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techwizrd

1,228 karma · joined September 25, 2013

Principal AI/ML, Aviation Safety, and Aeromedical Safety at MITRE

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/ksarkhel; my proof: https://keybase.io/ksarkhel/sigs/2C5BZyjsFh9eLr4vNe6-e6IVbpXEE0Edm4UuJ1rBcAA ]

Github: techwizrd

Fediverse/ActivityPub: Mastodon: @kksarkhel@mastodon.social Lemmy: @techwizrd@programming.dev X: @kunikins

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techwizrd··on How we made a text-to-speech model respond in sub-50 ms
Like a real-time voice changer? I'm sure some such thing exists. I'm building a real-time voice changer for RPG sessions because I'm terrible at doing voices. Half my NPCs all sound the same!
techwizrd··on Crown 0.64 – Native and cross-platform game engine
Now that piques my interest. I really enjoy writing Vala.
techwizrd··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (July 2026)
I'm working on a side project to clean up and fix EPUB files with transcription errors, incomplete or inaccurate metadata, and other issues. Users can accept/reject/edit the fixes as they go through it. I have the command-line interface and TUI working (thanks to Ratatui), but I'm still working on a Calibre plugin and web-based version using WASM.
techwizrd··on Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation
They've also been pushing digital-only PS5s and PS5 Pro so there are fewer reasons to get a disk if you have no disk drive. They have created the problem that they are "solving."
techwizrd··on Physical disc production ending in Jan 2028 for new games on PlayStation
The PS5 is great. We have a PS5 and PS5 Pro, both with disk drives (internal or external). But I really hate this policy. My brother comes over regularly to watch my pets, and he can simply bring a couple of his PS5 games over and play them rather than rebuying them and digitally downloading them. This breaks the in-person social aspect of gaming and game sharing that we've become accustomed to for decades.
techwizrd··on Ask HN: Is anyone using the A2A protocol?
I'm using it at work as well. It's quite challenging to manage.
techwizrd··on Modos Color Monitor Pushes E-Paper Displays Further
I found the video on YouTube before the IEEE article. It's a fascinating story.
techwizrd··on Understanding the rationale behind a rule when trying to circumvent it
This seems adjacent to Chesterton's Fence, though maybe not the canonical form of it.

For anyone not familiar with the term, Chesterton's Fence is the idea that you should understand why a rule exists before trying to remove it or work around it: https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/

Here the issue is not that the rule was removed, but that the code followed the wording while missing the reason the rule existed.

techwizrd··on Using Git's rerere feature to escape recurring conflict hell
This is what I've been doing for years. It's remarkably stress-free!
techwizrd··on An Obsessive Focus on UX: Pilot's Pressure-Regulating Kire-Na Highlighter
I agree. Their fountain pens and inks are just rock solid, and I've practically never run into an issue with any of mine. I wish more companies would obsess over the details like Pilot does.
techwizrd··on RaTeX: KaTeX-compatible LaTeX rendering engine in pure Rust
I'm working on a Neovim plugin to render LaTeX in Markdown, and I'm struggling with this. Why is it so hard to simply render an image from KaTeX?
techwizrd··on Show HN: WhatCable, a tiny menu bar app for inspecting USB-C cables
I am happy to package it and port it for Gtk/GNOME today.
techwizrd··on Ask HN: Any interesting niche hobbies?
I am a big fan of fountain pens, and I think they're a great hobby.
techwizrd··on CodingFont: A game to help you pick a coding font
I also got Fira Code, followed by Ubuntu Mono, Source Code Pro, and Oxygen Mono.
techwizrd··on Debian decides not to decide on AI-generated contributions
I agree. If the real concern is the flood of low-effort slop, unmaintainable patches, accidental code reuse, or licensing violations, then the process should target those directly. The useful work is improving review and triage so those problems get filtered out early. The genie is already out of the bottle with AI tooling, so broad “no AI” rules feel like a reaction to the tool and do not seem especially useful or enforceable.
techwizrd··on Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements
Whoa, I have been looking for AI-enhanced tab grouping for a while. This is actually pretty awesome.
techwizrd··on Intellectual Junkyards
I had this same issue early on when trying to adopt Obsidian. I was overwhelmed by all the "systems" and I was worried I was creating a headache for myself later on. Now I just focus on dumping text in, using search, and linking only as needed. Basically don't overdo it.
techwizrd··on Volvo Centum is Dalton Maag's new typeface for Volvo
That makes sense for code or technical text, but it is less relevant for car UIs. In an infotainment system you almost never see ambiguous strings where O vs 0 or I vs l matters. Everything is highly contextual, short, and glance-based. These fonts are tuned for distance, motion, glare, and quick recognition, not for reading arbitrary identifiers. If it tested poorly in real driving conditions that would be a real problem, but judging it by programmer font rules feels like the wrong yardstick.
techwizrd··on A guide to local coding models
Have you looked at tldr/tealdeer[0]? It may do much of what you're looking for, albeit without LLM assistance.

0: https://tealdeer-rs.github.io/tealdeer/

techwizrd··on Making Google Sans Flex
I had no issues using Firefox on a 2021 M1 Pro or my Framework 13. Reader mode does not work, however.
techwizrd··on Minimum Viable Arduino Project: Aeropress Timer
I've had good results from the James Hoffman recipe [0], although I brew inverted. You can push the plunger down with just the weight of resting your arm on the plunger. For something very different, you can brew something not-quite-espresso using the Fellow Prismo cap for the Aeropress.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6VlT_jUVPc

techwizrd··on My 2.5 year old laptop can write Space Invaders in JavaScript now (GLM-4.5 Air)
We have been fine-tuning models using Axolotl and Unsloth, with a slight preference for Axolotl. Check out the docs [0] and fine-tune or quantize your first model. There is a lot to be learned in this space, but it's exciting.

0: https://axolotl.ai/ and https://docs.axolotl.ai/

techwizrd··on GitDroid: A third party Android app manager for apps uploaded to GitHub releases
This is what I use, and it works well. It's very straightforward to add apps and automatically update them as new releases are pushed to Github or wherever they are hosted.
techwizrd··on Notetime: Minimalistic notes where everything is timestamped
This idea feels a little like bullet journaling or logseq [0] to me. For what it's worth, I do this in Obsidian and clean-up my thoughts on a regular basis. It hits the right balance of minimalism and usefulness for me.

0: https://logseq.com/

techwizrd··on Ladder: Self-improving LLMs through recursive problem decomposition
Is this quote real? I'm familiar with George Pólya's, "If you cannot solve the proposed problem, try to solve first a simpler related problem" but I cannot find any source for the Lenstra quote.
techwizrd··on Mistral OCR
The challenge I have is how to get bounding boxes for the OCR, for things like redaction/de-identification.
techwizrd··on JetBrains Fleet drops support for Kotlin Multiplatform
This is definitely surprising given they announced a KMP standalone IDE only a few months ago. For now, Flutter still seems to make more sense than KMP while the KMP world is still maturing.
techwizrd··on Using pip to install a Large Language Model that's under 100MB
If it can call tools, then it could be used to download a larger, more useful model. Or send API requests to another model.
techwizrd··on Commercial jet collides with Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan airport
As someone working in aviation safety, this is heartbreaking and awful to watch. The efforts of CAST and ASIAS in reducing aviation safety accidents have been very successful, but of course we still have so much to do.
techwizrd··on Authors seek Meta's torrent client logs and seeding data in AI piracy probe
This approach is used in Federated Learning where participants want to collaboratively train a model without sharing raw training data.
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