Hacker News: aethertap

New comment by aethertap in "Online age verification is the hill to die on"

aethertap — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 18:13:15 +0000

Education isn't based on the premise that they'll never disobey. It's to help them recognize when things become dangerous or are getting to be a problem. Of course kids will do things they're told not to do - this is just helping them tap the brakes and understand how to recover. The attitude that the only solution is perfect enforcement is (in my opinion at least) partially to blame for the lack of self-awareness that makes the more vulnerable to later addiction problems in the first place.

New comment by aethertap in "AI is destroying open source, and it's not even good yet"

aethertap — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 02:48:36 +0000

This comment really hit me - I have a few things I've worked on but never released, and I didn't even realize it was basically because I don't want to deal with all of that extra stuff. Maybe I'll release them with this philosophy.

New comment by aethertap in "Ask HN: How would you design a business model that supports plugin-writers?"

aethertap — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 19:58:46 +0000

Yeah, the idea of getting to a viable income source for plugin writers is what I'm hoping for. I didn't know about the issue with Apple App store, that complicates things quite a bit.

Congratulations on your success with relay.md! It looks like a great tool.

Ask HN: How would you design a business model that supports plugin-writers?

aethertap — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 13:22:23 +0000

I use Obsidian heavily on a daily basis, and I love it, but without the plugin ecosystem it would be far less usable. Most of the plugin authors are just doing the work because they have a passion for it, which eventually fades. They have funding links but I think there's too much friction in the process for many people to actually send funds to them. So, I've been trying to come up with a way to make a software product that can meaningfully reward high-quality plugin contributions, but the issue of fairness is hard to sort out.

My best shot at it currently is to have a subscription that allows plugins to be installed, and then just evenly splits each user's subscription fee among the plugins that user has active. There are several ways this could be gamed. For example, you could break what would naturally be a single plugin into several that depend on each other in order to get a bigger slice of the income.

Have you seen or thought of any other models that are really good at this, and hard to game?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45359961

Points: 3

# Comments: 5

New comment by aethertap in "Death by AI"

aethertap — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 11:36:50 +0000

I just wanted to drop in and thank you for posting this. I'd never heard of it, and seeing a plain page of actual web results was almost a visceral relief from irritation I wasn't even aware of.

New comment by aethertap in "Ask HN: How Are Parents Who Program Teaching Their Kids Today?"

aethertap — Sun, 01 Jun 2025 18:02:26 +0000

This is how it was for me too, but I actually think the world has moved out from under us. The environment today is way more complex, and it's a lot harder to be proud of little things when you see people crowing about how they "wrote this little app over the weekend" and it's already polished and full of features. I remember being proud of my little unit converter that ran on the command line, and even more proud when I got an actual window to show up on a screen (GUI programming took a long time to get into). These days, those things just aren't special enough to keep them engaged. I don't know if it's just too commonplace now, or too complicated to get started, but it doesn't feel the same as it once did.

My kids have finally gotten hooked by godot, after a few years of building up a foundation with simple programming assignments. It's fun to see them digging in for hours to make something, but man, it was a long road to get here.

PrintedLabs – 3D printable optical experiment equipment

aethertap — Sun, 16 Mar 2025 11:05:58 +0000

Article URL: https://printedlabs.uni-bayreuth.de/en

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43378114

Points: 105

# Comments: 12

New comment by aethertap in "Valve now allows the "vast majority" of AI-powered games on Steam"

aethertap — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 13:55:41 +0000

I think that any new tool just changes what's possible. At the start, we're all just rehashing the things we used to make, but faster (and possibly lower quality). This is the part that's scary for current practitioners, because the tools now do something basically for free that used to require a lot of human skill and it devalues our current skill set.

However, at some point there are people who really master the new tool and open up an entirely new range of possibilities because of what it can do. The value of craftsmanship just changes as the tools develop, it doesn't end. I don't know what new things will become possible with AI, but I'm confident that there are people with vision out there who will raise the bar on what can be created now that it's a thing.

New comment by aethertap in "EPA fast-tracking of gene-altering pesticide sparks concerns"

aethertap — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 12:18:49 +0000

Apparently it's done to dry out tough perennial weeds so that harvest can run more smoothly, and also for crop desiccation (getting the harvest to dry uniformly by killing all of the plants simultaneously).

https://cropwatch.unl.edu/2020/harvest-aid-herbicide-options...

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

New comment by aethertap in "Mini – The Minimal Language"

aethertap — Thu, 20 Jul 2023 11:46:20 +0000

I've been making a game system in which the core mechanic is using a limited language to describe magical effects, so it's a long way away from the intended purpose for both Toki Pona and Mini. However, I've found that Mini is far easier to work with and more expressive for my purposes because it's easier to put structure into the statements using the particles to indicate what part of speech is intended for each word. The selection of words also seems to be surprisingly well-chosen, because most of my use cases have been pretty straightforward to express.

I haven't really tried to limit the system to just Mini Kore (which is also 120 words, like Toki Pona, and would be a more direct comparison), mostly because Mini's current size actually seems to have the right feel. It might be an interesting experiment though.

Mini – The Minimal Language

aethertap — Wed, 19 Jul 2023 16:13:12 +0000

Article URL: https://minilanguage.com/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36788783

Points: 171

# Comments: 85

New comment by aethertap in "Ask HN: Struggling with Productivity and Procrastination"

aethertap — Mon, 05 Jun 2023 12:30:03 +0000

Same as l3x4ur1n, I use Obsidian. Plain markdown, a simple directory system, and multi-device sync were the deciding factors for me. There are many other good tools out there though.

New comment by aethertap in "Ask HN: Struggling with Productivity and Procrastination"

aethertap — Sun, 04 Jun 2023 13:33:15 +0000

I've struggled with very similar issues for about 25 years. I finally started to break through it just recently, and I give credit to two basic things: Listening to the Huberman Lab podcast (which echoes a lot of good advice in this comment section, and focuses on physiology), and using the system from "Building a Second Brain" to get myself organized. I've always had a problem with having too many ideas and not enough time and energy to pursue them all. Having to choose between them leads fear of missing out on the others, and I never actually managed to finish (or even start, usually) any of them as a result.

The thing that the second brain stuff has done for me is to provide a place to keep those ideas in suspended animation so that I can revisit and touch them up over a longer time period. I can see them all laid out, with clear "do this next" breadcrumbs for myself. Nothing is getting lost, and I'm not missing out on anything. Since setting this up, I've made a ton of progress on a wide variety of things because it's easy to get started again, and I don't get sidetracked by other ideas. I just capture them, make a note to develop them further at a later time, and then get back to work.

New comment by aethertap in "Notes apps are where ideas go to die (2022)"

aethertap — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 10:30:44 +0000

I came here to basically say this same thing. I also use Obsidian with the "Building a Second Brain" system and I can't imagine trying to function without it at this point. Notes can be functional and useful if done well.

New comment by aethertap in "Activists rally to save Internet Archive as lawsuit threatens site (2020)"

aethertap — Sat, 11 Jun 2022 12:11:50 +0000

Does anyone have sufficient knowledge of these things to have a sense of how it is going?

Practical Markup Language

aethertap — Wed, 02 Feb 2022 15:01:15 +0000

Article URL: https://www.pml-lang.dev/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30178459

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by aethertap in "GitHub – nushell/nushell: A new type of shell"

aethertap — Wed, 16 Jun 2021 13:48:09 +0000

Reading your comment made me realize another thing: Using rust often feels like the language is a successful attempt to take the best parts of a lot of other languages and put them together into a single, rational collection of features. Most of what's in there isn't new, but it all fits together well in one place so I don't feel like I have to make a devil's bargain for important features when I start out.

New comment by aethertap in "GitHub – nushell/nushell: A new type of shell"

aethertap — Wed, 16 Jun 2021 09:52:26 +0000

In my case, I use it because it is dead simple to get a standalone, lean, fast, native executable (on top of the other functional programming features). Cargo is a huge part of what I love about rust.

New comment by aethertap in "A Lifetime of Systems Thinking"

aethertap — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 15:47:23 +0000

I've been homeschooling my children for about four years, and figuring out how to achieve experiential learning has been a primary goal for the entire time. It has been very tricky for me to get it right, because there is a constant need to balance between over- and under-challenging them, and the process of struggling that's so crucial to learning is also self-defeating because it generates so much frustration. Emotional resilience is a skill that I think is foundational to being able to learn in this way, but it's been glossed over in the materials I've read on constructivist learning. The closest I've seen is the material about growth mindsets, but it's generally vastly oversimplified in my opinion.

The approach I'm currently working with is to ask them to do difficult tasks (such as math problems that don't have a straightforward, mechanical process to produce an answer), then I watch them work. When they get stuck, I try to get them to explore what they know and think about what would help them break a bit of new ground, but so far it's been very hard to guide without showing. Generally, they struggle for a bit and then I show them a couple of ways in which they could make progress. This seems to have very good results, but I can't imagine how it could be institutionalized effectively when you start to get beyond the most elementary topics. Even with only two students it's challenging to manage.

New comment by aethertap in "Dishwashing detergent hack: Two ingredients (2015)"

aethertap — Wed, 12 Aug 2020 22:25:23 +0000

Another related strategy: Pay an extra month on any recurring bills at the start (for services that allow you to maintain a credit balance). Then, just pay your bills as normal, except that you have an automatic one month of grace period for everything because you have a credit balance. This has saved me numerous times because of absentmindedness.