Hacker News: johschmitz

New comment by johschmitz in "Tiny Little Office"

johschmitz — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 06:02:17 +0000

I guess the PDF wouldn't have to be stored in the application/URL? Just a tool to load it, fill+annotate+sign it and export back to disk.

New comment by johschmitz in "Show HN: Guitoro, a virtual guitar you strum with your keyboard"

johschmitz — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 13:57:45 +0000

Great project overall, I like it a lot. Please fix it on Firefox. Tested with Firefox for Linux and layout was broken compared to Chromium based browsers. Additionaly, I also noticed in the mobile version on Android (Chrome) when switching to another app and back it breaks the guitar sound simulation and it gets completely distorted.

New comment by johschmitz in "Dutch Train Map Simulator"

johschmitz — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 11:08:09 +0000

Not obvious, I switched to desktop mode to be able to see something on mobile. Suggestion: have the menu collapsed at the beginning, at least on mobile layout, then it would be much more obvious how to use it.

New comment by johschmitz in "Stowaway – Take the window seat on any plane or satellite overhead"

johschmitz — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 06:40:41 +0000

Maybe provide an option for the user to bring their own API key for prettier results.

New comment by johschmitz in "Show HN: SIMD Viterbi Decoder in Rust"

johschmitz — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 10:43:49 +0000

Performance result are presented here as far as I understand: https://github.com/brian-armstrong/fec#performance

New comment by johschmitz in "Reverse centaurs are the answer to the AI paradox (2025)"

johschmitz — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 19:35:29 +0000

I am reading on mobile and actually preferred the pluralistic link, glad you posted that one.

New comment by johschmitz in "A better way to tie gym shorts (or any drawstring) [video]"

johschmitz — Tue, 07 Jul 2026 19:38:38 +0000

Reminds me of the granny knot "advice" which I also saw on hackernews for the first time many years ago and which changed my live:

https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/grannyknot.htm

If you don't know about this problem yet, I strongly recommend to cross check if you have been tying it wrong for years!

New comment by johschmitz in "Claude Fable 5"

johschmitz — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 21:01:31 +0000

As far as my understanding goes the bottleneck for what you are talking about is hardware not software, so open source won't help that much for the foreseeable future.

New comment by johschmitz in "Comma openpilot – Open source driver-assistance"

johschmitz — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 08:33:06 +0000

The control messages are transmitted via CAN bus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN_bus

The exact message content and protocols are reverse engineered.

Some cars use FlexRay instead of CAN bus but that has only experimental support.

New comment by johschmitz in "Training my smartwatch to track intelligence"

johschmitz — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 22:24:53 +0000

Since this talks about sleep quality I want to add something that was almost unknown to me for over 30 years. Smartwatches AFAIK don't have CO2 sensors. It seems to me though, that that would be extremely useful for sleep quality tracking. I have just a couple of years ago found out that CO2 levels are having the highest impact on my sleep quality besides temperature. I can highly recommend getting a CO2 sensor to get a good feeling for that effect. Also understand how much air is available in your room and how much CO2 your body produces per hour. I totally underestimated this until I was able to measure it. In a small sleeping room with closed doors the amount of CO2 will reach unhealthy levels at the end of the night.

New comment by johschmitz in "MCP-B: A Protocol for AI Browser Automation"

johschmitz — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 12:18:56 +0000

At the end of the day you often need to consider the energy efficiency of a system which is also reflected in the cost of operating it. For use cases where this is relevant the suggested MCP approach potentially offers large benefits compared to what's probably meant here by "AI". However, the disadvantages of public access discussed in other threads need to be considered as well, therefore, I expected this only to be used for certain niche use cases. Testing and retro fitting non-public websites come to mind.

New comment by johschmitz in "What makes a good engineer also makes a good engineering organization (2024)"

johschmitz — Wed, 21 May 2025 06:06:16 +0000

I never hated on Signal, on the contrary I recommend it too many people but I can say that the energy consumption on Android is in many cases abysmal for multiple years now and related issues in the Github issue tracker are being ignored. This is for me unacceptable for someone claiming to build high quality software and accepting my donations.

New comment by johschmitz in "MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia"

johschmitz — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 06:54:51 +0000

Reminds me of https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/grannyknot.htm

I wonder if what you describe is kind of the reason for this.

New comment by johschmitz in "Show HN: I've spent nearly 5y on a web app that creates 3D apartments"

johschmitz — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 13:45:40 +0000

Nice.

Feature request: In the top/overview view I would like to be able to tap on each room and then the pivot point should move to the center of that room. After a double tap or tap on the top view button the pivot point should move back to the apartment center point. This will help zooming easily into each room from above.

New comment by johschmitz in "Flowblade: Open-source video editor for Linux"

johschmitz — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 07:08:37 +0000

You might want to try out the one build into Blender: https://www.blender.org/features/video-editing/

New comment by johschmitz in "40 years ago yesterday Air Canada Flight 143 ran out of fuel mid-flight"

johschmitz — Mon, 24 Jul 2023 22:28:00 +0000

I like this one much better https://youtu.be/RKfG3lWCZ80 at 4:20 onwards. Also explains the difference between slip and skid.

New comment by johschmitz in "Teardown of the TM4313 GPS Disciplined Oscillator"

johschmitz — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 07:38:40 +0000

I did this back in the day using a ublox LEA-M8F module for my PhD work following the instructions posted here: http://www.opendigitalradio.org/lea-m8f-gpsdo I also experimented with RTK which this module is capable of. Now there's probably a more up to date ublox module available which could provide even better results using multi frequency GNSS etc.

New comment by johschmitz in "Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?"

johschmitz — Wed, 18 Aug 2021 15:42:34 +0000

ASUS Zenfone 8. One of the very few relatively small Android phones with 5G connectivity, good camera and a flagship CPU (Snapdragon 888) and not way too expensive.

New comment by johschmitz in "Show HN: Tara 2.0 – Fast Jira alternative with automation based on Git events"

johschmitz — Wed, 18 Aug 2021 05:15:44 +0000

Why not charge based on typical "packages" containing a certain number of interactions with the service?

New comment by johschmitz in "Show HN: Imba – I have spent 7 years creating a programming language for the web"

johschmitz — Tue, 17 Aug 2021 16:13:18 +0000

True, it doesn't seem to work so well, see screenshot: https://pasteboard.co/KgkhOEo.jpg