Hacker News: itsdesmond

New comment by itsdesmond in "Clay PCB Tutorial"

itsdesmond — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 16:56:27 +0000

You’re bringing so much weird baggage to this. A viral hit? This is a ~2,300 word piece, equivalent to an article in The Atlantic introducing a 30 page PDF tutorial and code repo which is ran as a workshop in hacker spaces and at conferences. It isn’t a proposal for a new scale industrial process seeking VC funding.

You’re critiquing it for not being something you value, but it isn’t trying to be that thing. They’re not doing the thing you think they are badly, they’re doing something you haven’t bothered to understand.

Honestly, I think the only way one could look at this and bring that critique is if they both didn’t look at shit but the pictures and saw the word “feminist” used and began to intellectually infantilize the authors.

New comment by itsdesmond in "Clay PCB Tutorial"

itsdesmond — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 23:44:06 +0000

The Democratic Republic of Congo holds between 60-80% of the world’s coltan reserves, a key input to capacitors and other discrete electronics. UN investigators have identified systematic rape and sexual violence as a strategy of armed groups controlling regions containing these minerals, over 113k individual instances in 2023 alone. Phones keep getting made.

To me, this project is arguing that we don’t necessarily need to tolerate systemic rape, exploitation, economic inequality, and other forms of violence to have our little circuits.

New comment by itsdesmond in "Clay PCB Tutorial"

itsdesmond — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 23:07:32 +0000

The materials they are hoping to replace are some of the least accessible, extracted with some of the most caustic industrial processes. What are you even talking about?

New comment by itsdesmond in "Clay PCB Tutorial"

itsdesmond — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 23:04:05 +0000

They’re investigating “can circuits be produced from”, not asserting “this is a better medium for this exact circuit”. It is a tutorial on creating clay PCBs at all, a demo of the technique.

New comment by itsdesmond in "Clay PCB Tutorial"

itsdesmond — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 20:54:41 +0000

Dope. Reminds me of the https://highlowtech.org/ research group at MIT Media Lab early 2010s, specifically kit-of-no-parts from Hannah Perner-Wilson and Leah Buechley. They were doing copper electroplated clay dead-bug circuits and other wild shit.

New comment by itsdesmond in "Clay PCB Tutorial"

itsdesmond — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 20:48:01 +0000

I want so badly for you to expand on this thought. What are you implying about it by describing it as an art project? What does art mean to you? Are you expanding on or disputing whether it is an experiment? Please, go on.

New comment by itsdesmond in "DeepSeek v4"

itsdesmond — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 18:45:06 +0000

That enrichment occurred after Trump voluntarily exited the JCPOA. The IAEA reported no enrichment over the 3.67% threshold through 2018, then reported over 400kg at 60% in 2025, all created in the period after Trump pulled out. You are describing a consequence of ending the JCPOA.

New comment by itsdesmond in "DeepSeek v4"

itsdesmond — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 15:41:03 +0000

The JCPOA was working fine. We discarded it for vanity and to create an opportunity for more war. That is obviously immoral.

New comment by itsdesmond in "At long last, InfoWars is ours"

itsdesmond — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 19:53:50 +0000

C’mon. Making this argument doesn’t even respect yourself, let alone anyone else.

New comment by itsdesmond in "At long last, InfoWars is ours"

itsdesmond — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 17:58:06 +0000

This is simply untrue. Rupert Murdoch has never had an ownership stake in The Onion. It is currently held privately by Twilio cofounder and former CEO Jeff Lawson and former NBC News reporter Ben Collins.

Was this a mistake, something you mis-remembered?

New comment by itsdesmond in "NASA Force"

itsdesmond — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 20:08:26 +0000

I, the person you replied to, was mocking the concept of TDS. I apologize if my intent was unclear to you, I’ll try harder in the future.

New comment by itsdesmond in "NASA Force"

itsdesmond — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 18:28:57 +0000

It’s not that you’re willfully ignorant of the critique, you already know what it is. It’s TDS. Case closed.

Pre-sorting all criticism as reflexive and not necessarily justified is a rationalization for you not trying to understand other perspectives.

Edit: it seems like my message was ambiguous. Fuck Donald Trump, I’ve got a bottle to pop when he dies and I’ll never let you fuckers live down what you’ve done.

New comment by itsdesmond in "Show HN: PanicLock – Close your MacBook lid disable TouchID –> password unlock"

itsdesmond — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 18:11:24 +0000

I did not know that. That is extremely convenient. Thank you.

New comment by itsdesmond in "Show HN: PanicLock – Close your MacBook lid disable TouchID –> password unlock"

itsdesmond — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 18:10:06 +0000

A person might use it to stop someone getting into your computer through certain types of physical coercion, forcing your finger to the reader, or (much less likely but I’m sure security services know how) a copy of your fingerprint.

But it isn’t a why, it is a what. That what is a tool that lets you quickly disable Touch ID for whatever reason you want to.

New comment by itsdesmond in "CadQuery is an open-source Python library for building 3D CAD models"

itsdesmond — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 15:53:25 +0000

Sure but like, that is specifically NOT easier if you need to iterate once initial implementation is complete. At least in my opinion as an industrial designer turned software engineer, which I only mention to assert I’m experienced in both sets of tools.

New comment by itsdesmond in "I wrote to Flock's privacy contact to opt out of their domestic spying program"

itsdesmond — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 19:15:33 +0000

Flock has knowledge/use of the data. Their system processes can relate the photos “owned” by two different entities. They’re interacting with it and selling their access to it as a feature. That’s obviously distinct from S3.

But you knew that.

New comment by itsdesmond in "The AI School Bus Camera Company Blanketing America in Tickets"

itsdesmond — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 16:34:24 +0000

I got popped in Berlin for like 80 euro or something. Imma buy those tickets from now on.

New comment by itsdesmond in "The AI School Bus Camera Company Blanketing America in Tickets"

itsdesmond — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 15:35:50 +0000

Look, I’m all in on public transit, I have straight up never had a drivers license in my 38 years on earth. That said, I pay for that shit by tapping my phone against a circle. They accept cash but I no longer work a tip-based job. They know where I got on and in some transit systems (not Chicago) you gotta tap to get out, as well. They got cameras on the bus and train pointed right at the spot where everyone’s face is as they get on. Public transit solves many problems, surveillance ain’t one of them.

New comment by itsdesmond in "GitHub Stacked PRs"

itsdesmond — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 14:27:24 +0000

> Sounds like what my teachers used to say: “a personal problem”.

They don’t sound like a very good teacher.

New comment by itsdesmond in "Hungary Is a Laboratory for Illiberal Nationalism. The Results Are In"

itsdesmond — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 16:43:33 +0000

I was checking if the url had weird Unicode shit going on, or something.