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u/aquisalid

r/hobiecat r/sailing r/BetterOffline r/PoisonFountain r/TheCaptivesWar
Image 1 — Minor sail repairs
Image 2 — Minor sail repairs
▲ 5 r/sailing

Minor sail repairs

Hi everyone. Hobie 18 sailor looking for some advice on sail repairs and supplies. Most of the mending I need to do is associated with batten pockets and sleeves. Photos above. There are a couple of small tears in the sail itself, about an inch long.

I’m happy to hand stitch these Dacron sails, but need a little help finding suitable patches, thread, and needles. I really like the options at Sailmaler’s Supply. Any suggestions or tips?

Thanks!

u/aquisalid — 1 day ago
▲ 1 r/hobiecat

Righting System H18

Ahoy!

Getting back into sailing, it’s been great. Family loves it, but we are too light to effectively right the mighty Hobie 18 without a lot of effort. So far we’ve been able to accomplish it using the stock “rope over the high hull and pull!” approach, but only when my son is actively lifting the mast tip out of the water.

I’m considering a Murray’s bag and block system to assist. I’ve also got a Hawaiian style righting system waiting to be installed. What do you all think:

Traditional righting line + bag system

Hawaiian righting + bag

Hawaiian and no bag

The piece of mind and happy spouse are worth the small expense.

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u/aquisalid — 1 day ago
▲ 59 r/BetterOffline+1 crossposts

Anthropic posted a FAQ of how their "text watermarking" will work. I don't get it.

So Anthropic posted a FAQ of how their "text watermarking" will work: https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-text-watermark

I'm not sure I understand how this could possibly work at all, considering that when people use LLM-generated text they are not pasting in the rest of the input and context, so how could it possibly do what they say it does. They do say it has "limitations": > There are limitations to the effectiveness of watermarking. Using our key, one can only answer the question “What is the likelihood this was partly written by Claude?” It doesn’t confirm whether the text was human-written, and it can’t tell whether the text was written by a different AI (even if that other AI uses watermarking, it would have a different key; it might also use a different watermarking method altogether). Detecting a watermark also doesn’t work well on small samples, where there are fewer word choices and thus less information to go on. As a passage increases in length, confidence about Claude’s involvement increases too.

> Watermarking is sparser on factual passages where there are fewer choices that can be made without decreasing the accuracy of the text. For example, take the sentence “Isaac Newton’s most famous work was called Principia…”. It really matters whether the next word is “Mathematica” (it’s the only right answer), so the watermark would have nothing to act on. The same is true for proofreading. If you hand Claude a piece of writing and ask it to edit only the grammar and punctuation and nothing else, the watermark can only live in the handful of corrections, which might be too few to register.

I've also had a quick look at the paper they link to: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08025-4

I don't see any discussion of false positive or false negatives. Are they just going to use this tool to claim that Claude is clearly so useful because it will flag everything that anyone writes from now on as Claude-generated?

You can't just say it has limitations without giving it at least some quantitative value.

Maybe someone understands this better and help me get it. Can you really spot a pattern of LLM output given that a model have billions or trillions of weights and we lack the surrounding context? What if I paste the text into the checker and just change a word here and there until it passes?

u/7upprosounds — 1 day ago
▲ 2 r/hobiecat

Rubber Strapping (?) for Mast Support on Trailer

Howdy. I've got a H18 with a fairly standard trailer configuration. The mast sits on a V-shaped stand, where a rubber covering protects the mast from sitting directly on the metal bracket at the top of the post. The rubber strapping (?) has an interesting shape that allows it to form-fit around the arms of the flat metal bracket. There is a gap in the rubber strap that accommodates the mounting hardware between post and bracket.

Does anyone have some suggestions on where to find this kind of rubber or similar material? The stuff I have is starting to crack and won't last many more summers.

PS: the Hobie 18 is one hell of a fun boat.

https://preview.redd.it/32s474poelgh1.png?width=636&format=png&auto=webp&s=220bb931680209211d626bfb6736d9f82a254cfc

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u/aquisalid — 19 days ago
▲ 29 r/BetterOffline

The Want of Peace

All of a sudden this poem seemed apropos. So tired of the non-stop, exhibitionist's insistence on generative AI. "Pave over the fields, burn the oil, consumer the water--so that we may summarize inane email conversations and fabricate video slop."

Just stop it, it is embarrassing.

The Want of Peace
by Wendell Berry

All goes back to the earth,
and so I do not desire
pride of excess or power,
but the contentments made
by men who have had little:
the fisherman’s silence
receiving the river’s grace,
the gardener’s musing on rows.

I lack the peace of simple things.
I am never wholly in place.
I find no peace or grace.
We sell the world to buy fire,
our way lighted by burning men,
and that has bent my mind
and made me think of darkness
and wish for the dumb life of roots.

reddit.com
u/aquisalid — 3 months ago
▲ 12 r/BetterOffline

Photograph of a book page from The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. Bantam, 1950.

This morning as I flipped through one of my all time favorite books, I noticed an incredible overlap in time and theme. If you haven't read the Martial Chronicles now is a good time. Incredible how these science fiction stories, now 75+ years old, resonate with our time. Fun stories aside, I'm not sure what is worse: humanity's constant rehashing the fate of unchecked hubris, or the environmental catastrophes that follow suit. This space and Ed's articles feel like a toe-hold against these powerful tendencies.

Anyway, August 2026 seems on track for the genAI house of cards to fall apart. Enjoy your breakfast.

reddit.com
u/aquisalid — 4 months ago