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Luke Chadwick github: http://github.com/vertis mastodon: http://hachyderm.io/@vertis telegram: https://t.me/vert1s blog: http://vertis.io email: luke [at] vertis dot io work email: luke [at] zolidar dot com

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/vertis; my proof: https://keybase.io/vertis/sigs/xYfsDvweY0NsqOc7M8nteQ8V1kFnzy5NqWIVrS7E31c ]

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vertis.io 2y ago

Reflections on a Startup Misstep: A Decade of Perspective

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vertis.io 2y ago

That Time I Accidentally Terminated 600 Instances

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vertis.io 2y ago

How SingleFile Transformed My Obsidian Workflow

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old.reddit.com 4y ago

Highlighting fraud and racism on Airbnb – to other digital nomads

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medium.com 6y ago

How not to spend your money OR my little lockdown giveaway experiment

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medium.com 7y ago

Sharing 360 Degree Tours of Virtual Environments

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graphql360.com 7y ago

Show HN: GraphQL360 – A 360 Degree Tour API Built with GraphQL

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www.theage.com.au 7y ago

Why the media is unable to report on a case that has generated huge interest

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www.theguardian.com 9y ago

'Exciting times'? Changes in technology can boost inequality, authors say

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www.ibtimes.co.uk 9y ago

Australian Call of Duty 'fanboy' Sicen Sun in court for 3D printing guns at home

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techblog.realestate.com.au 10y ago

Hacking together a homebrew 3D camera

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vertis.io 12y ago

An update on my AWS bill

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vertis.io 12y ago

My run-in with unauthorised Litecoin mining on AWS

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vertis.io 13y ago

My Post-PRISM checklist

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www.eff.org 13y ago

Podcasting Community Faces Patent Troll Threat; EFF Wants to Help

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ateam.nko3.jit.su 13y ago

Show HN: Browse news stories from around the globe (nodeknockout)

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www.abc.net.au 13y ago

Australian Government abandons plans for internet filter

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faxitforme.com 13y ago

Dealing with organizations that haven't discovered the internet (Rails Rumble)

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nomad.cx 14y ago

Show HN: App to setup permanent redirects so people can still find your content.

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I've never seen as many potholes as when I visited Canada FWIW. I'm a Kiwi and I've driven all over AU/EU/UK (Little bit of US, but only really CA and Maine).

I didn't drive in China, but I've been driven multiple times and the highways and main roads seemed solid.

I don't think so, I think it's a genuinely interesting piece of information and loss of a yacht. Most smaller (e.g. 36ft) yachts are very hard to sink, often with human error being the most likely problem (i.e the vessel itself is safe and seaworthy). Bigger yachts with commercial crews have to reach an even higher bar.

This becomes interesting from a number of facets. Engineering failure, human error, weather.

I'm a big Obsidian user and (small) plugin author, but I'd move to something Obsidian like that was open source because there is a chance of enshittification, looking at this though I can't find any reference to any capability for adding plugins.

They can compare themselves to Obsidian however you like in the features table, but the strength of Obsidian is not in the vanilla experience but in the plugins.

Nothing can really help/console in this moment. But so many of us are thinking about him. I appreciated his blog, his strength. It will go on and make a difference.

If you ever need anything my contact details are on my profile and I would be more than happy to help in any way that I can. Technically, financially (I'm sure you have much closer resources, but the offer is there regardless).

The ability to live our lives online well predates the pandemic. Remote work hasn't prevented experiences (except perhaps being tied to a commute), it's enabled us to live more flexible lives.

My partner (extreme introvert), and myself (somewhat an ambivert) have travelled the world for 6 years as digital nomads and rarely if ever do extroverted things. But introvert is not the same as not leaving the house.

We've done ~50 countries, quietly, patiently and without broadcasting our lives for all to see. We've learned to sail and lived on a sailboat for a while without starting a youtube channel so the world can follow us doing it.

I find the article mostly to be flawed and ridiculous. Calling introverts selfish is obnoxious. This reads like a (fake) column from "Sex and the City".

Carrie: "I found myself wondering if humans would go extinct if they didn't go to bars every night".

How I Use "AI" 2 years ago

I don't really use them together exactly, I just alternate backwards and forwards depending on the type of task I'm doing. If it's the kind of change that's likely to be across lots of files (writing) then I'll use Aider. If it only uses context from other files I'll likely use Cursor.

Starting Hospice 2 years ago

It has been heartbreaking to follow, but all the same an important documentation. You are a true hero. I am at a loss to know what else to say.

I think both work, from a purely information point of view.

The SingleFile download preserves more of the original format. For a long while I was using MarkDownload and capturing the content that way, but a bunch is lost that way.

I also use Zotero for downloading journal articles (etc), that also has the ability to snapshot, but then I found it was locked up in Zotero. Where my current setup is a Jekyll repo on Vercel that means that the content is almost immediately accessible after the github push and deploy. Something that happens automatically after I click the SingleFile download button (configured in the extension).

I need do no more than grab the web link and paste it into Obsidian, where linking to Zotero from Obsidian is a royal pain (not impossible).

How I Use "AI" 2 years ago

Once you know LLMS make mistakes and know to look for them half the battle is done. Humans make mistakes, which is why we take effort to validate thinking and actions.

As I use it more and more often the mistakes are born of ambiguity. As I supply more information to the LLM it's answer(s) gets better. I'm finding more and more ways to supply it with robust and extensive information.

How I Use "AI" 2 years ago

I use Cursor and Aider, I hadn't heard of Double. I've tried a bunch of others including Continue.dev, but found them all to be lacking.

How I Use "AI" 2 years ago

I'm finding myself using the extensively in the learning way, but also I'm an extreme generalist. I've learned so many languages over 23 years, but remembering the ones I don't use frequently is hard. The LLMs become the ultimate memory aid. I know that I can do something in a given language, and will recognised that it's correct when I see it.

Together with increasingly powerful speech to text I find myself talking to the computer more and more.

There are flaws, there are weaknesses, and a bubble, but any dev that can't find any benefit in LLMs is just not looking.

I'm not a particularly good writer, but I've written about how I use the SingleFile extension to capture a perma web version of everything interesting that I read[0]. It's a great open source tool that aids in archiving (even if only at the personal level).

I've been taking notes and blogging since the early 2000s and coming back so often to find the content that I'd linked to has disappeared.

Archive.org and Archive Team do amazing work, but it's a mistake to put all your archiving eggs in one basket.

[0] https://vertis.io/2024/01/26/how-singlefile-transformed-my-o...

Snippets from my partners reactions:

"Aimed at prosumers...uh...more nerdsumers"

"Oh I just saw the price, $4000 to avoid an hours work"

Reminds me of a date column where half the dates were MM/DD/YYYY and the rest DD/MM/YYYY. I did manage to eventually find the point in time when it changed and normalise the database. For those wondering about DD/MM, Australia.

I just had a (contract) team member "quit" abruptly. Happy happy, oh I'm burned out, and need to take 3 months off, maybe more. I'm the last person in the world that would overwork an employee. In fact, I spend a good amount of my time pushing back against anything that would cause overwork. Burnout can happen for multiple reasons, and with various manifestations, so I may never know whether the person was actually burned out.

I've definitely been across situations where life intrudes into the work as well. Partners trying to get into a building (previous job) to confront an employee about cheating.

Humans are messy. Yes it might be the startup itself that has brought these problems on itself, but that isn't a certainty.

How I Use AI 2 years ago

This is a fairly good selection of capabilities, and I'm finding myself using it in similar ways. Aside from a bunch of the tools in this article like Aider and Cursor I'm also using Dify to ingest my Obsidian notes so that I can ask questions and I've wired this up to lobechat for a generic interface that also allows me to use a broad range of models.

I've got a 96GB M2 Max Macbook so I'm using a lot of local models where possible. The dify setup is all local ollama for both embedding (mxbai-embed-large) and llm (llama3:70b,command-r,gemma2)

I've also been using superwhisper to do a lot of voice typing.

This is true. I'm somewhat disconnected from FAANG and bay area behaviours. Before going wandering most of my career was in Sydney and Melbourne. I think in Australia early career engineers are not doing the interviewing, more tech leads and engineering managers (or whatever we're calling them now, staff and principle?).

But the brain teaser is also just an exercise in trying to get a discussion going. Okay so how could I possibly memorise the volume of a 747 and a ping pong ball, and even if you give me that it's a decent amount of complexity to calculate.

But are we accounting for their comfort and making sure they all have TV screens? Do we have to account for FAA regulations? Is it okay if some of the ping pong balls get damaged as we try to fill the aircraft? Are we completely emptying the aircraft or leaving the seats in? Does the plane still have to fly and if so which areas have to be accessible in FAA regulations? What is the weight of a ping pong ball and if you have enough of them does that come close to the allowed take-off weights?

Some of how you respond to these is an indication of how you will respond to challenges and frustrations in the team.

Yeah, these are my favourite types of interviews on both sides of the fence. A great way to just try to get inside someones thinking. I used to like pair programming interviews as well, where you just implement something together.

We used to do a take-home assignment (which probably LLMs have ruined now) and then extend it further in the pairing interview. There was no one right way to do the assignment. Different approaches (functional, object oriented, tdd/bdd) would all become part of the discussion.