Live data from Hacker News

In Praise of AutoHotKey

hillelwayne.com

151–160 of 220 posts

Re: In Praise of AutoHotKey

#151
When I played poker full time, it made a huge difference. I was able to manage poker tables with it fully automatically, so I could play on 12 tables comfortably. I was able to implement features that PokerStars didn't have at the time, like hiding the cashier lobby, or floating the Lobby window outside of the screen and float back on mouse-hover so I had more screen-space for tables.

Check out my script if you are interested: https://github.com/pokerregion/pokerstars-autoit

Re: In Praise of AutoHotKey

#153
post #72
post #17

I've started[1] to do similar things on macOS using Hammerspoon[2]. So far I've set it up to let me: 1. Use shift when pasting something to simulate typing in the text instead, getting around websites that block pasting. 2. Use ";" as a hyper key. By holding it down and pressing another key, I can switch between specific programs without cycling. I can also use hjkl as arrow keys. 3. Automatically switch audio input…

> including treating my monitor as a speaker for some reason (it doesn't have built-in speakers). This is quite common on HDMI monitors. Since the HDMI connection transmits both audio and video, the monitor just accepts both audio and video input. They would then have a 3.5-mm jack to allow you plug in an actual speaker or headphone to receive the audio output.

Which is something I don't understand, just separate the signal and give me a digital output from the monitor, why are monitors doing digital analog conversion for audio too, all of a sudden?

Re: In Praise of AutoHotKey

#154

I had a low paid data entry job one summer at university well over a decade ago that involved a tortuous process for digitising gas mains installation information. I discovered ahk and found I was able to install it, so I began to script the repetitive entry screens spread between multiple different programs. It allowed you to write a simple GUI form to collect various data up front. There was a lot of window picking…

Its experiences like this that make me sad for people who can't code. Not full blown dev, just enough to automate the mundane. I can't imagine being at the mercy of computer tech in areas of being the master of it.

What advantage is it to the grunts if you automate stuff such that what took them an hour takes ten minutes? All that will happen is that either some will be laid off or the boss will find other ways of filling the time with other work.

Re: In Praise of AutoHotKey

#155
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> including treating my monitor as a speaker for some reason (it doesn't have built-in speakers). This is quite common on HDMI monitors. Since the HDMI connection transmits both audio and video, the monitor just accepts both audio and video input. They would then have a 3.5-mm jack to allow you plug in an actual speaker or headphone to receive the audio output.

Which is something I don't understand, just separate the signal and give me a digital output from the monitor, why are monitors doing digital analog conversion for audio too, all of a sudden?

It's pretty cheap to add and enough people find it useful

Re: In Praise of AutoHotKey

#156
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> including treating my monitor as a speaker for some reason (it doesn't have built-in speakers). This is quite common on HDMI monitors. Since the HDMI connection transmits both audio and video, the monitor just accepts both audio and video input. They would then have a 3.5-mm jack to allow you plug in an actual speaker or headphone to receive the audio output.

Which is something I don't understand, just separate the signal and give me a digital output from the monitor, why are monitors doing digital analog conversion for audio too, all of a sudden?

It was useful for me when I hooked my nephew's Nintendo Switch up to my computer monitor to let him play and then connected desktop speakers straight to the monitor.

Re: In Praise of AutoHotKey

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens with that data, though? Is this a non production data entry job?

Same that would happen with the manual typing process. The workflow either includes a process for auditing data quality or it doesn't, regardless of how it was entered in.

Okay, is that a manual process or not? Why not start with automating the testing and not the entry?

Re: In Praise of AutoHotKey

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using ; as a hyper key blew my mind, like the article recently about how a certain developer calls all of his scripts ',something' so if he want to run a cli command of his, pressing comma then tab will show only his scripts, so ',py(tab)' won't have 15 pythons in it.

I had almost used up all combinations of Ctrl, Alt, Shift, Win and letters at one point, and still never thought of making my own hyper key. It's genius. At my new job I'm afraid to download AHK at all :(

[deleted]

Re: In Praise of AutoHotKey

#160
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> getting around websites that block pasting. This one really drives me mad. Is there really any legit reason to this? By the way my hack is I paste it in the address bar, then just drag-drop into the field. Works 50% of the time or more (fails when a lot of these stupid websites don't use placeholder attribute but rather use some sort of Javascript for the placeholder text)

>> getting around websites that block pasting. > This one really drives me mad. Is there really any legit reason to this? No. Which is why I set the about:config option "dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled" in Firefox to false. That turns off the ability of websites to block pasting in Firefox.

Oooh, neat! Thanks! I presume it would also defeat those idiotic "let's insert a backlink or an ad into the text you just copied" scripts.

Truly, there are very few legitimate reasons for a site to even know you've copied or pasted something. Makes me think this setting should be a whitelist.

Post reply on HN