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suyula

136 karma · joined June 3, 2020

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suyula··on Why did Windows 7 log on slower for months if you had a solid color background?
I can't speak for Motif but Fluxbox works fine on my 4K monitor
suyula··on Why does every site's search now insist on giving me what I don't search for?
If you've got 15 minutes, here is your answer: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/
suyula··on Why I'm Writing a Book on Cryptography (2020)
It's only got a few sample paragraphs before it turns into random word-shaped characters.
suyula··on The Underground Network Sneaking Nvidia Chips into China
For some people it's important to establish facts, rather than just shaping an understanding of the world using vibes.
suyula··on Ask HN: Treadmill under your desk – gimmick or worth it?
I didn't end up using mine, as walking while keeping both hands on the keyboard doesn't work the right places in my back. I also get really sweaty when walking indoors with no breeze, it turns out.

I'd recommend a cheap second-hand treadmill if you're going to try -- people are always selling these after shelling out a heap of money and realising that they mainly collect dust.

suyula··on CO2 helps viruses stay alive longer in the air
What's the intended purpose of the system alerting you when you're out of town?
suyula··on Ask HN: Have you also started recently receiving Signal spam?
I've had a single catfishy-looking message request, I'm guessing it's because I set up a short username.
suyula··on An analysis of the Rabbit R1 APK
You probably wouldn't want an app to be able to press buttons on another app so if that's how it works (or worked) then that seems fair enough to me.
suyula··on Ask HN: What do you do with Local LLMs?
Well if you're looking for a real use, I ask a local LLM the setup for a child's joke several times a day, and post its answer to my tens of Mastodon followers: https://botsin.space/@jokeunderstander

So it's not all useless.

suyula··on Starbucks is raising prices almost every month now
Seems more reasonable to use milk when talking about Starbucks.
suyula··on Home Assistant: Three years later
I'm so grateful for what Home Assistant has done for home automation and compatibility, but its focus on dashboards and phone interfaces seems to lead everyone who uses it in exactly the wrong direction.

I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of what you like about 'Home Assistant' is Node-RED and Zigbee. They are two of the big building blocks for making a home that is more convenient to live in rather than less (the third being an MQTT server.)

suyula··on Ask HN: What have you built with LLMs?
I built Joke-Understander bot, a Mastodon bot that responds to a joke setup before the punchline is revealed. It's not very popular but I think it's hilarious.

https://botsin.space/@jokeunderstander

It's just a bash script that calls ollama on my desktop PC every morning and schedules a handful of posts on the Mastodon server.

suyula··on Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for yourself?
I built a mental health tracker and a physical health tracker, that sit in my living room and use LEDs to display a prediction of how good my health is.

The mental health tracker keeps track of my sleep, and how long it takes me to do various things in the morning. The physical tracker keeps track of how much walking I'm doing and how often I'm doing certain exercises.

They have slightly different uses; with mental health I only really notice whether I'm feeling 'okay' or 'extremely bad', so seeing a far more granular estimate is useful. The physical health is more a reminder that it's time to do certain exercises to keep the back pain at bay for a bit longer.

suyula··on Ask HN: What smarthome ecosystem is most open, private, and hackable?
You want Home Assistant, and a Zigbee USB dongle supported by Zigbee2MQTT.
suyula··on Ask HN: What are your preferred alternatives to the Raspberry Pi?
A 10 year old netbook from the pawn shop or thrift store.
suyula··on CVS ditches common cold meds after FDA advisers say they're useless
If the phenylephrine thing is true, that means I placebo'd my way through COVID in addition to every cold I've had in the past 15 or so years.

Going from severely congested to not at all, every four hours, makes me think that it's got to be a "this only works in some people" drug.

suyula··on Ask HN: Where can I get a tabletop programmable "Las Vegas Sphere"
You can build one out of a strip of WS2812b addressable LEDs and an ESP32. Requires some basic soldering, probably a 3d printer too.
suyula··on Ask HN: How to setup a distraction-free Linux setup for writing
Debian without the GUI, and your favourite CLI text editor. You turn it on, log in, run "vi book.txt", and you're writing.
suyula··on Ask HN: What is your weekend schedule?
I go outside and make no effort to be productive. If I do a project it is with no deadlines or expectations.
suyula··on US vs. Poller: Ruling says police can use iPhones to circumvent tinted windows
The sun is too bright.
suyula··on Ask HN: Why does SoftBank keep falling for lemons?
Because most things fail, but a handful of successes will pay for the failures.
suyula··on Consent-O-Matic: Automatic cookie management
My solution was to write a bash script that runs something like "delete from moz_cookies where host not in 'ycombinator.com');" in the Firefox cookies.sqlite file. I run that every time I suspend my computers.
suyula··on The collapse of companies like SVB is triggering demand for corporate merch
I don't think anyone on HN is going to come out of reading that feeling less confused.
suyula··on I tried to buy a Rolex and fell into a grey market for luxe watches
Having read all that, I would be embarrassed to own a Rolex.
suyula··on Show HN: boxxy – Control where Linux programs put files, without symlinks
While reading more about this I found out about the ~/.hidden file which I'm pretty excited about. The following hides the folder from Thunar & Dolphin (and presumably other file managers):

echo snap >> ~/.hidden

suyula··on Ask HN: How hard would it be to make an open hardware prelit xmas tree?
If by individual LEDs you definitely mean individual and not runs of 3 LEDs, then I would:

- flash WLED onto an ESP8266

- solder a data output and power lines to the LED strip

- go through the list of LED options in WLED until one worked

- try displaying Red, Green, and Blue to confirm that the RGB order was right

It would be pretty rare (I guess) to find a tree that was using a truly custom addressable LED strip with its own protocol

suyula··on Coat makes wearers invisible to AI security cameras
And the Ugly T-shirt from one of William Gibson's books.
suyula··on Antibody responses to Omicron BA.4/BA.5 bivalent mRNA vaccine booster shot
We as a society didn't stop COVID 3 years ago, so now we're stuck being either guinea pigs for the vaccine or for the disease. So far the vaccine has been a safer bet by far.
suyula··on 'Serious errors' in research linking deaths to red meat
You've just passed your viva-- now all that's left to do is eat this marshmallow, or wait 10 minutes and get two marshmallows.
suyula··on Ask HN: Use phone to check status of currently running process on laptop
I use Transmission, which has a web interface for this.
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