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mcbishop

674 karma · joined May 12, 2020

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mcbishop··on Show HN: Subvocal – Talk to your computer without making noise
Snark snark. I meant when walking around my house, initiating "smart home" stuff.
mcbishop··on Show HN: Subvocal – Talk to your computer without making noise
I've thought about learning sign language in order to communicate with the computer in a not-super-annoying way. Your solution... much more realistic. Cheers.
mcbishop··on Tool book of a Nuremberg knight from 1505
https://loeffelholz-codex.org/en/codex/f008r.html
mcbishop··on Tool book of a Nuremberg knight from 1505
FYI: The one tool page I checked out included a real life artifact.
mcbishop··on Claude Duet
Communicate with chrome via the claude extension.
mcbishop··on Claude Duet
With the desktop app (for windows). I gave it the link and asked it to fill it out (in the external chrome browser). I reviewed / edited what it wrote and submitted. Very simple.
mcbishop··on Claude Duet
Claude Code filled in the form for me.
mcbishop··on One Manhattan power room took down FAA air traffic control in 1991
This is an awesomely clear and methodical explanation of system failure.
mcbishop··on How the Claude Code team does code review
> At Anthropic, our jobs have moved from reading every diff to the decisions machines are bad at:

> ...Architecture that sets a pattern others will copy...

I'm happy that even Anthropic agrees this is best left to humans.

mcbishop··on Has AI tells
Super thoughtful discussion here. 100% human generated it seems.
mcbishop··on Bug Blindness
I love the UX-design book: Don't Make Me Think.
mcbishop··on The zero-cost fallacy: open-source software in the agentic era
I'm happy to now know about perma computing.

> up to the level of the mid 90s

So pair this with back-to-basics tech (e.g. text files)... that can serve us extremely well.

mcbishop··on Becoming a dad changes men's brains
Yup. The closer I am to her friends... the stronger the compulsion. It's like magnetism.
mcbishop··on Becoming a dad changes men's brains
As a dad, I have a strong compulsion to tell (bad) dad jokes. Ideally puns. All the time. I didn't used to be this way.
mcbishop··on Why Japanese companies do so many different things
> As a rule, the highest-paid workers at Mondragon cooperatives earn only six times more than the lowest-paid workers.

And I bet these salary-capped co-op leaders are still appropriately capable / qualified. The U.S. billionare situation is ugly.

mcbishop··on Investors pile into clean energy as Iran war drives push for energy security
But there is some valid concern around internet-connected PV / battery power electronics getting bricked remotely.
mcbishop··on OpenGridWorks: Electricity infrastructure, mapped
All good, I appreciate what you built! On desktop with Windows 11. I just tried it again and it was much easier to see the info (thru hover) than before.
mcbishop··on OpenGridWorks: Electricity infrastructure, mapped
Thanks, it's much easier to load info with the option you shared.
mcbishop··on OpenGridWorks: Electricity infrastructure, mapped
This is awesome. It'd be even more awesome if it was easier to show a power plant's info upon hover / click. ...It's currently too much of a cat-and-mouse game for me.
mcbishop··on In Edison’s Revenge, Data Centers Are Transitioning From AC to DC
I've heard the EV charging has played a big role in the maturation of GaN / SiC.
mcbishop··on Libre Solar – Open Hardware for Renewable Energy
A distinction was made:

> the transfer switch variety switches your house between the inverter and the grid whereas the disconnect just physically disconnects the inverters output

mcbishop··on Libre Solar – Open Hardware for Renewable Energy
Thanks, and I agree that a DIY-inverter designer should be able to meet grid-interconnection requirements (e.g. IEEE 1547-2018). With that said, I think case-by-base evaluation from the AHJ would be prudent without a UL listing... something that AHJs don't want to do.

I'd prefer to just put the DIY inverter behind a transfer switch (with an adequate battery bank and maybe a small propane generator)... with the grid as emergency fallback.

mcbishop··on Libre Solar – Open Hardware for Renewable Energy
> Why the fearmongering?

The main concern is exporting to a downed grid that line-workers are trying to restore.

mcbishop··on Libre Solar – Open Hardware for Renewable Energy
Not that this is accepted by insurers or AHJs ("authorities having jurisdiction"), but one can use UL-certified components in an (open-source) _assembly_ that itself isn't UL certified. This at least supports the argument that the overall product is safe if thoughtfully designed and assembled. An example is the OpenEVSE level-2 car charger (which I had a really good experience with).
mcbishop··on New accounts on HN more likely to use em-dashes
The creator of OpenClaw, for example, has come to appreciate grammatical / spelling errors in human writing (as he said in a recent Lex Fridman interview).
mcbishop··on Physicists Make Electrons Flow Like Water
Loosely related: This Lex Fridman discussion with a nuclear-fusion engineer, about 1-million-amp 100-million-degree electrical systems... blew my mind: https://lexfridman.com/david-kirtley
mcbishop··on The wonder of modern drywall
I really like this guy's drywall-install how-to videos: https://www.youtube.com/@vancouvercarpenter
mcbishop··on The skill of the future is not 'AI', but 'Focus' (2025)
For me, there's a sharp binary: If I ask AI to "own" a coding-problem solution — with me passing back the failure responses until resolved — my mind gets numb and I learn nothing. If I insist on owning the solution — using AI in my effort to better understand the problem space — my mind is active and I get better at coding. Sometimes I'm lazy and fall into the former. But mostly, so far, the latter.
mcbishop··on Advanced Rail Energy Storage of North America
Thanks for this! ...Thanks for helping me curb my naivete a bit. I think you'd appreciate this effort at even cheaper grid-scale chemical battery storage: https://www.volts.wtf/p/can-second-life-ev-batteries-work
mcbishop··on Advanced Rail Energy Storage of North America
> This is just a grift.

I'd like to understand why. Just too much complexity? Gravity storage is compelling to this layman.

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