Hacker News: jgable

New comment by jgable in "Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)"

jgable — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 01:20:12 +0000

I’m developing BaseRef (https://getbaseref.com), a requirements/risk/test management and documentation SaaS tool focused on medical device startups. There are competitors in the space but most are enterprise tools for enterprise customers. My primary differentiators are reasonable up-front prices, and easy inclusion of traced items in a wiki/notion-like collaborative document editor. It’s not a sexy or original idea, but I think there is a gap in the market for a solid business. I’ve been an embedded software consultant for medical device startups for years, but this is my first SaaS business.

New comment by jgable in "Can you instruct a robot to make a PBJ sandwich?"

jgable — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 17:58:11 +0000

I suppose. My original comment should have been “doesn’t teach you how to program.” It would be great to do it the normal way first, then point out that it’s impossible to do without a contract of behavior in place, then start creating that instruction set and building up from there. It is in fact possible to program computers, so this method would teach what makes programming possible.

New comment by jgable in "Can you instruct a robot to make a PBJ sandwich?"

jgable — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 03:53:24 +0000

It’s funny, when I’ve seen this demonstrated, it’s basically literally impossible to get the right result because the test maker doesn’t define an instruction set that you can rely on. They will deliberately screw up whatever instructions you give them no matter how detailed. A computer has a defined ISA that is specified in terms of behavior. A compiler transforms a language with higher level abstractions into this low-level language. I’ve never seen this “test” done with any similar affordance, which doesn’t really teach anything.

New comment by jgable in "Funeral Food"

jgable — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 21:21:09 +0000

One of the best parties I’ve been to in my life was the reception after a funeral for my wife’s great-aunt. Generations of relatives and family friends, some of whom hadn’t seen each other in thirty years, took over their house from after the ceremony at noon until 10pm that night. It was a rager.

New comment by jgable in "Kalman filter from the ground up"

jgable — Sat, 14 Oct 2023 19:06:31 +0000

I built a variant to very successfully estimate state of charge for a large battery pack in a production hybrid-electric vehicle.

Often some tweaks from the standard formula are necessary to account for real-world non-linearities, and some creative design work is required to define states in such a way that the Gaussian noise assumption can hold well enough.

New comment by jgable in "Ron Patrick's Street-Legal Jet Powered Volkswagen Beetle (2006)"

jgable — Fri, 06 Oct 2023 00:49:26 +0000

Wrightspeed did this a while (10 years?) ago. It looks like they have since pivoted to fully electric powertrains for buses, but when they first started they were doing range-extending hybrid powertrains for heavy trucks. I found an article the describes the system at the time:

  https://www.e-hike.net/tr/content/wrightspeed-unveils-new-turbine-range-extender-medium-and-heavy-duty-electric-powertrains-30

With a range-extender hybrid system, you can keep the turbine closer to its peak-efficiency operating point, since it only has to handle steady-state load while the battery takes up the spikes. Not sure how it would do up a long grade, but I imagine they designed for that.

New comment by jgable in "Gradle still sucks"

jgable — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 04:32:08 +0000

Allspice - git platform for hardware engineers

https://www.allspice.io/

New comment by jgable in "Porting the Slint UI Toolkit to a Microcontroller with 264K RAM"

jgable — Sun, 09 Apr 2023 03:36:18 +0000

I’m excited about Slint. It’s great to have a solid Qt alternative for embedded UIs. I doubt I will need to use it on a MCU rather than an embedded Linux processor, but even so, it’s also nice to know that it’s lightweight.

New comment by jgable in "Ask HN: Are there Wi-Fi baby monitors with decent security?"

jgable — Sun, 28 Aug 2022 03:38:27 +0000

Thanks, I’ll check them out

Ask HN: Are there Wi-Fi baby monitors with decent security?

jgable — Sat, 27 Aug 2022 03:34:48 +0000

I’ve so far refused to get a Wi-Fi baby monitor because of all the horror stories I’ve heard of horrendous security practices. However, our current baby monitor just doesn’t have the range we need when we are outside or in the garage, or at my in-laws’ larger house.

Are there any brands of Wi-Fi baby monitors that I can trust to have acceptable security practices? Yes, it need to be video. I’d prefer an actual baby monitor camera and not a large ugly security camera.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32615382

Points: 7

# Comments: 7

New comment by jgable in "How to advertise to developers: deep dive into paid developer marketing"

jgable — Fri, 22 Jul 2022 20:27:48 +0000

The “Interrupt” blog by Memfault is another example. They are adored by embedded developers.

New comment by jgable in "How to Draw Animals (1930)"

jgable — Tue, 07 Jun 2022 19:31:51 +0000

"How to See, How to Draw" by Claudia Nice is a good book for learning to draw in a self-guided way. Doesn't take much money -- $20 at any art supply store can get you a decent drawing book and a decent set of pencils.

New comment by jgable in "Fastly acquires Glitch"

jgable — Thu, 19 May 2022 22:12:08 +0000

and Patrick, I can say that you were the first heavy influence on me that pushed me in the direction of solo entrepreneurship. From your writings and podcast I found Brennan Dunn, Amy Hoy, Jonathan Stark, Philip Morgan and others who have inspired me to choose and pursue my own path. Thanks for all that you’ve done, and I aspire to leave the kind of mark on the world that you have left.

New comment by jgable in "J. Kenji López-Alt says you’re cooking just fine"

jgable — Sun, 27 Feb 2022 20:39:37 +0000

It’s funny, I actually find Babish quite educational because his videos are so tightly edited. Explains the techniques and recipe in seven minutes flat. My wife and I have made many of his recipes (that he usually borrows from others) because he makes them so appealing, shows common mistakes, and does it so quickly.

New comment by jgable in "Frankie Manning's dancing skills made him famous twice (2016)"

jgable — Thu, 21 Jan 2021 20:41:13 +0000

I was fortunate enough to take a workshop with Frankie Manning around 2004 or 2005 at the Atomic Ballroom in Orange County. He was an incredible teacher, and the ladies who got to dance with him to demonstrate moves were absolutely blushing. It’s such a shame that he spent so many years undeservedly in obscurity. I like to think that he knew how much he meant to so many people, but it doesn’t replace what he should have had. A wonderful dancer and a wonderful man.

New comment by jgable in "We've been running a bootstrapped startup for a year"

jgable — Sun, 10 Jan 2021 19:29:44 +0000

If it’s 20 pages of useful information and insight that saves someone time, yes. Assuming that’s the case, s/he should charge more.

New comment by jgable in "mRNA's next challenge: Will it work as a drug?"

jgable — Fri, 18 Dec 2020 21:54:31 +0000

Given that this pandemic has killed millions, shut down the world economy, and caused untold long term damage to children due to lack of stable schooling: yes, it’s because the precautionary principle is too costly.

Edit: sorry, my comment may have sounded snarky, which was not my intention. World-wide vaccinations do carry a risk. It’s just that such a risk clearly pales in comparison to the very known downsides of the current situation. I am in no way a vaccine expert and cannot comment intelligently on why long-term risks are considered to be low.

New comment by jgable in "ØMQ – The Guide (2011)"

jgable — Sat, 24 Oct 2020 16:57:13 +0000

This is the guide, which you would normally visit from the homepage. The homepage gives a very clear description of what it is.

New comment by jgable in "No script is too simple"

jgable — Wed, 23 Sep 2020 00:33:58 +0000

I remember the memfault blog post that introduced me to this package. Great find, and I’ve started doing the same on all my embedded dev projects. Thanks!

New comment by jgable in "Squash to monetise players’ physiological data to attract more eyeballs"

jgable — Fri, 18 Sep 2020 20:09:10 +0000

What is the deal with the commentators emphasizing when the players “fist pump” and pronouncing it strangely? Such a silly gimmick.