Hacker News: daniel_reetz

New comment by daniel_reetz in "An unsolicited guide to being a researcher [pdf]"

daniel_reetz — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 04:08:17 +0000

I worked there. Everything goes into a slide.

New comment by daniel_reetz in "Thank HN: You helped save 33k lives"

daniel_reetz — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 16:33:41 +0000

Precisely. Things become clear when we think of benefits for people instead of monetary terms.

New comment by daniel_reetz in "Mr TIFF"

daniel_reetz — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 14:11:12 +0000

A huge number of us labor behind the scenes with no public acknowledgment or credit. For each idea brought to life we might hope for -at most- an epitaph carved in expired patent claims.

This story is touching.

New comment by daniel_reetz in "Pixel 10 Phones"

daniel_reetz — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 01:02:37 +0000

I've been running GrapheneOS for a few months now, keeping my old Samsung on WiFi as a backup.

It is such a breath of fresh air. It is so quiet and functional. It feels like it prioritizes me, the user. I am so grateful to have this OS.

Of course it has flaws, but they're lesser flaws. Like the crop tool is sometimes unusable in the gallery app. I can live with that. I couldn't live with the AI onslaught and spyware infiltration.

New comment by daniel_reetz in "YouTube No Translation"

daniel_reetz — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 19:33:20 +0000

Respectfully, at this point, do we need Googlers to explain?

Structurally: launch-dependent levels/career advancement. Design wise: massive over reliance on A/B testing. Philosophically: a company hell bent on observing, categorizing, and exploiting us in extremis in exchange for only a tiny "relevant" slice of their potential deliverable.

Because of their focus on "scale", they have never cared about any individual user. The indifference of their technical systems is absolute.

New comment by daniel_reetz in "Coding without a laptop: Two weeks with AR glasses and Linux on Android"

daniel_reetz — Sat, 17 May 2025 23:12:29 +0000

In a VR headset the virtual screen distance is set by the distance of the microdisplay from the lens in the headset.

It's not crazy to think you could move the microdisplay position and get a virtual display at 6". There might be other optical consequences (aberrations, change in viewable area) but in principle it can work.

New comment by daniel_reetz in "California sent residents' personal health data to LinkedIn"

daniel_reetz — Thu, 15 May 2025 15:12:09 +0000

Here's some context for people who are curious about CA DMV data sales:

https://www.thedrive.com/news/35457/why-is-the-california-dm...

New comment by daniel_reetz in "Ask HN: What are good high-information density UIs (screenshots, apps, sites)?"

daniel_reetz — Fri, 09 May 2025 03:22:46 +0000

I spoke to a McMaster web team member at a bar. They told me that the real reason there's usually no brand information is that they buy the same bolt (for example) from many different suppliers to guarantee availability.

They will only put a brand on a product (example: 3M DP420) when it truly comes from a single source and has special meaning/implications.

That said, I order tens of thousands of dollars of McMaster Carr items each year. They almost always come in packages from the OEM with OEM part numbers. So if I want more bolts like that, I just look at the box they were delivered in. The info is just not on the web interface.

New comment by daniel_reetz in "Globalization did not hollow out the American middle class"

daniel_reetz — Thu, 08 May 2025 13:52:27 +0000

I've purchased equipment from scrapped solar factories in the Bay Area. Tons of people lost jobs and not just technologists.

New comment by daniel_reetz in "Mark Zuckerberg says social media is over"

daniel_reetz — Thu, 24 Apr 2025 17:04:12 +0000

Meta made the decision to take control of what users see via the feed, and to show them mostly content which is NOT from friends. Content that "performs well".

The testimony is disingenuous, but true. People see less of their friends because they are show less of their friends. Friends post less becuase no one sees it.

New comment by daniel_reetz in "Why Apple's Severance gets edited over remote desktop software"

daniel_reetz — Sun, 30 Mar 2025 18:45:00 +0000

This matches my experience. In addition I was advised/strongly encouraged to "go dark" on social media and refrain from ever discussing work at lunch, even with teammates.

My badge only worked where I had explicitly been given access, and desks were to be kept clear and all prototypes or hardware had to be locked in drawers and/or covered with black cloths. Almost every door was a blind door with a second door inside, so that if the outer one opened, it was not possible to see into the inner space.

New comment by daniel_reetz in "WWI's 'Dazzle' Camouflage Seemed Effective Due to Unexpected Optical Trick"

daniel_reetz — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 13:20:47 +0000

Strange take. Pixelated camouflage is and was an attempt to make a scale invariant camouflage (works at near and far distances) by encoding patterns at multiple spatial frequencies. It's far from "computers are cool" or pixel art.

New comment by daniel_reetz in "Meta pirated books to train its AI"

daniel_reetz — Sat, 22 Mar 2025 14:52:33 +0000

The similarities to Google Books are interesting. Google created Books based on their own scans of books, which publishers considered piracy.

The legal battle initiated by the Authors Guild was vicious and it damaged and hampered Books and other entities and scanning projects like the Internet Archive.

Now Facebook pirates all the world's books, uses them without paying authors or publishers, and seemingly faces no consequences.

I would strongly prefer to live in a world where we could easily search and access all books, than one where the richest guys get to exploit them without consequences.

New comment by daniel_reetz in "Designing Electronics That Work"

daniel_reetz — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 17:00:03 +0000

McMaster Carr now sells ethanol in large quantities.

New comment by daniel_reetz in "Teach, Don't Tell (2013)"

daniel_reetz — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 14:56:15 +0000

My domain is mechanical engineering. In my discipline, the Parker O-Ring catalog or the Omega Sensors catalog are basically textbooks which teach you how to specify and select seals and sensors. They create experts, and in the process, create sales and users.

The really outstanding trick of these catalogs is they also work as shortcuts. You can go to a table and pick an O-ring with very little expertise, and it will tell you the groove size, corner radius, etc.

In short, when you're documenting tools or engineering components, and your audience is tool users, teaching is a highly effective approach.

New comment by daniel_reetz in "Open source software for modeling soft materials"

daniel_reetz — Thu, 13 Mar 2025 18:39:54 +0000

It's also been tried in the mechanical world ("Generative Design" in Autodesk's language) and it's still mostly in the "cool demo, bro" phase. The parts end up being expensive and difficult to manufacture due to the unusual geometry. You're penalized for exploring the design space because it runs on cloud credits (more exploration == more cost). Just not very compelling yet.

New comment by daniel_reetz in "Kill your Feeds – Stop letting algorithms dictate what you think"

daniel_reetz — Sat, 08 Mar 2025 20:19:25 +0000

Since they already reference Technology Connections in the article, and since this is a great essay but not new ideas, let's also call out other important voices - in particular Shoshana Zuboff's "Surveillance Capitalism", Cory Doctorow, and the many others who have put their backs into helping us understand how these sick systems work.

New comment by daniel_reetz in "Apple's Software Quality Crisis"

daniel_reetz — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 04:12:25 +0000

Have you tried searching with Explorer? Or opening the start menu or a folder? I'm currently 100% a Windows shop, and it's embarrassingly slow on my silly fast computer.

New comment by daniel_reetz in "Apple says it will add 20k jobs, spend $500B, produce AI servers in US"

daniel_reetz — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 13:47:25 +0000

Even Apple doesn't do CAD on OSX. They run Siemens NX on Windows.

But your statement isn't quite right. Fusion 360 runs fine in mac. I'm ex-Apple btw.

New comment by daniel_reetz in "Recovering priceless audio and lost languages from old decaying tapes"

daniel_reetz — Sun, 23 Feb 2025 04:17:45 +0000

There's a piece of commercial software called Celemony Capstan. Might not be right for your application but it was designed explicitly for tape restoration.