cillian64

Joined 12 years ago

Karma
810
Submissions
199
Member since
Jul 14
Embedded design engineer in Cambridge, UK.
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Recent submissions

Comment · 2 days ago
In case you didn’t know, there’s a lightspreader mod for the backlight which makes it a lot less terrible. I did it on my f91, the backlight still looks a bit odd but it’s much more readable
Comment · 2 days ago
Thinking about it, even a lot of fancy fashion watch brands seem to do this, “Quartz”, “water resist 20m”, however many jewels. The old Casio watches are a bit worse for it though.

But check out the Casio MQ-24, it’s cheap and cheerful but has a much plainer face.

Comment · 1 month ago
You could move the settings app to a less-used home-screen page, or you can remove the settings icon from the home screen entirely.

It's mildly annoying to have to do the swipe-down-and-search to get to settings but it's not an app I use all that often.

Comment · 1 month ago
As someone who is usually on the other side of this interaction (software engineer at a company receiving bug reports), it's much easier when people write in their own words (even if they sometimes use the wrong terms or say something which can't be true) than when they use an LLM to make things clear and correct. I want to know what you're trying to do, what you expected to happen, and what actually happened - that doesn't benefit from having an LLM rewrite it.

Sure, I use precise and technical language, but I'm still a human and I can understand what people are getting at when they use imprecise terms. But if the text passes through an LLM I can't tell whether the result actually matches the original problem or whether the LLM has made guesses or filled in blanks.

Comment · 1 month ago
A free claude account with no subscription gets you access to sonnet and I believe uses it by default over haiku
Comment · 2 months ago
Generally the claude jargon is valid jargon I’ve seen real people use, it just uses jargon so much more often than a human would. And because it has particular jargon it likes, and claude is widely used, you see so much of that particular jargon that you get sick of it.

It’s like having one coworker with a very particular writing style which is mildly annoying, but then it suddenly feels like half the internet was written by that one person and it becomes a lot more annoying.

Comment · 2 months ago
Comment · 2 months ago
I think by "dangerous" they include things like "makes an edit to a config file outside the current project", not just "wipes the production database". So "dangerous" commands just means things we should ask the user for confirmation, not commands which definitely cause irreversible damage.
Comment · 2 months ago
I changed from cursor to claude code a couple of weeks ago and this is the biggest difference I've noticed. cursor very rarely had to ask for permission for a command because it almost always used builtin find/read/edit tools. Whereas claude code makes extensive use of unix tools with mysterious flags which are basically impossible to whitelist and pretty impractical to manually review.

Overall claude code seems better at "just get things done" if you blindly trust it, but cursor was much better at keeping the human in the loop.

Comment · 2 months ago
sed can be used to edit files (with the -i option). Not sure how this interacts with piping to its STDIN, but I wouldn't automatically assume `grep | sed` is safe.

I was thinking about this the other day, standard UNIX utilities seem poorly suited for this because they have so many weird options/flags with "unsafe" side effects. I have no idea if grep, for example, has some niche option to make it write/edit/delete files, so I wouldn't be comfortable blanket whitelisting it.

Comment · 5 months ago
Even for extended workloads, a Pi 5 without a heatsink is still a hell of a lot faster than a Pi 4. And as sibling says, most users appreciate bursty speed while not doing prelonged compute (see also fanless laptops).

(Disclaimer, I work for raspberry pi ltd, not views of employer etc.)

Comment · 5 months ago
You could say almost the same about Gorillaz except for the AI part.
Comment · 5 months ago
I had that style of integrated panels installed on my (Victorian) house in the UK. The slates were old and crumbling so needed replacing and doing integrated panels meant only needing a fraction as much slate which saved a chunk of money. I think the result also looks a lot better than non-integrated panels, at least with slate roofs (which are common in my area)

Apparently integrated panels can be a little less efficient in hot weather as they don't get cooled by airflow under the panels and are less efficient when hotter. But it's a pretty minor effect, maybe a few percent of output. Seems like the best option on a new-build or if you're re-roofing anyway.

Comment · 6 months ago
To look at it another way, just because some code I work on at my job is derived from open source MIT-licensed code doesn't mean I personally have the right to distribute it if my company doesn't want me to. I'd guess this comes under some generic "confidential information" clause in the employment contract.
Comment · 7 months ago
It'll be the same as larger inverters for roof-top solar - they are constantly monitoring the mains cycle and will shut off if the voltage (or probably frequency too?) goes out of range, let alone drops out entirely. The relevant standards in the UK are G98/G99.

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