Hacker News Reader

mastazion Gemini Code vs. Claude Code – A cautionary post-mortem ($800 in 12h)

Same, Australia

So "decision model" is the new cool term for classifiers? You know, that thing that already existed decades ago

mastazion Learning Jazz Pianist Style with Cross-Attention Conditioning

That “transcription” using piano roll (but without even showing the actual keys on the side, and without bar lines) is impossible to follow and doesn’t make sense for jazz, where chromaticism, key changes and syncopation are so common. I see a note and then another note that looks a little higher, are they a major third apart? Or maybe it’s a minor third? Was the first note a pickup? Or is it on the one? No way to know

mastazion Religious scholars met with Anthropic

Did the Internet disappear after the .com bubble? Did tulips stop being sold after tulip mania? Did people stop buying houses after the GFC?

mastazion My weird new hobby: Wandering around Tokyo on Google Maps

There is a specific Google Street picture in Rio De Janeiro, (in order to find it I need to go to a specific spot and then change the date to the time when I was living there), where I can see a friend who passed. His face has been blurred as usual, but to anyone who knew him, it's obvious it's him.

mastazion Mullenweg has returned as CEO after attempted board ouster

The link that you provided largely confirms what parent said: it puts WooCommerce ahead of Shopify in terms of store count, with a number (4.34M live stores) which is consistent to the one mentioned by parent ("over four million stores").

> They're close on number of installations.

2.84M vs 4.34M is quite a wide margin, wouldn't you agree?

It's true that the link puts Shopify at roughly 10X in terms of GMV but parent did not claim otherwise.

mastazion No Man's Sky Cosmos

The GTA franchise already broke away from this in the currently existing titles, but that's not a fair comparison given that GTA worlds are mostly handcrafted.

mastazion The ChatGPT/Codex app bundles a full copy of LibreOffice

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

mastazion Why Microsoft Entertainment Pack had a sticker announcing that it had Tetris?

sorry, I forgot that it did that when clicked from HN. I usually access it from my bookmarks.

mastazion Why Microsoft Entertainment Pack had a sticker announcing that it had Tetris?

yes that's a great one! I read it semi-regularly but forgot to mention it!

mastazion Kobo can run apps now

> A reboot returns to the stock Kobo reader.

so it's not something you can daily drive just yet? Is this because of technical issues that prevent it from surviving a reboot?

mastazion Why Microsoft Entertainment Pack had a sticker announcing that it had Tetris?

In addition to the blog where this post is taken from https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/, you could check https://folklore.org/ for early Apple anecdotes. And also https://www.jwz.org/blog/ for early Netscape/Mozilla stories

mastazion Claude: System Prompts

I wonder why Sonnet 5 is not included.

mastazion New Zealand lost its music media, and what we're building to replace it

that's beautiful, I really wish there was more media like this

mastazion Herdr is joining Y Combinator. The runtime stays open

in the herdr homepage near the top there is an interactive demo that responds to your mouse clicks

mastazion AI-Generated Images Discourage Me from Reading Your Blog

I have the same reaction with AI generated YouTube thumbnails. Something in the back of my mind immediately goes "it's probably low quality content" and I'm less likely to click.

mastazion Superlogical

Herdr is my daily driver. It is lightweight and snappy while also being customisable (hence the Sublime Text analogy). I like that, while it supports tmux-style shortcuts, you can also use the mouse, so the learning curve is very gentle. In addition it's cross platform (Mac/Linux/Win) which is great for me because I needed something I can use on different machines.

mastazion Astronauts describe persistent 'observer' sensation after 6 month missions

Ahah you're right I guess it would be interesting to some readers. The long story short is that growing up I used to be involved with the scouting association of my country (Italy), and we learned various outdoor/survival skills during camps and hikes, then later as a young adult I kept hiking as a hobby, I used to hike through mountain trails for extended periods, (between 2 and 6 weeks) in between semesters when I was in university, sometimes in a group and sometimes solo[1]. I haven't done any of that in about two decades, and I'm not sure I have enough mental focus to blog about stuff that happened such a long time ago. If you talk to anyone who is into hiking/bushwalking, they will tell you that it's pretty common to find yourself on a track where you don't cross any human settlement for an extended period, this happens even in densely populated countries like Italy and I guess it's even more common in places like the USA.

[1] I don't recommend solo hiking for extended periods, I was young and careless.

mastazion Astronauts describe persistent 'observer' sensation after 6 month missions

I used to spend weeks outdoors in the wilderness without ever entering a building (I would sleep in a small tent) and I used to have a similar range of sensations when coming back home and/or going into an enclosed building for the first time. This used to last maybe for a couple days.

Two more things that I used to experience, which are not among the phenomena described in the article, is that I was hyper aware of how sound echoed through a room, and I used to be hyper aware of how hard the floor was (carpeted floors are not common where I grew up, most rooms have tiled floors) I guess these two are something specific to the outdoor->indoor change and so they don't apply to astronauts.

mastazion LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

Do you know if this is a mandatory requirement set by Google, hence we can expect to find it on every single Google TV, or it depends on manufacturer? I cross checked some manuals from different brands and not all of them mention the "dumb mode" but maybe I just missed it. Based on my experience with Android devices, not every single Android feature is present on all devices, sometimes it's up to the manufacturer to implement certain features. I wonder if Google TV is the same.

mastazion LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

I am afraid that my dumb TV, which I've been holding onto for many years, might be on its last leg.

I remember seeing privacy guides for smart TVs over the years, does anyone know a place with up to date info?

Most 55inch monitors are now "smart" sadly, so are most "digital signage" products. So there is no longer a way to get a true dumb panel at least over 50 inch

EDIT I am in Australia, there might be products that are available elsewhere but cannot be bought/shipped here

mastazion The Kimi K3 Moment

> Qwen should leak that too, and it doesn't.

FWIW I had Qwen identifying itself as "a language model made by Google" in one conversation, although I could not reproduce this reliably.

mastazion Claude Sonnet 5

good luck actually enforcing that.

mastazion I used sound waves to make espresso. It could cut coffee‑brewing energy use by ¾

Depends on where you live.

mastazion Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

Cameras worked pretty well, but most people take photos with their phones nowadays. Pro photographers still mostly use cameras though.

I can envision a future where people have a humanoid trimming a small backyard but at the same time the maintenance of e.g. a golf course would be done by dedicated robots.

EDIT: my point is that just like smartphones replaced a number of specialised devices for most people, a humanoid robot could do the same, by virtue of being a general purpose machine

mastazion Can we have the day off?

For sure, but incentives are different when your pay is perfectly proportional to output rather than having a salary.

mastazion Claude Opus 4.8

A bubble doesn't mean a dead end - e.g. after the .com bubble, Internet usage kept expanding by orders of magnitude for two decades.

An AI bubble is pretty much guaranteed at this point but that doesn't mean there's going to be a new AI winter.

mastazion Can we have the day off?

Can you give some examples of jobs that are usually done by salaried employees and are paid by output? All the examples I can think of, are usually done by independent contractors.

mastazion Can we have the day off?

> I think it’s pretty naive to ask your employer for a day off.

Someone said the same before 1938, probably [1]

I think it's possible that AI will bring as much of a shift to our lives as the industrial revolution did, so it might be necessary to make some adjustments, just like we did back then.

[1] https://www.history.com/articles/five-day-work-week-labor-mo...

mastazion Didgeridoo playing as alternative treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea (2006)

Thank you, I was completely unable to access that page with my current browser settings.