anotherevan

> People love free.

I worry about the longevity of some of these. Are they going to be free with little further development and just languish?

If I was a graphics shop, I don't think I'd be jumping off Creative Cloud and re-gearing staff to Cavalry and Affinity in too much of a hurry.

My mum's dementia has recently worsened to the point that she cannot figure out how to use the phone to ring people. She just finds it confusing and has caused her a great deal of distress.

I ended up installing Big Launcher[1] as an alternative android launcher and configured it so it has buttons to ring three people. That's it. Even then, then confirmation yes/no dialogue when she presses "End Call" gave her a lot of anxiety initially.

I recently had to setup access to a local streaming service on my step-dad's TV recently. The amount of hoops necessary, including installing their stupid app on a phone, and entering passwords for several different accounts, several times, was absolutely ridiculous. Being technologically adept I found it an absolute PITA. It was a complete non-starter for him.

My point is that your, "If he can afford a season pass, he can afford a smartphone," comment comes across almost as callow as the attitude of the Dodger Stadium management towards the very real issues of getting old in a world that is moving faster and faster technologically.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=name.kunes.and...

So that means I'm either an exceptional judge of character, or and idiot and don't know it. /s

In the case of Google Workspace for our company, I'm using Cubebackup[1]. I've been going through the disaster recovery exercises lately, and thinking about what I've been calling "external backups", which are backups of a service that are stored and restorable outside that service.

It can be surprisingly difficult with a lot of SaaS products (including Google).

[1] https://www.cubebackup.com/

The Australian sulfur-crested cockatoos are pretty smart. They would teach each other how to open heavy bin lids to raid the garbage. I seem to remember they would even team up to do it. There are studies about how this behaviour spread from suburb to suburb in Sydney.[1]

More recently they've figured out how to operate drinking fountains.[2][3]

[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/cockatoos-lear...

[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2025-06-04/sydney-sulphu...

[3] https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/nature-wildlife/2025...

My admittedly more puerile thought upon reading that bit was to change to code so it only loads goatse.

"Why are you travelling with a blank phone?"

Detained in a room for twelve hours.

"Unlock your phone."

"No, I don't have to."

Detained in a room for twelve hours.

"Okay, okay, here's my phone."

I'm rather partial to MyBatis (and Liquibase) but I might have to give Jooq a try.

I really like this idea. Gonna need an "Awesome Axe" page that collects agents.

One idea I'm thinking of is, after an agent has been in use for a while, and built up and understanding of the task, would be something like, "Write a Python script to replace this agent."

I could imagine this would work with agents that are processing log files or other semi-structured data for example.

True, although I wonder if that was one of the points he is trying to make.

In any case, you could go to his Mastodon account listed at the bottom of the article and check out who he is following.

“For months, callers to the Washington state Department of Licensing who have requested automated service in Spanish have instead heard an AI voice speaking English in a strong Spanish accent.”

For some reason this reminds me strongly of an old play-by-email game called C++Robots[1]. I loved the idea, but the timeslice limitation[2] I found too annoying.

I had youthful dreams of re-implementing something similar that would run on the Java Virtual Machine, where you could run the submitted robots via the debugger interface so you could keep "real-time" in the game environment more authentic. Ideas are cheap, follow-through is hard.

[1] https://corewar.co.uk/cpprobots.htm

[2] https://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/pbem_articles/cpprobots_environ...

> assume I'm an LLM

I've noticed a habit of late of people accusing a comment of being LLM generated if they disagree with it. It was getting quite tiresome a few weeks ago but seems to have died down.

I suppose it is possible that they are actually LLMs making the accusations? :-)

(I'm one of those weirdos that try to use proper grammar and complete sentences in text messages and instant messages.)

How have you been tracking down all the bits and pieces from your operating system that the agent still needs to do what it needs to? I'm working with Java projects and Gradle builds and the list of stuff is getting crazy.

The biggest hold-back for me is that, here in Australia, Google Wallet (aka Google Pay) is the only way you can do tap credit card payments that I know of. Can't with Paypal. Not with any banking apps that I know of.

It's just so damned convenient. And the recording of transactions on the phone saves me having to collect paper receipts.

I'm surprised it's only 90%.

Hey, at least you didn't pull the reflexive, "this must be AI slop!" comment that seems quite prevalent on HN lately.

It's also absolute awesome how every person's brain works the same way. It makes it some much more convenient that what works for one person works for every person.

I think perhaps the author's 35th lesson¹ is that brevity can lose nuance.

I interpreted this one to be in the context where having them in your orbit is causing you (or others) harm, and it ain't something you can fix.

¹ Actually it would be the 50th lesson. For some reason tacking on fifteen "bonus" lessons annoyed me. Felt like having your alliteration and eating it too. 51st lesson: math.

Is there any way to take a cloned voice model and plug into Android TTS and/or Windows?

I have a friend with a paralysed larynx who is often using his phone or a small laptop to type in order to communicate. I know he would love it if it was possible to take old recordings of him speaking and use that to give him back "his" voice, at least in some small measure.

I think we also need a /dehumanizer skill.

Part 2: https://00f.net/2026/01/19/xet-intro-2/

Hyperacusis is a real thing. One of my kidults has it, and yes, they use active noise cancelling ear plugs or over the ear headphones and sometimes the world is still too loud.

Sidled up next to the guy and said loudly, “Mr Smith? Mr Smith? The mistress is ready for you now!”

If you are enjoying the coffee, then no, you are not doing it wrong.

There are a lot of different recipes for how to brew coffee in an Aeropress.

I have two Aeropresses so I can make two cups at once for the two coffee drinkers in the house.

I recently got a second shelf rack[1] so they can hang side by side instead of needing to put a plunger in the tube when one is hanging behind.

[1] https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B09NL9GDTQ

drawl “G’day mate.”

You've pretty much said what I was going to say. I think John was absolutely inspired in coming up with Markdown, but was a terrible steward. Or perhaps I should say he was unwilling to steward it.

My impression was he pretty much threw up a Perl implementation that was good enough for what he wanted, refused to refine it at all, and declared by the power vested in him by nobody in particular that if any parser implementation differed in behaviour to his (like, to fix bugs or make it better), wasn't true Markdown and wasn't allowed to be called Markdown.

Or perhaps I am being uncharitable in my interpretation of events.

> there is a Drupal 7 site that I need to migrate to something

You may be interested in Backdrop, which is a maintained fork of Drupal 7.

https://backdropcms.org/

(No experience with it personally. Only know about it from a friend who uses it.)