Hacker News: edge17

New comment by edge17 in "Don't rent the cloud, own instead"

edge17 — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 14:20:08 +0000

Just curious, what is the spec you pay $6000/year for? Where/what is the line between rent vs buy?

New comment by edge17 in "English professors double down on requiring printed copies of readings"

edge17 — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 06:13:14 +0000

yea I used a lot of low price editions in college that i would order from ebay etc and would ship from india. Wow i didnt know about the ink x-ray stuff, thats pretty interesting.

what i was referring to though was generic american bestsellers, nothing black/gray market. used books feel very expensive to buy online. my guess is market capture though

New comment by edge17 in "English professors double down on requiring printed copies of readings"

edge17 — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 17:20:01 +0000

This is a bit off topic, but why are used books so expensive on abebooks, thriftbooks, amazon so expensive compared to booksales, etc? I recall a time when a lot of these online stores were selling them for a few cents (granted, it was a long time ago and it was still called zShops on Amazon).

New comment by edge17 in "The Illustrated Transformer"

edge17 — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 06:09:31 +0000

Is there something I can read to get a better sense of what types of models are most suitable for which problems? All I hear about are transformers nowadays, but what are the types of problems for which transformers are the right architecture choice?

New comment by edge17 in "The Illustrated Transformer"

edge17 — Tue, 23 Dec 2025 03:30:14 +0000

Maybe I'm out of touch, but have transformers replaced all traditional deep learning architectures? (U-nets, etc)?

New comment by edge17 in "Movie posters from Ghana in the 1980s and 90s"

edge17 — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 17:46:04 +0000

My best movie experiences were probably watching hard to acquire bootlegs in the pre-digital age. The barriers were just so much higher, half the excitement was just getting a crappy copy.

New comment by edge17 in "Movie posters from Ghana in the 1980s and 90s"

edge17 — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 17:42:55 +0000

Yea, also often the movies were cams from people that recorded in the theater so you can see the audience walking around etc.

Quality hardly matters when the real treasure was getting the movie in the first place.

New comment by edge17 in "Texas Instruments’ new plants where Apple will make iPhone chips"

edge17 — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 04:25:33 +0000

I don't know if it was on purpose or not, but I have heard it said more than once that Republican led states are able to greenlight projects faster, are more business-friendly environments, and generally have less red tape compared to Democrat led states. Love it or hate it, but greenlighting projects is a big component in allocating funds.

New comment by edge17 in "U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel"

edge17 — Sat, 23 Aug 2025 03:00:10 +0000

Section 9902 of the act authorizes the Secretary of Commerce to provide financial assistance to "covered entities"

One can argue how to interpret "financial assistance" broadly, which is exactly what the administration has done.

New comment by edge17 in "U.S. government takes 10% stake in Intel"

edge17 — Sat, 23 Aug 2025 02:51:40 +0000

...thats how the US Constitution works. Congress passes laws (CHIPS Act) and the executive branch is empowered to carry them out - in this case the Secretary of Commerce and Commerce Dept. One can argue whether it stretches the intent of the law, nothing wrong with debate. But as of now, I don't think any judge or court has contested in the interpretation of the language.

New comment by edge17 in "FFmpeg 8.0"

edge17 — Sat, 23 Aug 2025 00:55:33 +0000

Agree with this, but I think LLM's have been a net positive in helping generate commands? Admittedly, getting working commands is still tough sometimes, and i'm 50/50 on whether ChatGPT saved me time vs reading docs.

New comment by edge17 in "What's going on with gene therapies?"

edge17 — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 23:48:44 +0000

The other thing no one wants to say is the technical software/hardware talent in biotech is not as good as broader tech, and the people in charge of these projects are usually coming from a science background first and a technology background second.

New comment by edge17 in "What's going on with gene therapies?"

edge17 — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 23:43:42 +0000

A lot of the technology is regulated by FDA requirements, which apply to humans but not animals. Some of these requirements are challenging engineering problems - like how to do certain type of liquid transfers without exposing the contents of a container to the atmosphere, etc. There are lots of tools for doing liquid transfers that mimic what a human would do, but FDA places a different bar when it comes to developing a controlled manufacturing process.

There's also the question of, who writes the rules. Often it's industry experts that are already working on the process, and have incentives like keeping others out or licensing their own IP.

New comment by edge17 in "Ask HN: How to learn CUDA to professional level"

edge17 — Sun, 08 Jun 2025 19:53:49 +0000

What environment do you use? Is it still the case that Windows is the main development environment for cuda?

New comment by edge17 in "Apple pulls data protection tool after UK government security row"

edge17 — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 21:45:46 +0000

Are there non-icloud backup options? There used to be local encrypted backups through itunes, but I can't tell if that feature is still around.

New comment by edge17 in "Patrick McKenzie (patio11) podcast on technology, finance, and systems thinking"

edge17 — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 18:27:27 +0000

because the spelled out domain is free advertising and easy enough to remember. It says exactly what it is.

New comment by edge17 in "Forested wetlands are missing from maps"

edge17 — Sat, 08 Jun 2024 13:32:44 +0000

What does that mean that "the sun is brighter"?

New comment by edge17 in "GhostStripe attack haunts self-driving cars by making them ignore road signs"

edge17 — Fri, 10 May 2024 18:28:33 +0000

Six boffins mostly hailing from Singapore-based universities have proven it's possible to interfere with autonomous vehicles by exploiting their reliance on camera-based computer vision and cause them to not recognize road signs.

How do non-camera based systems (lidar etc) get road sign information? I would expect with cameras...?

New comment by edge17 in "No joke: FTC boss goes on the Daily Show and is told Apple tried to block her"

edge17 — Wed, 03 Apr 2024 14:05:35 +0000

These comments make it sound like Jon Stewart himself wields no power. He commands an audience he can take to any platform he wants. It just looks like he took a liking to the pot of money Apple put in front of him.You can't really make the argument that Apple is the only game in town for Jon Stewart.

Free speech laws protect against government supression of speech, not corporations.

New comment by edge17 in "Getting into robotics as a software engineer"

edge17 — Sun, 11 Feb 2024 23:55:23 +0000

Definitely agree here. I have been making this transition and currently work on life science lab automation robotics. It definitely takes intentionality because if you're good at software it's easy to get steered towards lucrative but higher level places in the stack.