then would be automation. Switch on given a schedule, or switch on when entering the room, ect...
lywald··on Why I use DuckDuckGo and You Should Too
http://www.google.com/pda/?q=wat
lywald··on When Truth Survives Free Speech
Legitimate? Unless it's in a text of law, it's not legitimate. I could argue that he's not a judge the same way.
lywald··on When Truth Survives Free Speech
I don't think it surprises anyone, and it didn't require a 2-pages analysis. After reading one line on her blog everybody realized she's either crazy or trying to scam. But I don't think it justifies a $2M fine...
lywald··on The Day I Saw Van Gogh’s Genius in a New Light
The Harvest is different from the others, the wheat goes from intense orange to yellow. All others are about green being replaced with yellow.
lywald··on Vim: revisited
What about changing hjkl movements to jkl;? I didn't try it yet... But hjkl bothers me. My index belongs on j, for homerow touch typing, not h. Wouldn't it be an improvement? Not having to move the hand for movements. I must be missing something because everyone stays with hjkl.
lywald··on Some Asians' college strategy: Don't check 'Asian'
Putting people into "race" categories. In France we don't even acknowledge the existence of races. It's not even about discriminating. You're not allowed to say white people and black people are different races, that's labeled as racism. We talk about ethnicity or origin. And even then you have to be very careful. You don't say "arabs", you say "people originating from Maghreb" (or Middle east..). It's a sensitive matter. And there would be nation-wide riots if forms started asking about race or even skin color. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(classification_of_human_b... "In many countries, such as France, the state is legally banned from maintaining data based on race, which often makes the police issue wanted notices to the public that include labels like "dark skin complexion", etc." "The decennial censuses conducted since 1790 in the United States created an incentive to establish racial categories and fit people into those categories."
lywald··on Oregon Blogger Isn't a Journalist, Court Imposes $2.5M Judgement
That's what I was saying. It is not justice. It doesn't matter if this is the definition of a trial. Invent a word for something better... And invent that something too. Until then, law is flawed.
lywald··on Computers Will Entertain Us to Death
Aren't we programmers also living in the limbo of work and study to forget our nihilism? Or maybe it's just me. The programming mini-world with its mini-quests and mini-heroes, disconnected from the cold reality. And they didn't die or disappear, they just joined another group. It just happens that the barrier is quite thick. But yeah I'm still a bit worried by what you say.
lywald··on A single line to 3 cashiers is ~3x faster than a separate line for each cashier
It's obvious that one line is faster? Well it's not. Considering all cashiers are busy all the time, if it could be faster that would mean they have to manage multiple customers at the same time... If you're in the top 50% skilled at finding a line, then you're penalized because it just averages the queuing time.
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