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snickmy

696 karma · joined September 5, 2014

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snickmy··on Dyson new electric toothbrush (with camera)
I appreciate for once there is no smearing AI all over it. Wonder if it's on purpose since AI + Camera + Actuator = 'Scary Scary' in the tested demographic
snickmy··on I'm a USB-C Maximalist
Any recommendation for electric shavers that are USB-c ?
snickmy··on Automate Excel with Python: From manual grind to one-click workflow
in a world of ai agents, python is just an implementation detail that you don't need to know, between you and your data/business task
snickmy··on Reverse-engineering the 1998 Ultima Online demo server
sooo many memories.

got into it with Sphere (51 and 55) if my memory doesn't trick me.

was there ever a working port of the client for OSX ? would love to revamp it.

snickmy··on Gemini Robotics-ER 1.6
Agree. I'm unclear what's the highlight of this post. Is the multimodality of the model (that can replace computer vision), is it the reasoning part, is it the overall wrapper that makes it very easy to develop on top?
snickmy··on Gemini CLI tips and tricks for agentic coding
Addy delivers!
snickmy··on Solarpunk is happening in Africa
That is correct. When that will be available is the hard thing to guess.

There are currently enough production of electricity that is motor based (think about gas turbine, water turbines, etc), so there is a nice benefit of having AC at source and distribution.

The infrastructure needs to change. With an average lifetime of a substation in the 50-75years, it's hard to expect we'll overhaul completely the distribution system over night.

It's also hard for me to understand the power loss between the two scenarios (AC production, ac distribution, ac/dc conversion , dc consumption) and DC production, dc stepup to HVDC, dc distribution, DC stepdown and DC consumption). Even 1% at national scale means millions, so the entire business case might be anchored there. I'm sure there are smarter people than me here that can cast some light on this

snickmy··on Solarpunk is happening in Africa
I'm with you, and actually bullish on this to be a viable way forward.

48V DC has been eyed already for a potential standard to emerge. Doesn't need massive cables to deliver decent power (4A ~200W). There is enough hardware around coming from use cases like EV and Boats that could make it work. Many battery solutions already 'talk' 48v without lossy stepdown of voltage, etc.

Big plus is that the regulation is A LOT less strict for <48v DC compared to AC 110/220/240.

snickmy··on Solarpunk is happening in Africa
AC makes power distribution easier (because you can have modulated phases). So it's correct to say it's easier to move it over a long distance. Additionally, and i'm really simplifying, at parity of nominal voltage, you can move a lot more power, at a lower dissipation cost. This has resulted in few high power electronics to be AC native (ie.: no AC - DC - AC conversion). Think about motors in the various appliances, etc. It doesn't need to be like that, investment in DC car motors have pushed the industry to optimizes design, and get similar power output of the motor at lower energy consumption.

That said, if you are a manufacturer of an appliance and you have an addressable user base of billions with AC, and a 'potential new user base' with DC... you might just want to swallow the cost and add a DC / AC converter for the sake to not have to produce two variants of the most complex / costly item (the motor in this case).

snickmy··on USB-C hubs and my slow descent into madness (2021)
Slightly off topic. Would you see any case where Ethernet(POE*) are replaced with native USB-c?
snickmy··on LLM Inevitabilism
An axiom of inevitabilism, especially among the highest echelons, is that you end up making it a reality. It’s the kind of belief that shapes reality itself. In simple terms: the fact that the Googles, Anthropics, and OpenAIs of the world have a strong interest in making LLMs the way AI pans out will most likely ensure that LLMs become the dominant paradigm — until someone else, with equal leverage, comes along to disrupt them.
snickmy··on LLM Inevitabilism
Just wanted to callout how well written is this blog post (not necessarily from a substance standpoint, which in my opinion is very good as well), but from a fluidity and narrative standpoint.

It's quite rare in this day and age. Thank you, OP

snickmy··on Show HN: Pangolin – Open source alternative to Cloudflare Tunnels
genuine, security newbie, question. What's the worst case scenario that can happen on using this type of solution from a security standpoint? I do get it the authentication would be compromised. Probably some internal ports would be exposed publicly too.. what else?
snickmy··on Huawei releases an open weight model trained on Huawei Ascend GPUs
thank you for conjugating correctly the 1st declension to the genitive, we all, that wasted many years studying latin, te salutant!
snickmy··on Huawei releases an open weight model trained on Huawei Ascend GPUs
that's already the case, and it's called model distillation. You use LLMs to generate labels but then you use a dedicated smaller model (usually NN) to run at 1000x cheaper cost of inference.
snickmy··on Self-hosting your own media considered harmful according to YouTube
What does rhymes with "car"
snickmy··on Air Lab – A portable and open air quality measuring device
I really feel for the creators here. I was thinking exactly like that before trying to build an electronic device myself.

Later on I talked to people working in the hardware industry for small production scale, and pretty much told me that a fair pricing is usually 5x to 7x the total BOM (bill of materials).

After going through that experience myself, I couldn't agree more. This device in particular has some extra well thought design and style which might be worth a premium (on top of that 5x/7x multiplier).

snickmy··on Show HN: Air Lab – A portable and open air quality measuring device
different use cases. I don't expect you to go around with your air purifier attached to your neck :)
snickmy··on Why Bell Labs Worked
Shameless plug: I see few people in the comment that have been working there, or have had some first hand experience of that environment. I'd love the chance to interview them. This has been one of my main area of interest for a very long period. Anyone up for it ?
snickmy··on Norway's $1.7T Wealth Fund Reports $40B Tech-Driven Loss
that's not exactly how public companies work :)
snickmy··on Norway's $1.7T Wealth Fund Reports $40B Tech-Driven Loss
I mean ... 0.6% against a massive tech sell off, feels a very well managed fund to me :D
snickmy··on What went wrong with the Alan Turing Institute?
US universities (the usual suspects) have a substantial different approach to industry integration then European one.

Yet, European leaders have not got the memo, and expect the same level of output.

snickmy··on What went wrong with the Alan Turing Institute?
This was inevitable and we'll see it playing out all over Europe.

You have a desire to be relevant in an important technological shift.

On one side, you have big tech companies laser-focused on attracting the best talent and putting them in a high-pressure cooker to deliver real business outcomes, under a leadership group that has consistently proven effective for the last XX years.

On the other side, you have universities, led by the remnants of that talent pool—those who were left behind in the acquisition race—full of principles and philosophical opinions but with little to no grounded experience in actual execution. Instead, you find a bunch of PhD students who either didn’t make the cut to be hired by the aforementioned tech companies or lack the DNA to thrive in them, actively avoiding that environment. Sprinkle on top several layers of governmental bureaucracy and diluted leadership, just to ensure everyone gets a fair slice of the extra funding.

I'm surprised anyone is surprised.

snickmy··on Play the Virtual Organ from Arp Schnitger
Went to the demo, played some basic counterpoint, probably some poorly recalled lines from Bach, and I always get surprised how well the music of that time fits the instrument capabilities.
snickmy··on The FFT Strikes Back: An Efficient Alternative to Self-Attention
this is a great way to put it, that said, it was not obvious to me that the attention space (how it is structured in LLMs) is a frequency domain
snickmy··on The subtle art of designing physical controls for cars
we still have some units, but available only in UK
snickmy··on The subtle art of designing physical controls for cars
I'm not aware the new nest has a haptic feedback for the detents (those tiny steps as you rotate) to create a force resistance
snickmy··on The Art of Dithering and Retro Shading for the Web (2024)
plus 1! Really well done website, where the 3d bits are not detracting from the overall experience.
snickmy··on Show HN: I made an open-source laptop from scratch
because the guy spent more time shipping the product than iterating on the website that describes the product. (Deadly sin of every startup wannabe)
snickmy··on What are your thoughts on my app idea- car pooling for high school students
what problem are you solving?

Discovery ? Ease of arrangement and management?

If discovery, you are fighting against worth of mouth of a very clicky group of people, that have plenty of other ways to exchange infomration that leads to discovery.

If it is ease of arrangement, you are fighting against SMS/text-messages.

TLDR: there is no business opportunity here, but it's a cool CRUD app to build and i'm sure you'll learn something in the process.

If you disagree with the above, do some user research with your target demographic. If you agree with the above, do some user research with your target demographic :)

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