regnull

Anecdotal evidence: I found that it's super easy to eat way more than you should by just having some food laying around. And I don't mean just Cheetos - "healthy" food will set you back rather quickly as well. The amount of exercise doesn't matter that much - with the calorie density of common snacks, you will out-eat your exercise really fast. I don't think I'm that bad in that sense, but until I started keeping a track of what I eat and the count the calories, nothing worked. Yes it's a hassle, but I vibe-coded an app that does image analysis and tracks your calories. Shameless plug: HeartLens on app store, https://apps.apple.com/us/app/heartlens-your-health-tracker/...

I've been fascinated for checklists for a long time, and I've been thinking about creating this "checklists on steroids" app, where checklists can be shared, created from templates, executed (and information about each executing collected), etc.

I finally had some time to spend on it, and here's the result: https://checkoff.ai/

Would be grateful for any feedback!

From WSJ article:

"KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip—Thousands of hungry Palestinians amassed last Tuesday morning outside a barbed-wire fence surrounding the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid center here. The moment the gates cracked open, the crowd surged forward.

American security contractors tried to keep control, but scores of men pushed through barricades and snatched boxes of food awaiting distribution. Others sprinted in behind them. Men on speeding motorcycles raced past the pedestrians to grab whatever food they could. Gunshots rang out—it wasn’t clear from where. Within about 15 minutes, all the food was gone."

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/us-israel-gaza-aid-dea...

I know it's easy to judge being far away, but seriously, men on speeding motorcycles?

I notice an interesting phenomenon here and elsewhere. There is this complaint where everyone agrees that the current state of affairs sucks. There are some (perhaps limited, but still) ways to improve it, and yet, they don’t get much traction. My very brief research produced this list of cars with limited touch screens:

Toyota 4Runner, Toyota Tacoma, Jeep Wrangler, Nissan Frontier, Ford Maverick, Ford Bronco, Jeep Gladiator, Mazda MX-5 Miata

I wonder what kind of cars do you guys drive.

Stranger still, if someone comes up with an idea of how to improve that thing that sucks, frequently the reaction is very negative. Sadly, the whole thing more and more gets into “old man yelling at the cloud” territory.

Operation Greif (English: Griffin) (German: Unternehmen Greif) was a special operation commanded by Waffen-SS commando Otto Skorzeny during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II. The operation was the brainchild of Adolf Hitler, and its purpose was to capture one or more of the bridges over the Meuse river before they could be destroyed. German soldiers, wearing captured British and U.S. Army uniforms and using captured Allied vehicles, were to cause confusion in the rear of the Allied lines. A lack of vehicles, uniforms and equipment limited the operation and it never achieved its original aim of securing the Meuse bridges. Skorzeny's post-war trial set a precedent clarifying article 4 of the Geneva Convention: as the German soldiers removed the Allied uniforms before engaging in combat, they were not to be considered francs-tireurs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Greif

Why not have both?

Again, they are not being punished in a court of law. Being incorporated in Cyprus, they (sadly) enjoy all the rights and privileges of being a Western company.

I, as an individual, can refuse to do business with any company I please, on the basis of my beliefs and moral convictions (and on the basis of the likelihood of them being complicit in something I oppose to).

If you prefer one brand of ice cream over the other, is this a collective punishment of the other company (looking at you, Ben & Jerry)?

We are not talking about convicting them in a court of law. It's perfectly fine to refuse to deal with Russian companies because every ruble they pay in taxes goes to support the war. When the whole society (and yes, regular people too) are in favor of waging a war of their neighbor, refusing to deal with their companies should and must become the default way of action.

Russian companies are commonly registered in Cyprus, and the money flow back to Russia.

Source: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/les-decodeurs/article/2023/11/14/d...

OK, and you would be right to boycott US economy and refuse to cooperate with the US companies if this is your conviction. But I guess you are not doing this, since you are commenting on Hacker News, run by Y Combinator, a US company?

Ah yes, classic. Here's a helpful guide:

- This never happened

- They deserved it

- They did it themselves

- What about Iraq?

4o. The prompt is literally "How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?". It asked me if I want a poetic answer, and I've requested Homer.

ChatGPT really impressed me on this one:

Sing, O Muse, of the Chucking of Wood

Sing, O Muse, of the stout-hearted woodchuck, Dweller of hills, whom men call groundhog, Whose paws, though small, could hurl mighty timbers, If fate had gifted him such labor divine.

Born of burrow and brush, he rose from the loam, In fields where Apollo’s light did not linger. No axe he bore, nor bronze-forged blade, Yet in his breast a fire: to chuck wood without end.

Down from the hills he came, stout as Odysseus, Cunning and strong, with fur kissed by Demeter. The trees did tremble at his gaze, And even old oak whispered, “Beware!”

“Would he chuck?” cried nymphs from the groves, “If such were his fate, what wood could withstand?” Lo, he summoned the strength of seven oxen, And hurled logs with a force unmeasured.

Seven hundred pounds of timber he cast, Each arc a hymn to muscle and will. Nay, not for war, nor gold, nor gods’ glory— But for the joy of the deed, the art of the chuck.

Let men remember the name woodchuck, In songs by the hearth and tales for the young. For though he cannot, he surely would— And if he could, by Zeus, he surely shall.

Somewhat related, here's a little project I've done with LLM: https://github.com/regnull/how.sh

It uses locally hosted (or remote) LLMs to create and execute shell commands that you describe. You can go as far as writing "shell scripts" in natural language.

Found a bug - if you click on a language, then go back and click on another language, it still shows that you are learning the first one.

Great idea though, good luck.

> One survey of the literature suggests that drivers in the typical American city spend an average of eight minutes looking for parking at the end of each trip.

Maybe it's just me, but this doesn't sound realistic at all. If there is a place where I would spend eight minutes looking for parking, I would rather not go. And that's average, meaning some people spending twice as much? 16 minutes to look for parking? Who would do that?

This reminds me of the outsourcing panic, many years ago. Hiring cheaper talent overseas seemed like a no brainer, so everyone's job was in danger. Of course, it turned out that it was not as simple, it came with its own costs, and somehow the whole thing just settled. I wonder if the same will happen here. In this line of work, it's almost as when you know exactly what you want to build, you are 90% there. AI helps you with the rest.

Interesting approach, thanks for sharing!

Yeah I tweaked the prompt to make it work reasonably well. There is also an experimental mode where it can reason and correct the command if it fails. Feel free to sent a PR!

I did a similar thing, where you describe what you want to achieve and it gives you the command and (optionally) executes it for you:

https://github.com/regnull/how.sh

AFAIK it's entirely possible to adjust it based on the browser's locale

Apart from the eggs: can anyone tell me what they used to make this website? Looks awesome in its simplicity.

Just added a second news source, more to come!

I updated the script to use llm cli instead, so it supports any local model (including ollama) or online models, so choose your poison.

If you are like me and constantly forget useful shell commands, this is for you.

Here's an example:

$ ./how.sh find and delete files older than 30 days Generated command: find . -type f -mtime +30 -exec rm {} \; Do you want to execute this command? (y/n):

I had a model Y before, and after it became clear that I'm not extending my lease (thanks Mr. Musk), I test-drove a few alternatives, Mustang EV, IONIQ 5 & 6, etc. Ended up getting BMW I4, and man, this beats Tesla in every way. Yes, software might be not as perfect, but as a car to drive, it's so much better.

FWIW, I have no idea if this is any good. My point is, I found this after maybe 3 minutes searching. If we were to spend 30 minutes, we would definitely find something reasonable.

And as for "why are not selling this in every retail store?", the answer is the same - because if they were, no one would buy them. I found the situation curious, while everyone complains about it, only very few people are trying to do anything about it. Perhaps the breaking point was not reached yet, and something big has to happen to change people's perspective.

Here you go: https://us.starlabs.systems/

Now, how many of you guys have this? Or anything like this? I bet 95% of the HN crowd happily uses iOS/Android daily.

Before we put all the blame on vendors, I submit to you, ladies and gentlemen, this: the public finds this tradeoff (privacy for entertainment) completely acceptable. With all the outrage, privacy-centric solutions are out there and relatively easy to find, how come they don't get more traction? Including among the HN crowd?