Hacker News: bloggie

New comment by bloggie in "Launch HN: ProvenMetal (YC S26) delivers circuit boards in days instead of weeks"

bloggie — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 17:38:23 +0000

When you say PCB at the beginning are you referring to raw PCBs or PCBAs? Presumably your service will be sourcing raw PCBs from China still and just doing PCBA?

When my pal’s raw PCB company went out of business, you could buy a finished PCB from China for less than the cost of FR4, which also came from China. How do you intend to address this supply chain risk? Once China raises your cost of raw PCBs your price argument no longer works.

Also, are you sourcing components from US sources or using China? Recently I stopped purchasing from Digikey and Mouser because their services are much slower than they used to be, and I now get components much faster and for lower cost in China.

New comment by bloggie in "Kimi-K3 on HuggingFace"

bloggie — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 22:32:05 +0000

I pay a little less than that though I’m limited to 50 kW average load. Delivery is a fixed monthly fee, about $10 USD/month.

New comment by bloggie in "Advertise in ChatGPT"

bloggie — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 21:54:25 +0000

Great post. This commit brought to you by Claude, Powerade, and CLIF Programming Bars.

New comment by bloggie in "What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard"

bloggie — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 14:12:47 +0000

Hardware isn’t hard if the hardware is easy? There’s very few components, one of which is a pre made module, and it took 3 years to make essentially a text logger.

New comment by bloggie in "Amazon CEO's talks with U.S. officials triggered crackdown on Anthropic models"

bloggie — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 19:50:20 +0000

I'm not American so maybe I'm missing something, but doesn't the Constitution apply to all citizens? Is it not then unconstitutional to prevent federal inmates from possessing firearms while incarcerated?

New comment by bloggie in "The Future of Email"

bloggie — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 14:48:17 +0000

When I cancelled Proton the subscription ended immediately instead of running out the clock on the time I had paid for. Left a really bad taste in my mouth.

New comment by bloggie in "Meta workers can opt out of being tracked at work up to 30 min"

bloggie — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 15:57:57 +0000

After many years in research science I had an opportunity to work in applied sciences in the petroleum industry. This is an industry that knows that the writing is on the wall for them. Resources are finite and peak demand may well be behind us. (Almost everyone I worked with drove electric cars.) That does not stop the petroleum industry (drug dealers) from responding to economic demand (addicts). When I was younger I saw the petroleum industry as evil, but if there was no demand there would be no supply. Who is to blame? Working in this industry changed my perspective on addiction, drinking, gambling, infinite scrolling. I used to believe that the pushers were solely at fault, and some of them certainly are. But I find it hard to blame only Facebook for their practices.

New comment by bloggie in "Anthropic surpasses OpenAI to become most valuable AI startup"

bloggie — Sat, 30 May 2026 17:38:28 +0000

Steam and other game stores are pretty much the same but Steam is more popular because every one of their competitors has decided to continually shoot themselves in the foot over and over.

Even if Claude and ChatGPT were exactly the same, Claude would be more popular because OpenAI has decided to make some very unpopular moves and try to make money where popularity isn't required. At the moment that popularity still seems to matter.

New comment by bloggie in "First tunnel element of the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel immersed"

bloggie — Mon, 11 May 2026 02:42:45 +0000

Here’s a fun video about how one sunken tunnel was built in Vancouver back in the 50s. https://youtu.be/A1igKk8eK0M

New comment by bloggie in "Dav2d"

bloggie — Sun, 03 May 2026 12:42:08 +0000

Maybe he should change his name so it's not confused with a popular video codec.

New comment by bloggie in "Show HN: WhatCable, a tiny menu bar app for inspecting USB-C cables"

bloggie — Fri, 01 May 2026 16:47:47 +0000

This is actually one of the cost adders of USB3 USB-C devices. They need lane swapping ICs which are basically high speed analogue switches.

New comment by bloggie in "A DIY Watch You Can Actually Wear"

bloggie — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 17:01:37 +0000

To be honest there is not much to it, you buy the movement, put it in a case, and put the hands on it. you can get everything from aliexpress. it's easier and often cheaper to just buy a normal watch if you need one.

New comment by bloggie in "Tesla tells HW3 owner to 'be patient' after 7 years of waiting for FSD"

bloggie — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 22:04:55 +0000

Should Tesla pay people to use Autopilot?

New comment by bloggie in "Apple Just Lost Me"

bloggie — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 15:24:01 +0000

I didn't know what a MNT Pocket Reform and wow! Rockchip, 20 cm wide keyboard, ix ethernet connector, 4 hour advertised runtime, 2 inches thick and costs more than a macbook. You really have to suffer to stick it to the man!

New comment by bloggie in "Our commitment to Windows quality"

bloggie — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 21:43:12 +0000

Well the guy who wrote the blog post seems to have been in charge of windows for the last 2 years so he’s still at it.

New comment by bloggie in "Kagi Translate now supports LinkedIn Speak as an output language"

bloggie — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 14:09:58 +0000

I'm sad to see it doesn't work in reverse... nobody can decipher LinkedIn Speak.

New comment by bloggie in "AirPods Max 2"

bloggie — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 19:12:31 +0000

I found this forum last year https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php which opens the door up to a high number of lower cost manufacturers making very high quality products. although the forum audience (audiophiles) generally eschew wireless products and prefer open backed (loud for everyone else and no noise cancelling) headphones, there are all kinds of products discussed.

New comment by bloggie in "The MacBook Neo"

bloggie — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 21:57:19 +0000

I'd be interested in this but it seems the price is much higher than stated here, or this was some temporary deal. It's also larger and quite a bit heavier but I guess that is a personal preference. The screen also looks pretty lacking (300 nits!). I do see it around $1200 CAD where the new macbook is $800 CAD and in stock. However all said I do not think a lot of people will be buying this new macbook because they are comparing specifications. Laptop manufacturers show off their specifications and have tons of different models because that is how they can differentiate their products from each other. Apple doesn't need to play that game and can deliver usability and value, and good in-person after sales support to the general consumer.

New comment by bloggie in "Welcome to the Wasteland: A Thousand Gas Towns"

bloggie — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 18:13:09 +0000

Yesterday I wanted to change a white background to transparent on some clip art. I’m still learning Affinity so asked Google Gemini Nano Banana PRO 2. The output looked ok at first but the grey squares were a little off. They didn’t make a perfect grid. I opened it in mspaint and was able to erase the grey squares. It didn’t change the white background to transparent, it just drew an array of grey squares, but only good enough for a first glance. I have no idea how these AI tools can make anything of use if left to their own devices.

New comment by bloggie in "Attention Media ≠ Social Networks"

bloggie — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 14:14:22 +0000

The idea that community votes will result in the best content floating to the top is flawed, because what happens is the most popular content gets upvoted and not necessarily the most insightful or pertinent. This effect is magnified as the network or communities grow and welcome more a more general audience. The most prominent commentary is often useless jokes, memes, reactions etc. Slashdot, HN, lobsters have similar flaws with different strategies to overcome them.