Hacker News: blacksmith_tb

New comment by blacksmith_tb in "Raspberry Pi 5 – 16GB RAM"

blacksmith_tb — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 21:13:10 +0000

My personal fave RPi, the Zero W, is still $15 from Adafruit.

New comment by blacksmith_tb in "GoPro warned it may not survive"

blacksmith_tb — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 23:06:42 +0000

I bike commute with an old Hero 8 on my handlebars, and I never bother controlling or setting it up or anything: just power on, press record (which dismisses the nag dialog to connect it to your phone). That does mean the timestamps are always nonsense, but I am not too worried (I guess if I get run over again the lawyers can argue over if the one video on the card that shows me being run over is in fact from the day in question...)

New comment by blacksmith_tb in "The people who actually want AI to replace humanity"

blacksmith_tb — Sun, 31 May 2026 16:32:35 +0000

Not the OP, but I think the implication is you can't run a consumer economy if the consumers aren't making any wages to buy the products and services those cheap and efficient robots are churning out. Or pay taxes. So the entire socioeconomic system we currently enjoy/endure vanishes, robotic factories included.

New comment by blacksmith_tb in "Cheese Paper: a text editor specifically designed for writing"

blacksmith_tb — Sun, 31 May 2026 00:07:42 +0000

Maybe it would explain itself better if that said "specifically designed for writing fiction"? (lots of other sorts of writing don't have characters, for example...)

New comment by blacksmith_tb in "It's hard to justify buying a Framework 12"

blacksmith_tb — Fri, 29 May 2026 17:53:48 +0000

Also possible that people have paid for licenses / apps and thus want to stay with the OS those will run on, instead of having to pay again (if it's even an option).

New comment by blacksmith_tb in "Ruby for Good"

blacksmith_tb — Sun, 24 May 2026 17:12:19 +0000

That seems like it would depend quite a bit on the project? I would think many nonprofits would want a webapp of some flavor, and Ruby (or Python) are still not bad choices there - my experience with Claude is that it handles Ruby well.

New comment by blacksmith_tb in "Meta deletes popular 1M follower account after Kuwaiti request"

blacksmith_tb — Sun, 17 May 2026 20:25:18 +0000

Embarrassing, but the statistic cited there is 6 cases in 2017 for a single crossing point, looks like there are ~1.5M visits a year[1] so I would imagine even if we're talking hundreds of cases (generous), still not too common?

1: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/as-canadian-visits-to-t...

New comment by blacksmith_tb in "Scientists “bottle the sun” with a liquid battery that stores solar energy"

blacksmith_tb — Sun, 17 May 2026 20:11:34 +0000

Angle though isn't ideal, unless the PV panel pops off the lid so you can position it better (and still be able to open the screen far enough back to read - though that's often not great in bright sun). I remember the OLPC could be run by hoisting a bucket of sand or water up on a rope and pulley on a tree branch and letting it drive a small generator as that came back down - and that was almost 20yr ago).

New comment by blacksmith_tb in "Scientists “bottle the sun” with a liquid battery that stores solar energy"

blacksmith_tb — Sun, 17 May 2026 20:06:37 +0000

Sure, so a solar-only laptop is not practical, but generating the power in its battery on your roof is a solved problem.

This MOST process doesn't immediately look like it has home-scale applications (maybe in cold climates), but for heat to make steam, promising.

New comment by blacksmith_tb in "StarFighter 16-Inch"

blacksmith_tb — Wed, 06 May 2026 03:13:28 +0000

Not the OP, but some older laptop designs had a small trackball where modern machines have a touchpad, e.g. the early PowerBooks[1]

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook_180

New comment by blacksmith_tb in "HERMES.md in commit messages causes requests to route to extra usage billing"

blacksmith_tb — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 23:47:27 +0000

Is that reason customer service? My only experiences with AWS along those lines have not been great...

New comment by blacksmith_tb in "The Joy of Folding Bikes"

blacksmith_tb — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 03:36:16 +0000

Don't miss the Low Tech piece on Chinese one-wheel wheelbarrows:

https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/how-to-downsize-a-...

New comment by blacksmith_tb in "The Orange Pi 6 Plus"

blacksmith_tb — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 21:51:31 +0000

I have an even cheesier competitor, which randomly has a dragon on the lid (it would be a terrible choice for all but the wimpiest casual gaming... but it makes a good Home Assistant HAOS server!)

New comment by blacksmith_tb in "The Orange Pi 6 Plus"

blacksmith_tb — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 21:07:35 +0000

There are quite a few x86-64 machines in the 70mm x 70mm form factor[1], which is close?

1: https://www.ecs.com.tw/en/Product/Mini-PC/LIVA_Q2/

New comment by blacksmith_tb in "Generative art over the years"

blacksmith_tb — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 04:01:55 +0000

Hmm, isn't that a little like saying "now that we have cameras, no one needs to paint any more!" AIs can generate realistic video and images, but for me the fun of generative art is that it isn't realistic, it has texture, you can get a sense of what kind of patterns it will make, like echoes of the algorithm. Sure, you could probably prompt for some kind of geometric image, but if you asked for a little script that made them, then you could make tweaks and see what happens...

New comment by blacksmith_tb in "Car harm: A global review of automobility's harm to people and the environment"

blacksmith_tb — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 16:47:50 +0000

From the paper: "Crashes kill 1.3 million people per year including 700 children per day." I have always thought it's striking that people drive so much in spite of knowing that each time you could easily kill or be killed. Imagine if phones were equally dangerous - who'd carry one in their pocket?

Obviously cars are useful, but we've built our cities to maximize that (and we still spend a lot of time stuck in traffic, even so). That doesn't mean that there aren't more useful possibilities, just that the inertia in the system makes them seem like a dream.

New comment by blacksmith_tb in "Ju Ci: The Art of Repairing Porcelain"

blacksmith_tb — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 02:30:44 +0000

Beautiful work, but the cup can't hold water (or tea, or wine) now I assume? So a partial restoration. It does make me wonder if you could do a mechanical repair like that and then reglaze and refire it (but I suppose that'd melt most metalwork soft enough to hammer onto a delicate cup...)

New comment by blacksmith_tb in "GrapheneOS will remain usable by anyone without requiring personal information"

blacksmith_tb — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:39:49 +0000

But the "fact" that I told the OS I was 99yr old might be the data they're getting? To anyone who's setting up their own machine, it will be effectively optional: if you just want to make sure you fall in the "adult" bracket, you will tell the OS you're 25 (even if you're 13... or 99...). For kids whose parents are setting up devices, it could be an actual headache (assuming they're honest), but in that sense it's like a lot of other nannyware solutions, probably clunky, but possibly not all bad?

New comment by blacksmith_tb in "GrapheneOS will remain usable by anyone without requiring personal information"

blacksmith_tb — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 23:10:25 +0000

I appreciate the principled stand, but on the other hand the CA law only requires users to self-identify when setting up accounts (and then the OS will expose age to apps), that seems fairly toothless (though wrongheaded) compared to TX and UT wanting to scan photo IDs[1]

1: https://www.tomshardware.com/software/operating-systems/cali...

New comment by blacksmith_tb in "Ryugu asteroid samples contain all DNA and RNA building blocks"

blacksmith_tb — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 19:22:28 +0000

"The simple truth" being Genesis, for which there can be no evidence possible?