thebenedict

Curious how many tokens an agent uses to take a smoke break. (Not a complaint, actually curious and I'm not at a computer)

I'd love to hear more about the workflow. Do you open PRs and is there human code review? What scale is your software used at?

I'm building a temperature controlled dough proofing enclosure based on ESP32, an IKEA Samla storage box and an inexpensive silicone rubber heater. It's delightfully impractical-- purely a first hardware/MCU learning project and a holiday gift for a relative who I think will appreciate it.

I'm impressed by how far I can get "vibe making". Most of my professional experience is in high-level software, but AI gets me unstuck quickly when I don't know something specific to ESP-IDF or the hardware. As of today I've got a circuit tested, firmware nearly complete, and a custom PCB en route from JLCPCB.

One limitation I’ve noticed: ChatGPT struggles with the details of part selection (e.g. choosing specific temp/humidity sensors or connectors). Adding datasheets to the context helps a lot, which makes me wonder why this isn’t something the model can do or at least ask for.

Were they standalone devices, or was the ultrasonic hardware in a separate enclosure connected by a cord?

This is nonsense and your cynicism is unwarranted. I personally know Scott. He's worked on food tech in Seattle for decades, and developed the product and fundraised for Seattle Ultrasonics locally.

Ultrasonic knives are historically large footprint devices used in commercial/industrial food prep. The innovation here is making ultrasonic hardware compact enough to fit in the knife handle.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the quality of this article, especially the nuance around the value of a growth mindset. It's consistent with my experience of having had to work pretty hard to learn programming.

There's plenty of greenwashing in tech, but I don't think it's hopeless. On an ops call this morning I heard about a team switching to a server type that saves ~40% on power, and their fleet is ~50k instances. Opportunities exist if you have the skills and this is an issue you care about.

I'm a customer and fan of interviewing.io but I'm also disappointed in this post. It's not actionable information for candidates.

A lot of the interview prep industry deliberately stokes interview anxiety to drive sales. I appreciate that you folks have a product (and marketing tone, usually) that emphasizes results over hype, but I think this post falls short.

Have you had discussions about this with your manager, and made it clear you're interested in working on different things? How did it go? You probably have more agency in this situation than you think.

I did light research into a similar idea, and got stuck linking aircraft registration numbers from ADS-B to businesses. Many aircraft owned by corporations and high net worth individuals are registered to subsidiaries or holding companies. I wasn't able to follow the chain of registrations through opencorporates.com.

I probably didn't exhaust all possibilities -- wonder if this is a solved problem.

I've found The Five Dysfunctions of a Team useful. It's a clear description of things that go wrong when people work together, even when everyone has good intentions.

I'll second the suggestion to speak with a professional therapist or coach if it's an option. These situations are difficult to navigate and a neutral perspective can be helpful.

They announced in-app purchases a few hours ago: https://www.reuters.com/article/facebook-whatsapp-ecommerce-...

If you'd consider an (inexpensive) paid option, https://www.ckbk.com/ takes an interesting approach. They partner with publishers to put cookbooks online. Fairly powerful search/filters, and the focus on cookbook content is a good proxy for recipe quality.

I'm not affiliated with them, but Matt (cofounder) has a background in scientific publishing and is passionate about recipe sharing.

That means that legally, you could buy a ton of recipe books, and then make your own by copying and pasting just the ones you like. You could use the recipes unchanged...

At the scale of Google Books, we're not talking about using copyrighted recipes unchanged or copying and pasting. If you buy a ton of cookbooks, scan them, make them searchable by the world and derive new information about cooking from analyzing them, can you profit from the derived knowledge? Should that change if the publisher or author made an active decision not to make their content available electronically, or asked you to exclude them from your analysis?

Love it. Keeping documentation screenshots and code snippets in sync with development has been a headache for me on past projects. This is clever!

Me too -- studied Materials Science while Dr. Whittingham was department co-chair circa 2005. I never worked with him but it's a happy surprise to see him and Binghamton in the news.

Seconded. As a self taught generalist ruby/python/java guy, I read POODR two years ago and it stands out as a great investment of time. Lots of "a-ha, that's what I should be doing" moments. Has anyone checked out her new 99 Bottles book?

How is the value of the Tanzanian shilling relative to the dollar a problem to solve with a startup?

I'm impressed at how much more gracefully 7-11 handled it than McDonalds initially did in Queens, NY where I grew up [1]. It also helps that a government agency was observant and proactive enough to partner with a private company to build on existing customer behavior, vs trying to start separate initiatives.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/nyregion/elderly-patrons-e...

I applied twice and was rejected. I didn't get the impression it was cliquish, but they're in a difficult situation.

They write thoughtful blog posts on self-reflection, building an inclusive community and working hard to improve. These are values I identify with so it's disappointing not to be given an opportunity to participate, and no feedback after putting effort into the application. On the other hand they have a popular program and have to reject a lot of people.

If you're primarily looking for a cool place to work from or a digital nomad kind of lifestyle, you'd very likely do better in one of those places. Only consider Nairobi or elsewhere in E. Africa if you have a specific reason or interest in the region.

Do you know if there is a specific bill or other measure that needs to be supported? Is it useful to write a general message in support of 18F?

If you don't mind sharing, include the number of responses you got in your email. I'm curious. Thank you for organizing.

American in TZ here. I'm skeptical of FB motives but the Free Basics user experience is undeniably good -- it just works. I put up a few screenshots from Free Basics on Tigo Tanzania in a recent blog post (link in profile).

How would you prefer poor people in your country get access to the internet? Who should implement it and who would pay?

Agreed, free-as-in-beer internet is a pretty compelling deal for poor people, even if it's limited. And Free Basics has real benefits for governments and internet carriers. Wrote more about it here[1].

It's hard to imagine (but maybe possible?) there could be a comparable quality, net-neutral alternative. What would the model be?

[1] http://www.thebenedict.com/posts/2015/12/26/free-basics-alte...

Same. Love the idea, but tried a few obviously positive/negative people and got "completely neutral" for all.

Question for maintainers of popular open source projects: Would you prefer two days of developer time/month, or a comparable cash donation?

Charitable organizations often prefer the cash [1], but open source is different -- I suspect many developers have more context and preparation than the typical volunteer. On the other hand few people will be as efficient in a code base as the original authors.

[1] (http://www.theguardian.com/voluntary-sector-network/2014/mar...)

Looked at charitably these could be mitigated with good contracts and governance. E.g:

  * Well defined procedures for choosing what to work on and for how long
  * Agreement on what metrics to to base go/no-go decisions for continuing with an idea past the initial stages
  * Contracts to specify how spinoff equity is assigned. One interesting proposal I've heard involves a calculation based on developer hours worked over the initial development period.

I appreciate that this is hard (if possible) to do in practice, and that lack of vision might be a fundamental problem. It also feels like it could be an excuse to treat developers poorly -- which was one of my concerns when I had the opportunity and seems to have happened in this case.

I appreciate the update on Phileas and Fogg! I remember seeing the launch on here a couple of years ago.

I'm curious about "idea factories are a dime a dozen, and nobody would want to work for one". I've turned down similar arrangements in the past because they felt vaguely sketchy, but didn't realize "idea factories" are common. What are the problems with them?