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waterproof

324 karma · joined January 20, 2015

just another software guy, who cares about the purpose of his work.
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waterproof··on Local Wikipedia: Wikipedia, but only for things a half hour walk from you
I love this. Suggestion: make locations linkable eg. https://edjefferson.com/localwiki?lat=xx&lon=yy

Then post on location specific subreddits. Folks will eat this up.

waterproof··on Tesla Roadster
I'm not an Elon fan, but the timeline here is interesting:

The Model 3 Standard was released in October 2025 priced starting at $37k.

The $7500 federal EV tax credit was scheduled to apply to that car but was killed early by the OBBBA, ending in September 2025. Had the tax credit still been in place as planned, presumably the sticker price would have made it under $30k.

It sure looks like Tesla worked hard to hit their $30k sticker price but then Congress pulled the 'ol switcheroo. Elon left the Trump administration in ~June 2025, just before the OBBBA was passed, calling the OBBBA a "disgusting abomination".

waterproof··on Livenerf: Has Opus 5.5 been nerfed yet?
I find that I learn to "trust" a model to get certain things right, as I would trust a colleague. So, as `expectation` increases, my prompting and context management gets sloppier.

`percieved_performance = actual_perf/expectation`

`expectation` is an increasing function over time.

`actual_perf` is a stochastic function of the model's true ability, context, etc. -> a recipe for some bad sessions.

As for multiple bad sessions in a row, this is a studied phenomenon in gambling where players perceive "runs" because our brains love to find patterns.

waterproof··on The Ploopy A+ Trackball Is Here
It always seems like a missed opportunity that trackballs don't detect when you twist the ball. It would be so natural for spinning a model in CAD or zooming.

The easiest approach would probably be to add a second optical sensor and do some math to calculate the twist rate.

waterproof··on Herdr is joining Y Combinator. The runtime stays open
This is true, unfortunately. I've have had to walk away from a client because their software-illiterate lawyer didn't want me to build with copyleft dependencies.

It wasn't the only red flag in this case, but frustrating nonetheless.

waterproof··on LLMs reward expertise
Rice stands for Race Inspired Cosmetic Enhancements.

Race-inspired to look cool, but not actually functional. Picture putting one of those giant fake air intakes on the hood of your car.

waterproof··on Are AI labs pelicanmaxxing?
I recently had the following conversation with Claude:

Me: how many P's are in the following text? [Pasted text]

Claude: There are 14 P's, all lowercase (no capital P's)

Me: how many in "strawberry"?

Claude: there are 3 R's in the word "strawberry".

waterproof··on China’s open-weights AI strategy is winning
You can also try asking Gemini to create art that is "as close as possible without infringing" - I've had success with that.
waterproof··on Japan develops a method to recover up to 90% of lithium from used EV batteries
according to https://x.com/Mith_/status/2041911606213537971

> The industry standard for the recovery of lithium (remember there is a difference between recovery and extraction) is 90%, with some platforms now achieving 95%+ like those that use carbonation.

waterproof··on Show HN: I made an emergency page for my family
The QR code that you use to transfer TOTP secrets to a new phone, is static. It never changes (unless you add a new service) and it requires no verification.

Do with that information what you will.

waterproof··on Hengefinder: Finding when the sun aligns with your street
This could also be a legitimate lifesaver in places like India where extreme heat is common but delivery and gig workers have to travel outdoors.
waterproof··on Open source Kanban desktop app that runs parallel agents on every card
If Jujutsu had become popular a couple of years earlier, it might have had a chance to catch on. I worry that it missed the most critical training window for AI and we may be locked in on Git forever.
waterproof··on iOS 27 is adding a 'Create a Pass' button to Apple Wallet
your current wallet lets you add labels or stickers to your cards.

classic Apple situation - look, this is super clean, intuitive software! but if you want a reasonable level of flexibility that you would expect elsewhere, you are SOL.

waterproof··on Dear friend, you have built a Kubernetes (2024)
In what cases do you need autoscaling on your home stuff?
waterproof··on Show HN: AI memory with biological decay (52% recall)
nice concept! Beads did not age all that well, and Claude doesn't really want to use it since the TodoList upgrade.

Do you have any tricks for getting Claude to use guardrails effectively alongside (or instead of) TodoList?

waterproof··on All phones sold in the EU to have replaceable batteries from 2027
Great, now do storage!

People shouldn't have to pay $$$ for a 128GB upgrade when a 1TB microSDXC card is under $200. It feels like a trick to sell cloud storage and new phones.

waterproof··on NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers
Any day that I learn something new about color is a good day.

Here's my favorite color factoid: There is no such thing as monochromatic pink. You have to make it by combining the two ends of the visible spectrum: somethung reddish and something violet-ish. So that means there is no pink in a rainbow, strictly speaking.

waterproof··on Show HN: Free API and widget to look up US representatives
Data sources I'm using:

https://github.com/unitedstates/congress-legislators

https://github.com/OpenSourceActivismTech/us-zipcodes-congre...

https://geocoding.geo.census.gov/

From my tests so far the territories and DC are pretty well covered.

waterproof··on I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program
Happy to contribute to your lawyer fund. I want to see how this plays out.
waterproof··on Goodbye to Sora
> the things he does.

The things he does is convince investors to give him billions of dollars to build what he wants. Where exactly does that leave us?

waterproof··on Conway's Game of Life, in real life
Should be doable to implement GoL on an ortholinear RGB keyboard using QMK
waterproof··on Conway's Game of Life, in real life
Check out the video - you can draw on the game by pressing the switches.
waterproof··on Show HN: DenchClaw – Local CRM on Top of OpenClaw
Lots of folks use the Claude Max 20x $200/mo. tier, I think. Gets you waaay farther than $200 of API credits.
waterproof··on Windows: Microsoft broke the only thing that mattered
You have a point. They're not similar. OTOH, people do compare them. I think Apple realizes this and the Macbook Neo is a brilliant move.

It doesn't cost $1000 to get into the MacBook experience anymore, so drastically more people will be buying them for their kids and more families will have MacOS as their default.

waterproof··on Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft
You ask Gemini to make an Elsa and Anna Frozen-themed coloring book page. It says no, that would be copyright infringement. So you ask it to make something as close as possible but without infringing. It happily obliges.
waterproof··on Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’
Sam donated $1M to Trump's inaugural fund. Dario did not.

http://magamoney.fyi/executives/samuel-h-altman/

waterproof··on Dario Amodei calls OpenAI’s messaging around military deal ‘straight up lies’
Hmm I know quite a few real people pushing QuitGPT and none of them work for Anthropic.
waterproof··on An interactive map of Flock Cams
Reminder that at least in Washington state, all images from Flock cameras are public data and thus subject to public records requests.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/washington-court-rules...

waterproof··on Show HN: Govbase – Follow a bill from source text to news bias to social posts
In this case, I'd say only share news where you have some kind of structured regulatory stuff attached to it. Like sure, Trump started a war, that's noteworthy. Follow that up directly with a link out to structured tally of what reps have said, when was the last time a President did something similar, what are the relevant regulations, etc.

Rather than try to compete in the "current events" space you might have more success in more differentiated channels like having people subscribe to issues, subscribe to reps... News should be part of it but you should lead as much as possible with your differentiator. I bet you could sell enterprise level subscriptions for industry-relevant regulatory news.

waterproof··on New iPad Air, powered by M4
How would you handle user switching? Would users have to go through a password screen to use anything?
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