Hacker News Reader

_Microfton An interactive-speed Linux computer made of only 3 8-pin chips

Thanks, this was very insightful and entertaining once again!

One thing: you might want to mention the required board thickness (0.8mm, iirc?) for people planning to have their own boards made.

Edit, explanation for others: that is required to make the "USB-C edge connector" fit the plug.

_Microfton Fix the light guide in a laser meter

The different lengths that they are measuring after their fix are most likely because the transparent plastics (n_p ≈ 1.5) has a different refractive index than air (n_air = 1). That is the optical path length is no longer the same.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_path_length

_Microfton The Dead Planet Theory

If you can downvote any comment, then you've got downvote powers.

You cannot downvote direct replies to your own comments though if that helps understanding what might be happening here.

_Microfton logicanalyzer: 24-120 channel, 400Msps Pico 2-based logic analyzer

The description in the wiki was not updated yet. Follow the link to the PCBWay page to see the current description. The limit is 100Msps when using a Pico (i.e. RP2040, not RP2350).

120 channels are achieved by chaining a few 24 channel boards.

https://www.pcbway.com/project/shareproject/LogicAnalyzer_V6...

_Microfton US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago

The headline shown here is:

“US government struggles to rehire nuclear safety staff it laid off days ago”

_Microfton Aluminum batteries outlive lithium-ion with a pinch of salt

The link to the paper is hidden a few links into the article (what's up with all these 'tags' that they link to?):

"A Recyclable Inert Inorganic Framework Assisted Solid-State Electrolyte for Long-Life Aluminum Ion Batteries", https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acscentsci.4c01615 (Open Access)

_Microfton When a hyperspectral image is a cube

Wikipedia has an article on hyperspectral imaging that also talks about how these images are acquired.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperspectral_imaging

_Microfton Firmware Update Introducing New Authorization Control System

There is now a set of critical operations, among them starting printing operations via LAN which "unauthorized third party tools" are no longer allowed to perform.

The most interesting information is in this setion and the following one:

https://blog.bambulab.com/firmware-update-introducing-new-au...

_Microfton Is Iceland getting ready to join the EU?

They had pegged their currency to the DM (Deutsche Mark) and 1.95583:1 is still exactly the same exchange rate as when DM were converted to Euro.

_Microfton Liberating Wi-Fi on the ESP32 [video]

Don‘t they even have an ISDN network there this year?

_Microfton KiCad 9.0.0 Features

As a side note, KiCad is currently running its 2025 fundraiser if you want to consider supporting them.

_Microfton A pretty visualisation of the European power grid (2022)

You can also change the perspective by simultaneously holding the Ctrl key and moving the mouse.

_Microfton Bluesky is breaking the rules in the EU

No permission is required for cookies that are needed to make a website work.

Cookie dialogs are solely the contribution of those who want to keep tracking you but aren't allowed to do so without your consent.

_Microfton Meltwater from Greenland and the Arctic is weakening ocean circulation

A related term that is not mentioned in the article is thermohaline circulation -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation

_Microfton We're going to see the return of diseases we have controlled for decades

There is a sibling comment that matches what GP replied to. The longer threads get, the longer it takes until you can reply. I guess GP replied to their own comment instead.

_Microfton Show HN: I made a tiny device for automatically recording digital pianos

"Do i need to use the app? - No. You can also access your recordings directly from the SD card and by using wifi setup you can do things like set the date & time without the app.", from the FAQ

_Microfton A skeleton made from the bones of at least eight people thousands of years apart

Maybe we should add some bones, bury the skeleton again and wipe all records of what we did.

_Microfton Making Electronic Calipers

> i use microns instead of 0.001mm

What "micron" are you referring to here? The "micron" I am familiar with is exactly that one (i.e. 1 micron = 1µm = 0.001mm).

_Microfton Functional ultrasound through the skull

Modulation is part of the measurement process in that case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock-in_amplifier

_Microfton Functional ultrasound through the skull

Also check out their other post: https://brainhack.vercel.app/ae

They are planning to locally change the electrical conductivity of brain tissue by focused ultrasound, modulate that with at few hundred kHz and do a lock-in (EEG) measurement to deduce electrical activity at that spot on the scale of 1mm. Pretty wild if that actually works.

_Microfton Hacking the T2S+ Out of Fear: Get Lock-In Thermography for Free

GP is talking about the code sections and the "CRT effect" that was added via CSS. Press "Toggle glow" to make it obvious what effect that is.

_Microfton Show HN: Midnight Reminders via Morse Code

You do not even need anything special to build a capacitive pad with a Raspberry Pi Pico. Basically only an insulated pad and maybe a resistor (even though I think it is even possible to do without).

Here is an example of someone building a touch midi controller [0] with nothing more than a custom PCB and some resistors or a touch input device with varied inputs like sliders and buttons [1].

[0] https://github.com/todbot/picotouch

[1] https://github.com/todbot/picoslidertoy

_Microfton We've seen particles that are massless only when moving one direction

These are "quasiparticles" [0] of which there are quite a few others [1] with very interesting properties. Unfortunately I do not see enough of the article to be able to comment more on it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasiparticle

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_quasiparticles

_Microfton The rise of the U.S., the rise of China

Something similar was said about Germany’s 19th century development:

“No Copyright Law: The Real Reason for Germany's Industrial Expansion?”, https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-...

_Microfton Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (October 2024)

I think it might boil down to the „anecdotes vs data“ problem and how “lived experience” is sometimes treated as if it were some universal truth.

_Microfton Court tells EPA to consider fluoride risk

> As a Swede I always found it interesting we were one of the few countries which do not flouridate tap water.

Wikipedia doesn't support this claim. Here are two quotes from different articles:

(1) "As of November 2012, a total of about 378 million people worldwide received artificially fluoridated water. The majority of those were in the United States. About 40 million worldwide received water that was naturally fluoridated to recommended levels.", from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation#Worldwide_p...

(2) "Out of a population of about three-quarters of a billion, under 14 million people (approximately 2%) in Europe receive artificially-fluoridated water. Those people are in the UK (5,797,000), Republic of Ireland (4,780,000), Spain (4,250,000), and Serbia (300,000).

The first water fluoridation in Europe was in West Germany and Sweden in 1952, bringing fluoridated water to about 42,000 people. By mid-1962, about 1 million Europeans in 18 communities in 11 countries were receiving fluoridated water.", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation_by_country#...

_Microfton Starship Flight Test 5 – Official Livestream

You can also try https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1RDGlyognOgJL

_Microfton Starship Flight Test 5 – Official Livestream

You can use your browsers developer tools to look up the video stream URL (it is the one hosted on "pscp.tv") if you want to view the stream in a different viewer.

_Microfton [dead]

This is not the official channel. They no longer livestream on Youtube but use the Twitter infrastructure for that.

_Microfton Europeans Spend 575M Hours Clicking Cookie Banners Every Year

Also: if "Reject all" isn't obviously placed, I usually think for a second whether I am curious enough to bother rejecting usages individually or whether I rather don't care. Usually I don't care and leave.