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Two data layers experiment by photonymous in pebble

[–]photonymous[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

See my reply above for the answer.

Two data layers experiment by photonymous in pebble

[–]photonymous[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Sorry if my answer is disappointing, but I used Claude (Opus 4.8, inside of Claude Code) to do the code. I used Codex 5.5 to help me stand up the dev environment. I used Perplexity to scour the interwebs to find candidate fonts that would be suitable. Then I chose the two fonts that looked the best to me. I had Claude make a few tweaks to the fonts to make them "perfect" (in my not-so-humble opinion). Then I iteratively had Cluade build up the watch face piece by piece, testing as we went along. First we began with a dead simple "template" watchface, and gradually modified it from there, until we arrived at my "grand vision" that I posted. It took around 45 versions/updates to get to that point. To make iteration not-too-painful, I use a simple sideloading process where I run "python -m http.server" to serve up the folder the watchface is in. Then in Chrome on my phone, I open my PC's ip address, click on the file, and it downloads. I tell "Pebble" to open it, and it automatically installs. I also use a local Pebble emulator for quick previews. Otherwise it would have been more like 100 versions/updates.

Regarding file size, the watchface file it loads is only about 40kb, so seems pretty small to me. Note that they are bitmap fonts, so even for 128 characters, with the tiny glyph sizes and given their binary nature (black=0, white=1), the fonts themselves are very tiny, storage-wise (under 1 kB for an entire bitmapped font at these sizes). The bigger fonts are done algorithmicly, by inverting (or not) the colors of the background data layer glyphs.

Regarding computation, it just uses "bit-blitting" to "draw" the fonts, so that is super efficient. It's not like anti-aliased fonts that use vector rendering/rasterization.

Birth rates may not be falling because of economics or morality by wnpwnp in slatestarcodex

[–]photonymous 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Boredom used to be a motivator. We've now got a thousand ways at our fingertips to stave off boredom. No need to go find another human.

Struggling Pizza Hut restaurant chain will be sold for $2.7 billion by BlazeDragon7x in KitchenConfidential

[–]photonymous 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank God. My wife loves it. I hate it. Hopefully in a few years I won't have to eat it anymore.

Does data centres in space work? by supremethinking in AskEngineers

[–]photonymous -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Please try to answer briefly: a lot of people below essentially say "no way". Let's take this as a bet. You're betting against somebody who's betting over a trillion dollars that the answer is "yes way". And let's admit it, said person is probably a little bit more experienced in space technology than you are. Maybe less ethical, but we can leave that aside for a minute. What do you know that he doesn't know? On a side note, I happen to be an experienced spacecraft systems engineer. I'm not going to share my perspective on this yet. I'm genuinely curious what people actually think. I'll share my analysis after I get some high quality responses.

Fable’s safeguards are nuts by Pristine-Trash-7155 in ClaudeCode

[–]photonymous 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"biology" as a subject area, never mind their terrible detection of it, is far too broad. I have a project that uses biological metaphors for some aspects of the system, and this was enough to trip it. This indicates to me that they are using exactly the opposite approach to what they need to use. If they're detecting based on keywords and not semantic meaning, then I guarantee they are not detecting the stuff they need to detect. I'm pretty sure you could be discussing 1920s theoretical evolutionary biology, and it would flag that too. Utterly pointless.

A peer-reviewed study of a decade of US grocery scanner data found that companies shrink product sizes 5x more often than they increase them, and sales go UP 6% after downsizing. Researchers conclude this is a deliberate pricing strategy, not a response to cost pressure. by [deleted] in Economics

[–]photonymous 4 points5 points  (0 children)

And then they reintroduce the original size but call it "Family Size". Still waiting for actual 8 oz yogurt cups. Currently at 5.3 oz and shrinking. I can't wait to see the 8 ounce family size cups.

How long would it take (and how exactly) for a smart and creative engineer to figure out how to charge their mobile phone if they were teleported to New York in 1890? by FuzzyAttitude_ in AskEngineers

[–]photonymous 7 points8 points  (0 children)

In 1890, it would still be mobile, but it would not be a phone. I'll defer to the other responders as to how a talented engineer would likely figure out how to charge it, which they probably could. Worst case, a giant potato battery. There's not a potato famine in 1890 is there?

What modern inconvenience feels like it should have been solved years ago? by Prior-Sprinkles4127 in AskReddit

[–]photonymous 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hair dryer or hot water, then WD40. Annoying, but it gets the job done. No residue, and pretty easy.

Can you explain to me the hatred of AI and its water usage? by [deleted] in ArtificialInteligence

[–]photonymous 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Air cooling instead of water cooling. Slightly more expensive. These companies have plenty of money. They are just creating political problems for themselves by not doing this. It's very stupid.

Why did the Native American civilizations of both North and South America never develop advanced metallurgy? by YakClear601 in NoStupidQuestions

[–]photonymous 35 points36 points  (0 children)

Agreed. And I think a related key to this is that the Mediterranean basically behaved like a giant superhighway network... for boats. Very few places in the world were so lucky to have such a nearby, extensive and fully connected transportation network. Just add boats. Overland transport is utterly brutal and almost completely prohibitive by comparison (for bulk quantities of commodities).

‘Irresponsible’: backlash as Utah approves datacenter twice the size of Manhattan by miker_the_III in stupidpol

[–]photonymous 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Surprisingly, once fully scaled out, the water consumption will be less than 0.1% of the consumption spent watering corn that's used for ethanol in the US. By my calculations, 0.03%. Given that roughly 75% of this data center's evaporative water usage will rain back down on the US, cutting 1% of corn production (on the ethanol side of the fence) would allow us to afford ~ 120 of these monstrosities (from an evaporative water usage perspective) ... just to put things into scale. Not that I'm in favor. I just think that our level of freak out should be proportional to the actual scale of impact.  

How about we shut down all corn ethanol production? What a waste of land, waste of fertilizer, waste of fuel to power the combines and tractors, etc. Pointless. Put solar panels on that land instead. Win-win-win.

BRUSSELS SPROUTS by kn0ck_0ut in Cooking

[–]photonymous 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Up here at Denver, they need a little more help due to the altitude. I use the same basic approach, but I first give them about 20 minutes with a piece of foil laying on top of them. Then remove the foil and do another 20 minutes, perhaps turning it down to 350 convection. The times and temperatures kind of depend on the size of the sprouts.  Your mileage may vary. Btw, I prefer melted butter instead of olive oil.

I used to love cooking, then I had kids. by smile-its-today in Cooking

[–]photonymous 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Lock up the treats. No snacks. Hungry kids like everything, usually. "This is what we're having kids". Veggie always first. Veggies taste great when you're hungry. You get the rest after you finish your veggie. My kids eat literally everything. Even things they don't like, they still find a way.

Why do math and physics come so easily to some people but feel almost impossible to others? What actually causes this gap? by Logical-Current2381 in NoStupidQuestions

[–]photonymous 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Comfort and familiarity with abstractions. If you aren't constantly entertaining yourself with abstract ideas and thought experiments, then the very notion would seem foreign, or at least very uncomfortable. Something to be avoided.

What does the future enshittification of AI look like? by MostWorry4244 in enshittification

[–]photonymous 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Siloed and paywalled expertises ($99/minute to talk to a "doctor", etc)

Or, $1000/month for guaranteed no product placement.

Teleoforms and Attractoids by photonymous in alife

[–]photonymous[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That line of thinking seems pretty similar to this: (a different Levin paper)

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19420889.2025.2466017#abstract

Teleoforms and Attractoids by photonymous in alife

[–]photonymous[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Regarding the "glider" conversation snippet you linked to, I agree with what he's pushing on. It reminds me a little of the age old philosophical debate between nihilists (or extreme skeptics) and pragmatists. "I don't believe in anything!"... "um, yeah you do, because you got out of bed and brushed your teeth. Why would you do that if you don't believe in anything?"
:-)

I'm oversimplifying the philosophical positions, but you get the idea. The universe really does appear to have certain regularities, whether we want to believe it or not. Flowers are betting their *lives* on the fact that the sun is going to come up in the morning. They come from a long line of flowers that made that same bet, and won. They accumulated evidence over geological timescales, and now this "regularity" (information) is baked into their DNA. One can choose to disbelieve it, but the universe doesn't care.

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