Hacker News: larrybolt

New comment by larrybolt in "Fair Pricing"

larrybolt — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 10:21:09 +0000

This feels like an example of a company trying to do the "right thing" and deciding there must be a way to monetize that, regarding what everyone (even the web) is telling them.

Imagine the balance of revenue from non-returning users (think fitness) vs very heavy users, and finding a way to keep both parties happy. And the implications it has (those "paused" users still count towards "onboarded" users).

Major props Kagi team, or who-ever pushed this idea!

New comment by larrybolt in "Virtual Windows 3.11 Computer"

larrybolt — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 11:50:48 +0000

I didn't even realise mIRC worked on 3.11, wow! It was my first introduction to programming in a way.

It makes me wonder if adding something akin to the script editor you had in mIRC to for instance a game such as minecraft would serve as a good way to introduce people to programming, similar to how mIRC might have..

New comment by larrybolt in "The best $4 ever spent"

larrybolt — Sat, 28 Sep 2024 00:08:33 +0000

If you're a bit stable yourself (& used to skateboard yourself), try long-boarding (4 year old in front of you with plenty of protection, there's enough space on a standard longboard to fit an adult & child).

Or biking them in a bicycle trailer to the store/school.

Surfing is one I'm looking forward to myself, I've never done it either myself!

New comment by larrybolt in "Audapolis: Edit audio files by transcript, not waveform"

larrybolt — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 17:30:39 +0000

I'm not sure how new the trend is, but it's called gitmoji (https://gitmoji.dev/) and there's also tooling to make committing/searching for the "correct" emoji easier :D Whatever makes your job more fun, right? Oh and it saves on characters!

New comment by larrybolt in "Ask HN: Is there any software you only made for your own use but nobody else?"

larrybolt — Fri, 05 Jul 2024 19:49:41 +0000

My wife (mainly, my role has been system user/devops) wrote a custom angular UI on top of grocy for managing our household stock (basically any product we buy at grocery stores), there are two bluetooth barcode scanners and screens which allow you to quickly checkout a product when consumed. Since she started gardening she's also "abusing" the db with custom fields to track when she's planted vegetables, harvested them, etc...

Also over 70% of the lights / 50% of other devices in our house are smart (zigbee/wifi/ble) and are connected to home assistant (I very much recommend tradfri+xiaomi zigbee+home assistant). By now I'm sure we've spend over 200h on our "smart home/life", we love data :)

New comment by larrybolt in "Perplexity AI is lying about their user agent"

larrybolt — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 18:59:40 +0000

That's an interesting point you're making. I wonder what the policy is regarding the questions people ask an LLM and the developers behind the service reading through the questions (with unsuccessful responses from the LLM?)

New comment by larrybolt in "Bizcat: An 8x16 Bitmap Font"

larrybolt — Mon, 10 Feb 2020 22:21:12 +0000

It says on all posts on that blog: Please do not post this article to Hacker News.

Which I think should be respected :) even though it's awesome content!

New comment by larrybolt in "Iron particles are falling into the seas in greater quantities than thought"

larrybolt — Wed, 17 Jul 2019 00:38:26 +0000

With all the recent articles about sand running out (from rivers), microplastics, global warming, bugs dying... it sounds like we're screwing the earth big time. While I'm not the person who cares enough to completely change my life style, I'm getting worried. I wonder whether this is just me, I hope not, but then again it also feels like the industry in general still doesn't care enough.

New comment by larrybolt in "Ask HN: Tricks to integrate late coding session in current workflow?"

larrybolt — Mon, 26 Jan 2015 12:45:57 +0000

I'm still in my 20's, but I do need at least 5-6h of sleep to perform well the next day. Powernaps like i0nutzb suggests work for me too, but I wonder, are you anywhere near productive on any day between 8am en 11am? If not, wouldn't your employer understand you arriving later, if that means you're able to work more productively the rest of the day?

New comment by larrybolt in "Windows 10: The Next Chapter [video]"

larrybolt — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 20:56:51 +0000

I love that they are bringing something like Cortana to the desktop. Ever since I saw Her [1] I wanted something like that, something that takes away the need to look at my smartphone when I receive an email to know what's it about or who it's from. A smartwatch seems to be going in the right direction for that kind of things, but still, it's not the same as being reminded about the weather when you are on the point leaving the door instead of having to look up the weather yourself.

[1]: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/

New comment by larrybolt in "Can't you just turn up the volume?"

larrybolt — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 23:24:25 +0000

> If your ears hurt or are annoyed, stop.

I'd say it's more from the pushing on the sides of my head, not so much from the volume of the music. But you are right, and I have been thinking about stopping listening to music trough headphones when working, and use speakers.

> If you're sitting with headphones on for six hours, maybe you should get up a few times.

I have to say that my current working desk and rhythm is pretty much perfect as far as I know. My eyes never get tired, the screens are a good distance away from me, and I don't have to look down. I have a decent computer chair, and I take breaks about every hour, to go outside or get a new cup of coffee (but I do that with my headphones/earbuds in).

Heck, no employee can offer a better working situation if you ask me, I'm all for the working remote - office not required-idea! :P

New comment by larrybolt in "Can't you just turn up the volume?"

larrybolt — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 23:16:50 +0000

I don't often go to clubs or places in general with loud music, but I play music trough earbuds/headphones to shut out distracting noises around me. And I guess to get "in the zone". I'm going to look up if there would be earplugs that could help me with that.

And 6 hours is seldom, it's the max, but average I do go above the suggested 1 hour.

New comment by larrybolt in "Intel Compute Stick"

larrybolt — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 22:53:40 +0000

That would have been too good to be true, haven't even thought about that!

I remember way back I was trying to make a cheap wifi-powered box with a display that could play short video's and stuff. The base idea came from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ywr0A2aC_Jk, and I'd use a very cheap 3g-wifi router running openwrt as base. But in the end the firmware changed and made it impossible.

But nowadays with an arduino mini pro, i2c, cheap small displays or audio modules you can get a long way! It does however require you to purchase a lot of stuff like resistors, opamps, breadboards.. etc. And in theory, with the ESP8266-module you could make any device internet-connected.

New comment by larrybolt in "Can't you just turn up the volume?"

larrybolt — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 22:37:09 +0000

This was an interesting read, but what to me personally is more interesting is how to prevent hearing loss over the years.

I might be wrong on this, but I recall a hearing specialist advising me not to use earbuds at all, or at least limit the use to max 1 hour at a time. A dynamic headphones, such as the good old Superlux HD 681 would be "better" in the long term. (Not trying to advertise for that headphone, it's just one of the few that is cheap, good, and I can rewire myself and even add a plug so I can easily buy new aux cables).

However I cannot wear my headphone longer than 6 hours without it getting annoying. And running with a big headphone is a big no, but than again, I'm nowhere near to running longer than 30 minutes in a row.

Anyone who has his own thoughts on this topic?

New comment by larrybolt in "Intel Compute Stick"

larrybolt — Wed, 07 Jan 2015 08:34:32 +0000

It's not the box, but a small plastic enclosure with some very cheap electronics (I believe they even used a led as a light sensor) and the battery lasts very very long. I wouldn't know on the impact of that on the ecology though. When it comes to recycling I remember from long long ago that PCB's have a pretty large ecological footprint, but than again, it's not part of the packaging, so it can be easily taken out and used for other purposes!

New comment by larrybolt in "Two Simple Steps Helped Me Learn Vim"

larrybolt — Wed, 10 Dec 2014 17:25:14 +0000

What made the difference for me was a Vim version with a project/file drawler, like the one by alloy: https://github.com/alloy/macvim

After a while I got fluent enough with vim to switch to NERDTree.

Btw, such a shame vimR (http://vimr.org/) wasn't around back when I started using vim, it looks awesome to learn vim-motions but still be able sometimes to use insert-mode and mouse if you have to get something done quickly.

New comment by larrybolt in "sshrc – make your ssh sessions feel like home"

larrybolt — Sat, 20 Sep 2014 12:03:16 +0000

I wonder if it would be able to make it work with mosh (http://mosh.mit.edu/), which would be awesome!

New comment by larrybolt in "Logitech K480 – Bluetooth Multi-Device Keyboard"

larrybolt — Wed, 03 Sep 2014 11:06:19 +0000

I don't know how it's over on the iOS devices, but with my Macbook/android setup I use mysms for texts, WiFi keyboard for long passwords and couple.me for texting with my girlfriend. Back when msn live still was a thing I used Adium but I can't bear to have skype open all the time since it's impossible to make the window smaller, at least now I can use Fluidapp and use couple.me as a sort-of native app and resize it to my liking. And my girlfriend likes couple.me since it has all these neat little things such as thumbkiss, stickers, easy photo sharing... etc.

A long time i've been thinking about getting an external keyboard for my phone since I don't really like a touchscreen when it comes to typing. But this keyboard over a mechanical keyboard isn't really an upgrade if you ask me. Better get a good coding keyboard! And if you really are thinking about self-improvement when it comes to coding and working behind your pc, I'd always suggest Steve Losh his article: http://stevelosh.com/blog/2012/10/a-modern-space-cadet/

MySMS: http://www.mysms.com/

WiFikeyboard: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.volosyukiv...

Couple.me: https://couple.me/

New comment by larrybolt in "React vs. Ember – EmberNYC slides"

larrybolt — Tue, 02 Sep 2014 18:57:12 +0000

Awesome slides, even having very little experience with EmberJS and React it explained very well what Reach does and is, and why I would want to use it, better than most tutorials out there (at least the ones I have come across).

New comment by larrybolt in "The Ultimate Challenge for Recommendation Engines"

larrybolt — Fri, 29 Aug 2014 21:42:21 +0000

I can't remember the exact article, but if I recall correctly there was a blog post by Derek Sivers [1] how at CDBaby he entered similar albums manually by listening to them all (I presume back when they didn't have so much albums). The blog post was about other large companies asked him for the algorithm he was using while he was just entering them manually. I believe he also wrote that if he'd have to scale that process up he would hire more staff to do it, instead of automating it.

But I'm not trying to make a point or anything here, I do believe that in time AI will keep improving to the point more and more can be automated. For those who like thinking about technology is improving and things like that, there are very interesting books written on the topic, like "The Singularity is near" [2].

[1]: http://sivers.org/ [2]: http://www.singularity.com/