zbirkenbuel's comments

On: Octopuses seen hunting together with fish

[zbirkenbuel]

A solid series, with descriptions of thought process feeling truly alien. I'm currently enjoying "The Mountain in the Sea" by Ray Nayler for more octopus based speculative fiction

[abhgh → zbirkenbuel]

I would also recommend "The Mountain in the Sea"! I have mentioned this earlier on hn that I like it because it focuses on complexity of inter-species communication, even when both parties are intelligent. Interesting and somewhat unusual focus, plus loved the style of writing.

On: Joe Biden stands down as Democratic candidate

[zbirkenbuel]

I've said that the US needs an elected king. The guy you want to have a beer with, to throw out ceremonial first pitches, even to welcome other heads of state is the king. The person who runs the government and balances congress is the president and should be super boring. I'm imagining George W Bush as idea King material while Gore would have been ideal President material.

[ianburrell → zbirkenbuel]

In parliamentary republics, the President is the powerless head of state, and the Prime Minister is head of government. There are lots of terms for head of government like Chancellor, Chief Executive, and First Minister. "King" has too much baggage of being inherited.

Most limited Presidents have fixed terms, but I don't think there needs to be term limits for the figurehead. I was thinking that the head of state would attract those who want the spotlight.

On: Sakuga-42M Dataset: Scaling Up Cartoon Research

[zbirkenbuel]

Can't have a conversation about inbetween frames without sharing this[1] Noodle video. Now granted the interpolation there is pretty rigid, and the goal of this dataset will be to train an LLM replicate hand tweening, but I can't help but feel there's going to be a massive uncanny valley.

[1]https://youtu.be/_KRb_qV9P4g?si=vtDvfLU6XYz5QwWV&t=355

On: Every default macOS wallpaper

[zbirkenbuel]

It links off to `https://sylvan.apple.com/` which has a name mismatch cert error. If you follow the url in the console (and ignore the cert error) you can download it. Not super convenient but there you are.

On: Wait, what's a bookmarklet?

[zbirkenbuel]

I have a slightly longer one that also makes gets rid of the various `overflow:hidden` stylings since it seemed like I'd often kill an annoying popover with the content _right there_ to find that I couldn't scroll down anymore.

``` javascript:(function(){document.querySelectorAll("body ").forEach(function(node){if(["fixed","sticky"].includes(getComputedStyle(node).position)){node.parentNode.removeChild(node)}});document.querySelectorAll("html ").forEach(function(node){var s=getComputedStyle(node);if("hidden"===s["overflow"]){node.style["overflow"]="visible"}if("hidden"===s["overflow-x"]){node.style["overflow-x"]="visible"}if("hidden"===s["overflow-y"]){node.style["overflow-y"]="visible"}});var htmlNode=document.querySelector("html");htmlNode.style["overflow"]="visible";htmlNode.style["overflow-x"]="visible";htmlNode.style["overflow-y"]="visible"})(); ```

[lgats → zbirkenbuel]

GPT-4 appears to be able to cut around 180 characters off while keeping the same functionality.

   ((e,l)=>{[...e.querySelectorAll("body")].forEach((e=>{["fixed","sticky"].includes(l(e).position)&&e.parentNode.removeChild(e)})),[...e.querySelectorAll('html,[style\*="overflow"]')].forEach((e=>{["hidden"].includes(l(e).overflow)&&(e.style.overflow="visible"),["hidden"].includes(l(e)["overflow-x"])&&(e.style["overflow-x"]="visible"),["hidden"].includes(l(e)["overflow-y"])&&(e.style["overflow-y"]="visible")}));let o=e.querySelector("html");o.style.overflow=o.style["overflow-x"]=o.style["overflow-y"]="visible"})(document,getComputedStyle);

https://chat.openai.com/share/4c6710b5-9c81-415b-85fc-b33e69...

[cubefox → lgats]

Wow!

On: All of the vehicle license plates available in Ame...

[zbirkenbuel]

Just did a very similar road trip with a similar experience. Saw several Caddo plates around Craters of the Moon and an overland vehicle with plates from Brazil. Never did spot a District of Columbia one though and it appears there are no "standard" plates for DC?

On: The Coming Enshittification of Public Libraries

[zbirkenbuel]

As someone perpetually thrown off by Libby's UI it'd be awesome to learn more about that. Is it a blog post anywhere or just inside knowledge?

[yaky → zbirkenbuel]

Just first-hand experience. I haven’t used Libby for years, but I do recall it had multiple counter-intuitive “features”, such as theme and language not having a selector (relying on the OS), and that to enable email notifications, you first have to disable the app’s push notifications on the OS level (!)

On: Some companies think customers will accidentally c...

[zbirkenbuel]

That's one of the things I appreciate about BazQux as an RSS service. I get a reminder that my year "subscription" is coming up and if I'd like to continue I need to purchase another year. Perhaps it's because of their billing platform but I'm happy its a pattern.

On: Moderna mRNA sequence released to GitHub [pdf]

[zbirkenbuel]

That is a fascinating read (and the perfect level of depth in this field for me). How did you happen across it? Always looking to add a good source to my RSS feed list

[boruto → zbirkenbuel]

dont know about op, but the link is present in the posted git repo readme.