I did something similar with an LED display on my computer case. The display required a proprietary UI program from the manufacturer to display GPU/CPU temps which unfortunately only worked on Windows.
Since it needs sensor data, WINE would not work here and I didn't want to do something funky with editing WINE or granting non-typical permissions.
I was able to reverse engineer the software using Claude, some Python, and a few hours of probing sensor data to understand how it worked and what was available.
I wrote most of the code myself (it was dead simple), but Claude was extremely useful in understanding what byte packets were being sent to the USB controller, what they meant, and what the controller was expecting.
I was able to make it into a service so now it Just Works(tm).
Probably the first time I've used it to "hack" something, but now I have a service that works great, I understand it, and I learned a ton about how Linux controls some low-level hardware.
Is that why Anthropic recently gave out free credits for use in off-hours? Possibly an attempt to more evenly distribute their compute load throughout the day?
> Is that why Anthropic recently gave out free credits for use in off-hours?
That was the carrot for the stick. The limits and the issues were never officially recognized or communicated. Neither have been the "off-hours credits". You would only know about them if you logged in to your dashboard. When is the last time you logged in there?
The advice to work on your own "shed" has really helped with my burnout during this AI age. I got into technology because I liked coding, building, and tinkering with systems. LLMs are great at coding and getting basic pipelines built, and I found myself with more pressures to be agent-first rather than hands on key-board at work. My side projects at home are where I've been able to find the joy for coding again.
I recently wrote a small service to get a temperature LED panel on my computer case working. It required a proprietary program to pipe the sensor temps to the display, which only worked on Windows. Being on Linux (arch btw :P), there wouldn't be a way to get this to work. I had a lot of fun learning about how to reverse engineer the inputs/outputs the other software was doing and replicate it in Python.
Couldn't you technically crawl all these blogs for their "blog's I'm reading" and create a social graph? You could start vetting based on how often other blogs link to that one, sort of like an impact factor in research.
I don't like counting the number of subscribers, that ends up surfacing things like major news websites, or the hacker news feed. But I've found the graph to be useful in finding recommendations.
I am also going to call out House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. It's a really interesting book that explores a house that is slightly larger on the inside than the outside. It explores a lot of liminal spaces and has a really interesting format in print.
Interestingly, this video analysis of Control (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VII76R36GWw) claims Remedy was inspired by House of Leaves, and notes the similarity between "Ash Tree Lane" where the House of Leaves is set, and the "Ash Tray Maze" in Control.
Just seeing a few images of the book's pages in this video, yeah it seems like a really interesting book that plays with the novel format directly.
> Haunted is the second studio album by American singer-songwriter Poe, released in 2000 after a five-year hiatus from her debut album Hello in 1995. The self-produced album was created as a tribute to her father, and counterpart to her brother Mark Z. Danielewski's novel House of Leaves.
That book is definitely something you have to see in print.
Gregor Schneider made a super creepy house, called House Ur, it is a mega unsettling art piece. There are some videos on it but cant find them at the moment. Super creepy guy and super creepy layers in a house.
Microslop strikes again! AI implementations have really distilled all the shitty business practices tech companies have been doing into highly visible missteps.
It is interesting watching all these large companies essentially try to "start-up" these new products and absolutely fail.
You need a social hobby. If you like gaming, go find a game night at a game store near you. If you want to feel some purpose, look up some volunteering opportunities at churches and homeless shelters.
It's really important to stay active on things outside yourself and to at least spend some time outside most days.
Looks like a cool device though.
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