Hacker News: bsoles

New comment by bsoles in "Understanding the Kalman filter with a simple radar example"

bsoles — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 23:41:20 +0000

I never really understood Kalman filters, but there was a time I knew how to design non-optimal state (Luenberger?) observers, which are a lot easier to design and implement. I wonder if discussing those first would make things easier for the audience.

New comment by bsoles in "We found an undocumented bug in the Apollo 11 guidance computer code"

bsoles — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 18:53:39 +0000

Another CTO "published" an AI slop to get attention to their vibe-coded company that will disappear in two years. Tell me something new...

New comment by bsoles in "The math that explains why bell curves are everywhere"

bsoles — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 17:52:07 +0000

> Linear algebra is amazing.

The entire control systems theory is basically various applications of linear algebra. Like Kalman Filter that got us to the moon. Simply amazing.

New comment by bsoles in "KiCad 10.0.0 Release"

bsoles — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 17:44:39 +0000

I regularly try to donate to KiCad, FreeCad, and LibreOffice. They all have been terrific resources for me. Screw Microslop.

New comment by bsoles in "Dijkstra's Crisis: The End of Algol and Beginning of Software Engineering (2010) [pdf]"

bsoles — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 18:01:42 +0000

His article "On the cruelty of really teaching computing science" (https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD10xx/EWD103...) really resonated with me in the past, albeit it might be enforcing the assessment of the parent post regarding his more elitist approach to software development. He says:

> A number of these phenomena have been bundled under the name "Software Engineering". As economics is known as "The Miserable Science", software engineering should be known as "The Doomed Discipline", doomed because it cannot even approach its goal since its goal is self-contradictory. Software engineering, of course, presents itself as another worthy cause, but that is eyewash: if you carefully read its literature and analyse what its devotees actually do, you will discover that software engineering has accepted as its charter "How to program if you cannot.".

New comment by bsoles in "Show HN: Axe – A 12MB binary that replaces your AI framework"

bsoles — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 10:51:04 +0000

I don't know exactly how these things work, but you may run into copyright/TM issues with Deque's Axe tool: https://www.deque.com/axe/devtools/

New comment by bsoles in "Practical Guide to Bare Metal C++"

bsoles — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 02:26:29 +0000

Also same experience here. I can write UART code with DMA in 20 lines of code on an STM32 microcontroller. Same functionality using HAL is astonishingly cumbersome. The reference manual and willingness to read it is all you need.

New comment by bsoles in "Practical Guide to Bare Metal C++"

bsoles — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 02:18:44 +0000

I find that encapsulation of devices (UART, I2C, etc.) as classes in C++ rather than global functions that take structs, etc. as input arguments in C to be much more manageable. Same for device drivers for individual sensor ICs.

New comment by bsoles in "Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals"

bsoles — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 18:18:57 +0000

> I will vote for and donate to candidates who also want to fight ...

Fight for what? I bet to change one or more of the things that I have mentioned above. I have said "nothing will change" unless these things change; I didn't say you/we shouldn't do anything.

New comment by bsoles in "Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals"

bsoles — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 18:00:55 +0000

Why would you claim that my statement is defeatist? It is just acknowledging the reality of how things work nowadays without saying anything about giving up. If anything, it cautions people that change will not come easily and to be prepared for it. I vote, give money to political/public causes, to go meetings of my federal representatives, post my opinions on HN, ... I am just being more realistic about my expectations.

New comment by bsoles in "Government grant-funded research should not be published in for-profit journals"

bsoles — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 15:55:40 +0000

> So the solution here is straightforward: every government grant should ...

People who write such sentences have no idea what they are talking about or are being intentionally naive for whatever reason.

Just because your one-sentence solution reads simple doesn't make the actual solution simple. Because such a solution involves changes to laws, changes to entrenched interests, changes to distribution of money involved in the whole system, and changes to balance of powers between stakeholders. Unless the push for such changes is significant enough to overcome the current state of affairs (due to public opinion, redistribution of power or money, etc.), nothing will happen.

New comment by bsoles in "Dyson settles forced labour suit in landmark UK case"

bsoles — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 18:52:50 +0000

Dyson is Juicero of vacuum cleaners. So much "tech" for something so simple. A $100 Home Depot shop vacuum works as good if not better.

New comment by bsoles in "Smartphone market forecast to decline this year due to memory shortage"

bsoles — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 18:35:17 +0000

Back in the day, I was running AutoCAD on a 386 PC. Now, a single Firefox tab consumes 500MB of memory. That is progress for us.

New comment by bsoles in "Implementing a Z80 / ZX Spectrum emulator with Claude Code"

bsoles — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 18:31:38 +0000

Even on a specific STM microcontroller (STM32G031), the LLM tools invent non-existent registers and then apologize when I point it out. And conversely, they write code for an entire algorithm (CRC, for example) when hardware support already exists on the chip.

New comment by bsoles in "ChatGPT Health fails to recognise medical emergencies – study"

bsoles — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 18:17:38 +0000

>> "securely" (my emphasis) connect medical records and wellness apps” to generate health advice and responses.

No, no, no, and no. Are we going to never learn. Sharing medical data with AI tools is going to come back and bite you.

New comment by bsoles in "US orders diplomats to fight data sovereignty initiatives"

bsoles — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 15:41:21 +0000

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” - Trump

Just replace Mexico with America. There must be some Freudian issue going on with Trump here.

New comment by bsoles in "You are not supposed to install OpenClaw on your personal computer"

bsoles — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 02:44:09 +0000

If only I knew enough finance about making a lot of money from the impending collapse of this AI stupidity and the stupidity of AI grifters. I would put real money on it if anybody has suggestions.

New comment by bsoles in "How to stop being boring"

bsoles — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 21:31:10 +0000

People who are normally perceived as non-boring (like talkative, outgoing, friendly-by-default people) are usually insufferable for me.

People who are initially perceived as boring (like quiet, introspective, focused people) are more fascinating if you can get through to them. Unfortunately, I have no such skills...

New comment by bsoles in "No Skill. No Taste"

bsoles — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 18:36:53 +0000

If you vibe coded any software, by definition, it means you have no skills and no taste.

New comment by bsoles in "Can a Computer Science Student Be Taught to Design Hardware?"

bsoles — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 20:37:00 +0000

>> "Either we hire good CS people who have the basic understanding of EE, and we train them to become good engineers, or we hire good engineers who are good in CS, and we try to upskill them on the CS side."

The former (CS -> EE) is very unlikely to happen at a large scale than the latter (EE -> CS). It is much easier to teach EEs to become (albeit, often bad) software engineers, than teaching CS student to be good engineers.

Also, the former (CS -> EE) will not happen in academia because of (1) turf wars, and (2) CS faculty not having any understanding, nor interest in electronics/hardware/engineering.

I once proposed to teach an IoT class in the CS department of a major university in US, the proposal basically fell on deaf ears.