HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

mickelsen

400 karma · joined December 17, 2014

.
submissionscomments
mickelsen··on Tell HN: OpenAI keeps re-enabling the 'allow training' setting
Yup. Happened to me months ago, when the credit card failed to renew and it switched back to free, the allow training setting also got activated. Cheeky bastards. I guess they just vacuumed all my past convos, and you don't have anyone to complain to!

Since I still need to use that account with Plus, I added a new card, flipped the switch back to no training, and submitted that thing on the privacy page which is a bit more formal. Probably should have signed up for a business account.

mickelsen··on Ask HN: How do you keep up with HN these days?
It used to feel like that for me even before AI. The trick I use is when glancing through the homepage, I just open all the tabs that interest me and move them to OneTab. Eventually I sift through the threads on a lazy weekend. Many weren't that interesting, so they end up getting closed on the spot, same for those that didn't gain traction. Others are keepers, those get bookmarked.

But be careful, compulsively bookmarking isn't a good idea either. I see my AI bookmarks from 2023, most are irrelevant now. Same for a ton of new releases at that time, whatever homelab config, rumors around silicon architecture, geopolitical events, retrocomputing, etc.

So what actually helped me was realizing that after any ramp up period there's stabilization: you let the world figure out what works, then eventually you will see what sticks mentioned everywhere when going back to that topic.

There are also some evergreen discussions here. Those get more than a thread a year, like the tinnitus stuff, and they tend to stay up for a good part of the week.

mickelsen··on Windows 11's built-in Weather app wastes more than 1 GB of RAM
They could ask AI to refactor and debloat, since they can't be bothered with it because the incentives don't seem to align.

Last decade has been the worst, not even worth it for the eye candy like before.

mickelsen··on Amiga 1000: Ten years ahead of its time
I'm a millennial and I discovered the Amiga, the demoscene, the lore and so on way after its era thanks to the catchy tracker music and demos. I've had several different re-introductions over different stages in my life, but the first was by trying to figure out as a kid how the tunes of my games could pack so much in less than 1MB per song, when my mental model was only MIDIs, WAVs or MP3s. Then I figured it out and got Modplug Tracker from the school's computer lab (had no internet at home) and that whole rabbit hole.

I'd notice the recurring nicknames of the scene groups, composers (skaven, necros, siren, etc), and so on always in my favorite games, it piqued enough interest in me to see what the Amiga was all about. Tried to emulate it to no avail back then, today it's really easy. Even without having lived through it I could feel that thing was something else. I really liked all the clever tricks programmers did to output cool graphics, like the tunnel sequence in Super Stardust (which also had some really catchy tunes), later saw the same trick in Iridion for Gameboy Advance, I think some people behind the studios of both games were also from the scene.

There's this video from Ahoy, about how the Amiga tried but couldn't survive in the end, told in his signature way:

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

mickelsen··on Tacit Knowledge
Reminds me of this small post, which I found here on HN, and someone suggested the author was trying to define the concept.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230926225119/https://www.koopu...

mickelsen··on Ask HN: When will the stock market crash?
Well, software already had a ~25% repricing last February, and plenty of SaaS names were down 30–50%. Now for that to hit the whole stock market at once (not just the Nasdaq), I guess you'd need some sort of macro / liquidity event or black swan. High valuations alone just won't do it.
mickelsen··on We can still stop California's 3D printer surveillance scheme
Hope sanity prevails and printers stay free, don't give Europe ideas.
mickelsen··on Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI?
Nice, Noisetable is so relaxing. Reminds me a bit of those generative music apps from Brian Eno.
mickelsen··on I switched from Mac to a Lenovo Chromebook
x86 only tho
mickelsen··on Ask HN: When did you move from AI agentic loops to simpler deterministic system?
When you have a flow well defined, like transactions going on, it simply doesn't scale. But AI can then be used for analysis, alerts and investigating failures of such processes very nicely. Agents can also be used to prepare a transaction package that needs more human input, like a customer service case, but again with clearly defined outcomes. At least that's what I've seen in my limited experience consulting for a local online retailer.
mickelsen··on ChatGPT Images 2.0
I'd be a bit more humble rather than terrified, because I enjoy some AI slop too, especially funny animals that remind me of my old pets' antics. There are levels of slop. But tasteless stuff with crap graphics plastered all over, loud edits or badly calibrated tts voices were already all over reels/tiktok long before AI, and people still liked that.

The unsettling thing on social media is the mind hijacking with the recommendation algo and scrolling motion that resembles a slot machine, more than the content itself.

mickelsen··on Chrome extensions spying on users' browsing data
I still use the Little Rat extension, it shows a little notification when an extension does a network request, and lets you see quickly what type and where. It can also block requests (doesn't seem to work all the time in Brave now, even with the flag on), activate and deactivate extensions:

https://github.com/dnakov/little-rat

There's also this site that I've used from time to time to audit extensions quickly:

https://chrome-stats.com/

mickelsen··on The New Collabora Office for Desktop
Also didn’t these guys buy Zetaoffice?
mickelsen··on Ask HN: Where have all the humans gone?
Where are we? Probably talking to AI instead of posting, of course, getting our dopamine kick out of an autotelic dialogue, then moving on to the next thing.

But seriously, I haven't seen actual back and forth exchanges between bots, maybe those don't make it to the front page or get downvoted to death quickly? Some people do proofread their comments with AI before posting though.

mickelsen··on Threads edges out X in daily mobile users, new data shows
Deleted my previous comment, but as they say on X/Twitter right after a banger drops: “I am never deleting this app.”
mickelsen··on What I learned building "comfortable" LED strip lighting
Well, at least I learned a thing or two from this, or more like, to keep in mind for my next time messing with lights.

On diffusing them, I've had lamp shades that were adequate on paper but still didn't feel right; one eye would hurt and a headache would start (it has its own cause, after getting lasik a decade ago, I still see great but uneven light triggers a migraine) couldn't pinpoint until I started playing around this, rather than just limiting myself to intensity, temperature and the standard diffusion.

mickelsen··on Berlin Approves New Expansion of Police Surveillance Powers
The Berlin airport fiasco was absolutely on the left-wing government.
mickelsen··on Berlin Approves New Expansion of Police Surveillance Powers
Yup, they love their rules and procedures.

And it's funny, because the first thought they have if you get fined (say you didn't include the impressum in your personal website, or nosy neighbor found you mowing the lawn on sunday), it's that you must have done something wrong, not that the law is unfair.

It’s a Rechtsstaat with hardcore legal-positivist brain. Rules aren’t guidelines, intent doesn’t matter, context doesn’t matter, fun definitely doesn’t matter.

mickelsen··on Why is OpenAI lying about the data its collecting on users?
Yeah, pretty much.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42022905

And it's still strange that after a year, it only sometimes picks it up, depending on how relevant it thinks your location is.

For me it's a coin toss whether the answer tailored to my location is useful or not; I'm often following up with something like "do not show local results, I'm shopping in the US".

But this also happens with other features: the other day it was telling me it won't access a link I pasted. Next message, I ask why. Chat answers that it can't, it has no way to browse the web. I see Web Search wasn't explicitly turned on in the conversation (not that it has mattered before anyway). Turn on for the next message and tell it to try again, voilà. Didn't try just regenerating the answer, but that also works sometimes.

mickelsen··on Alan.app – Add a Border to macOS Active Window
This one was nice, pity it was never updated: https://github.com/dwarvesf/blurred
mickelsen··on He Chunhui's Tiny386 Turns an ESP32-S3 into a Fully-Functional 386-Powered PC
I’ve picked up a few boards from the Waveshare and Spotpear storefronts on AliExpress:

https://wvshare.aliexpress.com/

https://spotpear.aliexpress.com/

There you can find the latest launches and different versions depending on your use case. Also, checkout the Luckfox Pico.

mickelsen··on Tinnitus Neuromodulator
Yup, I had massive success with a theragun around the traps, and gentle massage around the SCM area for the ocassional flare up. Also caffeine use, vigorous exercise, loud fans, teeth clenching and sleeping on the side with the neck bent almost reliably triggers it back. But interestingly, after the initial flare during the pandemic and allergy season, the noise subsided with oral steroids. Now it's the occasional reminder maybe a few times a month, always the right ear, then it goes away.
mickelsen··on Migrating from AWS to Hetzner
Nice! Bookmarked. I know this one, it's been useful to me before: https://serverhunter.com/
mickelsen··on Researchers find evidence of ChatGPT buzzwords turning up in everyday speech
For anything serious I'd still double check, but my go-to strategy of googling expressions in quotes isn't that useful anymore. Here in HN (or any other forum), I've only done it very few times, because the thing rewrites it in a voice that doesn't sound like me, which I don't like. Plus I don't aim to keep a polished identity here, so I'm fine with the occasional mistake. Also I've been like 10+ years with this account, but lurking since 2011 or so... I guess what would offend me the most is someone treating me like a bot because I end up sounding like AI-slop in the future.
mickelsen··on Researchers find evidence of ChatGPT buzzwords turning up in everyday speech
I like words that weren't part of my speech, which I now use quite often, because of the context in which they were introduced to me by ChatGPT, they felt like a natural addition. Like intention, as in living with intention; before I'd rather use having a purpose or direction, but this captured something else, mind that english isn't my native language.

I hated the 'vibing' thing, 4o for some time started to use it on any given text, about the time vibe coding and the zoomer revival of the word was a thing last year.

Another one that I've seen pop up, and on a proofread comment of mine right here I let it slip (sorry, will keep doing it when I feel lazy) was that thing where you lead with a question "...the result? this happened".

I try to calibrate on NOT introducing them even if I like the expression, if I see it repeated too often throughout my chats or elsewhere in social media (X usually, esp. with foreign elonbux grinders), because then it feels cringe.

mickelsen··on Ask HN: Does using public transportation make you more creative than driving?
I'd say more the opposite; when driving alone I have ideas that pop up and sometimes entertain, I can rehearse conversations or thoughts out loud, because of the privacy, and maybe the fact of having the other half of the brain focused on the road. I don't recall doing much of that in my mind when taking the subway or riding a bus, especially since I was already expecting the moment to combine stations or walk away. It did however, bring a different sense of freshness to start my workday, already with some physical activity. Fun drives or going on walks intentionally, not as part of the commute, hit different though.
mickelsen··on Exit Tax: Leave Germany before your business gets big
Yeah, I'm appalled a line of thinking this naive (because let's face it, it's not just idealistic) is making it to HN.
mickelsen··on Many countries that said no to ChatControl in 2024 are now undecided
Windows Recall is just the proof of concept and boiling the frog on what's to come later down the road.
mickelsen··on Ask HN: Why is virtualization still not solved?
The problem is that the whole virtualization situation was left as an afterthought in the Apple ecosystem, and it got worse during the Apple Silicon transition years.

Just now things are starting to catch up, but there's still a wide gap in features; Apple Virtualization Framework is still very limited. And a personal limitation I hit recently, no USB4/Thunderbolt passthrough anywhere, not in UTM (which uses AVF), not in VMWare either.

Also remember the final Apple Silicon version of VMWare supporting M1/M2 wasn't available until November 2022 (it was a tech preview before), while all the Broadcom situation was ensuing. And I think only as of 2024 it runs smoothly. So far it's still the most reliable for desktop Linux VMs for me. Windows 11 for ARM runs very well too, and it does x86 emulation transparently, even 2010s games run well.

mickelsen··on Ask HN: Why do Cursor, Windsurf and Claude Code dominate the conversation?
[flagged]
Page 1 of 8Next →