Hacker News: philringsmuth

New comment by philringsmuth in "The Letter S, by Donald Knuth (1980) [pdf]"

philringsmuth — Thu, 21 May 2026 03:09:09 +0000

Trogdor!

New comment by philringsmuth in "Google Flow Music"

philringsmuth — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:30:00 +0000

I’m a photographer, I have almost a quarter million photos in my archives. When I take a photo, 90% of it is composition, during which I move around, analyze lighting, background, aperture, shutter speed, exposure and a whole lot of “what do I want to capture here?”

The other 10% is editing, which for me involves minor color adjustments, highlights, shadows, cropping, etc. I make all the decisions.

AI can generate an image based on a prompt, and that’s fine, but I would never, never claim to have created that output myself.

New comment by philringsmuth in "Google Flow Music"

philringsmuth — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 22:27:12 +0000

What I really hate about all of this, whether it’s music, images, video or anything else, is how much they all use the word “create.” As in, you can create the music you’ve always imagined.

You. Are. Not. Creating. Anything.

You are prompting. Then tweaking, changing, adjusting, etc. The tech is incredible, don’t get me wrong, but it’s advertised so blatantly as the user doing the creating.

Use it as a creativity tool, but don’t get caught up in the false belief that what it spits out is something you created.

Old man yells at cloud. Going back to my cave now.

New comment by philringsmuth in "I made Claude slower and it changed how I use it"

philringsmuth — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 02:41:01 +0000

I misread this as “ I made Claude shower…”. But I bet that would change some things.