Hacker News: camwhite

New comment by camwhite in "Open Source Low Tech"

camwhite — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 13:05:43 +0000

I would argue that, for anything with value, there is value in having a decent open source option for that thing. I think farm equipment is valuable, so I think it's great that someone is working on an open source option. You are right though, it is an enormously uphill battle. To get off the ground, there would likely need to be a well funded non profit involved. Would be cool to see Futo or similar tackle something like this

New comment by camwhite in "Open Source Low Tech"

camwhite — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 13:03:36 +0000

I thought of this guy as well. I love the spirit of attempting to make open source farm machinery. I think that domain and ones like it are under addressed by open source in general. I think the guy who started it still makes content on youtube but much of it seems to be recordings of zoom webinars he does. Not really sure what the state of the project is

New comment by camwhite in "Open Source Low Tech"

camwhite — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 12:59:08 +0000

I love this project. I often lament how narrowly focused on tech/software open source tends to be. It is the most powerful example of human altruism that I can think of but it tends not to address a lot of peoples basic needs. I would love to see an open source house, car, bike, etc much more than I would like to see another solution for coordinating container clusters or something

(I know there are actually a few projects in the categories I mentioned but they are, largely, underwhelming)

New comment by camwhite in "Repairable Flatpack Toaster"

camwhite — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 01:48:13 +0000

I love this because it is making a practical, everyday item more accessible.

I know the toaster is not explicitly open source but I've been lamenting the fact that such an incredible amount of energy is spent making things more accessible but most of those things are not what 'normal people' actually need.

For example I think there is a greater need for more open source couches, bikes, houses, clothing, etc than the need for, say, software that helps us coordinate containerized web infrastructure (from a social good perspective)

New comment by camwhite in "Startups, Strategy, and Algorithms"

camwhite — Sun, 02 Mar 2025 15:52:06 +0000

applying algorithmic strategy concepts to growth strategy is an interesting idea. I wonder what other domains this could be useful for

New comment by camwhite in "GPT-4.5"

camwhite — Thu, 27 Feb 2025 20:10:50 +0000

I can't wait for fireship.io and the comment section here to tell me what to think about this

New comment by camwhite in "Maybe Bluesky has "won""

camwhite — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 23:07:26 +0000

the article says:

"if you want to look up a DID:PLC, you need to query the Bluesky servers. This is important because every user is identified by a DID:PLC, and all interactions need to reference them."

which is not strictly true.

almost every user is identified by a DID:PLC but DID:WEB is also supported. DID:WEB is not mentioned in the article at all

I think this is important because it means that users can opt into being their own source of truth for their "identity" in the ATPROTO system

New comment by camwhite in "Show HN: Learn a new language by speaking with AI"

camwhite — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 14:01:42 +0000

Really like the idea. As someone who has been losing his limited spanish since college, I've been wanting something like this.

A couple pieces of feedback:

- It would be very useful to be able to get text translations of just one word at a time. Currently, I can give up entirely and have the whole message translated for me. But there's no way to just get help with the one word I can't remember the meaning of

- It would be very useful to be able to hide the text by default. I am interested in this app only because I am pretty bad at listening to spanish. That said, I am quite a bit better at reading it. Having the text always appear ruins my ability to practice listening

- The language selector at the top has 5 vertical bars that can be dark or not. I believe this might be a difficulty indicator? But it's not very clear

- When I speak some words are yellow. I assume this means my pronunciation was off leading the AI to not be very confident. That could also be a lot more clear

edit: fix formatting

New comment by camwhite in "Students may now begin teaching in AZ public schools before they finish degree"

camwhite — Sun, 10 Jul 2022 23:37:45 +0000

I could see dropping the college requirement if it were to be replaced by some other stringent barrier to entry. Teaching as a trade school style profession makes sense to me.

New comment by camwhite in "Hackers claim to have breached Okta systems"

camwhite — Tue, 22 Mar 2022 05:22:32 +0000

naïve question: Is there anything regular consumers can/should do in light of this information? Changing passwords etc seems futile if hackers have internal developer access anyway