Hacker News: chestervonwinch

New comment by chestervonwinch in "Cassette Logic: technology that never dies but is already dead"

chestervonwinch — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 03:08:59 +0000

> Especially if you go beyond Type-I cassettes

Yea, I use Type II cassettes to record on my Tascam 246. I did an experiment where I recorded a track I made digitally to tape and then back into the DAW. I A/B'd them and struggled to differentiate. That being said, I have used some really poor quality Type II tapes, where the difference was obvious.

New comment by chestervonwinch in "The new skill in AI is not prompting, it's context engineering"

chestervonwinch — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 12:52:27 +0000

There is a conceptual difference between a blob of text drafted by a person and a dynamically generated blob of text initiated by a human, generated through multiple LLM calls that pull in information from targeted resources. Perhaps "dynamically generated prompts" is more fitting than "context", but nevertheless, there is a difference to be teased out, whatever the jargon we decide to use.

New comment by chestervonwinch in "NeuralSVG: An Implicit Representation for Text-to-Vector Generation"

chestervonwinch — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 14:43:32 +0000

I wonder if you can use an existing svg as a starting point. I would love to use the sketch approach and generate frame-by-frame animations to plot with my pen plotter.

New comment by chestervonwinch in "Seen on Blind: “Chat with a googler was horrifying”"

chestervonwinch — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 23:13:01 +0000

This is somewhat validating to read as someone who started semi recently.

New comment by chestervonwinch in "A low latency guitar effects processor suitable for running on a Raspberry Pi"

chestervonwinch — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 01:38:25 +0000

Also, the teensy audio library is great!

https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/td_libs_Audio.html

New comment by chestervonwinch in "Does Google need a new CEO?"

chestervonwinch — Wed, 15 Feb 2023 04:54:05 +0000

it's their unused treadmill in the living room they bought back in November

New comment by chestervonwinch in "Chipotle Goes on Hiring Spree of 15,000 Amid Strong Growth"

chestervonwinch — Thu, 26 Jan 2023 14:56:34 +0000

Get a degree in STEM, they said. Don't want to end up flipping burgers, they said.

New comment by chestervonwinch in "Ask HN: Concepts that clicked only years after you first encountered them?"

chestervonwinch — Mon, 02 Jan 2023 00:53:44 +0000

Additionally, I would say more historical emphasis within STEM itself would be beneficial. Motivate through context. Show students that the concepts arose from people solving problems.

New comment by chestervonwinch in "Why I'm still using Python"

chestervonwinch — Sat, 31 Dec 2022 03:37:38 +0000

Similar camp. Two reasons I enjoy Python, both related to documentation:

1. docstrings

2. keyword arguments

Docstrings mean I can do REPL experiments without the additional friction of opening a browser to RTFM. Keyword arguments reduce how much I have to lookup the semantics of a function's signature.

New comment by chestervonwinch in "How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end"

chestervonwinch — Mon, 26 Dec 2022 21:02:36 +0000

> counterdiscombobulating

what a discombobulating way to say "clarifying" :)

New comment by chestervonwinch in "Facebook increased satisfaction and usage by sending fewer notifications"

chestervonwinch — Mon, 26 Dec 2022 20:34:05 +0000

The feed used to be a simple chronological timeline. Then it evolved into whatever stochastic mess it is now in an attempt to maximize user engagement and ad views. So they've turned the notifications into essentially a mini version of the old news feed which (big surprise) is damn noisy.

New comment by chestervonwinch in "Ask HN: What are your predictions for 2023?"

chestervonwinch — Sun, 25 Dec 2022 16:06:08 +0000

That's the first I've heard of the dead internet theory. Seems plausible. I deleted my social media around 2016. About a year ago, I created a new instagram account. My account is not private, and I'd reckon that over 50% of my followers are bots.

New comment by chestervonwinch in "Ask HN: What are your predictions for 2023?"

chestervonwinch — Sun, 25 Dec 2022 15:48:37 +0000

> - More gentleman layoffs at Google

New comment by chestervonwinch in "Things to argue about over the holidays instead of politics"

chestervonwinch — Sat, 24 Dec 2022 14:31:04 +0000

> Several alternative hypotheses were considered-that spices provide macronutrients, disguise the taste and smell of spoiled foods, or increase perspiration and thus evaporative cooling; it also is conceivable that spice use provides no benefits. However, none of these four alternatives was well supported by our data. The proximate reason spices are used obviously is to enhance food palatability.

> But the ultimate reason is most likely that spices help cleanse foods of pathogens and thereby contribute to the health, longevity and reproductive success of people who find their flavors enjoyable.

From: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/420058

New comment by chestervonwinch in "How are you doing?"

chestervonwinch — Tue, 13 Dec 2022 14:55:36 +0000

> Assuming it's not supposed to change how you feel (directly) - what is the purpose of being conscious of how you feel?

Because it can manifest in how you communicate and treat others. Recognizing your emotional state doesn't necessarily change it, but it can change how you react to your feeling. Recognition precedes reaction -- or rather, reaction with conscious intent.

New comment by chestervonwinch in "The game theory of John von Neumann transformed the 20th century"

chestervonwinch — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 01:48:35 +0000

> there's some politics at work in who is remembered

politics, or do people have natural a bias towards giving attribution to a lone genius?

New comment by chestervonwinch in "Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan"

chestervonwinch — Fri, 25 Nov 2022 17:42:42 +0000

> Few people live in what can reasonably called a "community" any more, so the link between anonymous theft and the erosion of social culture doesn't make sense to everyone.

What do you think about how this relates to communities shifting almost entirely to the internet?

New comment by chestervonwinch in "The ethics of reclining airplane seats"

chestervonwinch — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 14:44:19 +0000

seems like the actual problem is the meager space provided in the first place, not the scraps of free room we're forced to battle over

New comment by chestervonwinch in "My dad's resume and skills from 1980"

chestervonwinch — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 18:11:29 +0000

> Why that all happened, IDK.

I'd reckon the parent's suspicion about the scientific community is correct in that it was a large influence. When ML and deep learning blew up, the academic Python community was in a great position -- you had numpy and scipy early on (both optionally BLAS and LAPACK btw), then scikit-learn for ML, matplotlib for plotting results, open CV ports, etc. As for why Python was adopted so early by the scientific community, I'm not sure. Maybe because it was a scripting language that was also very friendly for hooking to C and Fortran?

New comment by chestervonwinch in "Ask HN: Was anyone working at Apple during Steve Jobs' return in 1997?"

chestervonwinch — Fri, 21 Oct 2022 23:41:04 +0000

The meat of the question is, "where do you go when don't know how to do a thing?".

The answer could potentially be "the docs", but that's not necessarily sufficient like you point out. However, you could ask follow-ups, e.g., whether the docs have multiple facets like user guides in addition to low-level API guides.

OTOH, where you go when don't know how to do something doesn't necessarily have to be the docs, and info here can still be valuable to understand. E.g., are questions typically discussed in public forums or is it discussed in private DMs? The former is typically a better signal in my experience.