pixelmonkey (u/pixelmonkey)

pixelmonkey commented on ReMarkable Paper Pro Move remarkable.com/products/r... · Posted by u/ksec

Zambyte · 3 days ago

I really love that there seems to be a general renewed interest in e-paper devices. I personally have made the Daylight Computer my primary mobile computing device (even over a smartphone, which I really only use if I need GPS, which I only really need if I'm driving, and I sold my car :-D) and it has been lovely.

I use my DC-1 all the time, but I have so much more impulse control over my usage. The lack of color and the lack of notifications means it is very much not overstimulating, and I only use it if I make a conscious decision to.

Quick edit: it might be worth mentioning that I wrote this on my DC-1.

pixelmonkey · 3 days ago

What are your primary use cases of the Daylight DC-1? I am curious as a reluctant iPad Pro M4 user who thought he'd use it for reading and annotating PDFs but finds himself sucked into streaming apps and YouTube instead a bit too often.

pixelmonkey commented on Magic Lantern Is Back magiclantern.fm/forum/ind... · Posted by u/felipemesquita

names_r_hard · 4 days ago

You're a better photographer than I am. I'm glad if ML helped you.

Please recruit your programmer friends to the cause :) The R7 is a target cam, but nobody has started work on it yet. There is some early work on the R5 and R6. I don't remember for the R7, but from the age and tier, this may be one of the new gen quad core AArch64.

I expect these modern cams to be powerful enough to run YOLO on cam, perhaps with sub 1s latency. Could be some fun things to do there.

pixelmonkey · 4 days ago

I've always wanted to work on Magic Lantern myself (I am in the Discord) but just haven't found the time yet! Thanks again!

pixelmonkey commented on Magic Lantern Is Back magiclantern.fm/forum/ind... · Posted by u/felipemesquita

names_r_hard · 4 days ago

Thanks to all who are sharing their appreciation for this niche but cool project.

I'm the current lead dev, so please ask questions.

Got a Canon DSLR or mirrorless and like a bit of software reverse engineering? Consider joining in; it's quite an approachable hardware target. No code obfuscation, just classic reversing. You can pick up a well supported cam for a little less than $100. Cams range from ARMv5te up to AArch64.

pixelmonkey · 4 days ago

I just want to say "thank you." I run Magic Lantern on my Canon 5D Mark III (5d3) and it is such awesome software.

I am a hobbyist nature photographer and it helped me capture some incredible moments. Though I have a Canon R7, the Canon 5d3 is my favorite camera because I prefer the feel of DSLR optical viewfinders when viewing wildlife subjects, and I prefer certain Canon EF lenses.

More here:

https://amontalenti.com/photos

When I hang out with programmer friends and demo Magic Lantern to them, they are always blown away.

pixelmonkey commented on Magic Lantern Is Back magiclantern.fm/forum/ind... · Posted by u/felipemesquita

chownie · 4 days ago

> C genuinely is easy to pick up.

I feel like this is a bit of an https://xkcd.com/2501/ situation.

C is considered easy to pick up for the average user posting HN comments because we have the benefit of years -- the average comp sci student, who has been exposed to Javascript and Python, who might not know what "pass by reference" even means... I'm not sure they're going to be considering C easy.

pixelmonkey · 4 days ago

C is taught as the introduction to programming in CS50x, Harvard's wildly popular MOOC for teaching programming to first-year college students and lifelong learners via the internet. Using the clang toolchain gives you much better error messages than old versions of gcc used to give. And I bet AI/LLM/copilot tools are pretty good at C given how much F/OSS is written in C.

Just to provide another data point here... that C is a little easier to pick up, today, than it was in the 1990s or 2000s, when all you had was the K&R C book and a Linux shell. I regularly recommend CS50x to newcomers to programming via a guide I wrote up as a GitHub gist. I took the CS50x course myself in 2020 (just to refresh my own memory of C after years of not using it that much), and it is very high quality.

See this comment for more info:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40690760

pixelmonkey commented on We should have the ability to run any code we want on hardware we own hugotunius.se/2025/08/31/... · Posted by u/K0nserv

josephg · 6 days ago

My parents are getting old and they aren't tech savvy. The missing piece here is that I want my parents to have a computer they can safely do their banking on, without leaving them vulnerable to scams and viruses and the like. I like that they have iphones. Doing internet banking on their phone is safer than doing it on their desktop computer. Why is that?

The reason is that the desktop PC security model is deeply flawed. In modern desktop operating systems, we protect user A from user B. But any program running on my computer is - for some reason - completely trusted with my data. Any program I run is allowed to silently edit, delete or steal anything I own. Unless you install special software, you can't even tell if any of this is happening. This makes every transitive dependency of every program on your computer a potential attack vector.

I want computers to be hackable. But I don't also want my computer to be able to be hacked so easily. Right now, I have to choose between doing banking on my (maybe - hopefully - safe) computer. Or doing banking on my definitely safe iphone. What a horrible choice.

Personally I think we need to start making computers that provide the best of both worlds. I want much more control over what code can do on my computer. I also want programs to be able to run in a safe, sandboxed way. But I should be the one in charge of that sandbox. Not Google. Definitely not Apple. But there's currently no desktop environment that provides that ability.

I think the argument against locked down computers (like iphones and androids) would be a lot stronger if linux & friends provided a real alternative that was both safe and secure. If big companies are the only ones which provide a safe computing experience, we're asking for trouble.

pixelmonkey · 6 days ago

What do you mean by "locked down computer." Maybe something like ChromiumOS?

Might be a tough sell for the volunteer open source community ("linux & friends") to work on such an alternative "locked down" computing experience. Free and open source software is usually more focused on unlocking use cases, not locking them up.

That all said, I basically consider macOS to be a locked down computing experience. So that's my solution for older people.

It's not a perfect solution but the Apple closed ecosystem is better designed for the limited use cases of the elderly. Rely on iCloud and built-in Apple approaches to data security as much as possible.

For example, an iMac and an iPhone can get all "adulting" use cases done, including typing/receiving emails, printing documents, online banking, government services, and so on. Apple Passwords plus Face ID helps to simplify password-based security. My biggest issue is getting TOTP-based two-factor adopted. Apple Passwords supports this but I usually have to do remote tech support to get it set up initially. It's also annoying that right now, the current generation of iMacs don't support FaceID, because that would simplify authentication across the two primary platforms (desktop/mobile).

I would never use this setup myself since I like to run F/OSS everywhere as much as possible. But I am realistic about tech expectations for the elderly who just want to live their life with minimal investment in learning about data/software security.

But you're right, along with other commenters, that it's dangerous for society to rely on a monopolist technocorporate overlord (or a pair of overlords forming a de facto duopoly) for the basic administrative tasks of adult living and lawful citizenship.

pixelmonkey commented on Ask HN: Do you still bookmark websites? · Posted by u/indus

pixelmonkey · 22 days ago

I sometimes describe Instapaper as "/dev/null for web content". I reflexively share to Instapaper not to read it later, but to absolve guilt for not reading it at all. It is one of my weirdest web habits, on reflection.

OTOH, back when del.icio.us was good, I used it for roughly the same purpose.

These days, I still send links to Instapaper when they are essays or articles. I send links to Raindrop.io when they are anything else, basically anything the Instapaper text extractor would fail on. Things like repos, interactive charts/graphs, photographs, videos, etc.

I still think it is behaving roughly as /dev/null. I do sometimes think that, at least nowadays, you can ask an LLM to visit your bookmarked links and do some semantic search over them. But I guess the best use case is just saving it for later/never rather than wasting time on it now.

pixelmonkey commented on Show HN: I built library management app for those who outgrew spreadsheets librari.io/... · Posted by u/hmkoyan

hmkoyan · 2 months ago

Thank you for your comment. Libib is indeed a well-established player in this industry. Although it suggests a lot of different functionalities/features, it lacks detailed statistics/analytics regarding users' reading activity, libraries and content. It also doesn't allow you to create your own data fields for storing information about books, authors or publishers. Regarding data extraction from photos, I considered this method initially, but then decided to leave it until there is specific feedback regarding this. Apparently, people would actually use it, as another user also pointed this out in a comment.

pixelmonkey · 2 months ago

Glad the comment was helpful. Cool project. From one book lover to another, best of luck!

pixelmonkey commented on Show HN: I built library management app for those who outgrew spreadsheets librari.io/... · Posted by u/hmkoyan

pixelmonkey · 2 months ago

I use https://libib.com for this use case. I didn't see it mentioned here, so figured I'd share.

I'll also mention a fun coding project that I used ChatGPT on. I created a data enriched spreadsheet out of my physical books. This could then be used to bulk import into libib for a searchable and visual digital bookshelf.

First I took photos of my bookshelves such that the spines were visible. Then I had ChatGPT vision model transcribe visible titles and authors, and guess the books based on that. Then I turned that into a CSV. Finally I had ChatGPT generate a Python script that used the Google Books API to enrich the spreadsheet with ISBNs. Finally I bulk uploaded that CSV with ISBNs to libib, and voila, I had a digitized library.

Just in case this gives you any ideas!

pixelmonkey commented on What's happening to reading? newyorker.com/culture/ope... · Posted by u/Kaibeezy

pixelmonkey · 2 months ago

I wrote a little on this topic in "Putting Your Media on a Diet":

https://amontalenti.com/2024/01/31/media-diet

Written in Jan 2024. I sensed that the world had already moved on from reading as a core source of information and awareness of the world.

But in that essay, I tried to make the case that this is a mistake -- that the environment has never been better for deep readers, that the internet and the various sources of cheap/free long-form text can be a deep reading utopia, if properly curated.

But that's the issue. Most people click into the default. They don't curate. They don't monitor their media diet. And so they are drawn, like moths to a flame, to short-form video (especially), as well as other passive information sources that resemble TV and talk radio from prior eras.

pixelmonkey commented on Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven-figure business projectionlab.com/blog/we... · Posted by u/jonkuipers

scubakid · 2 months ago

Account linking for automated balance updates is our most upvoted and most controversial feature request.

I agree it would be really nice if it worked well, but my understanding from other founders is that aggregator reliability still leaves a lot to be desired in 2025, and is always a huge expense and support burden. As a small, bootstrapped team building a long-term planning tool where current balances are only a small piece of the picture, we need to be really careful about what we choose to take on. Currently there are still dozens of other high-priority feature requests that will also deliver real value but without those downsides.

I do go back-and-forth on this though. And I think eventually there will come a time for it.

Glad to hear you're enjoying the tool, and thanks so much for your support!

p.s. also might be worth noting that there is a plugin system, and community members have built integrations that can pull in balance updates automatically from some of the popular budgeting tools.

pixelmonkey · 2 months ago

To provide a data point from a long-time ProjectionLab user, I don't really need account linking. I use Monarch Money to link cash and CC accounts to track spending.

I use a custom Google Sheet to track retirement portfolio performance. If =GOOGLEFINANCE isn't enough, there is a nice paid extension called WiseSheets, which adds a =WISE function that fills all the gaps.

My monthly ProjectionLab process is to update the "Current Finances" values on the first of the month, using the values from the other tools. Works well enough for me!