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changadera

14 karma · joined October 26, 2022

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changadera··on Recreating the math behind the first stealth aircraft
What animations ?
changadera··on Ask HN: What are tools you have made for yourself since the advent of AI?
> I assume, though, you mean LLMs. I haven't used them first hand

Wow, kudos. Honestly.

changadera··on AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice
If it’s too personal to share, maybe don’t mention it in the first place? People doing this online and IRL are attention seeking
changadera··on TikTok users can't upload anti-ICE videos. The company blames tech issues
Did the consensus shift about TikTok? I thought it was a given that as tech/IT people TikTok isn’t an app worth having on your phone due to spyware/attention brute forcing/curated propaganda by Chinese government.
changadera··on Modern Walkmans
We recently dug out my portable cassette player (Not as small as a walkman, takes D cell batteries) so my daughter could listen to my wife's Disney cassettes from her childhood in the early 90s. I was amazed how a 5 year old immediately figured out how to manipulate the tape player and flip over cassettes etc. I suppose it was similar for me at the same age. We even found a NOS Disney cassette on eBay that my wife didn't have.

The funny thing is, even though I'm just about old enough to have bought a few chart music cassettes when they were a contemporary medium, I don't own any cassettes and I only had the player because I bought it on eBay to experiment with tape degradation for music.

changadera··on Smartphones manipulate our emotions and trigger our reflexes
"Guns don't kill people..."
changadera··on Wikipedia loses challenge against Online Safety Act
What's a latency tax?
changadera··on WhatsApp introduces ads in its app
That's funny because one of the reasons I used Telegram originally was the encryption of messages and open sourcedness. Also Whatsapp use to require your phone to be on and with signal to receive messages on the web app.
changadera··on I wrote to the address in the GPLv2 license notice (2022)
I used to order fragrance samples on eBay, The first order I received from them had a 10 1/2 pence stamp attached. I was perplexed as the half pence (ha'penny, pronounced HAPE-KNEE) coin had been discontinued in 1984, 30 years ago at the time, and I'd only seen them in an old collection of coins from my parents. Also the portrait of the Queen (I'm from the UK) was a bit outdated.

I contacted the seller and it turned out her husband was a stamp collector and gave her his low value cast-offs to use as postage. I found it amazing that 30+ year old stamps were still valid. It's only recently they've become invalid postage as now stamps require a barcode.

Also I used to get items delivered to my office, and the office manager's husband was a stamp collector, so she used to ask to keep the stamps I got (I used to order electronic components from all over the world) so this completed the philatelist cycle.

Another old currency anecdote. I used to work on the checkouts at a supermarket in Cambridge circa 2009 and at least two times we'd get visiting academics from the USA who had studied in the UK years before and they'd try to pay with currency they'd had from the time, except it was the awesome old pre-decimal money (We switched to decimal in 1971). I found it quaint that they thought it was still valid and thought to bring it with them.

changadera··on How shut-down Bay Area tech companies ditch their fancy gear
I think that's where my Aeron came from, or somewhere similiar, but it was more like 300ish quid and via eBay.
changadera··on TikTok preparing for U.S. shut-off on Sunday
How do I downvote this.
changadera··on Combining 15s interval whole-sky-camera photos to form a 4y spanning keogram
As in Slashdotting?
changadera··on One way to fight loneliness: Germans call it a Stammtisch
Surely it should be called national socialising?
changadera··on An open source initiative to share and compare heat pump performance data
My neighbour has a heat pump and it's kind of annoying when running because the 180hz hum is audible in most of the rooms in my house. This in the UK and our houses are detached, but fairly closely spaced.
changadera··on MacPad: I created the hybrid Mac-iPad laptop and tablet that Apple won't make
Rich people problems. My keyboard for my $3500 AR headset isn't good enough so I connected some more expensive hardware to use as peripherals.
changadera··on Stable Cascade
Looks cool
changadera··on Restoring audio from the B-58 "Hustler" Voice Warning System
I wonder if you could use some AI to extrapolate the missing sound clips from the ones provided?
changadera··on Duolingo Cuts 10% of Contractors as It Uses More AI to Create App Content
I used Duolingo in 2022 for the 35 days leading up to a holiday in Greece. I went from knowing 0 greek to being able to read the alphabet and words, pronounce them and do things like order in a restaurant, explain allergies and convey our room number.

Around the beginning of 2023 they did a couple of things that ruined it a bit for me. They completely changed the track system so now you have to follow one set path, and they got rid of the classes feature which was awesome because for around $5 I could have a zoom lesson with a native teacher and other people learning the language.

Also the sentences it teaches you are a bit less silly now and that was a cool gimmick.

changadera··on My toddler loves planes, so I built her a radar
Disappointed that you live in London and choose the wrong spelling for aeroplane.
changadera··on Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark
306 members
changadera··on The Yamaha NS10 Story (2008)
Every time there's a music studio shown on TV I point out the mandatory Yamaha NS-10s and Herman Miller Aeron chair and say "Look, there's my speakers and chair!"
changadera··on Where else in London are there pylons?
This squashes the idea of some Londonites to become an independent city state. Try doing that with no electricity generation of your own, and nowhere to build one.