Hacker News: davidu

New comment by davidu in "Small Engines"

davidu — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 13:43:11 +0000

This helps define some of the challenges with making very very small turbine engines. We have electrical (lithium) powered drones but they are heavy and have low energy density compared to what a liquid fuel + turbine could provide. But could we make a 2 inch diameter turbine engine reliably? Maybe!

New comment by davidu in "Koralm Railway"

davidu — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 16:00:51 +0000

It turns out, you can build new high speed railways. Take note California!

New comment by davidu in "How elites could shape mass preferences as AI reduces persuasion costs"

davidu — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 13:54:50 +0000

"Historically, elites could shape support only through limited instruments like schooling and mass media"

Well, I think the author needs to understand a LOT more about history.

New comment by davidu in "Map of Near and Middle East Oil 1965"

davidu — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 16:21:06 +0000

It's not AI slop, it's probably not even AI. You simply are unable to parse the description, or the map, or both.

New comment by davidu in "Tinder, Hinge, and their corporate owner keep rape under wraps"

davidu — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 18:22:10 +0000

Palantir, the incredible American technology company run by one of the most successful Black Americans? That's great.

New comment by davidu in "Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk"

davidu — Thu, 08 May 2025 16:27:04 +0000

link?

New comment by davidu in "Fivetran to acquire Census"

davidu — Thu, 01 May 2025 18:36:48 +0000

Congrats to the Census team and the Fivetran team!

New comment by davidu in "Sonos CEO Patrick Spence steps down after disastrous app launch"

davidu — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 15:20:34 +0000

Tom who is stepping in is an awesome executive. He was OG Pandora and Snap before Quibi and was on the Sonos board. He's a true product person. I'm sure he was enjoying semi-retirement and see him dropping in as CEO is a huge upgrade. :-)

New comment by davidu in "Sonos CEO Patrick Spence steps down after disastrous app launch"

davidu — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 15:07:56 +0000

So what are people using instead of Sonos AMP for home sound control?

New comment by davidu in "Show HN: Django Daisy – Modern Django Dashboard with DaisyUI"

davidu — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 14:49:28 +0000

Really nice work.

New comment by davidu in "Honeycrisp apples went from marvel to mediocre"

davidu — Sat, 30 Nov 2024 23:57:28 +0000

This article doesn't explain why a hudson valley grown honeycrisp would taste worse now than 10 years ago? Those are still coming from the boutique farms where you can pick them off the tree. It only explains why big apple in Washington is ruining the national honeycrisp market. Or did I miss something?

New comment by davidu in "Gavin Newsom vetoes SB 1047"

davidu — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 21:31:00 +0000

This is a massive win for tech, startups, and America.

New comment by davidu in "Forbes Marketplace: The Parasite SEO Company Trying to Devour Its Host"

davidu — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 16:42:29 +0000

This is such a big story and yet most of HN just doesn't care. It should make the WSJ though.

New comment by davidu in "Geothermal energy could outperform nuclear power"

davidu — Sun, 15 Sep 2024 23:18:07 +0000

That ranks as one of the worst nuclear disasters in history, and it was really not bad on a human or planetary scale. Carbon-based power plants kill far more on an annual basis.

New comment by davidu in "Geothermal energy could outperform nuclear power"

davidu — Sun, 15 Sep 2024 23:16:07 +0000

That's untrue.

New comment by davidu in "Geothermal energy could outperform nuclear power"

davidu — Sat, 14 Sep 2024 20:25:05 +0000

The word temporary is only used to placate people who don't understand nuclear / nuclear waste (waste is a bad term) and who have been badly influenced by 70 years of misinformation from The Sierra Club and others.

None of this spent fuel is really that spent, has plenty of other use cases, and should be used. Also, storing it in concrete casks for 40 years is perfectly safe and has caused 0 harm.

The cost is largely due to regulatory hurdles that are slowly being eroded.

New comment by davidu in "Surveillance Watch – the hidden connections within the surveillance industry"

davidu — Sun, 18 Aug 2024 19:03:21 +0000

So much of this data is so wrong. It's bizarrely and obviously wrong.

New comment by davidu in "Private Equity–Backed Firm Bowlero Is Ruining Bowling"

davidu — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 14:11:36 +0000

I don't know if this article is true but many assertions are untrue. The bowlero stock is pretty level and up from when it went public. It never made it past $17 from the $10 opening (SPAC probably?). So I have no idea what this author is talking about when he says it's been a wild ride.

New comment by davidu in "Calling Time on DNSSEC?"

davidu — Tue, 28 May 2024 13:24:59 +0000

DNSSEC is a complicated kitchen sink that doesn't do the fundamentals (encrypt DNS traffic). It is also very black-box with the current tooling (not by design, but by implementation) which makes deployment perilous and confusing.

It's really a PKI infrastructure masquerading as a secure DNS system.

There's value in a PKI infrastructure for domain names, but it probably won't look exactly like DNSSEC. And there's value in encrypting DNS, but that is definitely not DNSSEC. I helped invent and deploy DNSCrypt which is strong encrypted DNS, but doesn't provide the PKI components. There are plenty of ways to do that part, however, that would be much lighter in weight than DNSSEC.

I'm not motivated to do it now with my current day job (American Dynamism) but someone out there could.

New comment by davidu in "A16Z blogs are just glorified marketing"

davidu — Tue, 02 Apr 2024 02:21:04 +0000

We're not one monolith of content. Folks post what they want and think is interesting. You can also imagine a lot of our portco CEOs don't love when we mention their competitors.

Some of us do it more than others, depending on the topic or point of the post. Market maps do it a lot more than position pieces, as you'd expect, for instance. Anyways, the feedback is good.