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veb

2,633 karma · joined December 4, 2010

;o
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veb··on Ask HN: How do you manage skills files?
interesting project mate. I have struggled with this as I built my workflow to rely on Claude, but when I put Codex into the mix it became a bit of a hassle, will check it out.
veb··on GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing
Try Cline, a vscode plugin that's been around since the start and has really active development. You can also use most providers as well.
veb··on Nano Banana 2: Google's latest AI image generation model
Same thing here. I took a picture of some gravel/grass and asked it to show me what it'd look like with tiles. I showed it another part of the property, and asked it to show me what it would look like with a raised lawn. Super impressive to be able to see a cloudy idea in the physical realm like that.
veb··on GPT-5.3-Codex
I just wanted to say that's a pretty cool demo! I hadn't realised people were using it for things like this.
veb··on Claude's new constitution
I've run into this before too, when playing single player games if I've had enough of grinding sometimes I like to pull up a memory tool, and see if I can increase the amount of wood and so on.

I never really went further but recently I thought it'd be a good time to learn how to make a basic game trainer that would work every time I opened the game but when I was trying to debug my steps, I would often be told off - leading to me having to explain how it's my friends game or similar excuses!

veb··on Donut Lab’s all-solid-state battery delivers 400 Wh/kg of energy density
Some more info I noticed over on X which might shed some more light: https://x.com/shortl2021/status/2008554842332225705
veb··on How to turn liquid glass into a solid interface
I'm assuming it's because nobody can just leave something alone. It's always gotta change, it's always gotta be made "better". And it probably generates a lot of marketing, good or bad.
veb··on How you breathe is like a fingerprint that can identify you
That makes it worse! Then people can sneak up on you :(
veb··on US detects H5N1 bird flu in swine for the first time
There's been a bigger outbreak in Washington it seems - https://nitter.poast.org/richardhirschs1/status/185164171224...
veb··on Enumerate all the subdomains for a domain name
How strange. I just tried this out and I see two unauthorised subdomains, with one being an actual "spam" website. However, I don't even know how to delete a subdomain that doesn't show up in my domain registrar or cloudflare!

Thanks for the tool.

veb··on Kagi Assistant
How bizarre. I'm not in the US either - I'm in New Zealand, and have been using Kagi since their beta I think and currently pay for Ultimate, and to me it's a lot faster than Google.

The other day I was using someone else's computer and used Google, and my goodness, the results were just awful and ... bloated?

veb··on RouteLLM: A framework for serving and evaluating LLM routers
From what I understand, it's from people using it in their workflows - say, Claude but keep hitting the rate limits, so they have to wait until Claude says "you got 10 messages left until 9pm", so when they hit that, or before they switch to (maybe) ChatGPT manually.

With the router thingy, it keeps a record, so you know every query where you stand, and can switch to another model automatically instead of interrupting workflow?

I may be explaining this very badly, but I think that's one use-case for how these LLM Routers help.

veb··on Adventures Making Vegemite
NZ Marmite ftw!

I had to tell my mum off for having Vegemite in her pantry the other day, but she had a decent enough excuse that made me giggle. "I buy vegemite because it comes in glass jars and I can reuse them!"

oh... I guess that's... practical, Mum!

veb··on Ask HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?
Totally sounds like Spark :D
veb··on Google says it can’t fix Pixel Watches, please just buy a new one
Go Garmin! You won't regret it.
veb··on Blue-light glasses may not reduce eyestrain from screens, study says
This also works in _so many different work environments too_! I like how you term it "intellectual humility" but I wonder if "professional intellectual humility" is more suited.
veb··on Stablevideo: Text-driven consistency-aware diffusion video editing
Thanks mate, I really wanted to see some demos myself, but OPs link didn't show me much. This is pretty exciting, I know it's in its infancy but still... exciting times!
veb··on Heat your house with a mechanical windmill (2019)
I have seen these turbines within city limits (in NZ): https://www.powerhousewind.co.nz/thinair-wind-turbine/ apparently they make a lot less noise. I'm sure some intelligent people will keep iterating on these technologies.

They do an awesome solar+wind deal too: https://www.powerhousewind.co.nz/powercrate/

veb··on Tech workers remain some of the highest paid in New Zealand
People tend to post interesting jobs that they find in the #jobs channel on the DevelopNZ Slack if it's something you're interested in.
veb··on Tech workers remain some of the highest paid in New Zealand
this city is so damn small, I didn't even need to know your real name to know who you were :D

All you other NZ devs should join the Slack server I founded for IT people in NZ. https://dev.elop.nz/ a lot of us work remotely. We have a dedicated jobs channel and all - we also have some very good recruiters. (700ish people)

veb··on [dead]
A few years ago I took my Samsung S6 back to the store as the screen just randomly shattered on my desk. It wasn't cold, hot or in direct sunlight - just an explosion of glass really.

It was under warranty, so I didn't think anything of it. A week later the store replies that it's _not_ covered because it had a third party Samsung screen.

> "What? How does it have a third party screen? I bought it brand new from you guys"

> ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ "You must have gotten it repaired at some stage"

I was mystified. I had definitely never replaced the glass. They sent it to Samsung NZ who to my benefit they actually emailed me a great explanation of how they knew it was not their glass - pointed out the logo was slightly different, different reflections etc very close, you'd not notice unless you were looking.

After some back and forth, Samsung did replace the entire phone free of charge for me, and went back to the store. I was able to provide receipts and things like that and I guess they just decided it was easier to help.

Still not quite sure how I ended up with what seems to be a refurbished phone, sold at full price as a new phone. I would've really complained to an ombudsman but I think the store earned the ire of Samsung, as I got a follow up a few weeks later to say Samsung had investigated and would be checking this via spot checks more often as after my complaint (to them), they found out I wasn't the only one maintaining my innocence after buying from this specific chain...

Now the irony is that: my old macbook did have a third party replacement screen (non-official screen) but Apple replaced it for free, without even asking me how the screen broke (cord got stuck between keyboard and screen when I was closing it). I was beyond shocked, and it wasn't even under warranty! I had to ask like three times, "Are you sure there's no cost?" it was so bizarre, considering it happened so soon after the phone incident.

veb··on Stable Diffusion WebGPU demo
Hold on, to run your demo does one have to click the "Load Model" button before doing anything? 'cos what I see is a form that is greyed out with the error message still at the top:

> You need latest Chrome with "Experimental WebAssembly" and "Experimental WebAssembly JavaScript Promise Integration (JSPI)" flags enabled!

Now I'm wondering whether the top message goes away once the flags are enabled?

veb··on Stable Diffusion WebGPU demo
I tried on latest (normal) Chrome, beta and canary/nightly and enabled both options one by one and let it relaunch but still wouldn't work at all. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

How are others getting it working?!

From someone else's comment, this one works fine: https://websd.mlc.ai/#text-to-image-generation-demo

veb··on Code Interpreter will be available to all ChatGPT Plus users over the next week
Here's one involving Diablo 4 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IxuAyYocoQ
veb··on Scientists regenerate hair cells that enable hearing
You seem to know your stuff.

My family suffers from a mitochondrial disease in which effects these very hairs in our cochlea (which makes us great candidates for cochlear implants) but would this be "simple" for research such as regenerating hair cells?

One of the reasons we make such good cochlear implant candidates is we instantly hear. It's like the neurons/links were just waiting.

If this is of interest to you, or you could perhaps point me in the direction of someone in this space, you can find my via my profile :)

veb··on SpaceX, Rogers to connect mobiles phones to satellites in remote Canadian areas
I was pretty surprised to see that advertising actually, definitely caught me off guard to see Vodafone changing their name to One NZ (for example) and then this news to provide 100% coverage.

Which I suppose would be good for those very rural farmers. Maybe places along the west coast/milford/fiordland would def benefit from it. Guess it's one of those things we wait and see how it gets rolled out. And boaties I guess. Basically anyone who can't connect to fibre, and that fibre rollout is pretty extensive as it stands!

veb··on Thinking hard makes the brain tired
Your last paragraph reminded me so much of an XKCD, haha.

In the past I've done a lot of landscaping work on the side, as well as development remotely. My old man has a landscaping company and obviously needs the help at times.

I gotta say also: if you spend your day cutting/pruning a hedge, cleaning the property up - you actually get to look back at all of that and go "Hell yeah, that looks awesome". I never get that feeling of accomplishment with the dev work. In the past, sure - when I've built something big. But it's just not the same. I can't really explain it more than that.

A couple of years ago I wasn't really paying attention where I was and I was on top of a 10m high Macrocarpa hedge that's... about 120 years old. Anyways, I fell off that straight down on to the footpath. Fortunately there was another (much smaller) hedge in the way that was about 100 years old too and that broke my fall except I parted the hedge so to speak. (We fixed it, wired it up and it grew back together). I managed to get up and walk away, I was very very lucky. Damn though I was wired up so much for the rest of the day, I felt like I could've done 50 marathons!

Since then I have stayed away from doing anything like that - because I am a software engineer really, I just have some skills in landscaping with certain tools but at the end of the day for me personally, getting say an injury from a fall or chainsaw would be devastating to my actual career.

If I spend all day programming (8hr)... I'm really buggered and I simply cannot even brain. Cook dinner? Ugh no. If I mow lawns all day and get home (6-7hr), I'm like "oooh what should I cook for dinner, I'll have this cold beer while I do that and ..." it's like COME ON BRAIN.

veb··on GitHub Copilot X – Sign up for technical preview
Not _immediately_ I think it's after 10,000 messages they start to remove some.
veb··on Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners
I'd say in New Zealand we definitely have them figured out. Every rental needs a heat-pump if there's no fireplace. Landlords will prefer the heat-pumps primarily because it's less maintenance. Apparently 25% of all households in NZ have one: https://www.genesisenergy.co.nz/tips-and-tricks/articles/use...) you may also be interested in: https://figure.nz/chart/HkvN4YjwyylwL2A4

Ours are exactly the same sort of units that I saw in Singapore - they're A/C systems, but can do cold or hot. I remember when I saw the 'heat-pumps' in Singapore, I was like "Wow, why does everyone have a heat-pump" and everyone looked at me and went "What's a heat-pump?" as they always called them A/C units - doubt they ever got above 16 degrees or something.

veb··on Launch HN: Buildt (YC W23) – Conversational semantic code search
Oh, I probably should've posted here rather than doing a review on the extension. Sorry!

When I click sign in with Google or whatever it's called, it then redirects me to https://localhost:3002/api/blah blah blah

Would love to give it a go though - looks super impressive. We have an "interesting" code base with a lot of moving parts so I was keen to see whether this helped finding the right part of the codebase I needed.

Excellent idea by the way :)

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