walton_simons (u/walton_simons)

walton_simons commented on Ask HN: Any good Silicon Valley Photo coffee table books? · Posted by u/vclouder

marcuskaz · 2 years ago

Not a book, and a bit self promotional, but I have a small photo series I worked on https://mkaz.com/silicon-valley/

Also, look for Silicon Valley '07 by Gabriele Basilico, it's a photo book - not a huge coffee table book but pretty good with about 80-100 photos from 2007

walton_simons · 2 years ago

I really love this. It makes me feel weirdly nostalgic, even though I've never been to California, or indeed the US. As a tech-obsessed teenager in the 90s, some of the older companies here felt almost mythical at the time. Plus lots of California generally would show up in so much pop culture, films, music videos and so on, and the sort of vintage-y vibe I'm getting here feels really reminiscent of that.

walton_simons commented on Google removed my Yubikeys from a Google account 'just to be safe' lunnova.dev/articles/goog... · Posted by u/nalllar

kkfx · 3 years ago

Personally, just to be safe I have ceased to use many "big name" services, preferring for instance to have my mails locally, paying a service (not that much) with a hotline... My personal policy is: if I can't phone them, if I have no local registered office to contact in case of need, if I do not have my data locally in usable forms, that's means is not safe for me going with them.

walton_simons · 3 years ago

One of my personal rules for life is that wherever possible I avoid businesses which are big enough to have call centres, especially if those call centres are in another country. Obviously that's impossible for a lot of things, but I try. The small local ISP I use, for example, is totally worth the additional cost. I can call them, and there's no "press 6 for support, your call is important to us" nonsense. A couple of rings, and I'm stright through to an expert who has the knowledge and authority to fix my problem right away.

walton_simons commented on Ask HN: Are things getting more convenient but less satisfying? · Posted by u/agomez314

walton_simons · 3 years ago

I do music production as a hobby, and I definitely see this. You can get a lot of plugins these days that will do all sorts of auto generation for you — chord progressions, melodies, stylistic aspects, variations, and so on, and a lot of them are incredibly high quality.

Each to their own of course, and if I was on the clock and doing this for money I think I'd love to be able to click a button and create an authentic-sounding Motown bassline or whatever, but for me... while it does sound great, and somewhat depressingly is almost certainly better than what I could create by myself, I find it quite an empty and unsatisfying way of working. I loved it at the start — look how fast I can make a track! — but I've been slowly moving away from this sort of thing, and I'm back to having more fun as a result.

walton_simons commented on The effects of sleep debt nytimes.com/2022/06/24/he... · Posted by u/bookofjoe

strangescript · 3 years ago

Little Anecdotal bit:

In 2020 I started getting this weird perpetual minor unsteadiness. Like I could not stand still, I sort of swayed, or at least it felt like I was swaying. My doctor said it was too minor to really be anything, I was fine. I couldn't shake it. When this started I was going hard, 5ish hours of sleep, 3 miles on a treadmill, work, then 5ish hours working on a new deck on my house, then sleep, rinse repeat.

A few months ago I started doing one meal a day fasting. I noticed my weight slowly creeping up and wanted a change. A side effect has been my sleep has gotten much better. (I eat lunch typically) I sleep 7 hours easy and even when I wake up I feel like just laying there some like I am a teenager again.

A few weeks ago it occurred to me after nearly two years, the unsteadiness sensation was finally gone. Not sure if its the calorie restriction or more sleep, but I am not complaining.

walton_simons · 3 years ago

I experienced something very similar to this when I had a kid. As you say, minor, but still noticeable. Like I was having to make constant small corrections to my balance. It worried me a bit at the time, although in retrospect I'm convinced it was caused by sleep deprivation. I wasn't getting more than a few (broken) hours a night for many months. It went away as things started to settle down a bit.

walton_simons commented on Visualizing Algorithms (2014) bost.ocks.org/mike/algori... · Posted by u/mrv_asura

walton_simons · 3 years ago

Speaking as a self-taught "programmer" who never got far beyond the rudiments (basic scripting and automation is about as far as I go), I find stuff like this utterly mindblowing. I'm aware that sorting and maze generation algorithms exist of course, but it's magic to me. I don't understand them at all, and seeing them visualised like this, in such an appealing way, is incredible.

walton_simons commented on “World’s best” Guitar Hero player was a cheat kotaku.com/guitar-hero-cl... · Posted by u/luu

donalhunt · 3 years ago

This reminds me of how F1 teams will look for any ambiguity in the regulations to allow them to take advantage over fellow teams.

Mercedes with their "not rigid enough" rear wing springs to mind. The sporting rule makers later clarified exactly what was and was not allowed.

And yes - I note the other responses mentioning the difference between bending the rules and breaking them.

walton_simons · 3 years ago

My favourite instance of this is the Brabham BT46B, which used fans to suck the car down onto the track. Not cheating by any means — they never tried to hide it — but nevertheless a very creative interpretation of the rules!

https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/articles/single-seaters/f...

walton_simons commented on Ask HN: What do you do to jump start your brain in the morning? · Posted by u/Snoddas

walton_simons · 4 years ago

I don't jump start my brain. I drink a lot of coffee and feel grumpy. I have a toddler, so this happens every day. I've always hated getting up early in the morning, and nothing I've ever tried has made it better. Left to my own devices, I'll gravitate towards going to bed around 4am, and getting up at around 11. The times in my life where I've been able to do this for an extended period are when I've felt most rested and energetic.

I know this can sound like a sort of edgy teenager thing to say, but I just prefer the night. From about 9pm onwards, my mind is absolutely buzzing with energy. Most of my learning, throughout my whole life, has taken place at night. I feel like my brain doesn't work properly until at least lunchtime, so wherever I can, I arrange to do easy stuff in the morning. Responding to emails, any light admin, nothing that needs too much focus.

walton_simons commented on Bitwarden: Free, open-source password manager bitwarden.com/... · Posted by u/gjvc

Octabrain · 4 years ago

I’ve strongly considered to migrate from Keepassxc to Bitwarden for making things simpler. At the moment, the way I use Keepass is: password + only storing the db on Google Drive + adding the key file to any device I want to access from (smartphone and laptop) via usb cable. This way I can keep the db up to date across devices while keeping it “safe” as the key file is not being shared across the network.

So, as I said, I’ve considered Bitwarden for being open source and cheap and for simplicity but despite reading the implementation they do and knowing they have had successful audits the paranoid in my cannot stop thinking on the “what ifs”. I have all my life on Keepass: from access to the bank, to government taxes stuff, to the pi-hole web ui etc etc. I feel I have more control now with my clunky approach. If I migrate to a managed solution and for any reason my data gets compromised on their side I would be utterly fucked.

Probably it’s just me being irrational.

walton_simons · 4 years ago

For what little it's worth from a random internet person, I agree with you 100%. I do it the same way as you, with the database stored on Dropbox, and an offline key file. I just can't make myself trust an online service for this stuff, as irrational as that may be.

Even if KeePass turned out to have some expoloitable vulnerabilities, it's still running solely on my machine, and I don't allow it to connect to the internet at all. I suppose yes, if someone breaks into my computer I could be in trouble, but if they can do that, they can just steal my session cookies anyway, password manager or not.

walton_simons commented on What’s Vivaldi’s business model? vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-... · Posted by u/vmurthy

wejick · 4 years ago

Vivaldi is my default chromium based browser right now. Firefox still be the default browser, however there are many site offering extra features for Chrome based browser. For example the video filter in Google meet doesn't work on Firefox.

The amount of customization is no joke, i love this feeling of being truly power user.

walton_simons · 4 years ago

Mine too. I think it's great. So many quality of life improvements. For starters, all the tab handling options. Being able to specify where new tabs open, and where you go when you close a tab. Tab stacks are amazing — five minutes after learning how they work, I was already wondering how I'd managed for so long without them. Being able to tile multiple tabs in the same window. The list goes on and on. The neat, compact interface. The sidebar that gives you a searchable list of closed tabs. Smaller things, like being able to see the entire URL in the address bar again.

There are a few rough edges here and there, and it certainly doesn't feel as responsive as Chrome, but I highly recommend it nevertheless, especially to those who get frustrated with the main players removing more and more features with each new version.

walton_simons commented on Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity' bbc.com/news/science-envi... · Posted by u/perfunctory

thendrill · 4 years ago

Can someone please explain why should a middle class, middle aged blue collar worker care about this? How does any of this make his life better or worse?

walton_simons · 4 years ago

Does he care about anyone but himself? Does he have children or grandchildren? Nephews or nieces? Does he care about their safety and welfare, and want them to have good lives?