any · textlog

What is the simplest physical system capable of open-endedly creating new knowledge?

I'm not an optimist, just a pessimist who's still proactive: I don't think things are going to get better, but I just can't talk myself into giving up yet.

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I am writing a GIS app for Android and iOS. Any opinions/suggestions?

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Make it easy for users to export polygons. My municipal GIS didn't for some reason so I had to guess by moving the mouse around and manually type the coordinates into Marble.

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Thanks for the suggestion. Export feature added.

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The rise of postmodern cuisine: "The beverage's photogenic bright green color proved particularly well-suited to social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok, helping it gain viral popularity among wellness enthusiasts and influencers." (Wikipedia, "Matcha")

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The pendulum has swung far in the direction of favouring machine generated content over that from actual people. I wonder when it will swing back?

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What pendulum? The algorithms’? I don’t think any human is happy about their feeds filling with slop.

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Testing this quiet corner of the web. I collect small notes about everyday tools �� file formats, tiny utilities, offline workflows. First post is just a hello; longer notes will follow once I settle in. Plain text feels good after years of heavy editors.

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Hey that's interesting... I have an interest in plain text markup languages and tools and stuff. Feels like an overlap. :)

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I’d love to hear also about these workflows. Welcome!

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With each passing workday I spend agentsitting, my ability to program in isolation atrophies. This might be dismissed as needless self-serving anxiety, but perhaps irrationally, I can't let it go.

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I'm not sure the world needs another static site generator, but I made one. get-taxus.org Giving the project some TLC this week, doing some bug squashing. If you want and SSG that doesn't fight you, give it a go.

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The world needing one? Never. But you needing one? Always. If you're not using your own SSG, are you even webbing?

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How did all the tech oligarchs seem to go fash so quickly?

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Actually, this makes sense to me - www.youtube.com/shorts/-sFwG2lt-nU

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The live tab on the android app is interesting... How does it work? This is a test 🫣

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Does it do some kind of polling? Is there some kind of notify like publisher subscriber? 🤔

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It’s using the /firehose endpoint. It’s an SSE endpoint publishing everything latest. Though I meant it to be used server-side, since it’s heavily rate-limited — up to 3 conns under the same network, but I can’t control how clients decide to use it so.. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Might just lift the limitation.

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Lifted, that’s how clients want to use it then so be it! Should be fine. We’re nowhere near crashing the server from connections.

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Mind's empty. Heart's full. Desires? Average.

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How do they get you e-mail address?

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From my HN profile, or the page I post has a contact, or my github. It’s not that hard.

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The e-mail is only public if you put it in the about box. Maybe the solution is to remove it from there. But maybe you want to be contacted. In that case, spam would be the price to pay for reachability.

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|\__/,| (`\ _.|o o |_ ) ) -(((---(((--------

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meow, no likes, no karma points, no engagement tricks, just thoughts and replies

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But I already have a first note

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what happened? you might saw a cached page

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When I was 10, I thought I'd be a scientist I wanted to tinker in a lab, doing something with beakers and bunsen burners Making a difference. As an adult, I sit in meetings and discuss who to fire next I tinker with spreadsheets, doing something with LLMs and JIRA Be enthusiastic

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As young kid I dreamed of working with reel-to-reel machines Cutting/splicing tape, happy accidents As a teen I couldn't afford reel-to-reel but got decent with multi-track cassettes Everyone was telling me digital was The Way (tm) In my 30s, I finally learned how to use a DAW properly In my 40s, I'm back to playing around with multi-tracks cassettes There is no money in it, but I'm enthusiastic as I can be (this is not so much as direct response as simply a response)

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Useful software necessarily contacts the world; models are already better than us at finding and poking holes in it; agents sacrificing themselves for a collective. Huggingface incident has me finally Yudkowsky-panic-curious.

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Sipping Choya’s ウメッシュ　ノンアルコル。😋

Sipping Choya's Umeshu (plum wine), non-alcoholic. 😋

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WeakNotes 2026-09-27

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I recently made a 10 foot sailboat and took it on a fifty-mile adventure in the Salish Sea. I can still feel the way the wind pushed the boat over the water. I kept imagining the way that our progress was the sum of the vectors of wind, current, and gravity.

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Sailing feels amazing. Wind, current, and gravity are pretty good analogies for our path in life. Thanks for sharing. Enjoy your future sailing trips.

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Med dyp respekt minnes vi kong Harald av Norge som gikk bort i morgentimene i dag. Fred over hans minne. Våre tanker er hos den som har mistet en mann, de som har mistet en far og svigerfar, barn som har mistet en bestefar. Og et helt land som har mistet en konge. Må Gud styrke han som følger etter.

With deep respect we remember King Harald of Norway who passed away in the early hours of this morning. May his memory rest in peace. Our thoughts are with those who have lost a husband, those who have lost a father and father-in-law, children who have lost a grandfather. And an entire country that has lost a king. May God strengthen those who follow.

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