Hacker News: boznz

New comment by boznz in "Earth's Radio Bubble: Every signal we've ever sent into space"

boznz — Mon, 18 May 2026 23:32:43 +0000

Nice article. I had to go down this rabbit-hole researching my first book. Actual likelihood of anyone actually being able to receive these past a few tens of LY is quite low without very sensitive receivers. Also as another commenter pointed out the window for receiving us is closing as more modern wide-band and spread-spectrum signals are more power efficient, directed, and look much closer to noise than data.

New comment by boznz in "The Rise of the Bullshittery"

boznz — Wed, 13 May 2026 22:51:32 +0000

.. or Downvote

New comment by boznz in "The Rise of the Bullshittery"

boznz — Tue, 12 May 2026 20:09:50 +0000

Those that can Do, those that can't Bullshit.

New comment by boznz in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (May 2026)"

boznz — Sun, 10 May 2026 19:52:41 +0000

Retired so two projects; a 2D arcade board using a RP2350, and my 3rd sci-fi/techno-thriller novel: Currently approx 140,000 words into a 100,000 word novel and about 50% complete.

New comment by boznz in "Nonprofit hospitals spend billions on consultants with no clear effect"

boznz — Fri, 08 May 2026 00:07:41 +0000

There is a very clear effect, the bureaucrats can distance themselves from any unpopular policies or decisions and blame the consultants.

New comment by boznz in "Ask HN: Ten Yrs from now, when only AI codes, what's the stack?"

boznz — Wed, 06 May 2026 02:24:28 +0000

Why have a stack, machine-code all the way down baby

New comment by boznz in "Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants"

boznz — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 20:09:35 +0000

Due to increased regulation etc you cannot just translate 1985 $, £ or Euro to a 2026 one. There is an actual example in the UK Hinkley Point C current estimate $43b, (£35b) where as sizewell B commissioned in 1987 was $3.2b billion (£2b) or about $7b in todays $. This is probably the worst example but makes the point.

New comment by boznz in "How I leared what a decoupling capacitor is for, the hard way"

boznz — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 04:57:09 +0000

decoupling is a real issue, but I think you are right in this case.

New comment by boznz in "Is possible a language easy as py, fast as C, more secure than Rust?"

boznz — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 22:17:03 +0000

All the trends say this will be the case in a few years, but a lot of people like to pretend otherwise.

New comment by boznz in "Why I Write (1946)"

boznz — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 20:08:18 +0000

Reading non-fiction maybe, but reading fiction is about escaping and immersing yourself in another world for a few hours, like gaming, and I doubt people will ever stop doing either.

New comment by boznz in "Why I Write (1946)"

boznz — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 20:05:10 +0000

Yes, not a good time to be a new author, as I well know, but you also need to go back to the title of this post "why I write" - There is a lot more to wanting to write than fame and money (which you are very unlikely to see either of)

New comment by boznz in "SpaceX says it has agreement to acquire Cursor for $60B"

boznz — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 01:47:43 +0000

Seriously DONT CHANGE THE FUCKING POST TITLE AFTER SOMEONE HAS COMMENTED

New comment by boznz in "SpaceX says it has agreement to acquire Cursor for $60B"

boznz — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 22:28:32 +0000

Looking forward to seeing where this goes, both companies have a reputation for engineering excellence.

New comment by boznz in "In the UK, EVs are cheaper than petrol cars, thanks to Chinese competition"

boznz — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 22:12:02 +0000

I had a rental EV while I was there for 6 weeks last summer, it was a pretty low spec jeep model and I stayed at mates places all over England none of which had parking or charging, to tell the truth charging was a bit spotty in town, but if I was just going around the local area the battery was good for a week or more. My take away was I would definitely rent an EV again, but a lot of the older charging infrastructure still sucks, under-provisioned at peak times, and cost 2-3 times what a similar charge would cost here in NZ. I ended up doing most of my charging at the Tesla superchargers on the motorways and at supermarkets in town. I did 2900 miles total and it was about the same cost as petrol in the end, but worth it as the EV was cheaper to rent and was automatic (which renters charge a premium in UK)

Not sure fast charging all the time is good for battery life though. 99% of my driving in NZ is on a normal 10A overnight charge

New comment by boznz in "California has more money than projected after admin miscalculated state budget"

boznz — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 21:50:22 +0000

Another indicator that the administration hasn't got a fucking clue what or where their (your) money goes.

New comment by boznz in "Ibuilt a tiny Unix‑like 'OS' with shell and filesystem for Arduino UNO (2KB RAM)"

boznz — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 21:46:56 +0000

The UNO is definitely past it's prime, but I think the exercise was more a "can I do this" challenge. The code is pretty generic C++ so the techniques should also be good for other more up to date micro's and for others to learn from.

New comment by boznz in "KTaO3-Based Supercurrent Diode"

boznz — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 23:04:04 +0000

"Supercurrent" to me implied a diode which could conduct large amps without the normal losses involved from the forward voltage drop; what this is actually referring to is the opposite end of the spectrum, a highly efficient, room temperature single photon emitter, I assume for photonic based computing.

New comment by boznz in "Blue Origin's rocket reuse achievement marred by upper stage failure"

boznz — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 22:43:02 +0000

It's a hard problem, and both SpaceX and Blue Origin will probably have failures in the future too, I am encouraged that they both see failure as a way to do better and looking forward to both of them eventually succeeding. It's a good time to be a space nerd.

New comment by boznz in "Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th"

boznz — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 19:42:03 +0000

Too true, and with 1000's of new books added daily, new authors are lost in the noise. Writing is a lifestyle choice and a hobby, you will need to be very lucky, have a strong following or be pushed by a big publishing house to make any money from it, even successful indie authors will earn in a year what a good programmer earns in a day.

New comment by boznz in "Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th"

boznz — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 19:36:11 +0000

an ePub book is basically a zipped HTML folder with static pictures and text. A 18 year old kindle can still render it easily. I expect Amazon are adding a lot more DRM and hoops than required. I also noticed if you havent read a book you downloaded for a while it wont let you read it again without re-connecting. Just glad I pulled everything onto my PC and Kobo a few years back. Agree the PC interface is pretty crappy though.