Hacker News: ek_erilaz

New comment by ek_erilaz in "Local Wikipedia: Wikipedia, but only for things a half hour walk from you"

ek_erilaz — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 18:00:04 +0000

I wonder if its more common to notice interesting and special places when in nature versus in the built environment. All of your examples are from nature, and most of mine would be too. But considering it further... in college there was a nook I found on the second floor of a nondescript building, where lounge chairs were built into the floor and covered with astroturf, and at just after midday the sun would shine down on it through a sort of compluvium in the roof. I'd been on that campus for almost three years before I discovered it, and only visited a few times because it was quite out of the way. But what a quiet little refuge, I hope its still there.

New comment by ek_erilaz in "Local Wikipedia: Wikipedia, but only for things a half hour walk from you"

ek_erilaz — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 17:48:51 +0000

This is so cool! Looking at my own city, most of the points of interest are public buildings; somehow the fact that its MY fire department building makes it relevant to me. Otherwise I'd probably never read an article about the history of a random fire department building. A few other commenters have mentioned that information feels more interesting when its physically close to you, I agree.

I had an idea a while back to gather audio recordings of people telling stories of their adventures in my area (Alaska) and placing them on a map, with the arbitrary restriction that you have to physically go to the place the story happened to unlock it. It works, and I think its pretty cool, but also found it takes a TON of time meeting with people, recording, cleaning up the audio... after about 100 stories I slowed down on the project. But if anyone here lives in Alaska, you can listen to these stories (mobile app only) for free at https://loremaps.io/app. Someday I hope to get back to it.

New comment by ek_erilaz in "Shutting down our public encrypted DNS"

ek_erilaz — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 17:12:04 +0000

Thanks for this! I was looking at your transparency report (https://quad9.net/about/transparency-report/) and I notice 2026 is not included in the 'list of years in which we have not received a request for data', despite the list being updated quarterly according to the text below it. When I saw the page earlier, I assumed that either the list isn't actually updated quarterly, or I'd discovered an exciting example of a warrant canary.

New comment by ek_erilaz in "Automating Immersive Reading"

ek_erilaz — Sun, 30 Aug 2026 18:52:20 +0000

I'd never considered such a tool before today, but the example sparked the exact same idea for me, as if it were the most obvious next step to invert the causal direction and externalize the inner reading voice (instead of trying to force the internal reading to follow the external audio). I'm not sure that it would improve reading comprehension or make the experience better in some ineffable way, but it would be really interesting to try it out. Questions arise:

- Would it help with reading comprehension? Speed? Enjoyment?

- If the audio was your own synthesized voice, would that help comprehension and immersion?

- If the audio was in a voice very different from your own, and you used this system for several hours a day, would it change your natural inner reading voice, or even some other aspect of your self-perception? I don't believe I've experienced Such a tight coupling between thoughts driving external responses before; I didn't expect to do so until real-time brain scanning got a lot better than current SotA.

- While reading, I frequently speed along and then jump back a word, sentence, or paragraph to slowly review it. In this system, the audio would slow down as I read back through more slowly, almost sounding out words along with me. I just read a book filled with the names of obscure french villages, and I couldn't just ignore them - instead bogged down in sounding them out and trying to guess how to pronounce them. Having a system sounding them out with/for me would have been awesome. This assumes the system is good at pronouncing things in various languages (mostly solved problem), and picking sane defaults when pronunciation conflicts arise (mostly unsolved?). In those cases, how hard would inferring be? Google translate is pretty good at generating localized pronunciations, but TTS systems struggle.

- Specifically for non-technical reading, it would be interesting to try having a very low level of ambient noise backgrounding the speech, driven by an LLM analyzing the text for obvious cues. Tavern sounds, rushing of wind in the mountains, crackling campfire, or even music generation (creepy dungeon etc etc)... When you pause reading for a moment to look away from the book, the speech obviously stops - but the tavern sounds continue. Might help people 'lock in' who normally get distracted from whatever they're reading.

New comment by ek_erilaz in "Out-braking the ABS myth [video]"

ek_erilaz — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 23:02:53 +0000

Same, for the "education"! In my hometown, lakes and rivers remained frozen for half the year. There were two such lakes separated by narrow dirt trails through the trees. Each winter, some kind soul went out there with their plow and created a drifting course that snaked around one lake, through the woods, wound around the other lake, and back. We'd take whatever vehicles we had access to and race there at night. I'll never forget careening around that track with the windows down, snow blowing in, music blaring, swerving around my friend's mom's minivan and trying to fend off another buddy in his rusty Toyota pickup.

I like to think we became safer winter drivers as a result.

New comment by ek_erilaz in "Underwater Chain Saws"

ek_erilaz — Sat, 14 Oct 2023 04:59:30 +0000

Your intuition was spot on! I used to cut concrete for a living, and we had several hydraulic chainsaws. The torque on those things was incredible. They were quieter than gas chainsaws, even factoring in the diesel-powered hydraulic pump in the trailer nearby. The main drawback, as other commenters mentioned, was portability. The saw itself was shockingly light (which made the torque that much more surprising) and portable - until you ran out of hydraulic line! Plus you always had to watch your lines to make sure they weren't going to get cut by a blade, pinched under a falling piece of concrete, or crushed under some piece of mechanized equipment. Interestingly, there were three lines - hydraulic in, hydraulic out, and a water hose to spray on the cutting surface and keep the dust down. It's been a decade since I worked that job, but I still clearly remember the feeling of revving one of those things up, watching the water fly everywhere, and grinning as I just carved straight into a solid concrete wall - rebar and everything. It was a delight.