silves89 (u/silves89)

silves89 commented on Show HN: An A2A-compatible, open-source framework for multi-agent networks github.com/openagents-org... · Posted by u/snasan

buster · a month ago

Can someone please explain what this means? I'm familiar with agentic development workflows but have no clue what this means and what I can do with it? Is it something like n8n, to connect agents with some work flow and let the work flow do stuff for me?

silves89 · a month ago

In the late 90s and early 2000s there was a bunch of academic research into collaborative multi-agent systems. This included things like communication protocols, capability discovery, platforms, and some AI. The classic and over-used example was travel booking -- a hotel booking agent, a flight booking agent, a train booking agent, etc all collaborating to align time, cost, location. The cooperative agents could add themselves and their capabilities to the agent community and the potential of the system as a whole would increase, and there would perhaps be cool emergent behaviours that no one had thought of.

This appears, to me, like an LLM-agent descendent of these earlier multi-agent systems.

I lost track of the research after I left academia -- perhaps someone here can fill in the (considerable) blanks from my overview?

silves89 commented on Audiobooks vs. Printed Books: a debate as a reader and an author newsandreviews.substack.c... · Posted by u/zeristor

chistev · 8 months ago

How do you listen to audio books when you're engaged in other activities? You'll be distracted and won't get everything. That's important to me.

silves89 · 8 months ago

That's a great question! It comes up for me a lot.

I can walk through my local woods and listen very carefully but I don't think I could read a recipe book and pay attention to an audiobook!

So for me and I guess for most people it depends on the intensity of the activity and on the nature of the book. I have gradually found where the balance is for me and I've learned to hit the pause button or rewind 30 seconds.

I also pick different types of books to read and to listen to. I _love_ having an engrossing story as an audiobook. And popular science is a great listen, e.g. I loved the audiobook of Stolen Focus. But with physical books I tend to choose more involved or complex novels (e.g. Deep Wheel Orcadia), poetry, and for non-fiction books that are more specific to my interests (psychotherapy, ceramics).

silves89 commented on Audiobooks vs. Printed Books: a debate as a reader and an author newsandreviews.substack.c... · Posted by u/zeristor

silves89 · 8 months ago

Can I read a physical book when I'm running? Can I read a physical book when I'm doing house work? Or throwing pots in my studio? Or knitting? Or cooking? Or driving?

Can I stay focused if I'm just sitting and listening instead of reading? Absolutely not.

There's no 'vs' here. They occupy different spaces. All hail text, whatever form it takes.

silves89 commented on Notetime: Minimalistic notes where everything is timestamped notetimeapp.com... · Posted by u/gohberg

silves89 · 9 months ago

The Terms and Privacy Policy links at the bottom don't go anywhere.

silves89 commented on Obscure islands I find interesting amanvir.com/obscure-islan... · Posted by u/venusgirdle

elorm · 10 months ago

You’d make a fascinating writer. There's something about the way you constructed these sentences - so enchanting!

silves89 · 10 months ago

Thank you! I'm on my 3rd draft of a novel so that's actually super lovely to hear.

silves89 commented on Obscure islands I find interesting amanvir.com/obscure-islan... · Posted by u/venusgirdle

ttepasse · 10 months ago

Some years ago in a very idle moment I was searching for a place on Earth where you could anchor an hypothetical space elevator.

You'd need a place near the equator, preferably unsettled but still politically stable. A mountain would be nice to shorten the length, but mountains are difficult.

For my internal fantasy I settled on Ascension Island, part of a British Overseas Territory, at 7.5° South.

It's not natively settled, the only people there are for work, military, spooks, space agencies for tracking and telecommunications. With the arrival of European explorers there was an ecological extinction, mostly the island seems to be barren.

And the name, of course, is perfect for a space elevator fantasy.

silves89 · 10 months ago

I was en route to St Helena and I had several days of a raging fever on Ascension, and my memories of the place on either side of my illness are suitably strange. I remember walking through a landscape of sharp, anthracite grey volcanic rock and throwing a banana peel into the sea, to watch the fish churn around it like piranha. I remember going past a rock covered in paint -- everyone who was determined to never come back added a new splash of colour. I think it was right next to 'the worst golf course in the world'. I remember leaving the barren low-lands and climbing the mountain switchbacks, into rainforest-like verdancy. A very odd place.

silves89 commented on Make Pottery at Home Without a Kiln (Or Anything Else) [video] youtube.com/watch?v=VaX1i... · Posted by u/surprisetalk

ceritium · a year ago

Does someone know if cooking pottery on a home fireplace is possible?

silves89 · a year ago

Normal firebricks wouldn't withstand mid or high fire temperatures. They'd crack or melt or both. An iron grate wouldn't fare well either. You could probably make modifications to the fireplace that could make it possible, but that that point you'd probably decide to take the whole thing away from your wooden floor/carpets.

silves89 commented on Make Pottery at Home Without a Kiln (Or Anything Else) [video] youtube.com/watch?v=VaX1i... · Posted by u/surprisetalk

Neil44 · a year ago

I used to use an electric kiln to do firings for my partner. It was fun working on the process. Our house had a lowish supply voltage so I ran 10mm2 cable back to the consumer unit, and experimented with the impedance of the elements, as we did a lot of quite high firings. I used an electronic kiln controller mostly but occasionally verified it against an Orton cone. Gas would have been more economical but a bit more scary, for me anyway.

silves89 · a year ago

It's scary for me too! And way less economical in the UK than electric. My small electric kiln costs £5 to fire. My big (perhaps 4 times the size) gas kiln costs £70-£80.

I'd much prefer firing with wood. But I'm too suburban and firing with wood takes much more effort in prep and during firing, but it's a pleasant and exciting experience! Which gas firing is not.

silves89 commented on Make Pottery at Home Without a Kiln (Or Anything Else) [video] youtube.com/watch?v=VaX1i... · Posted by u/surprisetalk

MrJagil · a year ago

What happens if you put anything wet in that bowl? Doesn’t it need to be glazed? And how could you glaze it at home?

silves89 · a year ago

The raw clay wouldn't be vitrified, so it would be porous and would seep or leak. A glaze is a glass, more or less, and to get the silica to melt you need a flux. There are different fluxes for different temperature firings, but suddenly things are getting a little more precise. Without substantially levelling up the kiln tech and design you'll be at best low-fired and probably using lead as a flux. E.g. terracotta and earthernware.

Early peoples would have used wax or fats to seal pots like these, to make them functional. People do that with modern pit-fired pots too, or use other sealants.

I designed and built my own high-fire kiln, but it uses industrially made light-weight insulating and refractory brick, and gas burners, and I use Orton cones to know when I've hit the right amount of heat-work, and a pyrometer to take temperature readings. But some brave souls make their own bricks, and look at the colour inside the kiln to know when they're at temperature.

silves89 commented on World’s largest four-day work week trial finds few are going back bloomberg.com/news/articl... · Posted by u/SirLJ

silves89 · 3 years ago

You can eat as many fermented foods and do as much tai chi as you like, and you can get therapy and manifest and go on retreats. But nothing improves life as much as a 4-day week.