Hacker News: Robotbeat

New comment by Robotbeat in "Stopping the Unstoppable: When an unstoppable force meets a dashpot snubber"

Robotbeat — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 04:08:22 +0000

Unions.

New comment by Robotbeat in "Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil"

Robotbeat — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 21:55:23 +0000

This is an inaccurate simplification

New comment by Robotbeat in "Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil"

Robotbeat — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 21:54:52 +0000

French Guyana is part of the EU, actually, in spite of being in South America. (Colonialism!)

New comment by Robotbeat in "Uber shuts operations in Nigeria and Uganda with immediate effect"

Robotbeat — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 02:03:43 +0000

In Nigeria: Lithium totally irrelevant compared to oil. I think people have this really weird idea that lithium is to electric cars as oil is to regular cars, but it’s literally like a factor of 50 less.

New comment by Robotbeat in "The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate"

Robotbeat — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 12:25:54 +0000

I mean, in the real world, people will just vote out politicians who raise their gas prices.

New comment by Robotbeat in "Why Is Europe Burning?"

Robotbeat — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 17:24:01 +0000

Some Cantons require all sorts of hoops to jump through in order to get an air conditioner.

New comment by Robotbeat in "A Rant About “Technology” (2005)"

Robotbeat — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 16:41:01 +0000

CS Lewis was pretty influential on the YA fiction, Harry Potter type of literature. And his other works also have broad influence beyond fiction.

New comment by Robotbeat in "Why Is Europe Burning?"

Robotbeat — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 03:03:27 +0000

I kinda feel like this is mostly irrelevant. Europe can stop fossil fuel emissions entirely right now and it’d have very little effect. Doesn’t mean they shouldn’t decarbonize! But… Europe needs to act. Global Warming is real, it’s happening, and it going to continue happening for decades regardless. So mitigations must be done. Improve fire fighting capabilities. Prepare for changing weather patterns and sea level rise. And yes, even install air conditioning to prevent the elderly and disabled from dying very preventable deaths. Letting the misfortunate die by under-resourcing climate mitigations isn’t going to help reduce climate change by any measurable degree.

New comment by Robotbeat in "Kill The Cookie Banner"

Robotbeat — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 01:42:48 +0000

If only there was a short little text file that websites could use to keep track of the setting...

New comment by Robotbeat in "Government orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat: Jack Dorsey"

Robotbeat — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 15:54:10 +0000

What about encrypted ultrasound modems?

New comment by Robotbeat in "The Silurian Hypothesis (2020)"

Robotbeat — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 15:26:00 +0000

Technical ceramics would have survived.

New comment by Robotbeat in "Is this the end of the once-mighty GoPro?"

Robotbeat — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 16:29:27 +0000

So long as you don’t live in India, Taiwan, Australia, Japan, South Korea… or maybe even the countries Russia their ally is antagonistic with, like Ukraine, Turkey, all of Europe.

New comment by Robotbeat in "Is this the end of the once-mighty GoPro?"

Robotbeat — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 13:57:43 +0000

FWIW you can get a kit Core One+ for $999 USD in the US. I actually prefer to get the machine as a kit as assembly helps with understanding the workings of the machine for maintenance.

New comment by Robotbeat in "Is this the end of the once-mighty GoPro?"

Robotbeat — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 02:43:17 +0000

I don't even think it's corrupt self-interest. Just idiotic bravado and wanting to settle long held grudges.

New comment by Robotbeat in "Is this the end of the once-mighty GoPro?"

Robotbeat — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 01:36:42 +0000

America does that for aerospace & some defense stuff. But the reason not to is that the industrial policy needed to do it like China does has the effect of reduced wages, longer work hours, and lower quality of life.

New comment by Robotbeat in "Is this the end of the once-mighty GoPro?"

Robotbeat — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 00:49:22 +0000

In general, I do think the East Asian nations have over-prioritized work for export and industrial policy at the expense of the well-being of their citizens.

New comment by Robotbeat in "Is this the end of the once-mighty GoPro?"

Robotbeat — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 00:48:09 +0000

Not as much as their East Asian neighbors, who had increasing democracy and fewer deaths to starvation…

New comment by Robotbeat in "Is this the end of the once-mighty GoPro?"

Robotbeat — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 15:25:03 +0000

GoPro is a US company designed in U.S. with manufacturing in Thailand, China, and Mexico.

Insta360 is a Chinese company designed in Shenzhen and built there, too.

People think this doesn’t matter, but GoPros are used all over in aerospace. If we replaced the brand with Insta360, that puts a big attack vector all over the place.

A similar pattern happened with drones with DJI, intentionally killing all non-Chinese drone brands. And with BambuLabs (founded by ex-DJI) with 3D printers (the only good non-Chinese printer that doesn’t cost 10-100x as much is Prusa, and they’re facing extremely strong headwinds).

Legitimately better Chinese products (incredible engineering) that have massive industrial policy support, probably industrial espionage support (as in the case of DJI for certain), massive influencer marketing campaigns, and near zero cost of capital. When China wants to deindustrialize non-Chinese industries for strategic and/or natsec reasons, they are incredibly good at it. (And note it’s not US-only, China targets basically ANY brand that isn’t Chinese. China absolutely does this to Europe as well… and you can see them doing it in real-time with automotive.)

The only surprising thing to me is how people just act like it’s not happening. I guess for people who don’t have any experience working on federal government adjacent aerospace stuff, the idea of natsec considerations for IT hardware seems entirely abstract, but it’s incredibly real if you do.

New comment by Robotbeat in "FCC approves test of space mirror to light night sky"

Robotbeat — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 00:18:32 +0000

I’ve physically touched the materials being used for solar sails and the lightweight mirrors.

New comment by Robotbeat in "The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes"

Robotbeat — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 00:17:43 +0000

I agree with all that. Many times I see someone Vagueposting about stuff, and I wish I could see their feed.