<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: hex4def6</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=hex4def6</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Thu, 30 Jul 2026 01:32:58 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=hex4def6" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hex4def6 in "The Secret Origins of Amazon's Alexa"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>For an article about the origins of Alexa / Echo, it seems a pretty glaring omission to completely skip over the organization that actually designed / made the hardware.<p>That, for what it's worth, was done by Amazon Lab126 in the Bay Area under Dave Limp. Again, it's very strange he's not mentioned once in this either.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 24 Jul 2026 22:30:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49042415</link><dc:creator>hex4def6</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49042415</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49042415</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hex4def6 in "More Bounce to the Ounce"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> This is false. Launch on Falcon 9 is under $1K/kg.<p>Every number I find is ~$2,700 or so per kg. I'd be interested to see your data.<p>>$10/kg is a reasonable expectation.<p>Citation needed. The tyranny of the rocket equation means you need about 95kg of propellant for every kg of payload. To be clear, assuming it costs $0 to build a rocket, you're going to need to find propellant for under 10c/kg.<p>Or flip it around. Falcon 9 can lift 18,400kg. You're suggesting therefore that the gross income for spacex will be $184K per launch at $10/kg. It currently costs them about $15-20M per launch. They have to reduce their cost 100x to make a profit with your numbers. From $15,000,000 to ~$150,000. That seems... unlikely.<p>> Entry from near-orbital speed? Also survivable passively.<p>... 
To be clear, you're suggesting that a rocket in a bad state (engine failure / tumbling) is able to survive a re-entry at 17,500mph?
Also -- your "armored canister". How many kg of armor per kg of payload? 50:50?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 23 Jul 2026 23:47:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49029608</link><dc:creator>hex4def6</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49029608</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49029608</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hex4def6 in "More Bounce to the Ounce"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That $1000/kg figure is reprocessing something like 10kg of material to get 1kg of enriched material.<p>Current costs to launch a kg to orbit are something like $2,000-$6,000.<p>If we're comparing it to you enriched amount, you'd have to launch 10kg, which means you'd have to hit $100/kg launch costs to break even. I'm not convinced that will ever be possible; that's on the order of a first class arline ticket for a 50kg person.<p>This also doesn't consider what you're getting for launching it into orbit. If the 100 year risk of a casket leaking is (say) x mrads into the environment, you're going to have to consider what the equivalent of vaporizing all of it into the atmosphere in the event of a failed launch is. the fallout (hah) from a failed launch of nuclear waste seems magnitudes more catastrophic than having the same stuff slowly leaking in the middle of a desert cave.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 18 Jul 2026 01:54:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48954354</link><dc:creator>hex4def6</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48954354</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48954354</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hex4def6 in "Autonomous flying umbrella follows and shields users from rain and sunlight"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>On the other hand, I used to have an automatic open garbage can. Absolutely hated it. Ended up replacing with a foot operated one. The benefits were:<p>* Never ran out of batteries<p>* Didn't rely on an IR sensor that would work about 80% of the time, but would sometimes require waving more than once to get it to open.<p>* Didn't have a delicate gearing mechanism (automatic one eventually stripped a gear and broke).<p>* No set open time. God forbid you throw something in, turn to the counter and throw a second thing in...<p>* large lid, since it relies on foot power, not a motor / battery can only realistically open a certain weight lid.<p>My inlaws also have an automatic one -- last time I visited I saw that they also suffered from the stripped gear issue...<p>I wish public restrooms used foot-operated faucets instead of the existing "wave frantically for 3 seconds of water" sensors they have.<p>I am jealous of the auto-seal garbage bag option, but I am skeptical about long term reliability.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 05 Jul 2026 19:46:10 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48797342</link><dc:creator>hex4def6</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48797342</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48797342</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hex4def6 in "One KW wind turbine without civil engineering"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Ah, I think you're correct. Although the watts per square meter still don't make sense.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 01 Jul 2026 22:08:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48753771</link><dc:creator>hex4def6</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48753771</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48753771</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hex4def6 in "One KW wind turbine without civil engineering"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Many questions.<p>A couple:<p>* 1m² = 1x2m? 4m² = 2x4m? etc. I'm confused by this.<p>* Why 25 m² (5x10 m) = 20.8kW, but 100 m² (10x20 m) = 62.4kW? 4x the size in m², but only ~3x the power? Shouldn't it be 83.2kW, not 62.4kW? It doesn't make sense efficiency would <i>drop</i>....<p>* You're speccing this as having a 25 year life (with $50/yr maintenance). I'm feeling a bit doubtful that zip-tied tarps under UV and dynamic load are going to last that long, to be honest. The tracking system also seems extremely susceptible to dirt etc.<p>* This thing looks pretty janky. I'm also not convinced a good 20-year storm wouldn't completely wreck it. Proper wind turbines have the ability to weather-vane into the wind, lock the rotor, etc etc. Again, in it's current incarnation, I'm doubtful it would survive.<p>* Your "guaranteed Cp of .32" seems... optimistic. Given it looks like you've built actual units, what are your real-world results vs the CFD numbers?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 01 Jul 2026 21:34:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48753447</link><dc:creator>hex4def6</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48753447</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48753447</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hex4def6 in "Amazon seller reveals glimpse of shadow bribery market"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yep -- I've gotten multiple postcards in the mail and/or product box after ordering something telling me I'd get ~$5-$10 if I left a 5 star review. They thoughtfully included exact screenshots of how to submit the review.<p>I also went looking for a way to report it. Eventually opened up a chat, didn't really get anywhere.<p>(I also didn't appreciate getting junk mail for ordering something).</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 30 Jun 2026 23:57:00 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48740780</link><dc:creator>hex4def6</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48740780</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48740780</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hex4def6 in "Moebius: 0.2B image inpainting model with 10B-level performance"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I've been playing around, got it to work, although quality was a bit crappy. Still playing around with the settings that get exposed, but you're welcome to look at :
<a href="https://huggingface.co/spaces/jonatei/MoebiusDemo" rel="nofollow">https://huggingface.co/spaces/jonatei/MoebiusDemo</a><p>Note that I'm actively messing with it, so it may break for short periods of time :)<p>It's also running on the free CPU, so it's like 80 seconds per image...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2026 21:49:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48636698</link><dc:creator>hex4def6</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48636698</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48636698</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hex4def6 in "Apple's weird anti-nausea dots cured my car sickness"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>In VR, it's well known that your peripheral vision is a cue to your brain to infer motion direction.<p>You can give yourself serious motion sickness in VR if you grab hold of the VR camera and force a roll / pitch in this state.<p>One of the things some games do is during motion create "tunnel vision" when you move, shrinking down the size of the video feed and putting a black border around it. This significantly reduces this unpleasant effect. I assume the high resolution portion of your eyeball isn't used for motion inference, which makes sense.<p>I'm thinking this feature is exploiting this same peripheral vision cue.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 16 Jun 2026 23:20:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48563642</link><dc:creator>hex4def6</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48563642</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48563642</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hex4def6 in "Vinyl succumbs to Loudness War: more than just collateral damage (2025)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Yep.<p>Most people aren't in a quiet environment when they listen to music these days. Compression helps significantly with this.<p>What would be neat would be to have a compression metadata 'guide' that would allow a compressor on-device to perform the compression, rather than baked into the audio track.<p>This would allow the user to tune 'severity' of compression. In a car / fancy headphones, you could sample the ambient noise level and adjust accordingly.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2026 19:17:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48495127</link><dc:creator>hex4def6</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48495127</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48495127</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hex4def6 in "Larry Ellison: "Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re recording""]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>While that's pithy, I think it's also incorrect, because it implies that Oracle / Ellison is controllable by us, in the same way a tool / lawnmower is. That's absolutely not true. It has its own motivations that are best-case neutral to our goals.<p>It might be better to think of ourselves as individual fish in a school of fishes, and Oracle is the boat with a mile long dragnet. It doesn't care about the individual fish; it's not worth it's time to consider us individually. It's thinking in terms of tonnage.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 02 Jun 2026 19:05:41 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48374724</link><dc:creator>hex4def6</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48374724</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48374724</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hex4def6 in "Coreutils for Windows"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think if it conflicts with a CMD command it's not shipped, but if it conflicts with a powershell command it's ok.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 02 Jun 2026 17:48:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48373618</link><dc:creator>hex4def6</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48373618</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48373618</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hex4def6 in "Protestware for coding agents"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Of course. LLMS still have huge weaknesses in distinguishing between incoming unsanitized data, and their operating instructions.<p>It's still malware though. Unlike some backdoor that you could plausibly claim was just a simple memory leak, the instructions for this one are literally written in plain english. Wouldn't be very difficult to show intent to a jury with that one...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 29 May 2026 00:34:09 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48317447</link><dc:creator>hex4def6</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48317447</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48317447</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hex4def6 in "1940 Air Terminal Museum Begins Liquidation"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/blairmc99/55275010559/in/photostream/" rel="nofollow">https://www.flickr.com/photos/blairmc99/55275010559/in/photo...</a><p>I don't think I've ever seen a manual that expected me to use DeMorgan's Theorem as part of a test procedure... :)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2026 22:56:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48242642</link><dc:creator>hex4def6</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48242642</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48242642</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hex4def6 in "The people writing AI alignment policy are not whose work is being replaced"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>One of the all time greats. I think I'll play through it this evening.<p>"...And what is the 'Self', if not a pattern of data? What is consciousness, if not an illusion of intelligence residing within meat?"
— Prime Function Aki Zeta-5, "The Fallacies of Self-Awareness"</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 14 May 2026 22:17:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48142007</link><dc:creator>hex4def6</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48142007</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48142007</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hex4def6 in "Testing UPS Output Waveforms"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Agreed.<p>For such low frequency stuff, it feels way safer to just buy a cheap <$500 scope for this kind of work. Using a $50k scope when it's not needed just seems needlessly risky.<p>Also, float the DUT, not the scope... Sometimes that's not possible, and the temptation is there, but it's really not worth it. Just buy the right gear like a diff probe. You can get one for a few hundred bucks if you don't mind going downmarket.<p>You can also use two probes and do CH2 - CH1. (Disconnect the GND clips!)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2026 19:10:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48112936</link><dc:creator>hex4def6</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48112936</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48112936</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hex4def6 in "An open-source stethoscope that costs between $2.5 and $5 to produce"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Hmmm.<p>Looking at: <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0193087.g001" rel="nofollow">https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/...</a><p>I'm not sure I believe the graphs.<p>For example, here's another frequency response chart of some stethoscopes: <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/figure/a-Frequency-response-of-Littmann-3200s-bell-mode-vs-Eko-Cores-cardiac-mode-and_fig3_368568555" rel="nofollow">https://www.researchgate.net/figure/a-Frequency-response-of-...</a><p>How is it that professional stethoscopes can be that different, and yet this 3D printed one can match a gold-standard one almost exactly?<p>From what I can tell there's no audio engineering / modelling that's been done here -- It's just some crude openSCAD tubes. And it's not even optimized for 3D printing; a 3D printed tube with a circular cross-section is going to have bridging issues at the top which will result in internal roughness. I have to imagine that results in attenuation. (A better internal shape for a tube is something that looks like "ô". The ^ will print much better)<p>The type of plastic used and its frequency response, the thickness / stiffness of the silicone tubing, the height / width of the bell... There are so many variables that I think would make significant differences in performance. The fact that they see basically no difference is highly suspect.<p>This feels like one of those "3D-print everything" fads that was popular a few years ago. Yes, you can make a 3D-printed adjustable wrench, but even the most miserable dollar-tree metal version will beat it in every possible metric.<p>Likewise, on Alibaba, if you order 200 pieces, I'm seeing metal ones as low as $1.22/pc. I don't believe that this 3D printed one will even be as good as those.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2026 21:40:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47955102</link><dc:creator>hex4def6</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47955102</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47955102</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hex4def6 in "I Spent My Sabbatical Building a Power Meter for Sledgehammers"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'm curious about the units -- watts doesn't really seem right.<p>It seems like joules would make more sense, right?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2026 21:23:25 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47940998</link><dc:creator>hex4def6</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47940998</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47940998</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hex4def6 in "An update on recent Claude Code quality reports"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think you could alter the prompt in subtle ways; a period goes to an ellipses, extra commas, synonyms, occasional double-spaces, etc.<p>Enough that the prompt is different at a token-level, but not enough that the meaning changes.<p>It would be very difficult for them to catch that, especially if the prompts were not made public.<p>Run the variations enough times per day, and you'd get some statistical significance.<p>The guess the fuzzy part is judging the output.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 23 Apr 2026 19:31:28 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47880533</link><dc:creator>hex4def6</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47880533</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47880533</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hex4def6 in "3.4M Solar Panels"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I was in the same boat.<p>I'm in the bay area, did a roof mount system. ~9.5kW with Enphase microinverters.<p>I think it cost be ~15k all in. The usual installer price is normally around $2.5-$3/w (so about $25k - $30k).<p>I got someone to do the plans (because I was under the gun to get on NEM2), but that was $300 well spent.<p>Did it all myself -- mounting, running conduit / wiring etc. Wasn't too bad. Probably about 3-4 Saturdays of work.<p>Here's my install log:
<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/diySolar/comments/1c6jfjv/finally_done_with_my_diy_solar_install_field/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/diySolar/comments/1c6jfjv/finally_d...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 23 Apr 2026 18:59:34 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47880050</link><dc:creator>hex4def6</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47880050</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47880050</guid></item></channel></rss>