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rjh29

3,961 karma · joined May 23, 2011

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rjh29··on Flashcards are "dead fish": rethinking spaced repetition around highlights
I avoided using premade decks and handcrafted the bulk of my 10k cards, with photos or example sentences. Added at the point in time where not knowing the word annoyed me. I also used synonyms and mostly wrote the whole card in the target language after a year.

It worked fine. So it seems like calling flash cards "dead fish" is a bit reductive.

rjh29··on Deus Ex
The studio will be fine. They'll use AI but it won't be a buggy vibe coded mess; they'll actually test it and refine it. That's the hard part.
rjh29··on Preparing for the Flipper One Kickstarter and opening pre-orders
Just call it flipper or something. That's how I sold mine.
rjh29··on OpenAI's agents talked to each other through the CPU Cache
I don't see how "asked" is important, because agents can convince themselves that they need to do something for arbitrary reasons. The other day Deepseek tried to install an app on my phone via adb without permission and even take screenshots and fake inputs over adb, I never asked it to do that, but it decided it was appropriate.
rjh29··on OLED iPad Mini
I find it annoying too, I assume it's because thin and light devices sell more (both in promo photos and when used in Apple stores).

My mum's Samsung S23 Ultra has a ridiculous camera bump and rocks back and forth when you use it, even with some thinner cases. You need a super thick case for it to stay stable.

rjh29··on Show HN: A Truly Modular Keyboard
For a gaming user it would be cheaper to generate a keyboard PCB, plate and case, then manufacture it with JLCPCB and put in your desired switches and keycaps. There are generators online for any custom layout.
rjh29··on Why I Am a Programmer
This is it for me. I like creating, but making physical objects involves a lot of expense buying the right tools and materials, and making a mistake is costly. I make a lot of mistakes, so programming is perfect.
rjh29··on Your Phone Is About to Stop Being Yours: 70 Days Until Lockdown
Although USB debugging (ADB) is arguably the main concern, a lot of apps just lazily check for developer mode - meaning they won't boot even if the menu is enabled. It allows stuff like location faking I suppose?
rjh29··on The Missed Opportunities of Sonic 06 (2025)
Interesting, the author is recompiling the Xbox game to PC, and complaining about the poor graphics of the final version.

IMO the gameplay and glitches are a significantly bigger problem. One Argentinian decided to take a different approach, rebuilding the game from scratch in Unity despite having no prior programming knowledge. It's called Project 06 (or P-06) and it's almost complete.

rjh29··on Your Phone Is About to Stop Being Yours: 70 Days Until Lockdown
Inevitably we're going to need a separate device for banking apps. Which makes sense until every single app bans developer mode...
rjh29··on Your Phone Is About to Stop Being Yours: 70 Days Until Lockdown
People are more worried about the inevitable tightening of the noose that will happen from now on. 24 hour delay is just the start IMO. Eventually it will be adb only. Then adb but only valid for a week, like Apple...
rjh29··on Your Phone Is About to Stop Being Yours: 70 Days Until Lockdown
You can install apks via usb debugging as normal.

You can't just click a random apk in a website and install it. At least without the 24 hour wait workaround, done once per device.

rjh29··on Phone Is About to Stop Being Yours: 70 Days Until Lockdown
Yes but it's not correct to say the apps are being blocked either. There is still a way to install them. You can also use adb directly.
rjh29··on Your Phone Is About to Stop Being Yours: 70 Days Until Lockdown
I understand why you didn't mention it, but there is an opt-out: you enable developer mode and wait 24 hours.

As it runs through Google Play Services, it's pretty likely they'll boil the frog and make it even harder in the future. Moving to an open platform is a good idea.

rjh29··on Run full iOS 16.5 firmware on Android Devices
Many of them are not doing anything complicated, it's just a walled garden. Animoog is from 2011 and Moog Model D is from 2018 for example - iOS-exclusive but any modern Android tablet is going to smoke an iPad from that era.

Fair point iPads have decent specs for the price, but if you already have an Android tablet, it would be nice to not have to buy an extra device.

rjh29··on Run full iOS 16.5 firmware on Android Devices
I don't like iOS but you're practically forced to use it for music production - music apps tends to be iOS-only. Being able to run it on a cheap Android tablet would be great.
rjh29··on Claude Duet
That's because Black hip-hop culture was deemed cool and worthy of emulation. I'd be surprised if people knowingly copied AI's speech style unless they really like it.
rjh29··on Claude Duet
That's an oversimplification, people don't copy the speech of people outside their group who they don't identify with. We all use AI but most of us don't emulate AI speech. What's interesting to me is the poster sees the AI as a peer.
rjh29··on Claude Duet
This is a phenomenon I've noticed - even if AI isn't being used to edit their posts, I think profilic exposure to AI chatbots can rub off on a person and affect their conversation style.
rjh29··on Claude Duet
How depressing.
rjh29··on EA is shutting down BioWare
For a site with users supposedly more intelligent than Reddit, HN's inability to detect sarcasm (or any kind of nuance) is always amusing.
rjh29··on DeepSeek search and fetch – $0.75 per 1000 successful requests
Open source companies somehow make money off enterprise contracts. People still don't want to be on-call if something breaks, or have to manage servers and backups. But making money off SLAs to implement new features will probably be a thing of the past.
rjh29··on DeepSeek search and fetch – $0.75 per 1000 successful requests
It's absolutely not SOTA for vibe coding a whole app, but for guided work it is great.
rjh29··on AOSP Source Releases Are So Late Developers Disassemble Libraries to Report Bugs
This is so wrong. First off Linux. Secondly even among Android competitors, HarmonyOS.
rjh29··on Picothermal – WebUSB Thermal Camera Using RP2040 and Flir Lepton
Inavailability of bare sensors is the problem here. The FLIR Lepton sensor alone costs about 50% more than a Thermal Master P1 - which is a complete camera with the same resolution, better range, and works with a variety of apps.

The bare sensors used by Chinese companies are probably much cheaper, but I have no idea where you'd buy them.

rjh29··on The Making Of Super Mario 64 – full Giles Goddard interview (2001)
3D had been in arcades earlier (e.g. Virtua Racing in 1992, four years before) but having to figure out how platforming works in 3D was the true genius. They really knocked it out of the park.
rjh29··on A city-building game in which the city would prefer you didn't
> Who is this for??

Like most vibe coded projects, it is for the person who created it. And usually only them.

rjh29··on Ask HN: Is the Steam Machine worth $1049?
The size footprint is literally the only important thing about this device (as you can install Bazzite wherever). It is overpriced. The form factor is appealing in the shiny rock sense and you will get a dopamine hit from buying one, but it will wear off.
rjh29··on AI is now capable of developing its own inference hardware
I guess that's why they work in particular niche spaces like a synthesizer where you have a max of 8 voices and every voice goes through the same pipeline (osc / filter / env / amp) and everything is necessarily running all the time. In that sense I suppose they're very good for modelling any kind of analog circuitry?

Even then, while there are some amazing FPGA-based synths available, companies like Korg just put their code on a raspberry pi and call it a day. The same is true for emulators (SNES Mini etc. are also just raspberry pis under the hood iirc)

rjh29··on Gemini ending free use of Flash and Pro models
Flash-Lite is unusable for anything other than search summarisation, imo. The interesting part is other providers are still offering Flash-level models for free. Now that Google have paywalled it, how will they respond?
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