Hacker News: simoneau

New comment by simoneau in "Geocities Backgrounds"

simoneau — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 16:23:52 +0000

I think I recognize some of these as coming from a tiled background pack I used back in the 90s. Maybe associated with the Enlightenment Window Manager project?

New comment by simoneau in "JSON5 – JSON for Humans"

simoneau — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 00:12:42 +0000

Someone just needs to write “JSON5: The Good Parts” and an aggressive linter to enforce it.

New comment by simoneau in "Low current around roots boosts plant growth"

simoneau — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 03:21:06 +0000

Wonderful high-school-science-fair vibes from this title.

New comment by simoneau in "Man captures 'weird anomaly' of Storm Babet lifting forest floor in Scotland"

simoneau — Sun, 22 Oct 2023 00:42:40 +0000

Direct link to source: https://twitter.com/dsnugentmalone/status/171535699852548549...

New comment by simoneau in "RealFill: Image completion using diffusion models"

simoneau — Fri, 29 Sep 2023 20:45:41 +0000

me: Facebook AI, please post a tender moment between me and my father when I was a boy. Include some photos.

Facebook: I'd be happy to. Are there any more details you'd like to include?

me: Please show how he didn't understand me at first, but then he looks at me and starts crying with love and regret.

Facebook: Done. Your relationship with your father must have been deeply fulfilling.

New comment by simoneau in "RealFill: Image completion using diffusion models"

simoneau — Fri, 29 Sep 2023 20:33:33 +0000

Me: Facebook AI, please post an entry about my vacation on Cape Cod and create a bunch of photos to go with it.

Facebook: Great. I'd be happy to. Any more detail you'd like to add?

Me: Make us look attractive. Show that we're a having a great time. Also, we went to see the Chatham Lighthouse.

Facebook: OK, done!

...

Facebook: You've received 48 likes. Your mother would like to know if you had any salt water taffy.

Me: Yes, and please create a picture of my oldest daughter having trouble chewing it.

Facebook: Done.

New comment by simoneau in "I'm moving my projects off GitHub"

simoneau — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 15:01:27 +0000

These green squares helped John Resig for about 4 years: https://johnresig.com/blog/write-code-every-day/

New comment by simoneau in "The Guardian bans all gambling advertising"

simoneau — Thu, 15 Jun 2023 13:38:51 +0000

The Daily has a good episode on how online sports betting moves into one state at a time: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/10/podcasts/the-daily/sports...

New comment by simoneau in "The Problem with Music (1993)"

simoneau — Sun, 02 Apr 2023 18:51:55 +0000

See also "Courtney Love does the math" (2000) for a similar analysis of the music industry:

https://www.salon.com/2000/06/14/love_7/

New comment by simoneau in "[dead]"

simoneau — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 18:18:33 +0000

In email to customers:

"Over the last 20 years, it’s been our privilege to protect our customers’ memories by hosting over 100 billion photos on our secure servers. We’re reaching out to remind you that we updated our Photo Storage Policy in January 2023; unlimited photo storage is now only available to active Shutterfly customers who make a purchase at least once every 18 months. On March 29, 2023, all inactive account projects and photos will be permanently deleted."

New comment by simoneau in "Samsung “space zoom” moon shots are fake, and here is the proof"

simoneau — Sat, 11 Mar 2023 20:15:03 +0000

Famously, upscaled Obama: https://twitter.com/Chicken3gg/status/1274314622447820801

I picture someone 20 years from now trying to find out what their parent really looked like when they were young. The obviously smoothed-out face filters are already giving way to AI-powered homogenization. And the filtering is moving deeper down the stack from the app to the camera itself. There will be no "original".

New comment by simoneau in "Microsoft Edge is getting a video upscaler to make blurry old videos look better"

simoneau — Tue, 07 Mar 2023 04:55:30 +0000

Famously, upscaled Obama: https://twitter.com/Chicken3gg/status/1274314622447820801

I'm with you, but I fear that horse is already out of the barn. I picture someone 20 years from now trying to find out what their parent really looked like when they were young. The obviously smoothed-out face filters are already giving way to AI-powered homogenization. And the filtering is moving deeper down the stack from the app to the camera itself. There will be no "original".

New comment by simoneau in "Dried Lake Reveals New Statue on Easter Island"

simoneau — Wed, 01 Mar 2023 21:35:06 +0000

Did I miss it or is there no photo of the new statue?

New comment by simoneau in "I made ChatGPT and Bing AI have a conversation"

simoneau — Sat, 11 Feb 2023 20:55:15 +0000

Dueling Carls (2010):

https://youtu.be/t-7mQhSZRgM

New comment by simoneau in "Bringing MathML back to Chromium"

simoneau — Tue, 10 Jan 2023 23:44:54 +0000

jsMath, now MathJax, took all the wind out of MathML’s sails by rendering LaTeX equations in the client. I know that MathML is better in some ways, but the combination of downloading custom fonts and JavaScript-based layout solved the problem well enough.

New comment by simoneau in "Pocket Casts goes open source"

simoneau — Sun, 23 Oct 2022 15:02:53 +0000

I have a moment of morning when a podcast I love disappears behind a firewall, most recently Heavyweight. Then I remember there are tons of other great podcasts out there I’ve never even tried and move on with my life.

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

simoneau — Fri, 21 Oct 2022 22:37:04 +0000

FYI: JWZ has long-since disavowed this attitude, and much else.

New comment by simoneau in "Visa, Mastercard suspend payments for ad purchases on PornHub, MindGeek"

simoneau — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 20:07:40 +0000

I recommend this podcast-miniseries "Hot Money: porn, power and profit" by the Financial Times:

https://www.ft.com/content/762e4648-06d7-4abd-8d1e-ccefb74b3...

It spends quite a bit of time explaining how the credit card companies became the de-facto regulators of porn on the Internet.

New comment by simoneau in "Why are maps so hard to make?"

simoneau — Fri, 03 Jun 2022 19:36:09 +0000

How much of that $15M went into the sweet domain name, felt.com?

New comment by simoneau in "Rotary Un-Smartphone Kit"

simoneau — Tue, 26 Apr 2022 14:15:44 +0000

"So you convince yourself that you only need to implement 20% of the features, and you can still sell 80% as many copies. Unfortunately, it’s never the same 20%."

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/03/23/strategy-letter-iv...