Hacker News: HNisCIS

New comment by HNisCIS in "Radar Laboratory – Interactive Radar Phenomenology"

HNisCIS — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 04:41:57 +0000

These interactive tutorials used to be better when they were made by hand to demonstrate the concept accurately. This Claude stuff just feels like an attention grab.

New comment by HNisCIS in "To my students"

HNisCIS — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 00:54:35 +0000

He's not wrong...

From an information theory perspective, LLMs are just regurgitating content from a loss-ily compressed training set.

It just turns out that like 95% of software we write is extremely repetitive rehashed shit globbed together. We just haven't found ways to abstract a lot of the redundant code well enough yet so here we are, stuck with the stupid robot.

That remaining 5% is stuff that's fully never been done before. If you ask an LLM to come up with a fully new sorting algorithm it's going to give you worthless garbage, maybe it'll get lucky if you burn a nuclear power plant worth of tokens in an infinite-keyboard-monkeys way.

All this is to say, if we want the field to actually progress we still need somebody with some knowledge about how a computer actually works.

New comment by HNisCIS in "MeshCore development team splits over trademark dispute and AI-generated code"

HNisCIS — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 22:02:16 +0000

Eh, I've played with 802.11ah and it's very long range for the power, but way too stateful for the use case that these mesh protocols serve. If you go out of range it's several seconds to re-establish a connection. I've worked with proper mesh radios (Silvus, etc) and they work very differently.

New comment by HNisCIS in "Microsoft offers buyouts up to 7% of US employees"

HNisCIS — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 21:00:49 +0000

So the goal is to get rid of the people who have all the internal knowledge?

New comment by HNisCIS in "Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price"

HNisCIS — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 17:42:57 +0000

I feel this. I've been looking at ADV bikes and everything on the market has a cellular modem for always on cloud connectivity, and multiple vendors, including Zero (the electric internet darling) are offering paid feature unlocks via apps.

On top of this, I looked at Zero's job postings and they're desperately trying to hire a firmware lead to get the team to use Claude Code (precisely what I want managing a 100hp motor under my ass).

Not only are we in a world where everything is locked down with software, the software is about to get way worse and there's nothing you can do about it.

New comment by HNisCIS in "NIST scientists create 'any wavelength' lasers"

HNisCIS — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 06:32:15 +0000

Something to be aware of, the laser safety goggles used by lab workers, pilots, soldiers etc are based on the premise that lasers only occupy extremely specific and narrow parts of the spectrum so by just blocking those little bits, you can get a very effective pair of glasses that doesn't significantly effect visibility. Arbitrary waveform lasers cause problems here.

New comment by HNisCIS in "Show HN: PanicLock – Close your MacBook lid disable TouchID –> password unlock"

HNisCIS — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 06:09:03 +0000

Why not just disable touchID if the Bluetooth modem hears advertising packets from the 00:25:DF OUI?

New comment by HNisCIS in "Google broke its promise to me – now ICE has my data"

HNisCIS — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 20:17:08 +0000

Not in the US, am on a burner under a random name right now lol

New comment by HNisCIS in "US national level OS-level age verification bill proposed"

HNisCIS — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 16:55:07 +0000

It's like explaining to IT that you can't, in fact, install global protect/UEM on a satellite just because it runs a Linux operating system.

New comment by HNisCIS in "Sam Altman's response to Molotov cocktail incident"

HNisCIS — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 04:37:30 +0000

Listen to the flock CEO talk and then tell me he isn't trying to build a counter-revolutionary dragnet. Just because cities are doing it doesn't mean it's not deliberate, that's just a step in the plan. Not everything the ultra wealthy do is a single step, they're lobbying and schmoozing their way to their goals in every way possible.

New comment by HNisCIS in "How NASA built Artemis II’s fault-tolerant computer"

HNisCIS — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 01:29:34 +0000

What would you suggest? Vibe coding a react app that runs on a Mac mini to control trajectory? What happens when that Mac mini gets hit with an SEU or even a SEGR? Guess everyone just dies?

New comment by HNisCIS in "An open-source 240-antenna array to bounce signals off the Moon"

HNisCIS — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 13:32:03 +0000

I used to work radar systems. The point being that the hardware is fully capable. The software side is quite well understood at this point. There will be plenty of repos floating around in a year to turn this into an airborne drone SAR or whatever. Functional range resolution will be around 4m but that's plenty for most shenanigans.

New comment by HNisCIS in "An open-source 240-antenna array to bounce signals off the Moon"

HNisCIS — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 05:20:44 +0000

EIRP. There's some gain involved.

New comment by HNisCIS in "An open-source 240-antenna array to bounce signals off the Moon"

HNisCIS — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 04:57:03 +0000

I'm struggling to understand the signal chain or antenna architecture here. If those two MAX chips are 2829s this would be 2x2 mimo per tile but I'm not super familiar with that product line and the PCB layout looks like a 4x4 setup.

And yeah, the agentic stuff is dumb, I've played a ton with doing low level SDR work on Opus 4.6 and it's truly ass.

Also, the "can't radar, plz don't ITAR" is horseshit. Some basic fw tweaks and you could get this to be, at the very least, a sweet FMCW setup.

New comment by HNisCIS in "The FAA’s flight restriction for drones is an attempt to criminalize filming ICE"

HNisCIS — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 05:38:27 +0000

I'm gonna say something bold here: if you're doing anything remotely edgy with a drone (read: you're not a 107 on contact with a mega corp) learn to build them, don't buy a DJI. Pilots are getting hammered because of RemoteID to the point where it's more of a liability to have it than to not have it. It would be like if license plates weren't enforced but speed cameras always sent you a $10,000 bill and took your license away.

You can build a decent stealthy fpv system for under 1k including ground equipment. Use PrivacyLRS or OpenHD, Ardupilot or Betaflight, and an AM32 ESC board.

Do not use anything from DJI, non-AM32 ESCs (deeply painful to flash/configure/update), or older radios like spektrum. Disable all onboard GPS and video logging. Avoid ELRS beyond initial testing, it's painful to decode but not encrypted. PrivacyLRS runs on the same boards so you can reflash once everything else is tested.

New comment by HNisCIS in "What young workers are doing to AI-proof themselves"

HNisCIS — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 06:28:12 +0000

Yeah if anything this recession feels demand driven rather than labor replacement driven. Nobody wants to do capex or buy things when everyone is telling them they're going to get replaced with jpeg-for-text so they aren't. As a result most of the economy isn't moving particularly fast with the exception of people buying up the entire worlds supply of silicon and driving up prices on increasingly essential hardware. So we have stagnation and inflation all in one but from the dumbest possible source.

New comment by HNisCIS in "What Young Workers Are Doing to AI-Proof Themselves"

HNisCIS — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 06:23:37 +0000

The admin is doing everything in its power to cause everyone heartburn and the billionaire class is just running around trying to double down on all the damage the admin is doing. During "good" times I think people would have an easier time looking at AI and seeing it as just another random tool rather than the end of days, but when everything looks like the end of days...

New comment by HNisCIS in "Grandparents are glued to their phones [video]"

HNisCIS — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 18:16:11 +0000

It's because election day is a weekday and the rest of us have to keep up with the grind. It's entirely because they don't have jobs

New comment by HNisCIS in "Jolla on track to ship new phone with Sailfish OS, user-replaceable battery"

HNisCIS — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 18:32:37 +0000

Maybe I'm out of the loop but what is everyone doing with banking apps on their phones that's so essential. I see this argument all the time but it's baffling to me.

New comment by HNisCIS in "An interactive map of Flock Cams"

HNisCIS — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 22:27:23 +0000

Uh speak for yourself but some of us are doing the good crimes and would rather like to continue that fight from outside prison and without being shot in the face.