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washbasin

18 karma · joined March 6, 2026

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washbasin··on Ask HN: CAD for wood working with LLM support?
Also a hobbyist woodworker. I have had both Claude and Gemini generate files I could open in openscad. I mainly use them to generate STL files for 3D printing but I bet it would work for woodworking as well.
washbasin··on Repair Cafe – Fix Your Broken Items
I have been a "repair mentor" at our "repair studio" for 3+ years. It's very rewarding. We did have to set some ground rules: (clean your fan/vac, bring batteries, etc). Collaborated with our local library.
washbasin··on Don't be a meat proxy
Great security talk about how humans aren't setup to deal with LLMs as tools.

I love the bullet point(s) : we don't trust [aircraft] pilots to catch automations mistakes (e.g. autopilot), but we are expecting humans to catch LLM mistakes.

Artificial Intelligence Natural Stupidity - Brandon Sherman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bx9UfDHf_k

washbasin··on Getting 25 Gbps Thunderbolt Ethernet on My Mac Studio
In addition to Jeff's comments in this thread, I am guessing all of his purchased gear is capital expense for an LLC he runs for his youtube channel. That makes it deductible from personal tax. (again, all guesses, but a common pattern in the US)
washbasin··on A better way to tie your gym shorts. (Or any drawstring) [video]
Tying a bowline is one of my fidgets. Also famously has a part in Jaws (1975), though not mentioned by name. ("Hey! I got it!")
washbasin··on A better way to tie gym shorts (or any drawstring) [video]
Just by the headline I suspected this was first class amateur. So many great videos. That being said, use cord locks, not knots. You can often shorten the drawstring, and you will never lose one end into the waist.
washbasin··on Reducing tick density along recreational trails in Ottawa, Canada
Through a combination of two of my hobbies, I learned that pyrethroids are toxic to aquatic animals. Glad to see that they used "locations [that] were situated away from waterbodies". Pyrethroids are very powerful tools for insect control (and non-toxic to humans) but any place where you have runoff or ground seepage is going to be a problem. Aren't those places the ones most likely for ticks to thrive -- areas near bodies of water where animals like deer come to drink?

So hot take: this would only be useful in places where there are not a lot of ticks?

(PS: Permethrin-sprayed clothing is very effective.)

washbasin··on The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs
Very thankful for Reader Mode.

Scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll.

Just no.

washbasin··on TIL: You can make HTTP requests without curl using Bash /dev/TCP
This is an old post-compromise trick used when an attacker needs to download a payload or make a network connection and curl, wget and nc are all not available.
washbasin··on Show HN: Atlasphere – Live Infrastructure Diagrams
Yes I realized after reading the response that we would control the permissions. What may not be obvious is many organizations have gatekeepers that don't understand IAM and would just not permit this at all.

On the technical side, you are probably underestimating the access you need to accurately gather the information the tool needs. For example, last time I reviewed the AWS-Managed ReadOnly role it does not allow you to read some important things like Managed Prefix Lists.

I completely understand you need a starting point and you picked a good one. Anxious to see how this proceeds. Best of luck.

washbasin··on Show HN: Atlasphere – Live Infrastructure Diagrams
Thanks for this. Another tool in the box is always welcome. We desperately need more competitors in this arena. Please take this as loving feedback. We need more of this! This use case is very dear to my heart. I have tracked over a dozen products that claim to do what Atlasphere is offering to do, and they all seem to fall short.

The most common issues are:

- They rely on https://github.com/mingrammer/diagrams which has simply not gotten any attention for a long time. It's too out-of-date to be useful, and any issue with rendering gets a response to "go use graphviz instead"

- When pointing these tools to anything moderately complicated, they implode or create non-nonsensical diagrams. Think: VPC Peering, VPC Security Groups, multi-account resources.

- They get the cloud resources OK, but neglect primitives like routing and policies that are just as important.

Just looking at the examples on the website: Claude Code can do this natively. Just a consideration.

I will also echo what others have said: allowing another account access to ours is a non-starter, even if Read-Only. It needs to use a security principal we have complete control over.

I can't tell from the project page what IAM permissions are in your "Read-only IAM role". That's something I would also need to know, regardless of how it is deployed.

I can tell from this post and the site that this is a labor of love, and I hope you keep up the good work. Like I said, this is an area where we need more, better tools. I want projects like this to succeed.

PS: Awesome name

washbasin··on Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection
I don't understand this style decision in web page design.

I don't want to read content like a receipt from the grocery store.

I instantly go to Reader Mode in my browser when I see pages like this. Is this because of phones? Why can't it adapt? My 42" monitor wants to know.

washbasin··on CVE-2026-31431: Copy Fail vs. rootless containers
Please post a tl;dr at the top or even in the subject. Many of us are scrambling to patch/reboot our **.
washbasin··on Show HN: Made a little Artemis II tracker
This is cool! NASA uses Imperial units (well, unless the it's the Mars Climate Orbiter). Can we get a version that follows the units they are using with their public feeds?
washbasin··on Show HN: Revise – An AI Editor for Documents
Er, is right click disabled on this page? Certainly seems to be in any browser I pick. If so, why?
washbasin··on Stop using grey text (2025)
This page isn't a long block of text. Look at what Reader View does to pages. It doesn't ADD gutters and margins, it shrinks them.
washbasin··on Stop using grey text (2025)
I created a ycombinator account after years of resisting, just to respond to this post. Stop creating web pages with huge-ass gutters/margins.

If you are concerned about design you would realize your page looks ridiculous and borderline illegible on modern screens (that are not phones). Text color is an issue, but layout is worse.