Hacker News: miniatureape

New comment by miniatureape in "ai;dr"

miniatureape — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 18:16:18 +0000

I had a take on this same thing a number of years ago. Much simpler, but the idea was just to see it at a glance. https://miniatureape.github.io/sprezzatura/

New comment by miniatureape in "An LLM does not need to understand MCP"

miniatureape — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 16:24:46 +0000

Is this the problem that Claude sub agents are supposed to be solving?

They say they’re are for preserving and managing context and I’ve been wondering if they help with the “too many tools” problem.

https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/claude-code/sub-agents

New comment by miniatureape in "A 1903 Proposal to Preserve the Dead in Glass Cubes"

miniatureape — Mon, 05 May 2025 11:55:53 +0000

Reminds me of the account of the macrobians by Herodotus:

> and after this [the Persian spies] saw last of all their receptacles of dead bodies, which are said to be made of crystal in the following manner:—when they have dried the corpse, whether it be after the Egyptian fashion or in some other way, they cover it over completely with plaster 21 and then adorn it with painting, making the figure as far as possible like the living man. After this they put about it a block of crystal hollowed out; for this they dig up in great quantity and it is very easy to work: and the dead body being in the middle of the block is visible through it, but produces no unpleasant smell nor any other effect which is unseemly, and it has all its parts visible like the dead body itself.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrobians

New comment by miniatureape in "My Life in Weeks"

miniatureape — Sat, 15 Feb 2025 22:42:19 +0000

Perhaps an even more fitting Housman poem: https://poets.org/poem/loveliest-trees

New comment by miniatureape in "TinyPod – Apple Watch case with scroll wheel"

miniatureape — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 17:22:58 +0000

I think my perfect phone would be if Apple chopped an inch or an inch and a half off the bottom of the iPhone 12 mini and ran a slightly improved watchOS on it.

New comment by miniatureape in "Shave and a Haircut"

miniatureape — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 12:59:27 +0000

A made a little “secret knock” authentication demo.

Shave and a haircut is obviously the secret knock used in the demo

https://miniatureape.github.io/prohibition/

(Nb: I’m sure this doesn’t work great on some devices)

New comment by miniatureape in "Making my bookshelves clickable"

miniatureape — Sat, 17 Feb 2024 22:09:55 +0000

I would really love a control-f for the real world.

Imagine you have a list of wines you want to try, or used books you’re hoping to buy.

In the store you open your phone and scan the shelves with your camera and if it finds any matches from your lists, it shows you them on the screen.

New comment by miniatureape in "Remembering Bell Labs as legendary idea factory prepares to leave N.J. home"

miniatureape — Mon, 22 Jan 2024 01:23:47 +0000

The building in that show is the Holmdel location. Murray Hill is a different campus.

The best and worst of 1994 and predictions for '95

miniatureape — Tue, 23 Aug 2022 01:08:29 +0000

Article URL: http://www.panix.com/~kgreenb/iw/bwv6n1.htm

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32559363

Points: 162

# Comments: 102

New comment by miniatureape in "Ask HN: Starting a Career in Programming at 61?"

miniatureape — Fri, 25 Mar 2022 16:03:07 +0000

I would try to identify an ecosystem where he could start building on his own: Custom Shopify functionality, Wordpress plugins etc. he can try to find small customers with simple needs and scale up as he learns. The ecosystem will provide him some guardrails and shrink the surface area to something manageable. You could coach him as he goes if you have time.

New comment by miniatureape in "Russian forces invade Ukraine after Putin orders attack"

miniatureape — Thu, 24 Feb 2022 13:36:56 +0000

What is the best way to help people in Ukraine? Are there charities or organizations that I can donate to?

New comment by miniatureape in "The Block Protocol"

miniatureape — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 21:26:12 +0000

I think this is a really cool idea and something I have personally wanted (or at least thought I wanted) for a long time. In fact I wrote about a similar idea in 2013.[1]

To me, this is just one part of something bigger though. I want to be able to store code in blocks and compose them into bigger blocks by chaining them and pipelining them. I'd also like versioning and some access rules.

https://justindonato.com/notebook/urls-as-pointers.html

New comment by miniatureape in "Chesterton’s Fence (2020)"

miniatureape — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 13:55:21 +0000

I think the point of the fence is to move the impulse from yourself (If I can't see the reason there must not be one) to the greater context (Someone had a reason for this at some point, let me see if I can try to understand).

Related to Chesterton's fence is Levi's Onion:

https://www.joeydevilla.com/2001/12/03/4419/

Which is sort of a Chesterton's fence situation where someone took those required steps.

New comment by miniatureape in "Using a mild Twitter addiction to get things done"

miniatureape — Tue, 04 Jan 2022 00:13:55 +0000

I’ve been considering getting an Apple Watch with cell service, so I can just leave my phone in a drawer most of the day but still be a answer 2fa pushes and be in touch in case of emergencies.

But I’m worried I’m trying to fix the problem with more technology.

Anyone try this out?

New comment by miniatureape in "Ask HN: Are new ThinkPads still worthy?"

miniatureape — Thu, 09 Dec 2021 21:43:21 +0000

I have a 7th generation as well. I had an issue with screen flicker, but I sent it back and the fixed it promptly (for free) and its been fine since.

Otherwise, its been very good. I used this guide to set up the dual boot with https://www.mikekasberg.com/blog/2020/04/08/dual-boot-ubuntu..., with some small changes because that is a dell machine.

I have the UHD display and the type is a bit small, but the scaling works well.

The only thing that is a little flaky is the fingerprint reader. The battery, with Ubuntu, is not great, but fine for my uses.

New comment by miniatureape in "Show HN: I had some time yesterday so I made a GPT3 podcast to help you sleep"

miniatureape — Fri, 03 Dec 2021 14:59:11 +0000

I want this, but instead of fairy tales I want the sounds of a really boring, never-ending baseball game without ads.

New comment by miniatureape in "An unexpected victory: container stacking at the port of Los Angeles"

miniatureape — Thu, 28 Oct 2021 16:38:55 +0000

What will people be watching to see the effect? Is there any data published that would show an increase in freight behind moved because of this change?

Tech giants brace for impact in India as new payments rule goes into effect

miniatureape — Fri, 01 Oct 2021 18:01:27 +0000

Article URL: https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/30/india-recurring-payments-rbi/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28721624

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by miniatureape in "California aims to ban recycling symbols on things that aren’t recyclable"

miniatureape — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 17:31:42 +0000

https://theconversation.com/heres-how-many-times-you-actuall...

Links to two studies which place the number of times you must reuse a cotton bag between 130-7100 times.

Pumpers, Dumpers, and Shills: The Skycoin Saga

miniatureape — Wed, 18 Aug 2021 10:22:29 +0000

Article URL: https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/pumpers-dumpers-and-shills-the-skycoin-saga

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28219414

Points: 2

# Comments: 1