Hacker News: lefra

New comment by lefra in "Growing proof that autonomous cars save lives"

lefra — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 17:48:33 +0000

Rates for human drivers are currently at the correct level for insurance companies to pay for damage and make some profit.

If autonomous cars result in less damage than humans, their insurance price will be cheaper than human drivers, but there's no reason to raise the human rate at the same time, their accident rate should stay the same.

New comment by lefra in "Music Theory for Programmers"

lefra — Sun, 06 Sep 2026 06:27:10 +0000

I should not have to install a browser plug-in to opt out of Google analytics (that's what's proposed as an opt-out option in the privacy policy).

Where's the "reject non-essential cookies" button?

New comment by lefra in "Can AI design circuit boards yet?"

lefra — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 06:43:04 +0000

> A lot of datasheets are inaccessible without signing an NDA

Only for very high-end stuff, where just designing the board around the chip needs a team of engineers.

New comment by lefra in "Can AI design circuit boards yet?"

lefra — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 06:37:02 +0000

Any company doing consultancy in electronics. You're going to have to pay for the time an electronics engineer spend on understanding what you want to do and reviewing your design, plus the consultancy's margin.

New comment by lefra in "The largest electric aircraft just flew [video]"

lefra — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 21:07:14 +0000

I discussed with people working on aircraft components, and my understanding is that weight is a constant obsession for them. Propose a new system to Airbus/Boeing, and the first question they'll ask is "how much does it weight?"

Every kg saved is a kg more of freight that can be transported (or a little less fuel used to keep the plane in the air); save 500g for each seat of a 200-seat plane, and you can put one more paying passenger in the cabin.

New comment by lefra in "Inception-style curved map for turn-by-turn directions"

lefra — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 06:27:37 +0000

I tried three times on my 5-year-old phone. First time got stuck at 90% loading. Second time the tab crashed at 90% loading. Third time Chrome itself crashed once loading finished.

New comment by lefra in "Previewing the Model Hardware Standard"

lefra — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 11:38:33 +0000

"Translating the datasheet into protocol ", is the essence of writing a hardware driver.

Also my experience with hardware is that the datasheet is often incomplete or misleading. Most of the time is spend fiddling with the hardware to understand exactly what needs to be done, in what order, and sometimes with what delay between commands, to make the damn thing work reliably in the way you want.

New comment by lefra in "U.S. State Department pauses immigrant visa applications"

lefra — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 04:53:12 +0000

I've known several people on visas in my european country. They don't need to go out of the country to apply for renewal.

New comment by lefra in "France's tax agency got hacked (in French)"

lefra — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 13:20:21 +0000

French would use "piratage [informatique]" (roughly "digital piracy"). However, "hacker" is used to name the person committing the crime.

New comment by lefra in "Where did all the public bathrooms go?"

lefra — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 05:06:25 +0000

Lots of comments here blaming the bad state of toilets on homeless people doing drugs.

They're not the only issue.

In France, toilets on highways are often disgusting. French highways have stupid-high tolls, so these toilets are used by people who have access to a car, and can spare a few tens of € to get to their destination faster. Not your typical drug-using homeless person. I'd say it's more that some people don't care to clean after themselves, and once the toilet is dirty, no one will touch it if they add up to the mess.

New comment by lefra in "Turns are Better than Radians (2022)"

lefra — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 07:08:07 +0000

Now define exponentiation by a non-integer.

New comment by lefra in "How does IKEA come up with names for its products?"

lefra — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 18:37:54 +0000

I agree, and it's kind of sad that getting simple, clear communication is exceptional.

New comment by lefra in "The Dutch community where people live on strips of land in a lake"

lefra — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 17:43:34 +0000

Obnoxious cookie banner with no "reject all" button. Too bad, it sounded interesting.

New comment by lefra in "Strait of Hormuz Live Traffic Tracking"

lefra — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 14:26:12 +0000

Sure if they use strait closures the same way Trump uses tariffs, everyone will try to not use it. But if they just collect fees that are cheaper than alternatives, ships will keep on going through.

New comment by lefra in "Debian has begun voting on the future of AI/LLM contributions"

lefra — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 14:17:57 +0000

For me, the main reason that I'm against all high-tech voting solutions is that a less-than-gifted citizen must be able to check that, at least for their polling station:

- Their vote, and everyone else's, was counted exactly once.

- The number of ballots that are counted is the same as the number of people who voted.

- Votes are anonymous.

All that is easily done with a clear ballot box, a signing registry, and public counting. Adding technology to that just makes the process more difficult to trust IMO.

As for myself, you're going to have to convice me that the software + hardware that's running on election day is exactly conformant to its published source code (the source code is available, right?)

New comment by lefra in "The Color of White Light"

lefra — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 13:29:10 +0000

The term you're looking for is "color space".

Depending on what you want to do there's CIE XYZ (maps spectrum of color to a 3 component vector by integrating the spectrum multiplied by three functions), CIE Lab* (describes the color of objects under a specified illuminant), CIE Luv* (to characterize emissive source, nonlinear so the the distance between colors corresponds to perceived differences).

These color spaces are built to objectively describe colors, as seen by a human with typical color vision.

New comment by lefra in "France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls"

lefra — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 09:41:57 +0000

My anecdotal experience is yes, most spam calls come from french numbers.

New comment by lefra in "Mars Bar from 1991 found – and it's 20g bigger than today's"

lefra — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 09:25:21 +0000

I had been having the same feeling, and the same doubts. Then I went on a trip abroad and there the Mars bar tasted _exactly_ how I remember it from my childhood (I think it was in Romania, but I'm not sure).

So I think the recipes are definitely adjusted over time, and depending on the local market.

New comment by lefra in "A physicist rigged his pet hamster’s wheel to upload to Strava"

lefra — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 11:14:53 +0000

Sounds like something that could be solved by an ambient light sensor.

New comment by lefra in "A year of fighting scrapers on my 1.5 million-page website"

lefra — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 20:43:12 +0000

Isn't all bot traffic ultimately initiated by a human? Someone plugged the computer in and gave it instructions. It may result in one http request or billions of them, but the human is still the initiator.