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mahrain

550 karma · joined January 18, 2011

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mahrain··on Tell HN: Bob Cringely has died
Reminded me of John C Dvorak, same generation, had a heart attack in April then died in July...
mahrain··on Nike exits the S&P 100 after 18 years and a $200B market-cap wipeout
Having gone through this process what surprised me was that they were advising along brand lines: “Brooks are sturdy, ASICS are narrow shoes, Hoka have thick soles and a lot of bounce”. They didn’t have differentiation within a same brand.
mahrain··on Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit
Already a reality in mainland China, which is a country with very little street crime, grafitti, vandalism etc.
mahrain··on The Dutch are filling gas wells with cement
This was done for mostly ideological reasons, "green transition" and such. The Dutch economy was dependent on natural gas sales for funding parts of the welfare state. They became a net importer of natural gas and then Ukraine and Iran made the gas prices spike. So the Dutch government is now struggling to fill the natural gas store for household heating and cooking applications for the coming winter season, while also incurring these high costs. The impact hasn't fully played out or understood.
mahrain··on Inkfield
Works for me, Firefox 152.0.4 on macOS 27 beta3.
mahrain··on The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code
I don't agree with "the west forgot how to make things", it moved supply chains for cheap consumer goods to asia, but in the B2B space a lot of things are manufactured in Europe: companies like Bosch, Volkswagen, ASML, Alstom and Airbus are cranking out extremely complicated machines that last many years in demanding environments. It's just a different level of value-add vs. low cost electronics (for instance).
mahrain··on Math Is Still Catching Up to the Mysterious Genius of Srinivasa Ramanujan (2024)
Well, these numbers are averages between people living until old age (65+ years) and high infant mortality. I don't think most people keeled over when they reach 25 years...
mahrain··on Windows: Microsoft broke the only thing that mattered
Office for Mac 2008, when they shifted to a new codebase, was pretty good for a while, just slooooow.
mahrain··on China's 450kmph bullet train is the fastest ever built
Airline-like comfort, and airplane-like noise. It's surprising how much noisier the Shanghai Maglev gets once you approach 400kph.
mahrain··on Jolla phone – a full-stack European alternative
Large parts of the OS are open source though. Not just the Linux kernel and userland, but also some specific things:

Sailfish: https://github.com/sailfishos Android layer: https://github.com/libhybris/libhybris

mahrain··on Jolla phone – a full-stack European alternative
Mediatek is a taiwanese company and the Dimensity 7100 platform includes the cellular stack.
mahrain··on My journey to the microwave alternate timeline
This explains a lot, American microwaves have these settings for different types of food etc, it seems most people throw something in and just 'nuke it'. European microwave ovens on the other hand, have a setting for different wattages (90W up to 720W 'Max' in my case), which, combined with instructions in the recipe or on the box, provide the right setting for this particular food.
mahrain··on WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system
Sure, however as explained further in this thread the BFI approach is new as opposed to the courser Zigbee RSSI-based approaches of Hue MotionAware.
mahrain··on WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system
Thank you for adding this context of this particular research, I do see that it relies on MU-MIMO information, which does rely on more powerful WiFi infrastructure than the basic ESP32's I am referring to.
mahrain··on WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system
Yes, you won't be able to do this on normal wifi traffic typically either, you need to send specific packets at a high enough rate (in between normal internet traffic) in order to sense with any accuracy, as I also remarked earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46976849
mahrain··on Ask HN: Why are electronics still so unrecyclable?
I was shocked to find that even electronics that are collected in Europe seem to be shipped to Africa, set on fire, and at most, metals are collected from the ashes, including traces of gold and copper. That's about it. Batteries have a bit better recycling path but not by much.
mahrain··on WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system
Verizon has a security feature built around this, https://www.xfinity.com/hub/smart-home/wifi-motion

Philips WiZ bulbs: https://www.wizconnected.com/en-us/explore-wiz/spacesense

Alarm.com also supports such sensors: https://poweredbyalarm.com/eventresources/wp-content/uploads...

mahrain··on WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system
What happens is that a large body of water (pun intended) has the ability to absorb and reflect wifi signals as it moves through the room. For this you need to generate traffic and measure for instance RSSI or CSI (basically, signal strength) of the packets. If you increase frequency you can detect smaller movements such as arms moving vs. a body, or exclude pets if you reduce sensitivity. It works well for detecting presence and movement in a defined space, but ideally requires you to cross the path between two mains-powered devices, such as light bulbs or wifi mesh points. Passing a cafe doesn't seem too likely.

If you want to do advanced sensing, trying to identify a person, I would postulate you need to saturate a space with high frequency wifi traffic, ideally placed mesh points, and let the algo train on identifying people first by a certain signature (combination of size/weight, movement/gait, breath / chest movements).

Source: I worked on such technologies while at Signify (variants of this power Philips/Wiz "SpaceSense" feature).

More here: https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/16/23355255/signify-wiz-spac...

mahrain··on Why more companies are recognizing the benefits of keeping older employees
With the age of retirement (in europe) steadily increasing, and the workforce getting older, the typical corporate position of rejecting older candidates will need to change, if only simply to fill the vacancies. For this, the mentality of hiring managers and HR will need to change as well, and business school articles like this should help.
mahrain··on ASML staffing changes could result in a net reduction of around 1700 positions
Local news sources[1] show that the unions and works council are outraged. That's only a start.

[1] Source: https://www.ed.nl/binnenland/vakbonden-woedend-na-keiharde-i...

mahrain··on ASML staffing changes could result in a net reduction of around 1700 positions
What’s more surprising is the fact that the seem comfortable letting go of 1700 people with knowledge of the company and processes.

Dutch government stepped in last year to help facilitate a anticipated growth by fast tracking infrastructure and housing investments, as ASML is building a new campus for 20.000 employees. Then do they expect the 1700 to wait and come back in 2-3 years when the new campus is planned to be operational?

mahrain··on San Francisco Graffiti
One of the most startling differences between Chinese and European cities is the lack of grafitti in China. I wonder if it's explained by laws, norms, enforcement?
mahrain··on Self Sanitizing Door Handle
The TiO2 will likely rub off and need regular replenishment. Also, the alternative here, sensor-operated or button-operated automatic doors are already widely used. I wonder who this is meant for?
mahrain··on Erich von Däniken has died
When I was young and having access to internet (but pre social media) I loved looking into these theories, prompted by Discovery Channel's "Quest for the lost civilization" and stumbling upon these books from the 1970s. It felt like doing research and archaeology on the nascent internet.

I was surprised to see these ideas becoming so mainstream with Ancient Aliens, and then somehow finding overlap with the alt-right, antivax and Covid-doubters. This made me really turn off of taking this seriously.

mahrain··on CATL expects oceanic electric ships in three years
It would be amazing if they could leverage the container system, but instead of goods, there'd be battery containers they could just plug in to the ship. You could even charge a battery container somewhere and bring it in by (electrified) rail.
mahrain··on How elites could shape mass preferences as AI reduces persuasion costs
I used ChatGPT to figure out what's going on here, and it told me this is a 'neo-Marxist critique of the nation state'.
mahrain··on I don't care how well your "AI" works
Reading the blog post the Marxist sentiment was creeping in, and then I also saw actual Marx referenced in the footnotes.
mahrain··on First recording of a dying human brain shows waves similar to memory flashbacks (2022)
Without spoiling too much, this is a major theme in Dan Brown's latest novel 'the secret of secrets'.
mahrain··on NORAD’s Cheyenne Mountain Combat Center, c.1966
Northern Europe had a very similar facility, a large "underground city" in The Netherlands near Maastricht, being used as a command center / information hub in NATO for the airspace. Unfortunately in the construction was a lot of asbestos, and it was completely dismantled. Small tours are given by former employees though! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NORTHAG_War_Headquarters_Canne...
mahrain··on Kevo app shutdown
There really are too few business models available to build sustainable IoT solutions, apart from subscriptions (and only Security companies seem to have figured this out), pyramid schemes (letting your new users pay for maintaining the whole solution), or plain old planned obsolescence (with forced upgrades, like with Smartphones).

I'm not sure what models would work, apart from regulators stepping in and mandating x years of updates, like with the European regulations. Which basically comes down to #3.

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