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daniel_reetz

1,421 karma · joined December 23, 2010

www.danreetz.com

www.diybookscanner.org

www.vicechief.com

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daniel_reetz··on Camera with transparent display launches for the equivalent of $29
Or develop thesense & skill of using it. It clearly has a fixed FOV that's being cropped based on what's on the display.

Humans can learn this stuff, cameras with crude viewfinders have appeared in the past.

daniel_reetz··on DuckDuckGo search saw 28% more visits after Google said people love AI mode
And this is the first technology that directly strokes their ego
daniel_reetz··on Meta Shuts Down End-to-End Encryption for Instagram Messaging
Users generally do not believe Instagram is reading their chats. Source: I have had this conversation many, many times.
daniel_reetz··on Inkscape 1.4.4
This is what I'm looking for. This would replace Corel Draw for me.

There is a plugin for blender that allows CAD style sketching. It may be a way forward.

daniel_reetz··on An unsolicited guide to being a researcher [pdf]
I worked there. Everything goes into a slide.
daniel_reetz··on Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives
Precisely. Things become clear when we think of benefits for people instead of monetary terms.
daniel_reetz··on Mr TIFF
A huge number of us labor behind the scenes with no public acknowledgment or credit. For each idea brought to life we might hope for -at most- an epitaph carved in expired patent claims.

This story is touching.

daniel_reetz··on Pixel 10 Phones
I've been running GrapheneOS for a few months now, keeping my old Samsung on WiFi as a backup.

It is such a breath of fresh air. It is so quiet and functional. It feels like it prioritizes me, the user. I am so grateful to have this OS.

Of course it has flaws, but they're lesser flaws. Like the crop tool is sometimes unusable in the gallery app. I can live with that. I couldn't live with the AI onslaught and spyware infiltration.

daniel_reetz··on YouTube No Translation
Respectfully, at this point, do we need Googlers to explain?

Structurally: launch-dependent levels/career advancement. Design wise: massive over reliance on A/B testing. Philosophically: a company hell bent on observing, categorizing, and exploiting us in extremis in exchange for only a tiny "relevant" slice of their potential deliverable.

Because of their focus on "scale", they have never cared about any individual user. The indifference of their technical systems is absolute.

daniel_reetz··on Coding without a laptop: Two weeks with AR glasses and Linux on Android
In a VR headset the virtual screen distance is set by the distance of the microdisplay from the lens in the headset.

It's not crazy to think you could move the microdisplay position and get a virtual display at 6". There might be other optical consequences (aberrations, change in viewable area) but in principle it can work.

daniel_reetz··on California sent residents' personal health data to LinkedIn
Here's some context for people who are curious about CA DMV data sales:

https://www.thedrive.com/news/35457/why-is-the-california-dm...

daniel_reetz··on Ask HN: What are good high-information density UIs (screenshots, apps, sites)?
I spoke to a McMaster web team member at a bar. They told me that the real reason there's usually no brand information is that they buy the same bolt (for example) from many different suppliers to guarantee availability.

They will only put a brand on a product (example: 3M DP420) when it truly comes from a single source and has special meaning/implications.

That said, I order tens of thousands of dollars of McMaster Carr items each year. They almost always come in packages from the OEM with OEM part numbers. So if I want more bolts like that, I just look at the box they were delivered in. The info is just not on the web interface.

daniel_reetz··on Globalization did not hollow out the American middle class
I've purchased equipment from scrapped solar factories in the Bay Area. Tons of people lost jobs and not just technologists.
daniel_reetz··on Mark Zuckerberg says social media is over
Meta made the decision to take control of what users see via the feed, and to show them mostly content which is NOT from friends. Content that "performs well".

The testimony is disingenuous, but true. People see less of their friends because they are show less of their friends. Friends post less becuase no one sees it.

daniel_reetz··on Why Apple's Severance gets edited over remote desktop software
This matches my experience. In addition I was advised/strongly encouraged to "go dark" on social media and refrain from ever discussing work at lunch, even with teammates.

My badge only worked where I had explicitly been given access, and desks were to be kept clear and all prototypes or hardware had to be locked in drawers and/or covered with black cloths. Almost every door was a blind door with a second door inside, so that if the outer one opened, it was not possible to see into the inner space.

daniel_reetz··on WWI's 'Dazzle' Camouflage Seemed Effective Due to Unexpected Optical Trick
Strange take. Pixelated camouflage is and was an attempt to make a scale invariant camouflage (works at near and far distances) by encoding patterns at multiple spatial frequencies. It's far from "computers are cool" or pixel art.
daniel_reetz··on Meta pirated books to train its AI
The similarities to Google Books are interesting. Google created Books based on their own scans of books, which publishers considered piracy.

The legal battle initiated by the Authors Guild was vicious and it damaged and hampered Books and other entities and scanning projects like the Internet Archive.

Now Facebook pirates all the world's books, uses them without paying authors or publishers, and seemingly faces no consequences.

I would strongly prefer to live in a world where we could easily search and access all books, than one where the richest guys get to exploit them without consequences.

daniel_reetz··on Designing Electronics That Work
McMaster Carr now sells ethanol in large quantities.
daniel_reetz··on Teach, Don't Tell (2013)
My domain is mechanical engineering. In my discipline, the Parker O-Ring catalog or the Omega Sensors catalog are basically textbooks which teach you how to specify and select seals and sensors. They create experts, and in the process, create sales and users.

The really outstanding trick of these catalogs is they also work as shortcuts. You can go to a table and pick an O-ring with very little expertise, and it will tell you the groove size, corner radius, etc.

In short, when you're documenting tools or engineering components, and your audience is tool users, teaching is a highly effective approach.

daniel_reetz··on Open source software for modeling soft materials
It's also been tried in the mechanical world ("Generative Design" in Autodesk's language) and it's still mostly in the "cool demo, bro" phase. The parts end up being expensive and difficult to manufacture due to the unusual geometry. You're penalized for exploring the design space because it runs on cloud credits (more exploration == more cost). Just not very compelling yet.
daniel_reetz··on Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think
Since they already reference Technology Connections in the article, and since this is a great essay but not new ideas, let's also call out other important voices - in particular Shoshana Zuboff's "Surveillance Capitalism", Cory Doctorow, and the many others who have put their backs into helping us understand how these sick systems work.
daniel_reetz··on Apple's Software Quality Crisis
Have you tried searching with Explorer? Or opening the start menu or a folder? I'm currently 100% a Windows shop, and it's embarrassingly slow on my silly fast computer.
daniel_reetz··on Apple says it will add 20k jobs, spend $500B, produce AI servers in US
Even Apple doesn't do CAD on OSX. They run Siemens NX on Windows.

But your statement isn't quite right. Fusion 360 runs fine in mac. I'm ex-Apple btw.

daniel_reetz··on Recovering priceless audio and lost languages from old decaying tapes
There's a piece of commercial software called Celemony Capstan. Might not be right for your application but it was designed explicitly for tape restoration.
daniel_reetz··on Privacy Is Not Dead: Beware the All-or-Nothing Mindset
Agree. Firefox is the only browser I "trust". It does the best job of respecting the user out of any available option. I am the user and I deserve respect. You are also users, and you deserve respect, too.
daniel_reetz··on Autodesk deletes old forum posts suddenly
Fusion is my daily driver and this is a huge thing for me. Missed it. Thanks.
daniel_reetz··on Insects rely on sounds made by distressed vegetation to guide reproduction
Some universities have a press or media outlet which generates press releases and handles media relations.
daniel_reetz··on TikTok divestment law upheld by federal appeals court
E2E doesn't fix the government mandated backdoors, which were implicated in this attack. Check out the last line of this article:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/04/politics/us-telecom-providers...

daniel_reetz··on Ask HN: Why did no one save the Living Computers museum in Seattle?
Something useful I learned recently. It's a lot more satisfying to share your favorite things while you're alive. You're alive to experience the rewards.

Someone close to me wants me to pick out my favorite things from their collection, so they can have the pleasure of giving them to me. Took me a while to understand.

Not everyone is worried about a legacy or where there stuff goes after they're gone. It's the least of my worries, personally.

daniel_reetz··on The business of gutting failed Bay Area tech companies
Losing Weird Stuff Warehouse was one of the bellwether signals for me to leave the Bay.

As I remember,Excess picked up a big chunk of Halted stock, but I heard the Excess location in San Jose closed (eBay store still open). Anyone know current status?

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