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el_benhameen

4,462 karma · joined June 9, 2013

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el_benhameen··on Apple CEO Presses Software Chief to Pursue More Ambitious AI Strategy
Yeah, the “new” Siri described in this article is not the Siri I’ve been interacting with. Basic speech to text is still flawed; I have to enunciate slowly and clearly with no background noise or it will make absurd mistakes that would be obvious if the context of the prompt and the phone were considered. Adding a reminder to a list is now slower and more error prone than with the old Siri, like you said. I have to sit and delicately hold the phone or watch to avoid disturbing it while it thinks, lest it decide that I’ve moved on and give up on its task. I tried to push it a little by asking for the title of the last podcast episode I listened to; it started talking about a podcast I’d never heard of nor even pulled up on the phone before garbling the second half of its sentence and then going silent.
el_benhameen··on Caffeine-like utility to keep you MacBook awake with its lid closed
Windows is so good at this that it refuses to let my work laptop sleep when I close it and put it in my backpack no matter how many settings I try tweaking.
el_benhameen··on Man discovers his parents' coffee machine used 1TB of data in 10 days
I’ve accounted for this by planning an alternate route to the station, having a secondary station available and, for cases where those are also blocked, mounting an M2A1 50-caliber machine gun to the roof of my Toyota Corolla.
el_benhameen··on Man discovers his parents' coffee machine used 1TB of data in 10 days
Yes, having coffee on the train is a preference, which is why I used the word "want". I suppose that having this job, or any job, is technically a preference. I decided to buy a smart kettle to satisfy my preferences given the constraints they impose. The parent asked why someone would buy a smart coffee device, and I thought it would be fun to give my answer for why, despite my general skepticism of smart devices, I bought one.
el_benhameen··on Man discovers his parents' coffee machine used 1TB of data in 10 days
I don’t disagree that over-automation is a thing. I miss my more leisurely mornings!

I use a Hario Switch to make coffee. It takes 3:30 to brew, so I pour the water and then brush my teeth and prep while waiting. Async coffee! I’m out the door as soon as the coffee is in the mug and get to the train station about 2 minutes before the train arrives.

el_benhameen··on Man discovers his parents' coffee machine used 1TB of data in 10 days
I have an admittedly very specific set of constraints that led to me buying a wifi kettle. I:

- have a short window to get to the train in the morning - want coffee on the train - don't particularly like drip machine coffee - want the water boiling when I wake up so that I can make coffee and get out of the house as quickly as possible - am more morally opposed to waking up five minutes earlier (pushing my wake time into the 4 o'clock hour) than I am to having a smart device.

I couldn't find a kettle that runs on a timer, and just taping the switch in the "on" position and hooking it up to a plug timer felt unsafe, so getting a stupid wifi kettle and using their stupid app to set it to auto-start was the best option. It's on its own network, though.

el_benhameen··on Margaret Hamilton has died
“There was no choice but to be pioneers” is a great line.
el_benhameen··on Behold the pawpaw
Read a really interesting writeup on blueberry engineering and economics a while ago. Worth checking out.

https://sftw.substack.com/p/chasing-counter-seasonality

el_benhameen··on My Recent Woodworking Projects
Pocket hole screws and glue won’t earn you any awards for beautiful joinery, but they’ll get a project done in a weekend and look plenty nice, especially if you’re going to paint it. The Kreg jigs are a little pricey but absolutely worth it.
el_benhameen··on Creatine uptake enhances antitumor immunity
Don’t worry, if you aren’t confused enough there’s also this to send you through another cycle! https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33811821/
el_benhameen··on Grok 4.7
I tried this a while back and I felt like the result was the same weird shoehorning of ideas into language, just with a different vocabulary. I’d really like for it to work, though.
el_benhameen··on iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27
And’s! Fucking and’s! Every goddamned time, regardless of the fact that I have never once intentionally typed and’s (until now, which probably means that it’ll now either appear constantly or never again).
el_benhameen··on Show HN: Graphify C# – Compiler-accurate Find Usages for coding agents
Very excited to see union types and to see C# on here. C# can feel like a bit of a scarlet letter in the bay.
el_benhameen··on Eating Fruit Skins
Now that is actually novel! To me, at least. You cook them into a regular soup as an additive? Or you make watermelon rind soup? How’s it taste?
el_benhameen··on Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft
Native AOT with C#/.net has come a long way, fwiw.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/deploying/nati...

el_benhameen··on De-Brainrot Vacations
I had a similar drop off in high school. For me it happened when the volume of assigned reading, particularly summer reading, crowded out all of the reading for pleasure. I just never started back up after that, despite fits and starts over the years.

I decided that I wanted to change about three years ago.

The first thing that helped was finding a book that I really wanted to finish and that I saw as a challenge. I tend to be motivated by challenges. Instead of “I want to get back to regular reading”, it was “I want to finish this one book no matter what”.

Second, I bought an e-reader that let me set the margins and text size to old man settings, such that there are only a few lines per screen. My mind wanders easily, especially when it feels like there’s an ocean of text on a page, so less text and frequent page turns helped me keep my momentum up and avoid constant wandering and re-reading.

As much as we all hate commutes here, getting a job that has me back in the office has had a silver lining in that time on the train is scheduled, routine time where I can’t do something else. I made the decision that it would not be dead time, so I religiously put my phone in my bag, get my book out, and focus on it for the 40 minutes until my destination.

I am a relatively slow reader like you, but much like exercise, sticking to a routine has meant slow but noticeable improvement. I think of myself as a book reader again, and I’ve made it over the hump where sustained concentration feels effortful. You can do it!

el_benhameen··on Calibrate Before You Accelerate: Bias Toward Action in a New Role
Thoughtful and to the point, I like it. I’m curious how long this process takes others. I’m in a new role for the first time in a while and trying to find the right balance between ramping up quickly and taking enough time for deeper learning.
el_benhameen··on Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later – Cliff Stoll [video]
I bought one for my dad a long time ago. I was late in ordering (if memory serves) and asked if I could pick it up in person. Not only did Cliff say yes, but he gave me a tour of his shop and let me watch as he retrieved the bottle from his crawl space storage with a robot he’d built. Incredible customer service!
el_benhameen··on I'm becoming AI-blind
This is a really good description of the problem. I’ve been trying to use Claude to get familiar with the mechanics of a new codebase, and there have been so many moments where I’ve stopped after reading the same paragraph five times in a row and thought “Am I tired? Or stupid? Or is this codebase just wildly more complex than anything I’ve seen before?” before realizing that it’s just taken English and smushed it around like a ball of clay into some abstract sculpture that kind of evokes something from real life.

I think part of it might be an innate feature of LLMs, but Claude seems extra prone to it lately. I ran the same query about the same codebase with Codex, and it gave me an answer that was about 1/4 the length and made me realize that it really wasn’t all that complex.

If nothing else, it’s good training for my own writing. I’ve been working on making myself be more straightforward and concise, and Claude’s writing is a good example of how cleaner prose is a functional choice, not just a stylistic one.

el_benhameen··on Sun Clock
The “Solar Dial” face does pretty much what the site does.
el_benhameen··on Engineers will do anything to avoid learning from history
I would also love to hear more details.
el_benhameen··on Blogging can just be stating the obvious
I’ve never thought about it quite like that, but it’s a great point. So, thanks for sharing the thought in this unique way.
el_benhameen··on The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars
Good interview with him here. Interesting dude.

https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/craig-newmark/

el_benhameen··on Your ePub Is fine
Have you tried the beta? Have you found it to be substantially better?
el_benhameen··on Don't trust large context windows
I would also be really interested in seeing this if you’re willing to share it.
el_benhameen··on The new bibliomaniacs
Not as satisfying as seeing your books, but I keep a running doc where I note the title, dates, a short synopsis, and a few sentences of thoughts for books I’ve read. It helps me keep track a little better.
el_benhameen··on Aging and Eye Problems
I had a congenital cataract removed, and the intraocular implant can’t adjust focus like a normal lens. So I have a similar problem. Progressives suck. Bifocals also suck. Finding an optometrist who was willing to listen, experiment, and adjust three different prescriptions (distance, computer, reading), and then carrying around three pair of glasses also sucks, but it sucks the least. Accepting that this is just a thing that is part of me and that I can’t fully optimize away has made it suck less!

And I have a central floater, too! Also sucks. Sorry you’re in the same boat! Helpful optometrist tells me that vitrectomy is the only real solution and the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Another thing to accept and move on from.

el_benhameen··on Creatine raises brain energy levels and slows cognitive decline: study
Curious if anyone has had hair issues while taking it. I’m aware that there’s no positive evidence for an effect, but there is an at least plausible mechanism. I’ve gone through two periods where I took it and liked the effects, but felt like I shed way more hair and stopped due to that.
el_benhameen··on Throwing AI-generated walls of text into conversations
I developed this habit when I worked in software support. It made me substantially more effective. Sometimes people are reading for the joy of the prose. Sometimes they’re reading because they want to get to the answer. In the latter case, writing that is easily visually parsable is quite valuable.
el_benhameen··on Judge Bars Kars4Kids from Broadcasting 'Misleading' Ads in California
Still plays on the radio. I can recognize it within the first two bars and have nearly punched a hole in my dashboard trying to turn it off.
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