cesarandreu's recent activity
-
Comment on English language music is losing its stranglehold on the charts – sixteen different languages appeared in Spotify's Global Top 50 last year, more than double the figure from 2020 in ~music
-
Comment on What are you no longer a fan of? in ~talk
cesarandreu LinkElon Musk. My respect for him had been eroding, but the thing that convinced me that he's genuinely evil were his actions with DOGE in cutting USAID funding for life-saving medicine going towards...Elon Musk. My respect for him had been eroding, but the thing that convinced me that he's genuinely evil were his actions with DOGE in cutting USAID funding for life-saving medicine going towards the poorest people in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people have and will die as a direct result of his actions. And the worst part is that it was all for nothing since it didn't even move the needle in slowing down the US debt or government spending, which was his claimed excuse.
The final nail in the coffin is that he doesn't even show the slightest bit of remorse! He could help fund a project to save millions of lives and his net worth wouldn't even budge. The richest man in the world is directly responsible for the deaths of a deciHitler's worth of people and it was all done for no good reason.
It's not just that I'm no longer a fan: I won't let a conversation where his name is mentioned go by without bringing this up.
-
Comment on The legal rights of extraterrestrials in ~society
cesarandreu LinkAfter some recent comments from major political figures about aliens, I was wondering what legal frameworks had explored the topic and I came across this concept of Metalaw. For all the...After some recent comments from major political figures about aliens, I was wondering what legal frameworks had explored the topic and I came across this concept of Metalaw. For all the first-contact stories that have been written, I was a bit surprised to find that the hypothetical explorations of law seem fairly limited. I haven't developed a strong moral intuition for how to think about this topic. One of the reasons I think that it could be valuable to discuss this topic is that it can help inform how we think about existing legal structures, since it forces us to reframe how we look at them while exploring different perspectives.
-
The legal rights of extraterrestrials
7 votes -
Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
cesarandreu (edited )LinkI had posted about this recently, but didn't get around to doing it until today. I'll note that this was vibe coded using Claude Code: a script that splits FLAC/WV/APE+CUE files into separate...I had posted about this recently, but didn't get around to doing it until today. I'll note that this was vibe coded using Claude Code: a script that splits FLAC/WV/APE+CUE files into separate tracks.
I have it running right now and it's working perfectly, specially tailored for my needs. One of the key features is that you can run the split command first to verify everything is correct before you take destructive action by running the clean command to actually delete the unsplit files. Since this can potentially require a lot of storage there's also a command to estimate how much storage a split run will take, and it checks if your device has enough free space to run this safely.
My music collection has 999 albums to split, and as of posting this I've processed 15% of the collection successfully. Hopefully everything works out perfectly, I won't be certain until a few more hours.
Edit: 450 albums into the process I found the first error: some track names are too long. Gotta do some research on different truncation strategies; figure out what existing tools have done to solve this problem.
Edit: It worked! Mostly... There was one album that failed because super long file names were an issue. After having the script updated to try truncating names, I just opted to name each track $NUMBER.flac to sidestep any file name issues.
-
Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books
cesarandreu LinkA few days ago I read Thinking in Systems, by Donella H. Meadows. It's nothing revolutionary, and a lot of the concepts in this book have "entered the drinking water" so-to-speak, but it's still...A few days ago I read Thinking in Systems, by Donella H. Meadows. It's nothing revolutionary, and a lot of the concepts in this book have "entered the drinking water" so-to-speak, but it's still good to get a refresher that puts you into the mindset of systems thinking for a couple hours. It's an excellent short read that I strongly recommend.
-
Comment on Amazon’s promotion of ‘Melania’ has critics questioning its motives (Amazon has spent 35M on marketing on top of its 40M budget) in ~movies
cesarandreu Link ParentI think that past a certain point it stops being about money and it's more about receiving tributes and having some of the most powerful people in the world genuflect in order to please you. It's...I think that past a certain point it stops being about money and it's more about receiving tributes and having some of the most powerful people in the world genuflect in order to please you. It's disgusting undemocratic king-tier shit.
-
Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
cesarandreu LinkI've been using nixOS for a few months now and I want to clean up my configs a bit, switch out some packages with flakes for more reliable version control, and start using Home Manager. I haven't...I've been using nixOS for a few months now and I want to clean up my configs a bit, switch out some packages with flakes for more reliable version control, and start using Home Manager. I haven't seen any guides that show how an all-inclusive setup looks like, and how people are handling stuff like secrets and backing up other derivative configs, which is part of what has held me back from making this jump. Ideally I would also keep my configs in actual version control as well. If anyone knows of any really good guides to accomplish this, please share it with me. Right now I have a single large config that keeps growing steadily as I add in new functionality to my system.
My latest project is cleaning up my music collection a little bit. I have a lot of albums that are stored as a single audio file along with a cue file, but most players don't support this format, so I'm finally biting the bullet and slicing those up. The primary tools for this are cuetools and shntool, but I also found out there's a GUI called Flacon. It feels like a good opportunity to try vibe coding in order to get help with writing the scripts to hopefully help me accomplish this task in a single sitting.
-
Comment on What have you been listening to this week? in ~music
cesarandreu LinkThere's this steampunk musical called The Dolls of New Albion, and I found out there's various renditions of it on YouTube, so I perused those a bit. The proper studio recording is the best...There's this steampunk musical called The Dolls of New Albion, and I found out there's various renditions of it on YouTube, so I perused those a bit. The proper studio recording is the best version sound-wise, but some of those renditions on YouTube have surprisingly great prop design and attention to detail. I've mostly just kept coming back to the opening track, New Albion 1.
I discovered Fief, and more specifically the album II with the song Dawnlight Warms the Castle Stone. It's cozy dungeon synth ambiance music.
Another great one I discovered was artist: Gryphon, album: Red Queen to Gryphon Three, song: Second Spasm. It's a conceptual album about an encounter between two chess players, told purely through music.
Honorable mention to Bean Fields by Penguin Cafe Orchestra. In particular, I'll shout out the version from the album Signs of Life because it has one of the greatest album covers I've ever seen. It has a penguin-headed monkey riding a bicycle with a gun out. Bean Fields is one of those songs that you should be able to listen for like 10 seconds and tell immediately if you love or hate it.
-
Comment on What creative projects have you been working on? in ~creative
cesarandreu LinkWell, let's see... I wanted to give Antigravity (the Google vibe-coding tool) with Gemini 3 Pro a fair shake, so I spent 6 hours trying to write a tool that would help me clean up my Audiobook...Well, let's see...
I wanted to give Antigravity (the Google vibe-coding tool) with Gemini 3 Pro a fair shake, so I spent 6 hours trying to write a tool that would help me clean up my Audiobook collection. Using a mix of file and folder names, file metadata, and transcribing the first minute of audio to identify the correct author and title. I managed to get something that worked with some of the simpler use-cases, but it felt pretty brittle. During the 5th or so hour, I found out that I could switch models to Claude Opus 4.5 and that was a huge boost in quality, Opus was able to identify a huge number of bugs and design issues that Gemini 3 Pro was ignoring. Unfortunately, when I was finally starting to make significant progress I ran out of free tokens and it doesn't reset until one week later. Now I'm considering giving Claude Code a try, because I've heard that it's much better than all of the alternatives, and I actually felt really impressed by Opus 4.5's capabilities from my brief interaction. In particular, one thing that stood out to me was that Opus was much more capable at narrowing down key issues and asking me direct questions about how I wanted those problems to be solved. My conclusion is that Gemini 3 Pro is quite useful from AI Studio but it's terrible when used to actually write code with Antigravity. I think that I would've made more progress if I had been more organized and disciplined about writing a detailed spec, but I wasn't thinking that hard about getting everything perfect and was more interested in playing around to understand what kind of capabilities these tools can provide.
For more pure creative work, I sketched this out on a canvas and I've been thinking about how to paint it:
-
Comment on What are some good stories told from non-human perspectives? in ~books
cesarandreu LinkSince nobody has mentioned it yet: The Raven Tower, by Ann Leckie (2019). The primary narrator is an an ancient sentient rock with magical powers.Since nobody has mentioned it yet: The Raven Tower, by Ann Leckie (2019). The primary narrator is an an ancient sentient rock with magical powers.
-
Comment on Voices of the Rift | LCK documentary (League of Legends) in ~games
cesarandreu LinkThis video is a mini-documentary on player communication patterns in pro League of Legends. It's a masterclass on effective communication in volatile time-sensitive situations. It's valuable...This video is a mini-documentary on player communication patterns in pro League of Legends. It's a masterclass on effective communication in volatile time-sensitive situations. It's valuable knowledge for any kind of team-based competitive game, especially if you're grouping up with other players. But the lessons aren't specific to this game either, a lot of the fundamentals can be applied to non-game domains.
In pro League of Legends you usually see flashy plays and really high level execution, but the highest level of play is only unlocked when everyone on the team is aligned and communicating clearly.
The two major key points are creating team alignment so that everyone is on the same page as to what actions to prioritize, and diffusing emotional turmoil when mistakes happen. Giving clear instructions is essential for everyone to execute with clarity. When mistakes happen it's essential to keep spirits high in order to maximize the chances of victory; don't dwell on mistakes while the game is ongoing.
I haven't played League of Legends at this level, but I've played Heroes of the Storm in skilled 5-stacks with voice comms and it really feels like a completely different experience than you typically get playing solo-queue.
One extra highlight which I loved was Faker's communication strategy. For those who don't know, he's well established as the best pro LoL player. His strategy is to partition engagements into different positions (top, mid, bot) while assigning each a status (good, bad); this treats engagements a bit more fluidly since it can be hard to keep track of every single enemy when a fight is spread out over multiple screens.
-
Voices of the Rift | LCK documentary (League of Legends)
5 votes -
Comment on The death of punctuation in ~humanities.languages
cesarandreu LinkI mix it up depending on the message, the medium, and the context. If I'm sending a standalone sentence to a friend, I probably won't capitalize it nor use any punctuation. If I'm trying to...I mix it up depending on the message, the medium, and the context. If I'm sending a standalone sentence to a friend, I probably won't capitalize it nor use any punctuation. If I'm trying to explain a more complex or nuanced idea that requires multiple sentences or paragraphs then I'm more likely to use proper punctuation, although I don't fret about the details.
-
Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books
cesarandreu LinkYesterday I binge-read the first half of There Is No Antimemetics Division, by qntm. It's an older story which just received a newly edited release along with an audiobook recording. The setting...Yesterday I binge-read the first half of There Is No Antimemetics Division, by qntm. It's an older story which just received a newly edited release along with an audiobook recording.
The setting is based on the SCP Foundation and it explores the concept of an antimeme. An antimeme is any entity or object that suppresses all information about themselves.
It's interesting to explore how one would document and battle against entities that have antimemetic properties. If you're interested in unconventional or non-standard magic systems I think this fits.
-
Comment on What have you been eating, drinking, and cooking? in ~food
cesarandreu LinkLately I'm boosting my spinach consumption. Stir-fry some garlic in oil, add in some mushrooms and once they're ready I add a mountain of spinach. If you do a quick search you'll find that some...Lately I'm boosting my spinach consumption. Stir-fry some garlic in oil, add in some mushrooms and once they're ready I add a mountain of spinach.
If you do a quick search you'll find that some huge number of Americans are deficient in magnesium, and spinach is a great source of magnesium.
-
Comment on How has AI positively impacted your life? in ~tech
cesarandreu Link ParentWell, I think an experienced human would be able to give me far better feedback, but I don't have access to anyone who's signaled interested in doing that, so the LLMs feedback feels like it's...Well, I think an experienced human would be able to give me far better feedback, but I don't have access to anyone who's signaled interested in doing that, so the LLMs feedback feels like it's better than nothing. It has occasionally given me actionable feedback which I've tried to incorporate, which has lead to me making better art. Sometimes I'll give it color inputs and ask it for a list of combinations, and if any of the suggestions seem interesting I try them out.
Recently I also started experimenting with having an image model modify my art, and although I don't particularly care for the exact changes it usually makes, it sometimes gives me ideas for techniques or approaches which I've adopted. So it opens up new perspectives which I hadn't considered.
Worth noting that I'm just an amateur painting for fun and to relax.
-
Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
cesarandreu LinkNot playing as much lately, but I really enjoy Heroes of the Storm. A few months back I took a break because it felt like the meta had gotten a bit stale, after years of no new content patches and...Not playing as much lately, but I really enjoy Heroes of the Storm. A few months back I took a break because it felt like the meta had gotten a bit stale, after years of no new content patches and very few balance changes. Recently there was a major PTR change which is looking to shake things up so I'm looking forward to start playing again once that's live. It's still the most fun MOBA. Enjoyment is a bit capped by your proximity to Blizzard servers though; when you can play with low ping it's possible to actually execute clutch plays, but if your ping is too high then you're kinda forced to play without taking as many risks.
Recently I found out there's a private server project that allows you to play a really old League of Legends version. Since I never played it back then, I'd love to try that out sometime just to see what the game was like during the first few years. I only got around to trying League of Legends between 2023 and 2024, but by that point it felt a bit too polished for balance and pro play. I only managed to climb to emerald in ranked mode before burning out; the playerbase is a bit toxic because they've all been playing for nearly two decades, so they expect you to know how to do a million tiny micro-optimizations. Overall, I think that game is dying because it's very unwelcoming to new players. But I'm still really curious to see what the original game was like, before they optimized all the fun crazy and creative elements out of the game.
-
Comment on How has AI positively impacted your life? in ~tech
cesarandreu LinkRecently, I've had a lot of great experiences using LLMs to learn nix / nixOS. It can help you figure out how to configure nixOS for whatever problem you're trying to solve, and it makes debugging...Recently, I've had a lot of great experiences using LLMs to learn nix / nixOS. It can help you figure out how to configure nixOS for whatever problem you're trying to solve, and it makes debugging issues so much easier.
LLMs have made me more comfortable with experimenting using new tools and programming languages as well. Aside from the magical experience of the turbo-charged auto-complete, you can debug most simple issues by copying the code and any errors. It used to feel impossible to figure out how to fix certain CUDA-related issues, but now you can one-shot them only to discover that your hardware sucks anyway.
I've also had a lot of great experiences using LLMs to look up technical non-fiction books to read. If I want to learn a bit about a topic, it can feel a bit overwhelming to sort through all the available options, such that I end up with decision paralysis. Now you can have the LLM look through a bunch of college curriculum for what books are used to teach certain topics, and then filter that down to a single book. Even just having the LLM to categorize each book in a topic can provide a bit of guidance.
LLMs can also be used to critique or get feedback on your art. The feedback is usually a bit shallow, but it helps you explore the domain a bit, serving as a first pass. If you're just making casual paintings, it's hard to get anyone to engage with you and provide constructive feedback.
Even just playing around with the LLMs is a bit of new fun that wasn't previously possible. If you can come up with crazy scenarios or inputs to see how it responds. Although for any given idea-space the amount of creativity that you can expect is fairly low at the moment. You can keep prompting any idea-space and the outputs will generally be very same-y, regardless of temperature.
-
Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books
cesarandreu Link ParentI read Babel after seeing it mentioned in so many places and absolutely hated it. There was potential for a good and interesting story, but the author couldn't resist bashing the reader's head...I read Babel after seeing it mentioned in so many places and absolutely hated it. There was potential for a good and interesting story, but the author couldn't resist bashing the reader's head while yelling "COLONIALISM BAD". Which, y'know, sure, it's true and I agree, but you don't need to bash my head with this message and anyone that doesn't already agree is unlikely to be convinced. The villains along with nearly every character in the story are 1-dimensional caricatures or incredibly shallow. If this book was any more heavy-handed they would be selling it inside of a medieval gauntlet.
That's great, historically there has been too much focus on Western / English singers without recognizing other cultures. I remember an interview with Bad Bunny where he points out that he was really disappointed when looking through older lists of the "top 100 singers of all time" and how they didn't even mention a single Latino singer. He clarifies that he doesn't even think he should be in that in list, but some of the historical legends of Salsa like Hector Lavoe should at least be considered.