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low_tech_punk

892 karma · joined May 1, 2021

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low_tech_punk··on Asus Bike Booster
It is decoupled from drivetrain. So, without torque sensor, how does it know when the rider wants to speed up vs. slow down?
low_tech_punk··on Gemini 3.7 Flash
Maybe Google is adding compute infra. I noticed today that the API has 500 tok/s throughput. It's quite compelling now.
low_tech_punk··on MAI-Cyber-1-Flash inside MDASH
> Three things matter today: Model. Data. Harness.

*knee jerk*

low_tech_punk··on Teardown: A Generic 7-Port USB 3.0 Hub That Wasn't
It's a classic scam. It is a 3.0 USB 7-Port Hub, not a 7-port USB 3.0 Hub. The number 3.0 is the model number of the hub, not the protocol.
low_tech_punk··on Where are YC founders now? OpenAI and Anthropic, mostly
According to the stats in this article https://www.ycombinator.com/investors, we can estimate 98.5% of the founders are not in OpenAI or Anthropic.
low_tech_punk··on Where are YC founders now? OpenAI and Anthropic, mostly
Is there a selection bias?

SELECT * FROM yc_founders WHERE employer IN ('OpenAI', 'Anthropic');

If there are 7k founders [1], the graph only shows 1.5% of the people from YC.

[1]: https://www.ycombinator.com/investors

low_tech_punk··on Don't discontinue Gemini 2.5 Flash
Interestingly, I found the original nano banana also has the best latency/quality trade-off that new versions can't beat. This might be domain/prompt specific though. I wonder if there is some truth in the saying that something is either new or improved by never "new and improved".
low_tech_punk··on Good Tools Are Invisible
Agree that good tool should be invisible. We want essential not accidental complexity in how the tool works.

But good tool should also be fun and makes us feel productive. We can't neglect the emotional aspects of designs. And at the end of the day, if a less productive tool makes us much happier, we will less likely be burned out. That is productivity in the long term.

Maybe only AI Agent doesn't care about the emotional aspects fro tool use, but that's a separate topic.

Also, it's not about steep learning curves. We want low floor, high ceiling tools. Some of the examples the author used are either low floor low ceiling, or high floor high ceiling. Neither is ideal.

low_tech_punk··on Rewriting Bun in Rust
(1) The original zig code was probably heavily AI coded with lower quality, hence the bag. There is a chance that a full rewrite in zig might do as well but we will never find out.

(2) The rewrite itself is a massively successful marketing move. It shows what Claude code can do and how little it costs compared to human engineering. But the question remains whether someone else, not knowing zig, rust, and TypeScript can pull this off.

low_tech_punk··on Wordgard: The new in-browser rich-text editor from the creator of ProseMirror
If you click on the "create link" button multiple times, the menu would pile up vertically.
low_tech_punk··on Wordgard: In-browser rich-text editor from the creator of ProseMirror
I believe Wardgard has zero external dependencies. The three packages it depends on are all utils written by the author himself.

https://code.haverbeke.berlin/wordgard/wordgard/src/branch/m...

low_tech_punk··on Previewing GPT‑5.6 Sol: a next-generation model
all the emphasis on cyber security. feels like a reaction to anthropic, not a real next generation.
low_tech_punk··on Microsoft VibeVoice: Open-Source Frontier Voice AI
When mixing languages, why does the English have Chinese accent and Chinese have English accent? Is it a feature or bug?
low_tech_punk··on All phones sold in the EU to have replaceable batteries from 2027
I hope this puts more pressure to extend the software life-span.
low_tech_punk··on A CPU that runs entirely on GPU
Saw the DOOM raycast demo at bottom of page.

Can't wait for someone to build a DOOM that runs entirely on GPU!

low_tech_punk··on Clawdbot Renames to Moltbot
When I visit https://www.molt.bot/ with Edge browser, there is a bloody red screen screaming malware. What's wrong with the name?
low_tech_punk··on System: Control your Mac from anywhere using natural language
User: Hey AI, turn off my Mac

AI: (after 10 minutes of deep reasoning) Ah! I found the solution. I need to cause a power surge in the grid to power off your device.

low_tech_punk··on Show HN: Quantum Tunnel
Google's ML team really nailed it. There are lots hand/head/eye tracking demos made with mediapipe.

I recommend checking out The Poet Engineer: https://x.com/poetengineer__

low_tech_punk··on Show HN: Ez FFmpeg – Video editing in plain English
No AI is appealing but there is the cliff problem. If there is one small thing the mini language can't handle, the user would have no chance solving it themselves. They might as well start with an LLM solution first.

One workaround is that when there is syntax error, let user optionally switch to LLM?

low_tech_punk··on Coffee linked to slower biological ageing among those with severe mental illness
Is it possible that the coffee drinkers have more social interaction with the barista and others? It's unclear from the paper if they eliminated the confounding factors around coffee drinking.
low_tech_punk··on Linux Kernel Explorer
I believe the entire web app was a mod on top of monaco (vscode)? Really great hack!
low_tech_punk··on iPhone Pocket
A slingshot, A blind fold, A pocket -- Steve Jobs never said that.
low_tech_punk··on Say Hi to Kit
Everyone asks, what does the fox say, no one cares how the fox feels. Thank you Mozilla, now we know the fox feels like open source.
low_tech_punk··on Claude Code on the web
IMHO, parallel tasks across multiple repos is not as useful as parallel tasks in one repo.
low_tech_punk··on Apple M5 chip
Not all is lost: AI can still be acronym for Apple Intelligence.
low_tech_punk··on Comprehension debt: A ticking time bomb of LLM-generated code
I had a similar thought, feature not bug.

The nature of programming might have to shift to embrace the material property of LLM. It could become a more interpretative, social, and discovery-based activity. Maybe that's what "vibe coding" would eventually become.

low_tech_punk··on Comprehension debt: A ticking time bomb of LLM-generated code
Most programmers don't understand the low level assembly or machine code. High level language becomes the layer where human comprehension and collaboration happens.

LLM is pushing that layer towards natural language and spec-driven development. The only *big* difference is that high level programming languages are still deterministic but natural language is not.

I'm guessing we've reached an irreducible point where the amount of information needed specify the behavior of a program is nearly optimally represented in programming languages after decades of evolution. More abstraction into the natural language realm would make it lossy. And less abstraction down to the low level code would make it verbose.

low_tech_punk··on We can’t circumvent the work needed to train our minds
This piece reminds me of another article musing on the necessity of manual memory: https://numinous.productions/ttft/#how-important-is-memory.

That article articulated the reason slightly differently, arguing you need to hold multiple concepts in your head at the same time in order to develop original ideas.

Still, I'm not sure you have to remember everything, but I agree you have to remember the foundational things at the right abstraction layer, upon which you are trying to synthesize something new.

low_tech_punk··on Eternal Struggle
maxwell's demon peeking from the dark side
low_tech_punk··on Vibe coding the MIT course catalog
Nice write-up!
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