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monkellipse

119 karma · joined April 1, 2021

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monkellipse··on Bill Gates tries to install MovieMaker (2003)
The bit about updates not truly being critical if you’re behind a firewall doesn’t age too well lol
monkellipse··on Show HN: Orate – On-device neural text-to-speech queue for Mac
Cool, I’ll give it a try! OCR for printed stuff, device sync and character voices (for fiction) would be killer.
monkellipse··on Combustion engine web-based simulator
I see no declaration that this is a machine generated site, but the aesthetic is a dead giveaway. The language on the “how it works” page is unmistakably LLM output. As a total novice in engines this site had the potential to educate me, but did the author vet the data at all? If the author doesn’t bother telling me they checked any output on this, what assurance do I have anything is accurate on the site at all? If I knew an actual engineer put their focus on this tool I’d feel much better about trying to learn something from it. Short of that it’s just a pretty (but predictable) interface.
monkellipse··on Ask HN: Do you believe aliens are visiting Earth?
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”
monkellipse··on A test for life versus non-life?
Lex Fridman had Cronin on his podcast, quite an interesting discussion.
monkellipse··on The accidental tyranny of user interfaces
For further reading, “The Design of Everyday Things” by Don Norman is a great source for a comprehensive look at this subject. I believe it’s probably still required reading for UI/UX folk but also approachable for other people and lays out a thorough case for what the key trade-offs are in interface design.
monkellipse··on A load of old pixel shift. Why I just don't care for high-res modes
Professional product photographer here, primarily jewelry. Can confirm, pixel shift is a thing of pure beauty in this application, at least on the Hasselblad medium format system our studio used for years. Was a pain to wait for 16 captures to fire off, we certainly didn’t use it every day, but for high end work it gave beautiful tones and pixel resolution. I’ve never tried such a thing on landscapes, I can see the reasons to avoid it in that case for sure!
monkellipse··on The psychology of getting high a lot
A survey about how motivated the users felt? I am not convinced by this data. Surely we can do better.
monkellipse··on How to copy a file between devices? (2022)
Having just last night gone back and forth with multiple screenshots and careful explanations to guide someone through importing a picture from email to the ios photos app… maybe I’m lazy but it’s just exhausting. I agree that with effort it’s do-able, but it IS tiring :)
monkellipse··on How to copy a file between devices? (2022)
As the defacto I.T. support man for family and friends of varied skill levels… sometimes it’s really daunting trying to get them to do things that seem very intuitive to the technically experienced. I’m not saying we should just give up ok trying to show people new tools but I can empathize with the terror of even imagining handing a terminal off to some of these people, hah! A simple GUI goes a long way for people who don’t, for example, know how to write a file path or don’t know the difference between a forward slash and a backslash!
monkellipse··on Browser extensions are underrated: the promise of hackable software (2019)
Correct, none. I use Pihole for blocking. But the bigger point I think is that security conscious users are hesitant to employ extensions in general, even if some folks are ok with a couple select extensions they are still spooked by the general field.
monkellipse··on Browser extensions are underrated: the promise of hackable software (2019)
I love the idea of browser extensions but they don’t appear to be worth the security/privacy risk for my use cases. I wonder how many others are like me and too paranoid to risk extensions at all?
monkellipse··on Optical One-Time Pad Decoding
This project shows how to make a small view screen that uses light to perform the logical operations needed to decrypt the unbreakable One-Time-Pad cypher. The video presents a little history to provide context, then shows the details of how optical logic gates can be made to do decryption.
monkellipse··on Bare Bones Software – BBEdit 15 is here
I was about to sit and gripe that the only shortcoming for me in BBedit compared to vscode is built in ssh combined with python venv… but once I started to type that I realized BBedit almost certainly had a solution there too, I just haven’t bothered to look! It’s great software.
monkellipse··on Real-time image editing using latent consistency models
The same way you stop people from using a hammer maliciously?
monkellipse··on Show HN: Inshellisense – IDE style shell autocomplete
Great idea! Also terrifying :) Given how often I accidentally commit the wrong text in vscode, I shudder to think of the damage I could do with this on my shell, hah! What safety measures are there/could there be?
monkellipse··on Ask HN: What are some well-designed websites?
Their catalog is also brilliant. Often companies seem to struggle balancing marketing desires (“HEY CHECK OUT THIS THING!!”) with serving users what they’re looking for efficiently. Mcmaster leans heavily to the latter in the catalog AND web, to the joy of their users and perhaps the frustration of their marketing team? Great stuff.
monkellipse··on Ask HN: What is the most memorable game you played?
Subspace(“continuum”)… top down spaceships pew pew. Elegant physics, high skill ceiling. Multiplayer only, so many hours spent in 40+ player arenas in Chaos Zone. That game was really fun for chasing high-bounty ships that had survived in a single life for hours… half the zone going after one guy/turret, finally popping them was so satisfying!!
monkellipse··on Is ORM still an anti-pattern?
“At lago we…” Hmmm… as a forced user of Lago’s product at work, I’m sorry but I stopped reading at that point. Terrible software, terrible support, enjoy your ORM hellscape I’ve flipped the bozo bit.
monkellipse··on For accountants, AI is like spreadsheets in the 1980s
I was hoping for some domain-specific insight there. Instead, that was a thin article without much more than a blanket assertion. Could have copy/replaced “accountant” with pretty much any other knowledge worker.
monkellipse··on Why not tell people to “simply” use pyenv, poetry or anaconda
This was my solution. It feels like overkill at times but I never have to worry about packaging messes anymore. That being said I can understand the desire to solve it on the metal, it’s a mess.
monkellipse··on Parsing the .DS_Store File Format (2018)
An informative nitpick, thank you.
monkellipse··on Lego violates GPL by keep Blender-based BrickLink Studio source closed (2021)
I try generally not to be the vindictive type… but Lego being SUCH HAWKS and sticklers when it comes to brand protection, I can’t help but root for them getting skewered for this. I doubt much will really come of it, though.
monkellipse··on Show HN: I built an autopilot for the lunar lander game
Nice! I also got hooked on the lander thing, really quick to pick up and good replay value! Your autopilot handles a gentle landing well. If I get the lander going sideways at any appreciable speed, then flip autopilot on, a crash is inevitable :) As a human my solution to that is simply slowing down with lots of thrust, though I still wind up turning the lander into scrap most of the time hah!
monkellipse··on Brew Is a Bad Neighbor
Unexpected overwrites of system tools are the problem I’ve faced. Not sure how common that really is but once can be enough to leave a bad taste!
monkellipse··on Brew Is a Bad Neighbor
I really got fed up with Homebrew after something got clobbered, this looks like a nice simple solution to that! Thanks! Curious to know how effective it is in practice. I resorted to abusing Docker for nifty command line tricks on the Mac but it sure is a heavy solution and some things really are better on the metal!
monkellipse··on Ask HN: How to Create Vector Art?
Curves are just plain tricky, and are a skill that requires practice. I recommend tracing a shape in a photograph, especially one that has a mix of soft and hard angles and edges. Be patient with yourself, practice it like an instrument, and in a week or so you’ll have it down!
monkellipse··on Setting up a Pi Hole made my home network faster
Yes, exactly. DNS settings on router makes that easy, just give each pihole a static address and point DNS to them. The address are listed in priority.
monkellipse··on Setting up a Pi Hole made my home network faster
Can confirm, pihole is great. I put in two for redundancy, helps make sure nothing gets through. No negative impact on network perf, as it only touches DNS and plenty fast for that.
monkellipse··on Study: Curcumin spice boosts memory by 30%, eases depression
Fair enough! My intuition would be the more subjects the better. I realize there’s probably a whole field of study on this subject, and intuition is often wrong :)
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