Hacker News Reader

zonkerdonkeron Mark Zuckerberg's biggest legal nightmare yet could cost Meta $1.4T

Advertisement as a concept should get the tabacco treatment.

zonkerdonkeron Wallace the 6 inch f/2.8 telescope, building it, and hiking with it

I will check them out! Thanks for sharing

zonkerdonkeron Wallace the 6 inch f/2.8 telescope, building it, and hiking with it

Very cool project and video documentation, really inspiring! As someone who is mechanically inclined and has a decent amount of tools/3D printer, is there any DIY telescope that you would recommend to build as a first foray into the field?

I've never done much with optics, and after reading through a few of your posts, it looks both incredibly challenging and very rewarding.

zonkerdonkeron Apple raises prices of MacBooks, iPads

Some back of the envolope math, Apple sells roughly 30 million macbooks per year [1], lets say they average out to 16gb per unit, their demand is about 500 petabytes of ram.

A single rack of NVIDIA’s GB300 uses 20TB of HBM3E and 17TB of LPDDR5X. There could easily be a thousand racks of these in a large datacenter.

So an approximate entire years worth of ddr5 ram demand from Apple equals approximately 1 single datacenter.

I can see how they succumed to the pressure.

[1] https://www.tweaktown.com/news/104073/macbook-pro-is-reporte...

[2] https://frame.work/pl/en/blog/updates-on-memory-pricing-and-...

zonkerdonkeron Unified Controllable and Faithful Text-to-CAD Generation with LLMs

McMaster-Carr CAD downloads are actually modeled native and parametrically in Solidworks.

For your funnel, it seems mainly the problem area is a volumetric calculation, not CAD. A simple funnel would take 1 sketch and 1 revolve. I guess it'd come down to if you'd prefer to type all your variables in a text prompt vs in the CAD dialogue box.

Otherwise, I think mainly the point where we disagree is that it is easier to specify mechanical designs in natural language vs the typical inputs in CAD.

Let's try the spiral pattern example. Which direction is the spacing increasing in distance? Radially? Hole to hole along the spiral pattern? How many instances establish the radiating arms of the spiral? Which direction is the spiral going? Is this a planar pattern? What is the radial pitch of the spiral? How many extra details would I need to type out into my prompt in order to achieve the precise results desired, and how many re-tries?

Vs: Fill out this box of variables. https://i.imgur.com/juDH435.png

zonkerdonkeron Britain Announces Social Media Ban for Children

I was curious how the ban was going for Australia, seems like not that great.

>The eSafety commissioner's latest compliance update reported that 70 per cent of the 898 parents surveyed said their kids still had active social media accounts. [1]

The banned social media companies obviously have massive incentives to make this rollout as messy and un-successful appearing as possible, and seems like they've done a great job at that.

I know there are many reasons to balk at a ban like this, but at least they are trying something. Social media is designed to be only 1 thing: addictive. All other features only exist to serve that purpose in the end.

Governments have always stepped in to regulate dangerous vices that humanity's monkey brain can't resist (to the detriment of society): alcohol, smoking, gambling, drugs, etc. This might be a rocky start, but at least it is a start

[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-06-14/why-teens-say-social-...

zonkerdonkeron Unified Controllable and Faithful Text-to-CAD Generation with LLMs

https://www.mcmaster.com/6325K113/

Download model, done.

Not attempting to be sassy, sorry, but maybe I can explain my point a bit better. If you are making something complex enough to warrant you yourself designing it (something unique, custom, new), then CAD on its own is the best tool (right now!). I have models with thousands of parametric features linked to hundreds of other parts in an assembly. I would need to write a novel to achieve those same features with an LLM.

If what you want to make is simple enough that an LLM would be able to nearly one-shot it, then that model either: 1. Already exists somewhere (like the gear above) or 2. Is simple enough that a couple hours of training videos will give you all the skills you need to make it yourself

zonkerdonkeron Unified Controllable and Faithful Text-to-CAD Generation with LLMs

The first image on the actual paper really tells the whole story. CAD for mechanical design, by necessity, requires pretty immense specificity. It is more onerous to type out "now raise the height of the torus relative to the base 4mm" than to click on "extrude" and type 4 or drag a handle.

Injecting a natural language layer into the workflow is just not optimal. CAD itself is not a difficult tool to learn and use effectively. There are essentially no layers of abstraction that an LLM can assist in cutting through, and no obfuscated rules or languages to learn.

I think of it this way. If there was someone sitting at my computer, and I had to do all of my CAD design by explaining what I wanted them to do verbally, I'd rip out my hair.

LLMs are doing for programmers what virtual CAD did to the drafter 35+ years ago, optimizing the effort expanded to create the thing already in your brain

zonkerdonkeron Are blue zones real? Answering that question is harder then ever

Median life expectancy is affected by a much larger number of variables, and is also susceptible to just as much (if not more) number fudging and statisitical nudging. Maybe the country also has a large subset of obese alcoholics for example. If someone lives to be over 100, that in and of itself is a pretty valuable data point

zonkerdonkeron A fundamental principle of aeronautical engineering has been overturned

Based on the mechanism of flow attachment in the transition zone it seems like the overall airfoil profile would likely have to change to take full advantage of the reduced friction. I think its much more likely to see this technique played with somewhere like Formula 1, if it hasnt been already.

zonkerdonkeron California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy

Big cities aren't typically in such an ideal planar geological setup as that. I'm having a hard time imagining how something like that would work in the Bay area, NYC, Seattle, Miami etc

zonkerdonkeron China blocks Meta's acquisition of AI startup Manus

>not immediately clear on what grounds China was seeking the annulment of a deal involving a Singapore-based company and how, if at all, a completed acquisition transaction would be unwound.

Interesting. I wonder what sorts of threats China could make to back up this demand, or if this is more of a warning for future acquisitions in the space.

zonkerdonkeron Penguin 'Toxicologists' Find PFAS Chemicals in Remote Patagonia

There is plenty of evidence that sauna does in fact help with detox, specifically phthalates. It's not magic or some intrinsic property of sauna though, just sweat. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3504417/

zonkerdonkeron Bubble Sorted Amen Break

And a tragic story at that:

>Coleman died homeless and destitute in 2006. It was unlikely he was aware of the impact he had made on music. Neither he [band leader Spencer] nor Coleman received royalties for the break.

zonkerdonkeron MacBook Air with M5

Its absolutley mind boggling. My work machine (lenovo) regualry roasts itself to 0% battery in my backpack during my commute

zonkerdonkeron Sizing chaos

For anyone else wondering. Im also a 33 or 34 in pretty much any brand, just measured my waistline (where my pants usually sit), 38.5 inches.

Never knew!

zonkerdonkeron Steam Frame

Its worse than that. Cameras (plus DToF if you want tracking in the dark), imus, gyros, and necessarily onboard compute/SOC to handle processing that data. Shipping it all off to a remote computer and then making the round trip creates an untenable amount of lag. Thats not even accounting for controller and hand tracking.

And once you have the pipeline and computation power to enable inside out tracking all on device, adding an OS is essentially free.

zonkerdonkeron Server DRAM prices surge 50% as AI-induced memory shortage hits hyperscalers

It really is a damn shame, but before AI, it was cryptomining. Desktop GPU prices have been inflated to nonsense levels for gamers, to the point where console vs. PC isnt even really question anymore.

zonkerdonkeron Are Saunas Good for You?

Agreed that more studies are required. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25705824/ This and some others studies correlate a 40% reduction in all cause mortality (that is, 40% reduction in risk of dying from anything) with sauna use. Even if the correlation is proven to be weak, still seems worth it to get a shvitz whenever you can.

zonkerdonkeron Developer sentenced to prison for activating “kill switch” to avenge his firing

"Chinese national" feels like a pretty critical detail to this sentencing time.

zonkerdonkeron Jury says Google must pay California Android smartphone users $314.6M

Can't wait to cash my $2.43 check is 3 years!

zonkerdonkeron Personal care products disrupt the human oxidation field

Ok, so dont shower, and punch my date in the nose. Got it!

zonkerdonkeron Expanding Racks [video]

It's an intriguing idea, but the scope of any such formal definition would essentially be the entire scope of physics, materials science, thermodynamics, etc. For much more bounded problems (like that very fun website you linked) I think something like that would be more attaintable, but still challenging.

Take the example of the differential gearing shown. I doubt there exists any functional differential/mass produced assembly that looks exactly like the example presented. The concept of differential gearing may be able to be broken down into more symbolic representation of forces and motion, but at some point it becomes simplified to the point of impracticality.

zonkerdonkeron The impossible predicament of the death newts

Same here. I had no idea they were this toxic, I feel like someone should have told us this as children!

zonkerdonkeron How to disappear– Inside the world of extreme-privacy consultants

>Living this way, he acknowledged, incurred a “20 percent cognitive” overhead.

Great article. I wish I had the time, money, and dedication to be able to try some of the techniques, even if only for the principle of it. But like the author says, it really is a Sisyphean effort. There is too much convenience, too much money, too much power in your data.

zonkerdonkeron Teaching LLMs how to solid model

I appreciate that you have given this some thought, but it is clear that you dont have much or any professional experience in 3D modeling or mechanical design.

For the guitar amp, ok. Maybe that prompt will give you a set of surfaces you can scale for the exterior shell of the amp. Because you will need to scale it, or know exactly the dimensions of your speakers, internal chambers, electronics, I/O, baffles, and where those will all ve relative go eachother. Also...Do you need buttons? Jacks/connectors/other I/O? How and where will the connections be routed to other components? Do you need an internal structure with an external aesthetic shell? Or are you going to somehow mold the whole thing in one piece? Where should the part be split? What kind of fasteners will join the parts and where should they be joined? What material is the shell? Can it be thinner to save weight? Or need ribs or thickness for strength? Where does it need to be strong?

These are the issues from 30 seconds of thinking about this. AI (as suggested) could maybe save me from surfacing an exterior cosmetic cover, given presice constraints and dimensions, but at that point, I may as well just do it myself.

If you have a common, easy, already solved an mechanical design problem (hinge e.g.), then you buy an off the shelf component. For everything else, it is bespoke, and every detail matters. Every problem is a "wine glass full to the brim"

zonkerdonkeron Ocean Iron Fertilization

This, and stratospheric aerosol injection are both:

1. Incredibly cost effective 2. Mimic natural effects 3. Could pretyy easily cause anotger ice age if miscalculated

I wonder at what point the potential benefits will outweigh the potential risks for using these geoengineering techniques. Cant be far off, right?

Sulfur dioxide injection could halt global warming in its tracks for a measly $18 billion a year. I wonder if a vigilante billionaire climate activist gonna take a try in the next few decades..

zonkerdonkeron Snapchat is harming children at an industrial scale?

I imagine this could be set up on the operating system side. All the apps would receive is a go/no go signal, not fine coordinates

zonkerdonkeron Snapchat is harming children at an industrial scale?

People knew smoking killed for decades. Do you think that with no policy change and no regulation, that Marlboro and Philip Morris would have let their market tank?

Advertising - banned, smoking indoors - banned, and most importantly, taxing the hell out of them (every 10% increase in cigarette prices results in a 4% decrease in adult consumption and a 7% decrease in youth consumption).

There isn't really directly comparable policy to taxing these free social media platforms., however, and the whole thing is a bit stickier. Before any policies can stick, the public needs to be aware of the issues. That is tough when most people's 'awareness of issues' comes directly from social media.

zonkerdonkeron Snapchat is harming children at an industrial scale?

Anyone remember YikYak? I was in university at the time, the explosive growth was wild. After the inevitable bullying, racism, threats, doxxing, that came with the anonymous platform, YikYak enabled geofencing to disable the app on middle and high school grounds.

I think every social media platform with an "age limit" should be required to do this as well. And open it up, so that anyone can create their own disabling geofence on their property. How great would it be to have a snapchat free home zone? Or FB, or tiktok