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oriel

265 karma · joined May 6, 2016

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oriel··on “Microslop” filtered in the official Microsoft Copilot Discord server
I want to be constructive here, but I just cant. So I'm saying the one word in my head:

> Macroplop

oriel··on Ask HN: What single AI tool/technique 10x'd your productivity last year?
This is one of the things that made me ditch Cursor: when they're constantly shifting around keybindings, overriding long-held conventions, and changing UI, etc etc; especially without opt-out (or opt-in for that matter).

Tie that in with a release cycle that force restarts the IDE, its a recipe for flow-breaking frustration that makes a tool untrustable. When its untrustable, it gets removed.

Now I don't let my tools auto-update. It was an experiment to allow the auto-updates to begin with, because new tech paradigms, yet its clear the end user still isn't accounted for properly.

IMO because the product roadmap (such as it might ever be) is usually only influenced by poorly targeted analytics (more is not better), and a small minority of vocal users; leaving the rest of us in the lurch.

oriel··on Why We Spiral
To add to this further, I've had great success following The Body Keeps Score; seeing it as a repository of past stress and trauma.

As part of this, I've been able to locate and work through stress and trauma activations in my body, where normally they'd cluster around my head and never actually get resolved.

Every time I go to work out, I pay attention to what areas of my body arent responding, are activating oddly; and I'll work to strengthen the foot-to-neck paths. It started with a back injury and has resulted in me finding I needed wide foot shoes and changing my entire stance, posture, complex movements, etc.

Some times I find it odd that I don't have that daemon running around yelling, because hes now activated in my body, and all I have to do is stretch.

oriel··on Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy
For me, it was when a movie wasn't the way I remembered it. Then I found a pirated copy.

Turned out the 'official' release was heavily edited, with tone, characters, and even some plot had been completely reshaped. I've found this to be increasingly prevalent, and not just in a "made for TV" or "adapted for Flying" type modifications.

oriel··on Just redesigned my personal site with a TTY-style interface
I did something like this, in a much more limited form, when putting together my personal site a few weeks ago. https://1ps0.info/

I had a friend try to run 'sudo shutdown -r now'. It inspired a much more thorough approach to the terminal functionality, but I didnt want to rabbit hole too far.

As it stands, initially it was a cyberpunk theme but i wanted a vscode-like professional theme as default, so you can toggle between them through cli. Lots of fun to be had with eastereggs.

oriel··on Should We Respect LLMs? A Study on Influence of Prompt Politeness on Performance
My experience informs my opinion, that structure is more important than specific tone.

IMO If LLMs are made from our language, then terminology semantics plays strongly into the output, and degree of control.

Some people rage when the machine doesn't work as expected, but we know that, "computers are schizophrenic little children, and don't beat them when they're bad."[1] ... right? Similar applies to please.

I've had far better results by role playing group dynamics with stronger structure, like say, the military. Just naming the LLM up front as Lieutenant, or referencing in-brief a Full Metal Jacket-style dress-down with clear direction, have gotten me past many increasingly common hurdles with do-it-for-you models. Raging never works. You can't fire the machine. Being polite has been akin to giving a kid a cookie for breaking the cookie jar.

It is funny though, to see the Thinking phase say stuff like "The human is angry (in roleplay)..."

[1] https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks

oriel··on Electromagnetism as a Purely Geometric Theory
At this point, should failing the test be an indicator of being human, rather than success?
oriel··on Silicon Zen: Modern Koans for the AI Age
Following in the tradition of the Tao of Programming[1] and the Unix Koans[2], this initial set of Koans for LLMs seeks to capture the line between understandable tool and misunderstood hype.

[1] https://www.mit.edu/~xela/tao.html

[2] https://prirai.github.io/books/unix-koans/

oriel··on Open source AI agent helper to let it SEE what its doing
This is great, going to see how it integrates with my own agentic work. Code looks well laid out and concise.

I really like how you demonstrate the clear workflow and obvious outputs in the video.

FYI feedback on the branding end: I'm starting to notice a negative reaction to anything termed 'vibe' (though i love the wordplay in the project name). Also I was a bit startled by the splash image.

That said, this is definitely a cut above the average project with a clear targeted tooling win. Congrats!

oriel··on Goblin.tools: simple, single-task tools to help neurodivergent people with tasks
I ended up taking my own path towards small-scale tooling. I've been using the binaural audio trick through youtube for some years now, particularly the rendered 40hz trick to clear my head.

The insight was that a lot of the noise pulling me off center was coming from built up clenching of muscles around my head and back, and a destabilization of core posture while sitting, leading to shaky leg and such.

The project I built was simply a mixable tone dashboard for different frequencies. Ive been dogfooding it hard, and its my goto to push around my headspace to clear out the noise and make a protected space for work. The easiest litmus for tone choice has just been, 'does this help or hurt'. On my better days its like im giving my brain a massage and I have the most productive times.

https://1ps0.github.io/binaural

A note: i load the file directly from repo when I use it on Firefox, theres an audiocontext policy i havent been able to figure out. Should work great on mobile and elsewhere.

oriel··on Goblin.tools: simple, single-task tools to help neurodivergent people with tasks
Barkley opened the door for me to the term 'executive dysfunction'. This better describes my symptoms than the blanket ADHD term that is now oversaturated IMO. Its given me much better anchors to reason with the issues that mess up my day(s), and ive made notable progress since the discovery of his work, at a time when I had been plateauing.
oriel··on Optimal brain process requires balance between excitatory and inhibitory neurons
As a human, I like to think of this akin to how we walk/run/etc; eg, the act of Not Quite Falling Down.
oriel··on Tesla Sales Fall Off a Cliff Globally, Including Germany, Australia, and China
Simply being always-online and sending telemetry, doesnt preclude the ability to remotely intercede in the car's operations.

I think there's precedent with the OnStar system in other cars, and there has anecdotally been evidence of various systems being operable by some kind of admin terminal.

I think "summon mode" is actually a great demonstration of how you can remotely access and do some form of piloting the car without a driver. There's also the disabling of features remotely on resale, and probably other examples.

oriel··on Tesla Sales Fall Off a Cliff Globally, Including Germany, Australia, and China
That's always been the catch for me; its an always-on remotely controlled camera-mobile, of which you happen to sit in the drivers seat and pretend you own while it drives you around dangerously.
oriel··on Ask HN: Is Cursor deleting working code for you too or is it just me?
A small note: 1.96.2 is the VSCode version, the Cursor version latest i think is 0.46.x.

I'll also say that "Restore checkpoint" often causes crashes or inconsistency in the indexed files. I've found using git and explicit full reindexing has solved more problems than the AI itself.

oriel··on Ask HN: Is Cursor deleting working code for you too or is it just me?
After working with this tooling for about a month, I've found the biggest struggle is adapting my mental model as the paradigms change. Because make no mistake, this is a research-stage tool that has been thrust into the spotlight while in its infancy.

There's definitely shift between versions of cursor. One time I had an unpleasant crash that also upgraded the version, and suddenly .cursor/ files I thought were working (but hadnt been) showed up mid prompt, and derailed the entire composer run.

I've tried ideas ranging from TODO documents, append-only work logs, blueprint documents, faux-team interactions through role definitions, and much much more.

The most success I've had is by adding manual lines at the end of every prompt, akin to phrases like "be respectful of the existing code and functionality, make deliberate changes with caution and consideration". Beyond the normal "plan and take it step by step" type phrasing.

It would also be nice if .cursor/ rule files actually were actively used, instead of sometimes being hooked in if you wrote the description right.

Sometimes I have great success at utilizing specialized roles, with named team members and explicit direction, to elect the "appropriate" role for the items being worked on, and discuss pros/cons and facilitate brainstorming.

At the end of the day, I think I end up doing an annealing pattern for changes:

- Build the features and breaking is okay so long as we get the features.

- Distill the built features into a doc with examples and roll back the code by git.

- Build a v2 based on the distillation.

- Rinse repeat, usually until v4 or v5, when i tear it all down and write it 99% by hand from the distilled documents.

Definitely a rocky road so far.

oriel··on Chrono: A Peer-to-Peer Network with Verifiable Causality
Looks like code lives at https://github.com/hetu-project/chronos
oriel··on Apple iPhone sales dip despite AI rollout
I havent personally tested it, but I also havent allowed it on my phone.

I figure either its time to drop the smartphone concept, as I barely use it for more than calls, or try to wait it out for them to realize I/we didnt want or ask for it.

oriel··on ContainerScript: Firefox Addon for programmatically assigning URLs to containers
Hey this is a really cool idea.

I'm curious, for such a straight-forwarded added functionality, why you would:

1. add a very heavy editor framework (monaco) for a configuration page?

2. use actual javascript to check partial urls one at a time?

For 2. this would be better handled by a json or similar that just maps Firefox's approved url match patterns[1]? Using javascript adds potential execution vulnerabilities and possibly parsing complexity that isnt needed.

Also a word on partial urls. Given that many sites will use subdomains and redirects as a norm, expecting a site to be like "www.amazon.com" seems like it would generate a lot of excess code in order to maintain url targeting. This comes from working on a macOS plugin that did similar javascript injection based on url targeting (BeardedSpice[2]) and would have regular targeting errors, especially with more complex SPAs.

Either way, keep up the good work! Love to see projects like this attempt to improve the QoL around the browsing experience.

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web...

[2] https://github.com/beardedspice/beardedspice

oriel··on Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs
A question I've had on my mind for a while now, watching this progression of fake or poisoned jobs, and miles of automatic systems to navigate:

At what point do people consider the well poisoned? Where they just check out and stop applying, to specific companies or in general, because its very very obvious that there isnt actually a valid hiring market at all.

I ask this question, because I've already passed this threshold, and have instead devoted the maximum of my time to personal ventures.

oriel··on The Fourier Uncertainty Principles [pdf] (2021)
I've had this feeling before. Even now I read that doc and feel I need to study it for some time.

I think that's actually the point of dense math formulas/papers like this, but I want to share a resource that helped me start from "ground zero" per-se.

Starting with Mathematical Thinking [1], and adding in practice books for Algebra [2] and Calculus [3] to grok what the different parts of the formulas are trying to capture.

Once I did some basic problems, I found the what and why became much clearer. At this point I tend to read it more as programming code than as archaic formulae.

[1] https://www.coursera.org/learn/mathematical-thinking [2] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1453661387 [3] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1941691242

(sry for the amz links)

oriel··on Microsoft says its Recall uninstall option in Windows 11 is just a bug
The subtitle is even better,

> Microsoft is working to fix Recall showing up as an optional Windows 11 feature.

then

> While the latest update to Windows 11 makes it look like the upcoming Recall feature can be easily removed by users, Microsoft tells us it’s just a bug and a fix is coming.

with the crown

> Microsoft is now making the AI-powered feature an opt-in experience instead of on by default.

I thought that had been changed already. As before, they want to make it Optional Until They Change Their Minds.

tl;dr Uninstall Windows 11.

oriel··on Pocket-Godot: Starter Kit for mobile game development using Godot
A positive view would mean an uptick in library quality and sophistication, and a death-knell to the trend of shallow do-one-thing script wrapping libraries.

I've been doing similar mobile development with Godot, and have found the Phantom Camera library to be an example of a better developed and thought out library thats actually worth importing.

oriel··on The Puzzle of How Large-Scale Order Emerges in Complex Systems
This has been a topic of interest for me for almost a decade so far.

See also: non-linear dynamics, dynamical systems

The study of Complexity in the US Sciences is fairly recent, with the notable kickoff of the Santa Fe Institute [1]. They have all the resources there, from classes to scientific conferences.

A few book recommendations I've picked up over the years:

- Lewin, Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos [2] (recommended for a gentle introduction with history)

- Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science [3]

- Holland, Emergence: From Chaos To Order [4]

- Holland, Signals and Boundaries: Building Blocks for Complex Adaptive Systems [5]

- Holland, Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity [6] (unread but part of the series)

- Miller, Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life [7]

- Strogatz, Nonlinear Dynamics And Chaos: With Applications To Physics, Biology, Chemistry, And Engineering [11] (edit: forgot i had this on my desk)

Also a shoutout to Stephen Wolfram, reading one of his articles [8] about underlying structures while stuck at an airport proved to be a pivotal moment in my life.

- Wolfram's New Kind of Science, as an exploration of simple rules computed to the point of complex behavior. [9]

- Wolfram's Physics Project, a later iteration on NKS ideas with some significant and thorough publication of work. [10]

Links:

[1] https://www.santafe.edu/

[2] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226476553

[3] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143113453

[4] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0738201421

[5] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262525933

[6] https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Order-Adaptation-Builds-Comple...

[7] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691127026

[8] https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2015/12/what-is-spacetim...

[9] https://www.wolframscience.com/nks/

[10] https://wolframphysics.org/

[11] https://www.amazon.com/Nonlinear-Dynamics-Chaos-Applications...

oriel··on CrowdStrike Update: Windows Bluescreen and Boot Loops
I'd go a step farther and say software engineering as a field is not respected at the same levels as such certified/credentialed engineers, because of these lacks of standards and liabilities. Leading to common occurrences of systemic destructive failures such as this, due to organization level direction being very lax in dealing with software failure potential.
oriel··on CrowdStrike Update: Windows Bluescreen and Boot Loops
If such a warranty exists, the real question will be how Crowdstrike tries to spin this as a non-security incident.
oriel··on Seven Conversation Hacks
A form of communication I encountered a while back, called 3-way communication, helps with this.

Essentially saying back to the person what they tried to communicate with you. You can leverage that to lead in with your own comments, as they're primed to listen by listening to their own words given back.

oriel··on Seven Conversation Hacks
A habit I picked up from the format of one person preaching to a meeting room.

Take notes, or barring that use fingers or verbal cues (or other memory palace tricks) to keyword myself to remember the multitude of things I want to bringup or am monitoring to see if they're addressed.

I ended up getting a Remarkable for exactly this reason, and all my poorly scrawled notes ended up being very useful to make sure key thoughts and responses were raised at relevant times.

oriel··on Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, 4th ed
Is a modern book written by a pre-modern person, modern at heart, but classical in content?

Whats the new term then? Post-modern? Cutting Edge?

oriel··on Ask HN: What skills do you think will be most in-demand in 10 years?
I'd doubly emphasize this. Technology changes rapidly regardless of bubbles, its better to learn how to pick up skills quickly and grok (deeply understand) them.

I found these two courses to be really good foundations for kicking off in my own reeducation post-bachelors (in CS). They filled in blanks and reinvigorated my internal monologue of "yes i can do/learn that" growth mindset.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

https://www.coursera.org/learn/mathematical-thinking

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