Hacker News Reader

unwindon Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

ALPR = Automatic License-Plate Recognition [1] for those not familiar with the acronym.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number-plate_recogni...

unwindon Tiny, removable "mini SSD" could eventually be a big deal for gaming handhelds

That size obviously doesn't parse, so it's hard to tell. It's how thick, again? I guess they just mean "15x17x1 mm" but somehow edited the 1 out and ... I don't know.

unwindon Candle Flame Oscillations as a Clock

Same, I had to Google it too but didn't even understand the pictures since they were so alien.

Eventually found this page [1] which includes a basic description:

A baseboard heater is a convection heater. In such heaters, cold air coming in from a window enters the heater through a vent and hot air is dispersed through metal fins that are heated through electricity.

But it's still confusing because if it's cold outside (=you need heating) why would you have your window open to let in the cold air? That would also make your already-heated air escape ... duh.

Agreed, it's amazing how something that "feels" like it would get the same solution everywhere it's needed still does not, due to cultural differences, history, and stuff.

[1]: https://www.cadet.glendimplexamericas.com/en-us/articles/ele...

unwindon Physically Based Rendering in Filament

Huh? That literally says that the (higher-level) "Sceneform" library uses Filament for the PBR, isn't that the opposite of it being forgotten? What am I missing, I really don't follow Android development ...

unwindon Intel Foundry demonstrates first Arm-based chip on 18a node

Intel are believed to hold an Arm architectural license [1] as far as I know, they have made Arm-based things in the past.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture_family#Archit...

unwindon Croatian freediver held breath for 29 minutes

Obliviously [...]

I love that, thanks! :D

unwindon OpenMower – An open source lawn mower

Wouldn't the small solar robot have to move pretty fast in order for the blade to be able to cut through grass? I can't imagine cutting grass very effectively by just (manually) dragging a knife through it, it will just bend out of the way instead of cut won't it?

unwindon Faster substring search with SIMD in Zig

Can the compiler detect that and use the proper code so no test is needed at runtime?

This is Zig so I guess the answer is "yeah, duh" but wanted to ask since it sounded like the solution is less, uh, "compiler-friendly" than I would expect.

unwindon Millau Viaduct

Beautiful!

Also I can't help but appreciate that the gently curved bridge makes it possible to drive to Béziers [1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9zier_curve

unwindon Ultrathin business card runs a fluid simulation

Just as a point of interest perhaps for folks who are not familiar with PCB design and modern electronics: the "huge" matrix of 21x21=441 LEDs would, with the specified LED from the bill of materials (BOM) cost all of $6.

That is based on the price for low quantity (1-500 pieces) though; if you were to build more than one board you would buy more LEDs, pushing the per-LED price (way) down. You can get 4,000 LEDs for $30.'

Edit: here is the LED in question, from the BOM [1].

[1]: https://jlcpcb.com/partdetail/C497920

unwindon Ultrathin business card runs a fluid simulation

That was very clearly mentioned and linked in the article, too.

unwindon Italy's pizza detectives

Your images didn't load for me, sadly. Might be some corporate filtering.

Anyway, I googled up this [1] article about supposedly original poke, and it also mentions rice and shows images of bowls with rice. Interesting!

PS. As a Swedish person, the "cinnamon rolls" with frosting that are typical in the US are somewhat triggering to me (because [2]). Sorry about the poke!

Edit: switched the cinnamon roll link to the actual Swedish-style image, for clarity.

[1]: https://guide.michelin.com/hk/en/article/features/6-things-t...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinnamon_roll#/media/File:Cinn...

unwindon You know more Finnish than you think

Thanks! I just kind of knew that a "South African guy ... something music something ... remix" had to be The Kiffness.

unwindon Zero-day flaws in authentication, identity, authorization in HashiCorp Vault

This feels like a dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44821250.

Edit: replaced link with link to HN post, not the article in that post.

unwindon A fast, growable array with stable pointers in C

Got it, thanks. I suck at x86, even more than I thought. :/

Edit: it's CLZ on Arm [1], probably what I was looking for.

[1]: https://developer.arm.com/documentation/100069/0610/A32-and-...

unwindon A fast, growable array with stable pointers in C

Very nice, although I think the level of "trickery" with the macros becomes a bit much. I do understand that is The Way in C (I've written C for 30 years), it's just not something I'd do very often.

Also, from a strictly prose point of view, isn't it strange that the `clz` instruction doesn't actually appear in the 10-instruction disassembly of the indexing function? It feels like it was optimized out by the compiler perhaps due to the index being compile-time known or something, but after the setup and explanation that was a bit jarring to me.

unwindon About the BLOBs in Ventoy

Good point, [1] is a handy reference on the word. Also used in the compound word "blobfish", of which [2] is a well-known specimen.

[1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/blob

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Blobby_(fish)

unwindon UR5 with Robotiq 85 Gripper: Object Grasping and Placement Simulation

Here, "a UR5 robotic arm" is a reference to a product by Universal Robots called the UR5 [1]. That was not obvious for me, so I had to look it up. :)

[1]: https://www.universal-robots.com/products/ur5e/

unwindon Fire hazard of WHY2025 badge due to 18650 Li-Ion cells

That is mentioned in the article, although could perhaps be more emphasized since it does mean the "obvious" fix is not possible:

Commonly available protected 18650 cells don't fit in the badge's cell holders because they are slightly longer.

unwindon C10kday

It's in the second sentence of the article, so not exactly buried?

unwindon Show HN: Use Their ID – Use your local UK MP's ID for the online safety act

Meta: typo in title, says "Dd" instead of "Id".

unwindon Is the Interstellar Object 3I/Atlas Alien Technology?

Linky linky for the lazy: https://xkcd.com/2326/.

unwindon Open Sauce is a confoundingly brilliant Bay Area event

Meta: typo, it's Ken Shirriff not Sheriff. Although in my mind Ken is certainly the sheriff of IC exploration. :)

unwindon How large are large language models? (2025)

Meta: The inclusion of the current year ("(2025)") in the title is strange, even though it's in the actual title of the linked-to post, repeating it here makes me look around for the time machine controls.

unwindon Feasibility study of a mission to Sedna - Nuclear propulsion and solar sailing

It's actually the diameter that is 1,000 km, so I guess that changes the mass if assuming Lunar density to around 1.74×10^21 kg.

unwindon The provenance memory model for C

I can't even view the post, I just get some kind of content management system-like with the page as JSON or something, in pink-on-white. I'm super confused. :|

The answer to your question seems to (still) be "no".

unwindon Reverse Engineering the Microchip CLB

The smallest members of the family are 8-pin devices with 14 KB flash memory and 1 KB of RAM. They cost around $0.60 in quantities of one. That is typically not a platform where you would need/be able to se a specialized SERDES, since it's not powerful enough to deal with a lot of data.

I think the CLB is intended to "eat" some basic latches and/or gates that might en up on boards in industrial/control environments, i.e. push very simple logic stuff with perhaps high demands on timing and reliability into the already-programmable part.

Sounds kind of nice, but (as an actual embedded software developer) I would hesitate to commit to a platform that requires using a remote server to generate parts of my code. :|

unwindon Collections: Nitpicking Gladiator's Iconic Opening Battle, Part I

Yeah, since the M777 doesn't have a napalm shell [1] that would be totally absurd! :D

In fact, since I got curious, it seems nobody fires napalm out of howitzers, it's non-trivial to combine the thin easy-to-break shell skin needed by napalm with something tough enough to be fired from artillery [2].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M777_howitzer#Ammunition

[2]: https://www.quora.com/Was-napalm-ever-used-in-artillery-roun...

unwindon Parameterized types in C using the new tag compatibility rule

I think this is an interesting change, even though I (as someone who has loved C for 30+ years and use it daily in a professional capacity) don't immediately see a lot of use-cases I'm sure they can be found as the author demonstrates. Cool, and a good post!

unwindon Battery-electric "Infinity Train" will charge itself using gravity

It's Australia, the rail line is 143 km (89 miles). Putting up poles and hanging catenaries over that kind of distance is probably not cheap?

Either way it sounds brilliant, both simpler and better than catenaries, I like it!