Hacker News: fra

New comment by fra in "Diode – Build, program, and simulate hardware"

fra — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 14:42:30 +0000

This was my first thought: this seems like a web + 3d port of Fritzing. Perhaps they even reuse some of the code?

New comment by fra in "2025 marked a record-breaking year for Apple services"

fra — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 16:01:05 +0000

Gross margin doesn't tell you much about their level of investment. Gross margin is only revenue minus COGS (i.e. hosting, support, potentially infra teams). To understand further investments you'd have to know R&D or at least Opex broken out for Apple Services (which AFAIK they do not share).

SaaS typically expects 80% gross margin, so Apple is not out of line here.

New comment by fra in "Norway's Wealth Tax Unchains a Capital Exodus"

fra — Fri, 14 Nov 2025 18:39:56 +0000

In practice, I don’t think tax policy is the primary driver for where people chose to live. Even very wealthy people.

If I were very wealthy the first thing I would want to buy is proximity to the people I love, the food I like, the culture I’m excited about. For many people that means being close to home.

I can’t imagine how shallow my life would have to be for me to optimize it around taxes.

New comment by fra in "Steam Frame"

fra — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 05:03:44 +0000

Extremely impressive that they were able to ship inside-out tracking, pancake lenses, and eye tracking + foveated rendering. Each of these is a serious engineering challenge. Very few organizations could pull this off.

New comment by fra in "Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix"

fra — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 04:54:57 +0000

This guy ^ runs a conference on corporate values. You can't make this stuff up...

New comment by fra in "The Tiny Teams Playbook"

fra — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 22:36:25 +0000

Hacker News formula for startups: no offices, no offsites, no meetings, and no MBAs. If only idiot CEOs and rapacious VCs were listening!

New comment by fra in "Making Minecraft Spherical"

fra — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 12:28:43 +0000

If you, like me, were looking for a video of the demo in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=752-Oo1hok4

New comment by fra in "Nordic Semiconductor Acquires Memfault"

fra — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 02:19:38 +0000

In hindsight I think the correct word would be "regular software upgrades".

New comment by fra in "Nordic Semiconductor Acquires Memfault"

fra — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 01:10:20 +0000

Every vendor you bring in comes with switching cost, and this is no different. But we do our best to make it easy for folks to migrate off of our platform should they decide.

New comment by fra in "Nordic Semiconductor Acquires Memfault"

fra — Wed, 25 Jun 2025 01:09:18 +0000

Hi Pete -- email me (francois at) and I'll get you early enrolled into the special deals we have coming for Nordic customers.

New comment by fra in "Nordic Semiconductor Acquires Memfault"

fra — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 21:01:49 +0000

Thank you!

New comment by fra in "Nordic Semiconductor Acquires Memfault"

fra — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 21:01:45 +0000

Thank you!

New comment by fra in "Nordic Semiconductor Acquires Memfault"

fra — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 21:01:35 +0000

It's all on Github (https://github.com/nordicsemiconductor), but it is not technically open source as it is a modified BSD that does not let you use the SDKs with other chipsets.

New comment by fra in "Nordic Semiconductor Acquires Memfault"

fra — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 21:00:16 +0000

I'm the co-founder and CEO of Memfault. We were in the W19 YC batch. I never thought our news would make the front page of HN!

This is a very exciting day for us (after a very intense few months). We've known the Nordic team for years and could not think of a better partner to grow our platform.

Happy to answer questions, if you have them.

New comment by fra in "Litestream: Revamped"

fra — Tue, 20 May 2025 20:56:49 +0000

Litestream has seen very little development lately and I was worried it was dead. Very glad to see Ben Johnson is continuing to push the project forward with some exciting new plans.

New comment by fra in "The number of new apartments is at a 50-year high, but states expect a slowdown"

fra — Sat, 03 May 2025 16:31:53 +0000

[citation needed]

New comment by fra in "Distributed systems programming has stalled"

fra — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 02:10:32 +0000

As someone who builds observability tools for embedded software, I am flabbergasted that you're finding a more tools-friendly culture in embedded than in distributed systems!

Most hardware companies have zero observability, and haven't yet seen the light ("our code doesn't really have bugs" is a quote I hear multiple times a week!).

Claude 3.7 Sonnet with reasoning model card on Anthropic docs

fra — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 18:26:30 +0000

Article URL: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/about-claude/models/all-models

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43162980

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by fra in "Simplewall Has Been Discontinued"

fra — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 22:52:08 +0000

I think this is the reason in fewer 0.01% of cases. Languages are not in the top 10 things that make being an open source maintainer difficult.

New comment by fra in "I found a backdoor into my bed"

fra — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 23:47:48 +0000

You’d be surprised at how many hardware companies think this is a good idea!

I’m the founder and CEO of a company called Memfault, we make observability SaaS for hardware companies.

I constantly get asked if we could just offer a remote access solution. Many of our competitors do! But we think it’s (a) a huge security liability and (b) too ripe for abuse.

But fundamentally consumers do not care, and until that changes you can expect any embedded Linux device to have this kind of backdoor (they do more often than not).