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schrijver

924 karma · joined March 13, 2011

Copy This Book. An artist’s guide to copyright: https://copy-this-book.eu/

eric at ericschrijver dot nl

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schrijver··on The CSS Zen Garden dream, finally shipped
If you think other things are more important than writing, why would you expect anyone to take the time to read it ?

It’s just not a very efficient strategy, it might work for some readers, but as the comments show it’s a big turn off for many. Where it says “There’s one honest footnote”, that’s really grating, like the other commenter I also stopped reading there.

That’s not necessary rational, it’s just that we are social creatures that are really sensitive to those kind of surface level cues in communication, to gauge credibility. I’m sure many authors today use LLM in brainstorming, research, ask it to steelman an argument etc and no readers complain because it doesn’t impact the authorial voice.

The problem then is with letting LLM ‘fleshing out the details’: you end up having the LLM’s style and words all over your text. You can’t really do that without your authorial voice loosing credibility. I think next time, you have to go over it and edit it and make it sound like you.

If you don’t want to that, the good news is that I think people will start to get less critical of sloppy writing, as long as it sounds human. So you could sound convincing while leaving some details raw and not have the LLM have a go at it.

schrijver··on Muse – Meta’s personal AI agent
I read this take on hacker news all the time, but what indication do you have that this would be popular ?

All the streaming giants had ample budget and engineering talent to make interactive fiction happen, but didn’t, presumably because they know a) not everybody is creative that way and b) a big part of culture is that you can discuss it with others, which doesn’t work for personalised works.

schrijver··on More German than many Germans
Since dieselgate I no longer believe in German engineering. That, and that they just can’t make their trains run on time. Never have I taken an ICE train that was not delayed. How could that happen in an actual engineering culture?
schrijver··on Optocam Zero: a Pi Zero based digital camera made using off the shelf components
You turn a dedicated camera on as you grab it, cold boot, and most of them will be functional before you manage to put your eye to the visor.
schrijver··on If Claude Fable stops helping you, you'll never know
That’s a separate mechanism, and it will tell you so if it does (if the prompt is remated to cybersecurity, biology)
schrijver··on Japan Lost 3M People in Five Years
> your company has to wait weeks for you to return

I mean that’s the very concept of a holiday to me ?

schrijver··on Rust (and Slint) on a Jailbroken Kindle
Live has been kind to you ;)
schrijver··on I turned a $80 RK3562 Android tablet into a Debian Linux workstation
An em dash is used without spaces in most typography manuals. But that’s for typeset books, it’s not like everybody writes that way in casual communication.

I think surrounding it with spaces comes from people using a regular dash (the em dash is not readily accessible on the keyboard), then surrounding it with spaces to make sure it’s not interpreted as a dash.

schrijver··on DaVinci Resolve – Photo
For years now all their images have this look, everything sharp at all distances. I enjoy it because it goes against the shallow depth of field trend that has been dominant, it’s refreshing. I think they achieve it by focus stacking, compositing multiple images focused at different distances.
schrijver··on Chrome extension adjusts video speed based on how fast the speaker is talking
Right, but if you were Irish, you wouldn’t have to slow it down when listening to English in an Irish accent. Your distinction to what is accented or not seems personal to you.

Accent is a subset of dialect, referring to pronunciation, where dialect also refers to vocabulary and grammar. It follows that if all English belongs to a dialect, all English has an accent.

Of course, some accents are more readily understood across the world; I imagine you are from the US, and there is the American English featured in film and TV (that I imagine synthesises different regional accents), that has a huge cultural reach, so people who learned English through media might find this particularly easy to understand.

However, outside the US, if you speak like this, you will always turn be regarded as the person with an accent, because you don’t speak like the locals. And people are going to find their local accent easier to understand.

schrijver··on Chrome extension adjusts video speed based on how fast the speaker is talking
Fwiw all English is accented, so you’d need a setting for which accent you consider easy to understand.
schrijver··on Wired headphone sales are exploding
You’re right, the kind of cable often used is not easy to solder. This makes it hard to solder a broken cable together again, or to replace a broken / bent plug. So best replace the entire cable and its plug — it’s still an inexpensive part.

You’ll need to solder it to the contacts inside the can, but that’s quite straightforward.

In case the internal cable that goes from one can to the other breaks, you can replace it with any bit of audio cable so you can use one that’s easy to solder.

schrijver··on Wired headphone sales are exploding
I’ve repaired many pairs of wired headphones over the years, as electronic repairs go they’re very simple. The same can’t be said for the wireless ones.

Plus, the more high end ones come with repleceable cables.

schrijver··on Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion
Sounds pretty grim to me, why are they sending you slack messages when you’re on a trip with family?
schrijver··on MacBook Air with M5
The Macbook Pro has a HDMI port and a Micro SD slot, it’s great to not have to look for a dongle. Steep price difference though.
schrijver··on Magical Mushroom – Europe's first industrial-scale mycelium packaging producer
Thanks for the links ! Good to have an overview of the current crop turns out there is a factory near me
schrijver··on I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard
It’s one of the reasons I don’t like the current fashion of controlling devices from your phone. Each time you change the channel you risk seeing your notifications or are tempted to go to the apps.

Yet AV remote controls were UX hell and phones are an improvement. So maybe a separate old phone just for that ?

schrijver··on I built Timeframe, our family e-paper dashboard
I watch through the window to see the current weather, except for the temperature, which I assume is more or less the same as yesterday. I know it’s colder at night, but that’s true every night. It’s all very approximative, but I just can’t be bothered to look up the weather. I like not thinking about it at the cost of sometimes being surprised.
schrijver··on Running NanoClaw in a Docker Shell Sandbox
I see your point but these business owners are going to wait until a big player offers this as an online service. As of now installing *Claw requires running scripts, mucking about with Docker etc, no business owner is going to do that unless software dev happens to be their hobby.
schrijver··on Bose has released API docs and opened the API for its EoL SoundTouch speakers
People keep bringing dead Bose bluetooth speakers to our repair café. These are a lot more expensive than the competitors. Bose has a reputation so people think they’ll last longer, but they don’t, they’ll fail just out of warranty just like cheaper brands. They also don’t sound meaningfully better. And they’re not at all engineered to be repaired. I’d avoid.

I personally prefer corded headphones and mains powered speakers, but if I were to buy a small wireless speaker I would buy a cheaper brand and ideally second hand, because this category of devices are basically consumables.

schrijver··on Experiments with Ableton-MCP
It’s a method like any other. The process took him two days, after the LLM suggested which track to mix (like he was working for the LLM instead of the other way around?). Two days is more than enough to learn how to make a mashup in Ableton without LLM’s.

Seems though that working with those AI tools appeals to the author, that they learned and had fun, so I guess that makes it a good usecase for them specifically?

schrijver··on Italy's longest-serving barista reflects on six decades behind the counter
I would say that the ae comes from Dutch, it was the way the open a sound used to be spelled before it became aa (maalstroom). You can still see it in place names (Aerdenhout which is pronounced Aardenhout).
schrijver··on FreeMDU: Open-source Miele appliance diagnostic tools
My bad, a few years ago this was reported in the press (in the Netherlands). Maybe the regulatory framework caught up with them in the mean time.
schrijver··on FreeMDU: Open-source Miele appliance diagnostic tools
I know HN loves Miele, but they are very Apple like when it comes to repair — they don’t make their parts available to the public and since a few years neither to independent repair shops.

In contrast I had a great experience repairing a Smeg stove and buying all the necessary parts directly from them, so it’s not like it’s impossible.

schrijver··on IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products
Pull out my phone to turn on the heat on my stove ? A simple and satisfying mechanical motion that’s in my muscle memory since forever ? Hard to express how much I would hate that !
schrijver··on IKEA launches new smart home range with 21 Matter-compatible products
Hobs built into the countertop are usually like that (and I hate them vigorously for the reasons you state), but freestanding furnaces (oven plus hobs) exist with big physical buttons. Since the buttons are on the front of your unit, the heating surface is still flat and easy to clean. Smeg makes nice ones, and I’m sure others exist.
schrijver··on My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4
It’s perfectly possible to enjoy hobbies deeply without getting “serious” in the way you describe.

I’ve taken my 10 euro dance classes for years without feeling the necessity of pricey exchanges and camps.

My neighbour goes to the park many evenings to play petanque, doesn’t cost him anything.

A couple I’m friends with goes on day hikes where they do bird watching—maybe they bought a nice pair of binoculars once? Another couple likes to lay jigsaw puzzles together, not exactly breaking the bank!

My sister is learning Finnish because she never learned a non indo-european language. She bought a book.

I would wager most people’s hobbies are low key like this because either they don’t have disposable income to spend on them, or they don’t want too!

schrijver··on My Impressions of the MacBook Pro M4
Knitting / crocheting / quilting / embroidering? Drawing / painting / calligraphy? Singing in a choir? Creative writing / journaling / blogging? Solving crossword puzzles? Bird watching? Day hikes? Reading? Visiting museums? Learning about history / philosophy / art / whatever? Learning a language? Taking dance classes? Playing chess or petanque or any other game that doesn’t require expensive gear? Or most sports?
schrijver··on Grammarly rebrands to 'Superhuman,' launches a new AI assistant
What do you think ‘super’ means ? It is latin for ‘over’, wich in German is über. In English it has come to take on a broader meaning, but Nietzsche’s übermensch is called ‘superman’ in most English translations, even if ‘superhuman’ would be more accurate.

GP doesn’t imply Nazis used ‘Supermensch’, just that the ‘superhuman’ translates to übermensch and that the branding might evoke this concept for European ears.

schrijver··on The day my smart vacuum turned against me
I don’t think there’s any single way to be sure, but it sure reads like ChatGPT to me. Which I’m not sure is such a bad thing—I presume the author used an AI to help them write the story, but the story is real. Or maybe they edited it themselves to make it sound more generic. Whatever the reason, the style takes away from my reading experience. It’s a blog post, I expect some personality!
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