cutmetal's recent activity

  1. Comment on AI text watermarking is free and good in ~comp

    cutmetal
    Link Parent
    I think you're right. The claudisms are really annoying and while this watermarking is something different, it's easy to confuse. I've been using this skill, it's pretty solid:...

    I think you're right. The claudisms are really annoying and while this watermarking is something different, it's easy to confuse.

    I've been using this skill, it's pretty solid: https://github.com/oaustegard/claude-skills/tree/main/declauding

    2 votes

  2. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    cutmetal
    Link Parent
    When I was telling the father to bury the dead baby, I right-clicked the dead baby and for a (forgive the expression) pregnant second my mouse hovered over the option "Consume (disliked food)"....

    When I was telling the father to bury the dead baby, I right-clicked the dead baby and for a (forgive the expression) pregnant second my mouse hovered over the option "Consume (disliked food)". But I didn't do it - if I had, there would be no baby-filled grave for people to go to from time to time and remember at for a low positive mood buff 💀

    3 votes

  3. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    cutmetal
    Link
    RimWorld's (first?) expansion Royalty finally went on sale, so I completed my expansion set and started a crashlanded colony with Royalty stuff in place, no Ideology no monolith. We're at a higher...

    RimWorld's (first?) expansion Royalty finally went on sale, so I completed my expansion set and started a crashlanded colony with Royalty stuff in place, no Ideology no monolith. We're at a higher latitude than I normally go, there are four seasons but don't think I'll even need to install AC units.

    Haven't engaged much with the Royalty systems yet, been just trying to get a viable colony going first. We're midwinter now and barring the unforseen come spring we'll have enough capacity to build a throne room or whatever.

    One of my characters had a stillborn baby, don't think that's ever happened to me before. The debuff for the mother was surprisingly small at -15.

    4 votes

  4. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    cutmetal
    Link
    I've temporarily moved into a fairly decrepit old farmhouse. The window AC unit in the bedroom is a good modern one, but in the middle of the night it will switch back to Eco mode, which will...

    I've temporarily moved into a fairly decrepit old farmhouse. The window AC unit in the bedroom is a good modern one, but in the middle of the night it will switch back to Eco mode, which will cause the fan to cut off and wake my fiancee.

    I started off asking Claude to ingest the manual and see if there's something I'm not doing. The bot did that, and checked forum posts, and came back with this idea that brownouts in the aging house infrastructure are causing the mode to flip from low to Eco.
    Naturally this window unit has wifi. Claude found the sdk and wrote a script to poll the unit's mode and set it back it it switches modes.

    Haven't seen it trigger yet, maybe soon.

    5 votes

  5. Comment on Help selecting a mechanical keyboard in ~comp

    cutmetal
    Link Parent
    Hah, my first real mech was a Ducky too! Before that I used a Model M that I just happened to have from when I would screw around with old computers in the 90s. Some people really go crazy with...

    Hah, my first real mech was a Ducky too! Before that I used a Model M that I just happened to have from when I would screw around with old computers in the 90s.

    Some people really go crazy with collecting boards. That's never been me, but six keyboards is maybe 3-4 too many. IDK what to do with the ones I'm unlikely to use again though, I guess I should try to rehome them with friends and family, or donate and make somebody's day at Goodwill.

    1 vote

  6. Comment on Help selecting a mechanical keyboard in ~comp

    cutmetal
    Link Parent
    I just got a Keychron Q6 Max with the Gateron Jupiter Banana switches and holy shit is it a dream to type on. The base is so sturdy, and the key clack is like the sound of little ceramic dominoes...

    I just got a Keychron Q6 Max with the Gateron Jupiter Banana switches and holy shit is it a dream to type on. The base is so sturdy, and the key clack is like the sound of little ceramic dominoes being slapped into place.

    2 votes

  7. Comment on Any obscure songs you'd like to share? in ~music

    cutmetal
    Link
    Normally I'm an albums guy, but you said songs, and for some reason this one popped into my head - band is called Television, song is called Marquee Moon, it's their 1977 debut album's title...

    Normally I'm an albums guy, but you said songs, and for some reason this one popped into my head - band is called Television, song is called Marquee Moon, it's their 1977 debut album's title track. Wikipedia calls it punk rock, and the vocals do have that quality, but the song is really more of a prog-ish jam, a melancholy journey.

    In 2011 I had just moved into my first post-college place with some friends, we were drinking and smoking and sitting on the floor, and a musician friend of mine (one of my best friends) played me Marquee Moon. He had just discovered it himself, and our minds were blown together. The song always reminds me of the optimism of that time, combined with a wistfulness that it's passed. There were other moves in between but now I've just moved again, feeling very optimistic about it but sad to be leaving behind my home of ten years, where I had so many formative experiences negative and positive, and the place my dog has known for 90% of her life.

    It might just be an association thing unique to my experiences, but I think Marquee Moon captures the feeling of these life transitions beautifully.

    2 votes

  8. Comment on Once you hear it, the 'Gen Alpha melody' is everywhere in ~music

  9. Comment on What pre-NES games do you still recommend today? in ~games

    cutmetal
    Link Parent
    Never heard of it before now, but now I want to play it - do you know what the easiest way would be?

    Never heard of it before now, but now I want to play it - do you know what the easiest way would be?

  10. Comment on What pre-NES games do you still recommend today? in ~games

    cutmetal
    Link Parent
    Came here to suggest Rogue. The person who maintains bsdgames-nonfree in Debian (which is how I usually play Rogue) is (or maybe was) actually here on tildes, they showed up once years ago when I...

    Came here to suggest Rogue. The person who maintains bsdgames-nonfree in Debian (which is how I usually play Rogue) is (or maybe was) actually here on tildes, they showed up once years ago when I was talking about Rogue!

    2 votes

  11. Comment on Do I belong in tech anymore? in ~tech

    cutmetal
    Link Parent
    Sure tons of programmers just write mobile apps and web apps and crap that doesn't really matter their whole careers. I've worked on diagnostic medical devices - a bug could mean your software...

    Sure tons of programmers just write mobile apps and web apps and crap that doesn't really matter their whole careers.

    I've worked on diagnostic medical devices - a bug could mean your software tells someone they don't have HIV or influenza when they do, or that a suspicious powder is inert when it's really anthrax, or that a pig doesn't have ASF when it does, leading to the disease spreading and thousands or millions of animals being slaughtered (a la the Asian ASF outbreak of 2019ish).

    I've also worked on software for heavy equipment that was human-rated but for off-highway use. Most modern heavy equipment platforms are just as software-defined as modern passenger vehicles are. If your accelerator pedal doesn't have a physical cable running to the throttle body (like on a bicycle brake) then software is controlling the acceleration. Most automotive brake systems are still fully hydraulic but there are some now that are brake-by-wire - oopsie something in there and then you can't stop the car. The collision avoidance systems are all sensors and software, and I wouldn't be surprised if there was software in airbag systems too.

    Then what about things like EMS communications? Traffic control systems? Or the mountains of military hardware getting pumped out that's all software-controlled?

    The THERAC-25 is the ur-example, but there's an ass-ton of software out there that would be killing people and causing mayhem every day if it were halfassed. Mostly it doesn't misbehave so we don't think about it, but that's because when you work on safety-critical software there's heavy process in place to make sure that your team doesn't write code that kills people.

    All these safety-critical software standards that are used to build software development processes that don't kill people predate LLM coding agents of course, so they probably don't address them yet. Mostly what I've seen is that the people making potential user-safety decisions err on the side of safety, even if it affects hitting release targets. But I'm sure there are sociopaths out there somewhere rubber-stamping anything to get the product out the door faster, thinking something like "I'm sure it will be fine" lol. Hopefully I'm wrong, but I think we'll see a case of LLM-written software causing human death due to lack of proper human code oversight within the next year or two.

    Who knows, maybe eventually the coding agents get so good that the thing we'll need to be suspicious of is human-written software.

    11 votes

  12. Comment on Looking for a Bluetooth car stereo deck that is simple and not ugly in ~tech

    cutmetal
    Link Parent
    That single DIN with a flush screen with android auto sounded cool so I asked Claude, it dug up this https://www.pelicanparts.com/catalog/shopcart/PORS/POR_PORS_PCR911_pg1.htm Apparently there...

    That single DIN with a flush screen with android auto sounded cool so I asked Claude, it dug up this

    https://www.pelicanparts.com/catalog/shopcart/PORS/POR_PORS_PCR911_pg1.htm

    Apparently there were other similar niche units made to match specific classic high-end cars of European and/or JDM make, but I didn't take my enquiry any further.

    Also lol at $1500 head units, just Porsche things I reckon.

    2 votes

  13. Comment on REO Runabout, gas truck starting at $21,500 in ~transport

    cutmetal
    Link Parent
    Omg. This is like attributive adjective ordering but for measurement units. A fully organic process that feels right when you use it but sounds hellish and makes no sense when you describe it.

    Omg. This is like attributive adjective ordering but for measurement units. A fully organic process that feels right when you use it but sounds hellish and makes no sense when you describe it.

    2 votes

  14. Comment on How do I keep my dog from fearing water sprinklers? in ~life.pets

    cutmetal
    Link
    I'm dealing with a really similar issue with my dog. My fridge makes this relay click sound randomly, usually a few times a day, and it scares her shitless. We've tried cuddling and soothing her....

    I'm dealing with a really similar issue with my dog. My fridge makes this relay click sound randomly, usually a few times a day, and it scares her shitless. We've tried cuddling and soothing her. She's very food motivated but food < fear apparently - she'll abandon her meal to possible theft by cats in order to avoid clicks.

    To me it seems like a fear of fear situation - one day the click just happened to startle her, then when the click happened again she remembered being startled and was afraid.

    When it happens she runs down to the basement which we allow.

    9 votes

  15. Comment on How do I keep my dog from fearing water sprinklers? in ~life.pets

    cutmetal
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I used to work in landscape irrigation and you're right about the timing. The best time to set the sprinklers to run is before sunrise. If people rise early in your household, you want the system...

    I used to work in landscape irrigation and you're right about the timing. The best time to set the sprinklers to run is before sunrise. If people rise early in your household, you want the system to finish running just before they start waking up and taking showers/doing laundry/whatever so they don't have to deal with the pressure drop that the irrigation system will cause. It's also better for the yard at that hour - the water can gradually be absorbed by the plant and evaporate off as the day heats up. Irrigating in the day can even burn the grass - I don't know the mechanism but that's what an old guy told me who had been doing irrigation for like 40 years. If you run earlier in the night, the lawn will sit wet all night and you'll get mold and fungus and moss and things growing.

    10 votes

  16. Comment on Reddit will require you to be logged in to use old.reddit.com in ~tech

  17. Comment on Mullvad CEO gives ≈€452,000 to the Örebro Party in ~society

    cutmetal
    Link Parent
    Hey thank you for the deep comment. I wish I had been more clear in my top-level comment but we're completely on the same page - I too was pretty unhappy about the Kagi backlash when that was...

    Hey thank you for the deep comment. I wish I had been more clear in my top-level comment but we're completely on the same page - I too was pretty unhappy about the Kagi backlash when that was happening, and it bums me out when I see it brought up again. (But, I couldn't make my point without bringing it up.) It wasn't a good look for them but it also wasn't toxic to the point that it should keep anyone from using their product, unlike Proton and Brave (and Automattic, and Twitter/X, and Hyprland, ...). I'm a diehard, I only google with Kagi. For now I'll still use Mullvad but I'm keeping an eye on this.

    3 votes

  18. Comment on Mullvad CEO gives ≈€452,000 to the Örebro Party in ~society

    cutmetal
    Link
    That's unfortunate. The Proton Mail guy is iffy, the Kagi guy has thin skin or whatever it was - maybe you just have to be a bit nutty to care about privacy enough to do the hard thing of building...

    That's unfortunate. The Proton Mail guy is iffy, the Kagi guy has thin skin or whatever it was - maybe you just have to be a bit nutty to care about privacy enough to do the hard thing of building a product around a service that protects it?

    28 votes

  19. Comment on Should the plural of "milf" be "milfs" or "milves"? in ~humanities.languages

    cutmetal
    Link
    I vote milves because it's more fun, but @Bauke should make this a survey question so we can settle this once and for all.

    I vote milves because it's more fun, but @Bauke should make this a survey question so we can settle this once and for all.

    8 votes

  20. Comment on Should the plural of "milf" be "milfs" or "milves"? in ~humanities.languages

    cutmetal
    Link Parent
    Since the plural of Attorney General is Attorneys General. It follows that the plural of gifs is radarves. Yes, like Tolkien did.

    Since the plural of Attorney General is Attorneys General. It follows that the plural of gifs is radarves. Yes, like Tolkien did.

    5 votes