Hacker News: ajw287

New comment by ajw287 in "Gaussian Splats part 3: There's always a bigger scene"

ajw287 — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 19:19:15 +0000

If I understand what you are saying, it might be that your phone had a better camera than your ipad? The depth of field and atmospheric lens effects aren't really what you want - a pinhole lens like old phones (and my flir) works better since blur is the enemy.

New comment by ajw287 in "CNC Stone Carving"

ajw287 — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 16:10:26 +0000

... and the audience is too mature to mention that the internet stole the acronym Computer Numerical Control, so its often shortened to Numerical Control to make it safe to search?

New comment by ajw287 in "Gaussian Splats part 3: There's always a bigger scene"

ajw287 — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 16:04:11 +0000

Gaussian Splats are great, and putting them in Unreal is even better! Do you see splats cropping up in games/sport events? Where next?

Gaussian splats are surprisingly easy to make: https://superspl.at/scene/82eb1744 (I used a thermal camera - so I could also project the IR onto it too)https://superspl.at/scene/f9672a5e

New comment by ajw287 in "The Grid, a factory-scale robot in Massachusetts that builds PCBs on demand"

ajw287 — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 15:34:53 +0000

If you are doing pool pcb manufacture - think about getting your design rules as a template in KiCAD (you could talk to KiCAD services corporation about how to do that) or Altium. This would help people designing to avoid getting to a finished pcb then discovering that you have a rule about no route through pads or whatever.

New comment by ajw287 in "The Grid, a factory-scale robot in Massachusetts that builds PCBs on demand"

ajw287 — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 14:54:01 +0000

OK, Its a cool video, and wish there was more joined up thinking about keeping sovereign control of designs/manufacture - but the concept isn't new. I know the UK better, but 24 hour pcbs are a thing, we have https://www.pcbtrain.co.uk (which might outsource to china anyway) but I usually prefer https://www.eurocircuits.com/ which builds in Poland. There are plenty more CEMs

Sadly neither really compete on price with jlcpcb and despite a hemisphere of delivery advantage jlcpcb can be quicker! I once got in a discussion with a Project Manager about whether the design was worth keeping some level of traceability for ~$50... he just wanted it cheaper.

New comment by ajw287 in "Superhuman Hardware Design Is the Easy Part"

ajw287 — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 14:51:50 +0000

I have used local LLMs (Qwen27B) to generate SCAD versions of components. I got there eventually - it took a bit of cajoling, but have printed that component and confirmed that it fit the parts and the output was properly parameterized in a way that Solidworks wasn't.

New comment by ajw287 in "Superhuman Hardware Design Is the Easy Part"

ajw287 — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 14:47:06 +0000

As an experienced hardware designer I am never... confidently wrong!

Show HN: Untranslated Einstein paper available in English for the first time

ajw287 — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 04:44:25 +0000

As far as I can tell, this paper (in which Einstein solves a decades old question about Crookes Radiometers) has never been available in English! Einstein’s work became public domain on 1st January 2026, which meant that I could finally release this translation that I did during my PhD in 2019!

I have a blog post that gives a little more context: https://adaptive-machine-patterns.com/blog.html#einstein [alt. link: http://archive.today/381Pl] I am new to blogging, so advice welcome.

The preprint is hosted at CULA repository (many thanks) https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/398349 and it has a DOI: https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.127224

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47030977

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by ajw287 in "Open source, 3D-printable smart chess board"

ajw287 — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 07:38:24 +0000

Really?! Making this project must have taken tens or hundreds of hours - if they are proud of the work, why not show it off? The video looks like it wasn't faked.

Did nobody look at the image after they generated it? If they live in a bedsit and don't have a nice windowsill, they could easily generate the background and if the product is vaporware they could drop a rendering over the top - I think that might actually be easier than training an AI on your product... I'll be grumpy at clouds next!

New comment by ajw287 in "Open source, 3D-printable smart chess board"

ajw287 — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 06:59:21 +0000

Is no one going to mention that the first picture is AI generated tosh? I understand that generating a picture is easier than taking a nice picture, in a nice place with a a nice camera - but the back row of the board is all white and the second row.. sort of disappears!