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doctorhandshake

Re:3D-Knitting: The Ultimate Guide on Thursday March 12, 2026 @05:36AM (#47348373)
I think this is an uncharitable view of the information on offer. The linked page similarly brands the technique with a trademarked WHOLEGARMENT label, claiming it’s a world first, so it doesn’t seem a stretch to see how these folks got to claiming it’s novel and making a bit of a todo about how it’s different. It also seems to have some business model implications that on first approximation look less than favorable, so I think that helps to justify the need for a position paper like this.
It is my belief that a time may come when we can all ‘write’ on, or link information to, any person, place, or thing, based on a melange of semantic anchors, and in that world there will be fewer secrets and more experts.
As part of a speculative fiction project I have imagined this scenario playing out many times over as people who wear AR-style displays have, eg, melanomas pointed out to them on bodies of people who don’t wear and are unsure if they should say something.
Re:Making Video Games in 2025 (without an engine) on Monday March 02, 2026 @12:18PM (#47220926)
Well I’m not anti ;) … I just mean if your goal is to make the thing and you’re sure you need a tool to do it, watch out for the temptation to make the tool that makes the tool, which is the LONG way around, as OP was saying
Re:Making Video Games in 2025 (without an engine) on Monday March 02, 2026 @07:59AM (#47217429)
The way I phrase this to myself is ‘make the tool, don’t make the tool that makes the tool.’
Re:Fix Your Tools on Sunday February 22, 2026 @02:26PM (#47113830)
My version of this is ‘always be toolin’, but then of course one must use judgement lest it be better to just get on with it.
Re:Where did all the starships go? on Sunday February 08, 2026 @11:01AM (#46935455)
In the programming sense one might say it is an ‘overloaded’ term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurist
Re:Where did all the starships go? on Saturday February 07, 2026 @07:34AM (#46923357)
My theory about this aligns with my theory about the disappearance of ‘futurists’ from the popular conversation - we’re living in science fiction. The future is arriving every day. It no longer feels necessary to speculate about a changed world - you need only look out the door.

I say this as someone that still loves (and writes a little) speculative fiction. Just a guess as to what’s happening.

This visually resembles Falling Bough by Walton Ford

https://www.kasmingallery.com/artworks/4717-walton-ford-fall...

Re:If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014) on Monday December 22, 2025 @07:35AM (#46353674)
“The crime which bankrupts men and nations is that of turning aside from one’s main purpose to serve a job here and there.”

As a former career contractor who took probably 7 commercial jobs I didn’t care about for every 1 creative job I wanted to do but for which I was underpaid, this feels deeply true.

Thanks! It was called Cut&Paste
Re:Ireland’s Diarmuid Early wins world Microsoft Excel title on Saturday December 20, 2025 @04:15PM (#46339703)
I used to work as technical director for a touring live graphic design, 3D modeling, and animation tournament. It was kind of like iron chef for designers. They worked live in timed rounds with their screens projected overhead. It was sponsored by Adobe, Autodesk, and Wacom. It was pretty impressive to see how power users did their thing for sure.
Re:A Remarkable Assertion from A16Z on Friday November 28, 2025 @09:11AM (#46078791)
Not sure if the substitution of ‘tale’ for ‘tail’ was intentional but regardless it’s apropos
Big +1 for Tiller after trying several other options including YNAB. Your data in a spreadsheet - go nuts, use our templates, make your own, etc.
Re:TouchDesigner 2025 Update on Thursday October 30, 2025 @08:05AM (#45759110)
Major major TD release, long awaited - highlights include:

* release of the new POP operator family * new DMX workflows * laser updates * serious and likely underappreciated (IMO) color space workflow overhaul * ST2110 support * TDI library for VSCode (finally, autocomplete) * Thread Manager * Python Environment Manager (tdPyEnvManager) * Logger overhaul * Render Simple TOP, Layer Mix TOP, Serial Devices DAT * ZED camera SDK update to 5.0.4 and op family overhaul * Many data in/out improvements and new features * Nvidia 50-series GPU support

Re:Harnessing America's Heat Pump Moment on Saturday October 25, 2025 @09:49AM (#45703883)
Yeah in case it wasn’t clear - I wasn’t asking a million vendors to price the job, I was asking them to do a manual J so they could price the job. It took 12 to get 4 to do the manual J. The other 8 came on-site and then refused to do the calcs even though I told them before coming out that it was a prerequisite for me to consider their quote.

I got a variety of explanations for why they weren’t going to do it, most of them along the lines of ‘I’ve been doing this forever - I know what I’m doing,’ but a few disappointingly ‘I don’t know what a manual J is.’ Again, this was AFTER my telling them over the phone that I wouldn’t consider a quote that wasn’t based on the calcs.

Re:Harnessing America's Heat Pump Moment on Friday October 24, 2025 @08:51PM (#45700526)
I should have said 100% performance. COP is typically 3-4:1 with mitsu
Re:Harnessing America's Heat Pump Moment on Friday October 24, 2025 @07:27PM (#45700127)
Yeah. Sadly the trend does not seem to be heading that direction what with the current admin’s … policies and the whole … AI … thing.
Re:Harnessing America's Heat Pump Moment on Friday October 24, 2025 @07:25PM (#45700121)
I’m not sure what yours is but it doesn’t sound appropriate to your application.

Mitsubishi hyper heat is indicative of a contemporary inverter design - 100% efficiency to -5f: https://www.mitsubishicomfort.com/articles/mythbusters-heat-...

Re:Harnessing America's Heat Pump Moment on Friday October 24, 2025 @07:19PM (#45700087)
This. I had 12 contractors come out for an estimate. I insisted to each that I would only consider estimates accompanied by a Manual J (aka show your work). I got 4 estimates with a manual J, and one of them the vendor said ‘despite that the math says you need a 4 ton outdoor unit, I’m giving you two,’ and refused to budge on that.

I went with a vendor who did the math and sized accordingly and my system works great - great comfort year round and very low energy usage.

Re:Harnessing America's Heat Pump Moment on Friday October 24, 2025 @07:13PM (#45700044)
The notion that heat pumps don’t work at low temperatures hasn’t been true for years. I think you may be surprised to find that just about any heat pump you look at has good efficiency down to very low temperatures.
Nice timing. I’m right in the middle of doing this for music and video media for my kid (using an elaborate concoction of python, nocodb, home assistant, Jellyfin, a NAS, an RPi, and a chromecast) and the thing I had yet to figure out was the physicality of the RFID-sticker-containing cards themselves
I still strongly believe that all day to day computing happening via AR is nigh inevitable. We have become so accustomed to computing happening via small rectangles, fixed in place, happening with computers that have no clue about the real world we occupy, or of what’s happening now, that the idea of computing sharing our world with us seems six leaps removed and itself unmoored in reality. I think someday within our lifetimes we’ll look back at the way we compute today as a primeval relic and wonder how we ever thought of it as computing at all.
A good example of one of my favorite diagnostic axioms, Hickam’s dictum:

Hickam's dictum is a medical principle that a patient's symptoms could be caused by several diseases. It is a counterargument to misapplying Occam's razor in the medical profession. A common version of Hickam's dictum states: "A man can have as many diseases as he damn well pleases."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hickam%27s_dictum

Re:Indefinite Backpack Travel on Tuesday October 07, 2025 @07:31AM (#45501847)
I did make it sound like transport was contributing to the lion’s share of the embodied carbon and I shouldn’t have - it’s more in the production process. Would have been well served by an ‘in addition’ in between those statements.
Re:Indefinite Backpack Travel on Monday October 06, 2025 @02:08PM (#45494278)
In the limited amount of experience I’ve had with researching these things, embodied carbon can be a much higher number than you might think, even with something as simple as a cotton t-shirt. Odds are that shirt had already sailed around the world once or twice by the time you buy it, and it might make its way to another continent once you’re done with it as well.
Re:Indefinite Backpack Travel on Monday October 06, 2025 @11:44AM (#45492604)
I’m all for minimalist travel but I feel like I picked up a number of cues that the author is buying and disposing of (somehow) items seasonally or even on an as-no-longer-needed basis. Hopefully that means donating the item and maybe even buying used to begin with but it’s not mentioned here. I don’t want to make assumptions but in the worst case this could be a very wasteful kind of minimalism.

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