Hacker News: austinthetaco

New comment by austinthetaco in "Bambu Lab is abusing the open source social contract"

austinthetaco — Tue, 12 May 2026 15:54:41 +0000

then its not open source. That's just shared cad files which mcmaster carr does.

New comment by austinthetaco in "Hardware Attestation as Monopoly Enabler"

austinthetaco — Mon, 11 May 2026 16:11:03 +0000

i mean Apple kind of used that position for building a good reputation. their whole thing is/was how secure their devices were and how they had human verification on all apps that went through the app store with a clear intents file (a file the describes exactly WHY an app needs permission for bluetooth/etc), and a secure enclave that prevented even the FBI from getting in (while apple refused to give them a backdoor). Hackers and tinkerers will find a lot of these measures to be an annoyance and authoritative control, but a lot of people just want their phone to a product, not the user.

New comment by austinthetaco in "Killed by Apple"

austinthetaco — Mon, 11 May 2026 14:49:10 +0000

unfortunately they hold it in the wrong direction. At least when it comes to updates and feature retention apple is one of the leaders. Even this website posted here shows that most of the software stuff is just rolled into other native apps instead of being abruptly cancelled (lookin at you google) with no recourse where to go.

New comment by austinthetaco in "Write some software, give it away for free"

austinthetaco — Wed, 06 May 2026 19:43:40 +0000

need is a weird thing to hinge off of as software itself doesnt have "needs" and most software thats made doesn't fulfill a true pure "need".

New comment by austinthetaco in "Write some software, give it away for free"

austinthetaco — Wed, 06 May 2026 15:45:38 +0000

No other customers asking for the feature is not a signal that its not wanted by many others. Other people suggesting the same thing is a terrible measurement, as suggestions from paying users is already an incredibly small amount of users and some users may just thing it would be nice but not enough to warrant sending in a request. For example: it would be nice if I had a one-click export of my favorites on HN to a markdown. I'm not going to write to them to suggest it because it's not a big deal, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't improve my experience using the the product.

New comment by austinthetaco in "New mechanical panoramic film camera from Jeff Bridges"

austinthetaco — Fri, 01 May 2026 14:32:54 +0000

This is only true for gear hoarders. Many many many people still shoot film or use high end cameras explicitly for the end result.

New comment by austinthetaco in "New mechanical panoramic film camera from Jeff Bridges"

austinthetaco — Fri, 01 May 2026 14:28:01 +0000

While cool, there is quite a bit of difference between this and what the widelux is. The widelux rotates the lens as the front cover moves, which creates a drastically different look.

New comment by austinthetaco in "After dissing Anthropic for limiting Mythos, OpenAI restricts access to Cyber"

austinthetaco — Fri, 01 May 2026 14:21:26 +0000

I don't know, but I also think people are easy to jump into popular rhetorics about internet personalities in the tech space without due diligence. It used to not be such a problem on hn but it seems like its bled here too. Sam Altman might be a bad guy, might be good, but after everyone misrepresented the military contract argument its tough for me to buy into the hate.

New comment by austinthetaco in "Show HN: Rocky – Rust SQL engine with branches, replay, column lineage"

austinthetaco — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 12:47:21 +0000

This comment itself is likely written by AI by the sounds of it. It may be worth your time writing it out in your own words in your native language and then finding a competent translation tool to translate your words.

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

austinthetaco — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 21:14:18 +0000

You're moving goalposts here. They have already been involved in emergency communication numerous times, its not the most optimal emergency communication, but critical nonetheless because of it's decentralized and among-the-people nature. Some elmer with 80ft tall tower in his backyard sometimes has a better chance at communicating with random operators that are at the location of a post-disaster scenario. If you don't want to look at helene, look at 9/11 where they became the primary communication for some red cross, medical facilities and personnel, and even new york's OEM.

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

austinthetaco — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 21:04:30 +0000

You're arguing for why people shouldn't buy a ham for prepping without a license or weirdly arguing that someone who is totally unprepared should've just happened to have a garmin on them. Realistically most people aren't toally prepared. A wife went to a remote cabin with their husband who is a ham op and has a heart attack, someone falls off a cliff while taking a photo of someone with their phone and the only thing is a mobile vhf/uhf radio in their car, etc etc etc. there are countless reasons why someone unlicensed might end up needing to transmit on amateur bands in an emergency, which again is why it's vague. You're claiming its not even though FCC enforcers themselves have said otherwise, so you should probably go argue with the fcc instead of strangers on the internet.

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

austinthetaco — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 18:20:35 +0000

the rules arent clear, which is why 97.403 and 97.405 have been argued nauseam for a VERY long time. It's intentionally vague so that some people cant claim being out of soap as an emergency. But during a real emergency (someone had a heart attack on the floor, you're being chased by an axe murderer, etc) every single representative has said that the spirit of those parts covers the person. I don't disagree that people should get licensed, mostly so they know how and where to operate the radios or god forbid we do have a collapse and do have to fix up our own radios and antennas.

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

austinthetaco — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 18:02:05 +0000

Well, according to multiple times where people have checked with FCC enforcement folks, the spirit of the ruling covers unlicensed users operating in amateur bands for real emergencies.

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

austinthetaco — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 17:43:08 +0000

Not sure why you're denigrating HAM radio folks. They have in fact historically already been useful and critical in emergencies, most recently in 2024 for hurricane Helene. Just because you don't see it happening doesn't mean its not. I mean RACES is even a whole thing explicitly outlined because the government realizes the value of some ham radio operators.

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

austinthetaco — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 17:38:07 +0000

This is the correct info. Anyone in an emergency is allowed to use the amateur frequencies. Just got my technician license a couple weeks ago, emergency use is even actually on the test!

New comment by austinthetaco in "Sauna effect on heart rate"

austinthetaco — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 15:01:06 +0000

I'm equally confused as the other person above. Why not just ask participants to report what type of sauna they used? Sure humidity/duration/temp would be awesome to have, but at the very minimum knowing if a dry sauna would get the same results as a traditional steam sauna.

New comment by austinthetaco in "Introduction to Obsidian"

austinthetaco — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 23:14:45 +0000

A lot of people view that as pretty costly for what is incredibly small amounts of data in the scope of things. for half that cost you can get 100gb of storage through google and have it synchronize all my docs AND my pictures and videos and anything else I want, so by comparison $4 can seem like a lot for note synchronization.

New comment by austinthetaco in "Ollama is now powered by MLX on Apple Silicon in preview"

austinthetaco — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 15:05:59 +0000

Have you played around with any of the Hermes models? they are supposed to be one of the best at non-refusal while keeping sane.

New comment by austinthetaco in "From zero to a RAG system: successes and failures"

austinthetaco — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 14:36:06 +0000

i assume based on their concerns of the hetzner pricing that they didnt want to pay for voyage/turbopuffer. unless there are free versions of those products that I'm unaware of, but I'm only seeing paid.

New comment by austinthetaco in "My astrophotography in the movie Project Hail Mary"

austinthetaco — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 17:57:16 +0000

there is a stark difference between a division aimed at developers attempting to astroturf on a tech industry (mostly developer) news aggregator and a movie studio.