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kimburgess

2,583 karma · joined March 3, 2013

https://simple.industries/about.html
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kimburgess··on The glass at McCormick Place in Chicago is a lethal obstacle for birds
Bug in the latest firmware. Should be patched during the next recharge or OTA for the newer models.
kimburgess··on Meta spends $181M to get out of lease at vacant London offices
Bleak is the word you’re looking for. The trajectory of the rental market in AU is beyond terrifying: https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2023/jun/new-in...
kimburgess··on We are beginning to roll out new voice and image capabilities in ChatGPT
From prior experience, courteous interruption is a skill that a lot of humans find challenging at times too (myself included).
kimburgess··on IPFS support got merged into curl
Similar. It’s a Merkle DAG.

There’s an intro to IPFS content identifiers here: https://docs.ipfs.tech/concepts/content-addressing/.

kimburgess··on 95 bits per second
It's still a valid form of data transport today. AWS will (literally) ship you a 45-foot container with 100PB of storage for shifting bits around: https://aws.amazon.com/snowmobile/.
kimburgess··on Apple Launches Apple Watch 9
The aggregation of a sufficient number of small useful tools is a good point.

I wouldn’t carry a voice only phone, or a text only messaging device, or a standalone GPS, music player, or PDA. But I do find a phone that combines these pretty useful.

kimburgess··on iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus
You can already do that with an iPad (sans fat OS). If you're using Blink Shell (https://blink.sh) the external display is independent of what's on the iPad too, which works really neatly. This is the exact setup I used as my main dev machine in a previous role.

Would be very nice to see if this works on the new iPhones. A thin client with decent security in your pocket with keyboard/mouse/display at both home and work seems like a very approachable computing setup.

Photo for reference: https://twitter.com/_______kim/status/1348736952330301440

kimburgess··on Apple Launches Apple Watch 9
For those using the Apple Watch: would you recommend it?

I was an early(ish) adopter of smart watches/wearables - think Pebble and LG G Watch era. I walked away from that experience with the perception they exist solely as expensive distraction machines with an extremely short functional life and have been enjoying mechanical watches since.

This tech has me on the verge of trying again. It's seems to be getting pretty close a ubicomp device. There's enough compute onboard to do useful things with the sensors, particularly with the addition of the neural cores. The UWB proximity awareness look interesting too for someone with other apple devices (HomePods etc).

What I'm not familiar with is the current software ecosystem. Are there any core functions or third party apps that make use of this outside of just slinging notifications?

kimburgess··on Ask HN: Turning off the programming mind during non-work hours
Another advocate of this approach here. Define some form of time-boxing: 90 minutes, 3 hours, 1 day, 1 week, whatever. When this is up force a capture of current state, knowledge, assumptions and ideas, then walk away and intentionally drop context. When you return it’s a great spot to be self critical and reorientate towards what you’re actually trying to achieve. Think of it like async rubber-ducking.

If you continue to think about the problem space during that ‘off time’ (which you likely will) add the thought to some notes for review when you return.

kimburgess··on HDMI ISA graphics card for vintage PCs by improving the Graphics Gremlin
Absolutely - YCbCr 4:2:2 and 4:2:0 use different encodings across the lines to balance bandwidth. Complexity then continues to stack with deep colour pixel packing. There's a beautiful pocket of simplicity for RGB 4:4:4 8bpc which is essentially a direct digital encoding of ye oldy RGBHV signals. More than OK for any retro-comp needs, and a fun starting point for general hacking.
kimburgess··on HDMI ISA graphics card for vintage PCs by improving the Graphics Gremlin
That's only the case in the (relatively) shiny new 2.1 spec with FRL. Prior versions are TMDS with 3 channels for red, green, blue, along with a clock. The audio and InfraFrames slot into the data islands in blanking periods on those signals.
kimburgess··on Fighting API bots with Cloudflare's invisible turnstile
For this style or abuse mitigation I’m always surprised that HashCash [1] or similar simple, locally implemented proof of work mechanisms aren’t more common.

This can be implemented in a way that remains transparent (albeit via JS), poses little impact on ‘good’ users, but protects against a lot of traffic patterns that may be undesirable. The cost can be scaled to match infra capability and the challenge can be a combo of the request data and time. Valid windows for that time can then be synced with cache validity which removes the need to keep tabs on any state.

For those deeper in this space. What am I missing here that prevents this from being the norm?

[1]: http://www.hashcash.org/

kimburgess··on Ask HN: Anyone using Linode to host large systems?
Another host to consider with AU presence (both Sydney and Melbourne) is Vultr.

Not associated, but have been using them for some personal infrastructure lately - it's a really nice platform. If you have strong isolation requirements they have bare metal options too.

kimburgess··on The Carrot Problem
A big caveat is #4 should read "be willing and able to take risks". If you're not living in country with a social safety net or have the resources to self-support failure, risk taking is simply not an option.
kimburgess··on I drew these corals with mathematical equations
Obligatory demoscene links for anyone continuing down the rabbit hole: https://nanogems.demozoo.org/, https://www.pouet.net/.
kimburgess··on The US government is taking a step toward space-based nuclear propulsion
Just wait until you hear about SSBN’s…
kimburgess··on I'm OK, the bull is dead (2004)
This form should be the default for any async comms.

Expressing the core statement up front allows proceeding content to serve as an optional framing, if required. If the recipient already has context they can skip the cruft.

This structure is mirrored in larger org settings that use memo's. It's not a new idea, but definitely a well proven and effective one.

kimburgess··on Zero Motorcycles makes its service manuals free
This is great news, and somewhat unfortunate something so benign requires celebration.

I used to ride a Zero SR. It was a phenomenal bike but also completely unserviceable in Australia. I ended up reverse engineering the log protocol [1] to get a sense of how it was performing and maintain what I could myself. It was horribly painful, inefficient and completely avoidable spend of time.

Hackability for devices is one thing but when you straddle an energy source that propels you, a fragile meat sack, at speed imo it's essential to have absolute confidence in how the machine behaves.

[1]: https://github.com/zero-motorcycle-community/zero-log-parser

kimburgess··on Speed Test
Default is Apple’s infra, but you can choose via a config flag. You can also run your own: https://github.com/network-quality/server
kimburgess··on Ask HN: Zoom alternatives which preserve privacy and are easy to use?
Depending on the scale or your organisation (and budget): https://www.pexip.com/ is a pretty incredible platform.
kimburgess··on Ask HN: What is the most powerful, fully open, fully programmable computer?
If you’re interested in the journey, and happy to run on a simulator rather than hardware, https://www.nand2tetris.org/ is a decent ‘full stack’ experience.

I know it’s a fairly popular resource here - has anyone extended the content to go all the way with an FPGA implementation?

kimburgess··on The Cables That Run the Internet
For the inter-satellite links. First and last hop still need to pass from the ground to LEO.

The obvious solution is to start yeeting compute and/or users into space.

kimburgess··on The Cables That Run the Internet
You're right that it won't be the same - it has the potential to be faster.

Speed of light in a vacuum is higher than what can be achieved in a fiber-optic. Combine that with a more direct path than what can be achieved with an undersea cable and things start to get interesting.

kimburgess··on Trying to become a better developer by learning more about aviation
A “bug” is specific to computer systems. It traces back to a literal bug (moth) trapped in a relay and is an external factor with no responsibility attributed.

A “defect” is a declaration that something is evidently faulty with a clear onus on the vendor to fix.

kimburgess··on Ask HN: What focus/coding music are you listening to these days?
Loads of Max Cooper [1] and other misc from Mesh [2]. Always new bits of interest from every listen. Also very much looking forward to (finally) experiencing a live show with upcoming AU gigs.

[1]: https://maxcooper.net/

[2]: https://www.meshmeshmesh.net/

kimburgess··on Digikey's Physical Connectors Tutorial
One that's not mentioned in the article, but is a beautiful assembly of engineering is all of the https://www.neutrik.com/ connectors - speakON, powerCON, etherCON, opticalCON etc.

Amazing solid bits of hardware with ingress protection, strain relief, and good usability for environments with a lot of equipment movement.

kimburgess··on Show HN: AI companions stack – create and host your own AI companions
As someone working in a large non-software org, that statement does not hold. Spreadsheets are the underlying infrastructure to a mildly terrifying amount of modern civilization.
kimburgess··on Displayport: A Better Video Interface
That's not HDMI causing that pain. In fact, HDMI includes specific functionality for lip sync correction and enabling devices to expose both audio and video latencies they add to the signal.
kimburgess··on Debate over 'fake work' and 'lazy management' in tech industry
Unborked link: https://simple.industries/notes/chesterton's-fence.html

Looks like the single quote doesn't play nicely with the auto-linker.

kimburgess··on Debate over 'fake work' and 'lazy management' in tech industry
That failure mode is not isolated to tech, and predates modern org structures too. See Chesterton’s Fence (https://simple.industries/notes/chesterton's-fence.html).
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