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perplex

126 karma · joined November 17, 2016

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perplex··on How do you use Vim in the era of AI?
My Neovim + AI workflow is running Neovim (LazyVim) and Claude Code side by side in a terminal split. As the agent makes changes, I review them in Neogit. I don't really make edits by hand much anymore, but the keyboard is still how I navigate the code when doing reviews. I can jump to references, open files, read through the diff very quickly with keyboard shortcuts.

The Neovim/LazyVim speed for writing code turns out to be just as fast for navigating and reviewing code.

perplex··on Organic foods are not healthier or pesticide free
I think food quality is real and the same foods from certain stores taste better and make me feel better than from other stores. So I usually pick my food based on brand/store rather than organic labeling.

A lot of what I buy happens to be organic, but I eat it because it tastes good, not because of the label.

I do think organic bananas taste better than non-organic. Same with meat and eggs, but any high-quality meat is great, organic or not.

For flour, pasta, and cereal, I feel like it comes down to the brand, not whether it's organic.

Maybe food quality is more complex than what an organic label actually measures.

perplex··on Anthropic acquires Stainless
I've seen this at work. Giving Claude Code to a mediocre programmer gets you mediocre results. The really effective engineers with coding agent can accomplish a lot. Thousand monkeys...
perplex··on Xcode 26.3 – Developers can leverage coding agents directly in Xcode
Xcode is abysmal on a large codebase. Freezes constantly on operations. The most useful features stall the entire program, things like: test navigator, quick open files, debugger, etc..

But I agree that Xcode runs fine on small projects and recent version feel stable compare to past releases.

perplex··on Context is the bottleneck for coding agents now
I've been using claude on two codebases, one with good layering and clean examples, the other not so much. I get better output from the LLM with good context and clean examples and documentation. Not surprising that clarity in code benefits both humans and machines.
perplex··on Starship: The minimal, fast, and customizable prompt for any shell
Happy user of spaceship prompt for zsh: https://spaceship-prompt.sh, and, among other things, it runs repo status asynchronously.
perplex··on AI Angst
> I really don’t think there’s a coherent pro-genAI case to be made in the education context

My own personal experience is that Gen AI is an amazing tool to support learning, when used properly.

Seems likely there will be changes in higher education to work with gen AI instead of against it, and it could be a positive change for both teachers and students.

perplex··on Thoughts on thinking
I don't think LLMs replace thinking, but rather elevate it. When I use an LLM, I’m still doing the intellectual work, but I’m freed from the mechanics of writing. It’s similar to programming in C instead of assembly: I’m operating at a higher level of abstraction, focusing more on what I want to say than how to say it.
perplex··on A flat pricing subscription for Claude Code
I've been using LLMs as learning tools rather than simply answer generators. LLMs can teach you a lot by guiding your thinking, not replacing it.

It's been valuable to engage with the suggestions and understand how they work—much like using a search engine, but more efficient and interactive.

LLMs have also been helpful in deepening my understanding of math topics. For example, I’ve been wanting to build intuition around linear algebra which for me is a slow process. By asking questions to LLM I find explanations make the underlying concepts more accessible.

For me it's about using these tools to learn more effectively.

perplex··on OpenAI in Talks for Investment Round Valuing It Up to $340B
> OpenAI was last valued at $157 billion in October, when it raised $6.6 billion. A near-doubling of its value in just a few months would be extraordinary even by the standards of Silicon Valley’s current AI boom.

Seems way overvalued for not having a moat. https://semianalysis.com/2023/05/04/google-we-have-no-moat-a...

Edit: formatting

perplex··on How corn syrup took over America
There must something different between corn syrup and sucrose.

I have a corn intolerance where corn and corn byproducts trigger a migraine type headache.

I assume there must be corn byproducts in corn syrup because it absolutely triggers my corn reaction, but cane sugar does not.

Also from a purely taste standpoint there is a big difference to me as well.

Lastly, you can’t make peanut brittle chewy without corn syrup, with sugar alone (which is how I make it) it’s very crunchy.

perplex··on The US Navy Put Cameras on Dolphins and the Results Were Wild
Next we'll need dolphin unions. This is actually the sub-plot of the John Scalzi novel "Starter Villain".
perplex··on The Wes Cook Archive
+1 Watch the talk to the very end. It’s great.
perplex··on Silk Helped the Armies of Genghis Khan Conquer Asia
My uncle was career officer in the Army and told me once that the M16, with its smaller faster bullet would wound the enemy, compared to the AK47 with its large slow bullet would kill, and that a wounded enemy was more expensive than a dead solider because you had to extract and care for the wounded.

Not sure if there was any factual evidence behind his theory, but I found this idea fascinating when I heard it.

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_AK-47_and_M1...

perplex··on Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?
I started skateboarding two years ago in my backyard and this year I started skating at my local skatepark. I'm all padded up for safety and even use hip pads. It's a very fun and cheap hobby. Seeing a lot of progression so it's very fun.
perplex··on Domain Registrars Which Developers Recommend
I have used hover for over a decade. Clean and straight forward interface. Free private whois. Never had a single issue so I highly recommend.
perplex··on Ask HN: What topics are good for a UI/UX Primer?
The book “The Non-Designers Design Book” is very good. This is where the acronym CRAP comes from, which is Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity.
perplex··on Why Evernote failed to realize its potential (2021)
I use bear.app and love the simplicity but is versatile enough to all my uses cases. It only runs on Apple platforms, so maybe a deal breaker. It seems similar to Obsidian, so maybe another deal breaker. It syncs via CloudKit and for what it's worth, the devs have shared that they are working on a web app version that would presumably use CloudKit Web Services.
perplex··on Migrating from Netlify to Cloudflare Workers Sites for 2x Performance (2020)
CloudFront is only more expensive for the first 400GB. Netlify's bandwidth is $0.20/GB after the 400GB mark compared to CloudFront's $0.085/GB.
perplex··on Fewer young men are in the labor force, more are living at home
For some people (myself included) Game/TV addiction is a real problem and can have drastic affects on ones life. (It did for me throughout my 20s/30s). For others it doesn't seem to have negative side effects.

My life was held back by time spent gaming for so long and later in life I realized TV was doing the same. Moderation in all things right? For me it is easier to cut them out period.

I'm happier and have a far more productive life as a result. I'm now in my 40s and have productive life and career but this didn't start until my mid 30s.

perplex··on Figma and Canva are taking on Adobe and winning
Wait the article doesn’t mention Adobe XD which is Adobe’s UI design tool that competes with Figma and Sketch. XD is great for my needs and with frequent updates it is always improving.

I’m also in the camp where Adobe shortcuts are burned into my muscle memory. I’ve tried the others but am more productive using the tools I know.

Photoshop and Illustrator alone are worth it also. Some amazing power that other tools just don’t have.

perplex··on “When the entire household goes to bed, I do curl development for 2 more hours.”
I exercise 5 days a week for 30 minutes right after my day job ends. I'm WFH so and have weights and stationary bike in my office, so it's easy to jump onto.
perplex··on “When the entire household goes to bed, I do curl development for 2 more hours.”
> do you immediately start coding? What is the morning ritual?

I wake up, get dressed in the dark, and go downstairs where I immediately start coding. I leave all the lights off and focus solely on my task at hand, and I typically use a todo list in bear.app to know immediately what to work on.

Breakfast comes at 6:30am when house wakes up. Since I'm WFH for day job I can shower do morning routine before work, which usually starts around 8am.

edit: typo

perplex··on “When the entire household goes to bed, I do curl development for 2 more hours.”
Yes I share a bed and I use the iPhone built in alarm on lowest volume and typically silence it within seconds.
perplex··on “When the entire household goes to bed, I do curl development for 2 more hours.”
I wake up at 4am everyday to work on a personal project for 2 hours or so. Once the house wakes up I wrap things up.

I had to adjust my bedtime to accommodate waking up so early. I'm fairly disciplined about it and never stay awake past 9:30pm.

The reason I chose morning instead of evening is I'm pretty tired after work to do anything. And so I get to dedicate my evenings to family time.

Edit: typos.

perplex··on Against Netflix
Did the same and quit TV completely about 10 months ago. Fairly quickly after, I noticed that I am reading books every day and sleeping better (I now fall asleep consistently at same time every night.)

There is something about removing the high stimulus of TV watching that allows my brain to appreciate being productive. It's been easier to be motivated to do things I truly want instead of defaulting to the veg state each night.

perplex··on Tell HN: Never search for domains on Godaddy.com
I use Hover for the past 10 years. Clean UI with no ads or up sell. Free whois privacy is really nice. Only contacted support once and was positive experience.
perplex··on New iPhone SE
> Lack of headphone jack is still unacceptable

Don't forget you can still use the lighting to 3.5mm adapter. It's no longer included free but at least it's available. Cost around $9.

perplex··on Little Snitch and the deprecation of kernel extensions
> Yes. We are going to release an update of Little Snitch that will be compatible with macOS 10.16.

At least a future version of LS will work with 10.16.

perplex··on Ask HN: What are good distance learning Bachelor's/Master's degrees one can do?
Something I've looked for a few years now is Oregon State University has undergrad program that is 100% online: https://ecampus.oregonstate.edu/online-degrees/undergraduate...

I'm not enrolled but it it is accredited and (at least in my opinion) OSU has a good CS program.

They also have a postbaccalaureate program that gives you a a CS Degree if you have an existing undergrad.

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