Hacker News Reader

ratsbaneon AMD acquires Taalas to boost inference performance by etching models in silicon

Smart move by AMD. Chatjimmy is very fast and not very good, but I think it might become very fast AND very good.

ratsbaneon Cookware Got Worse on Purpose: Who Owns Pyrex and All-Clad Now

After my AllClad pans have started to get the sharp edges from dishwasher corrosion of the aluminum layer, I've been switching to Hestan Nanobond. It's not exactly nonstick, but the surface is so hard and polished that things don't stick very much and you can use metal implements without scratching the pan.

But I think AllClad has switched to sealed-rims on their pans, thus making them truly dishwasher-safe?

ratsbaneon Launch HN: OctaPulse (YC W26) – Robotics and computer vision for fish farming

I like your project. I'm a SWE working on something completely different by day but tinkering with several other side projects, including this, https://github.com/ratsbane/panda-mcp/ (which is accelerating my computer vision learning rapidly) I'm interested in your choice of the OAK cameras because I'm trying to select a camera model also. I started this with a simple USB webcam and added a PhotoNeo camera. I've just switched to RealSense and I've got a couple of ZED cameras on order but now I'm looking at the OAK-D and thinking that it makes a lot of sense to run a nn directly on the camera.

ratsbaneon You are not required to close your <p>, <li>, <img>, or <br> tags in HTML

This is more of a problem with linters.

ratsbaneon Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)

https://provenancevault.com/

I started this over the summer when I was moving to a new house and wanted to document the family history behind some thing I own. It's turned out to be more useful than I thought and I've expanded the features as friends found it useful. A developer friend, who I used to work with, joined me and we're both working on it now. It does have a little revenue now but we are far from quitting our day jobs.

I'd really like any feedback from the HN community!

ratsbaneon The Fancy Rug Dilemma

This really made me think - and not just because I went to Artsy Rugs last week and talked with the someone there about a rug that I bought at an estate sale and which I would like more information about ( http://provenancevault.com/treasures/12x16-persian-rug-ajrk8... ) but also because I've been moving to a new house the last few months and going through a lot of the possessions I've accumulated, deciding what to keep (definitely things with strong sentimental value or family history) and what to get rid of (a lot) but also what it means to have things. They can be both a joy and a connection with the past as well as a burden.

And because of that, I started building this website https://provenancevault.com/treasures/discover (it's probably not ready to introduce widely yet, but relevant to this conversation)

ratsbaneon Berkeley Humanoid Lite – Open-source robot

Probably not much. Also the LeRobot reference arm (SO-ARM100) is 6DoF, but it's very hackable and there are already project with different grippers, etc.

ratsbaneon Berkeley Humanoid Lite – Open-source robot

HuggingFace LeRobot. You can build the reference arm easily and cheaply and the software is designed to train AI. There's a lot to explore and extend there and the community is growing rapidly. It's based on the Stanford Aloha project. https://huggingface.co/lerobot

ratsbaneon DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

Your question contains a clue to the answer: "Why doesn't anyone do anything". Specifically, what? I've been asking myself this since at least 2016 and I'm sure many other people have too. I've made phone calls, donated money, volunteered for campaigns and gone door-to-door. None of that has made any difference. The problem is in figuring out WHAT to do.

ratsbaneon Tesla Cybertruck Pricing and Specs

I spend about $20/month to charge mine at home and drive about 700 miles/month, unless I go out of town.

ratsbaneon Tesla Cybertruck Pricing and Specs

The independent plumber I use when something goes wrong with the pipes drives a GMC Savana van. He's really good; close to retirement age and very methodical and thorough and his prices are reasonable. The electrician I use also drives some sort of van. I've had a few other contractors out for different projects around the house and I'm starting to notice a correlation: the ones in the giant lifted pickup trucks are unreliable and overpriced; the ones who drive vans are the best.

ratsbaneon OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

Thanks - good answer. At the very least it seems like something to keep lawyers busy for a long time, unless everyone can ctrl-z back to Thursday. I am thinking though that this is a risk of IP-sharing arrangements - if you can't stop the employees from jumping ship, they're dangerous

ratsbaneon OpenAI staff threaten to quit unless board resigns

Question for California IP/employment law experts - 1) would you have expected the IP-sharing agreement between MS and OpenAI to contain some provisions for employee poaching, within the constraints allowed by California (?) law? 2) California law has good provisions for workers' rights to leave one company and go to another, but what does it all for company A to do when entering an IP-sharing relationship with company B?

ratsbaneon Visualizing American inflation across eight categories

Changes in technology do shift the market baskets that we buy. I now pay $7 to do the equivalent of "filling my tank" when I charge at home.

ratsbaneon Radar Interference Tracker: An Open Source Tool to Locate Military Radar Systems

Fascinating. It's even possible to pinpoint missile installation locations in the past because this uses existing satellite imagery.

ratsbaneon What Happened in 2021

We had 38,680 motor vehicle deaths in 2020. We haven't had 45,000 since 1989; 54,000 in 1972. The rate has been steadily decreasing (with a few ups and downs along the way) for about the last 50 years(1), even though miles driven has been steadily increasing(2). This is because we, as a society, as a government, decided to study the problem and implement changes to improve the situation.

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

(2) https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10315

ratsbaneon Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

The queue proposal sounds like a Monty Python skit.

If we adopt the rule that the next person to be served is the most recent person to join line, it's inevitable that a second line will form with people waiting to go to the first line and if someone tries to go to bypass the second line and go directly to the first line, the crowd in the first line will direct their rage at this person and compel him or her to queue in the second line - it's just as if there were only one line and the person had cut in that.

ratsbaneon Explanations for the Havana Syndrome

I was in Havana in January, 2017, around the time that this was happening. I walked around the US embassy one day. The weather was sunny but cold and windy; the embassy is on the Malecón, the seafront that stretches around Havana, and waves were crashing over the walls. It was unpleasant. I had never heard of the "Havana Syndrome" thing then, but in describing that day in my notes, I wrote that there was a feeling of pressure from the wind and sea spray. In hindsight, I wonder if this sort of weather condition contributed to perceptions of this syndrome. In videos I took that day you can sense this from the wind noise.

ratsbaneon The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences

You don't have to put it into a savings account. I do the same thing but into a stock fund.

ratsbaneon What can mRNA treat next?

I think that DNA methylation is a big factor in hair loss as well as hair color changes. There are other disease processes which are also driven by DNA/RNA methylation, so a treatment for any of these might also lead to treatments for all of them. (And I don't really know what I'm talking about and I hope someone with more expertise can add to this)

ratsbaneon The Daily Standup Is a Waste of Time

It also can solve the problem of helping team members know what each other are doing. If standup were only what this essay describes, it would be a waste of time, but it's a lot more than that. It's also a chance for team members to describe problems they're having and benefit from the collective experience. I'm a big fan of morning standup, but I suppose there are good standups and bad standups.

ratsbaneon Please do not put IP addresses into DNS MX records

  dig myspecialdomainwhatever.com MX

for anyone like me who had to look that up. (And I'm far from competent on DNS matters so please correct if there's a better way)

ratsbaneon Shadow traffic: site visits that are not captured by typical analytics providers

Watching the bot traffic is an interesting exercise in itself. The trick is not to filter it out; it's to identify it (to the greatest degree possible.)

ratsbaneon Ask HN: What are you reading to make sense of the economy?

Famous Financial Fiascos by John Train. It's short and entertaining. There are only a few chapters that deal with sovereign debt, but he gets the essence of the thing.

ratsbaneon Weather.com Has Become the Pawn of a Data Theft Scheme

Nothing in this article explained how this advertising could actually be dangerous. It "collects the IP address and user agent string." Is there something serious or not?

ratsbaneon New Software Flaw Could Further Delay Boeing’s 737 Max

I remember a few times in school when we took turns grading each other's work. That scenario raises all sorts of other potential for problems, but it's an interesting thought experiment: what if Boeing were responsible for certifying Aribus' planes and visa-versa?

ratsbaneon Arduino programmable air, pneumatics kit

Only a few days ago I was playing with the little pump I took out of a broken automatic blood pressure cuff. This is very neat, but really I think you could buy a few such devices and scrap them for the parts for less money.

ratsbaneon Ask HN: Feasible Alternative to the MacBook Pro?

Macbook Pro is still my primary laptop, but for the last year or so I've also been carrying and using a Pixelbook. Except for the smaller screen, it's almost evolved to the point that I'd be comfortable with it as a primary laptop.

The recent addition of Linux support is very nice and I'm looking forward to its continuing evolution: https://support.google.com/pixelbook/answer/9031351?hl=en

Perhaps the new Pixelbook Go will tilt the scales for me: https://store.google.com/product/pixelbook_go

ratsbaneon Sears Hasn’t Fared Better After Bankruptcy

I've been paying attention lately to https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/ and https://www.red.com/ They make video cameras which take interchangeable lenses, produce video and stills good enough to be used in feature films, and are relatively cheap (comparable to Leica and Hasselblad cameras from the film era.) They are positioning themselves to be successful where Nikon, Canon, et al are becoming increasingly irrelevant.

My Nikon DSLR is four or five years old now, but instead of replacing it with another Nikon I'm thinking about a Black Magic Pocket Cinema Camera. (https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicpocketci...)

Video is the new still photography.

ratsbaneon Tesla Model 3 represented over 15% of September new car sales in The Netherlands

fjfaase, your statement "An electrical car produces almost as much fine dust particles as an internal combustion engine" is very surprising and not at all what I would expect.

Can you cite any sources for that or explain it a bit more?

Aside from particulate matter in exhaust, regenerative braking doesn't produce dust like friction braking does, thus I'd expect electric cars to produce much less dust than ICE vehicles.