Hacker News: StephenSmith

New comment by StephenSmith in "Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War"

StephenSmith — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 14:51:02 +0000

I find this language fascinating. On one hand, the Department of "War" gives the department an underlying, unspoken goal that it should be involved in war with something. On the other hand, it's very easy to fund the Department of "Defense;" of course we need more money to defend our country. Don't we want to be safe! It's much less attractive to fund the Department of "War"

New comment by StephenSmith in "Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War"

StephenSmith — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 14:43:48 +0000

I had to dig this up. Elon Musk signed an open pledge in 2016 to disallow Robots/AI to make kill decisions.

https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/lethal-autonomous-weapo...

He's now on X bashing Anthropic for taking this same stance. I know this would be expected of him, but many other Google AI researchers signed this as well as Google Deep Mind the organization. We really need to push to keep humans in the kill decision loop. Google, OpenAI, and X-AI are are all just agreeing with the Pentagon.

New comment by StephenSmith in "Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics"

StephenSmith — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 13:00:11 +0000

Also, MicroVision, the company in OP's article bought the IP from Luminar. This feels like a circular venture capital scam. Luminar originally went public via SPAC and made a bunch of people very wealthy before ultimately failing.

New comment by StephenSmith in "De-dollarization: Is the US dollar losing its dominance? (2025)"

StephenSmith — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 16:24:40 +0000

If the goal is to make US goods attractive to other countries and to decrease our trade deficit (not saying I agree with this goal), either the dollar has to become fundamentally weaker or the goods have to become more valuable. The latter feels more difficult than the former at this point. However, the side effects of a weaker dollar may not be worth weakening it.

New comment by StephenSmith in "Türkiye will not sell rare earth elements to the USA"

StephenSmith — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 15:04:18 +0000

Every country has rare earth elements. Just google "X discovers rare earth" where X is your country of choice and you'll find articles about how they have huge deposits. The underlying problem is the processing. China has figured this out and has cornered the market. Until other countries figure out how to process these materials, China will be able to leverage this capability to their advantage.

New comment by StephenSmith in "Larry Ellison – 'citizens will be on their best behavior' amid nonstop recording"

StephenSmith — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 13:08:19 +0000

Lead poisoning.

New comment by StephenSmith in "iPhone Air"

StephenSmith — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 18:18:57 +0000

Who actually wants a thinner iPhone?

New comment by StephenSmith in "Designing Electronics That Work"

StephenSmith — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 20:13:13 +0000

Trying to buy a physical copy. It says "This product is not currently for sale." Would love to buy this.

New comment by StephenSmith in "Marshall Brain has died"

StephenSmith — Sun, 24 Nov 2024 18:45:14 +0000

I just wanted to highlight that he was also an entrepreneurship professor at NC State and shaped many students' views of what they could do with their lives.

I was one of those students. I now own my own company as a result of his teachings. He was very influential and a wonderful human being. This news is tragic.

RIP Marshall. You were loved.

New comment by StephenSmith in "Launch HN: Fresco (YC F24) – AI Copilot for Construction Superintendents"

StephenSmith — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 17:17:30 +0000

We make an AI camera for residential home builders. I'd love to chat to see if there's any synergy here.

bedrockwireless.com

Ping me, stephen [at] bedrockwireless.com

New comment by StephenSmith in "BBC Sound Effects Library"

StephenSmith — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 12:48:21 +0000

When they use sound effects in news reports, they're called "nat pops."

They're often used to make reporters sound like they're somewhere they're not. They can be very convincing.

New comment by StephenSmith in "QWERTY-Flip: The better keyboard layout your fingers already know"

StephenSmith — Tue, 03 Sep 2024 01:17:43 +0000

Just learn dvorak or colemak - they're not hard to learn, have tons of benefits, and are readily available on all operating systems

New comment by StephenSmith in "The surprising cause of fasting's regenerative powers"

StephenSmith — Thu, 22 Aug 2024 14:55:36 +0000

And then refuted that with a different study at the end. Weird.

New comment by StephenSmith in "Pongamia trees grow where citrus once flourished"

StephenSmith — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 15:18:12 +0000

Most of the citrus growers are just selling off their land for housing developments. Florida is still experiencing high growth. A lot of that growth is older populations trying to avoid state taxes on their retirement income. These people don't need to live near industrialized areas. They just want to live near other older populations.

New comment by StephenSmith in "Show HN: We made a small and cheap network switch"

StephenSmith — Sun, 16 Jun 2024 12:50:54 +0000

Now do POE

New comment by StephenSmith in "Zany ideas to slow polar melting are gathering momentum"

StephenSmith — Fri, 07 Jun 2024 17:57:11 +0000

AKA kill half the worlds population

New comment by StephenSmith in "2023 planetary heat uptake from termination shock of inadvertent geoengineering?"

StephenSmith — Thu, 30 May 2024 21:24:17 +0000

This video explains this fairly well (Hank Green).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk8pwE3IByg

New comment by StephenSmith in "On Self-driving, Waymo is playing chess while Tesla plays checkers"

StephenSmith — Wed, 22 May 2024 13:47:16 +0000

Yes, but Waymo hasn't (yet) made Google $1 of profit and FSD is almost pure margin for Tesla.

New comment by StephenSmith in "LLMs and the Harry Potter problem"

StephenSmith — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 19:10:25 +0000

"If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail." -Abraham Maslow

New comment by StephenSmith in "Apple's risky bet on CarPlay"

StephenSmith — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 18:20:09 +0000

If you're in the market for a new-to-you car, then I recommend looking at the model years where they switch from wired car-play to wireless car-play and buying the previous model-year.

Typically this difference of one model-year can add thousands to the cost of the vehicle, especially because wireless car-play is so coveted. The experience of wireless is fantastic, but is it worth several thousand dollars? Maybe, but herein lies the trick.

Buy a dongle. They're about $100 for a good one. They can be tucked away in the vehicle. They work almost* as good as integrated wireless car-play.

*Maybe add 5 seconds to auto-connect when you get in your car.