Hacker News: mahrain

New comment by mahrain in "Windows: Microsoft broke the only thing that mattered"

mahrain — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 07:47:35 +0000

Office for Mac 2008, when they shifted to a new codebase, was pretty good for a while, just slooooow.

New comment by mahrain in "China's 450kmph bullet train is the fastest ever built"

mahrain — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 12:24:07 +0000

Airline-like comfort, and airplane-like noise. It's surprising how much noisier the Shanghai Maglev gets once you approach 400kph.

New comment by mahrain in "Jolla phone – a full-stack European alternative"

mahrain — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 14:55:35 +0000

Large parts of the OS are open source though. Not just the Linux kernel and userland, but also some specific things:

Sailfish: https://github.com/sailfishos Android layer: https://github.com/libhybris/libhybris

New comment by mahrain in "Jolla phone – a full-stack European alternative"

mahrain — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 14:51:08 +0000

Mediatek is a taiwanese company and the Dimensity 7100 platform includes the cellular stack.

New comment by mahrain in "My journey to the microwave alternate timeline"

mahrain — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 10:45:02 +0000

This explains a lot, American microwaves have these settings for different types of food etc, it seems most people throw something in and just 'nuke it'. European microwave ovens on the other hand, have a setting for different wattages (90W up to 720W 'Max' in my case), which, combined with instructions in the recipe or on the box, provide the right setting for this particular food.

New comment by mahrain in "WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system"

mahrain — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 08:38:09 +0000

Sure, however as explained further in this thread the BFI approach is new as opposed to the courser Zigbee RSSI-based approaches of Hue MotionAware.

New comment by mahrain in "WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system"

mahrain — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 08:37:11 +0000

Thank you for adding this context of this particular research, I do see that it relies on MU-MIMO information, which does rely on more powerful WiFi infrastructure than the basic ESP32's I am referring to.

New comment by mahrain in "WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system"

mahrain — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 16:30:49 +0000

Yes, you won't be able to do this on normal wifi traffic typically either, you need to send specific packets at a high enough rate (in between normal internet traffic) in order to sense with any accuracy, as I also remarked earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46976849

New comment by mahrain in "Ask HN: Why are electronics still so unrecyclable?"

mahrain — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 16:27:48 +0000

I was shocked to find that even electronics that are collected in Europe seem to be shipped to Africa, set on fire, and at most, metals are collected from the ashes, including traces of gold and copper. That's about it. Batteries have a bit better recycling path but not by much.

New comment by mahrain in "WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system"

mahrain — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 16:21:49 +0000

Verizon has a security feature built around this, https://www.xfinity.com/hub/smart-home/wifi-motion

Philips WiZ bulbs: https://www.wizconnected.com/en-us/explore-wiz/spacesense

Alarm.com also supports such sensors: https://poweredbyalarm.com/eventresources/wp-content/uploads...

New comment by mahrain in "WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system"

mahrain — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 16:17:20 +0000

What happens is that a large body of water (pun intended) has the ability to absorb and reflect wifi signals as it moves through the room. For this you need to generate traffic and measure for instance RSSI or CSI (basically, signal strength) of the packets. If you increase frequency you can detect smaller movements such as arms moving vs. a body, or exclude pets if you reduce sensitivity. It works well for detecting presence and movement in a defined space, but ideally requires you to cross the path between two mains-powered devices, such as light bulbs or wifi mesh points. Passing a cafe doesn't seem too likely.

If you want to do advanced sensing, trying to identify a person, I would postulate you need to saturate a space with high frequency wifi traffic, ideally placed mesh points, and let the algo train on identifying people first by a certain signature (combination of size/weight, movement/gait, breath / chest movements).

Source: I worked on such technologies while at Signify (variants of this power Philips/Wiz "SpaceSense" feature).

More here: https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/16/23355255/signify-wiz-spac...

New comment by mahrain in "Why more companies are recognizing the benefits of keeping older employees"

mahrain — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 12:34:31 +0000

With the age of retirement (in europe) steadily increasing, and the workforce getting older, the typical corporate position of rejecting older candidates will need to change, if only simply to fill the vacancies. For this, the mentality of hiring managers and HR will need to change as well, and business school articles like this should help.

New comment by mahrain in "ASML staffing changes could result in a net reduction of around 1700 positions"

mahrain — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 14:46:53 +0000

Local news sources[1] show that the unions and works council are outraged. That's only a start.

[1] Source: https://www.ed.nl/binnenland/vakbonden-woedend-na-keiharde-i...

New comment by mahrain in "ASML staffing changes could result in a net reduction of around 1700 positions"

mahrain — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 13:48:34 +0000

What’s more surprising is the fact that the seem comfortable letting go of 1700 people with knowledge of the company and processes.

Dutch government stepped in last year to help facilitate a anticipated growth by fast tracking infrastructure and housing investments, as ASML is building a new campus for 20.000 employees. Then do they expect the 1700 to wait and come back in 2-3 years when the new campus is planned to be operational?

New comment by mahrain in "San Francisco Graffiti"

mahrain — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 13:35:30 +0000

One of the most startling differences between Chinese and European cities is the lack of grafitti in China. I wonder if it's explained by laws, norms, enforcement?

New comment by mahrain in "Self Sanitizing Door Handle"

mahrain — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 09:22:07 +0000

The TiO2 will likely rub off and need regular replenishment. Also, the alternative here, sensor-operated or button-operated automatic doors are already widely used. I wonder who this is meant for?

New comment by mahrain in "Erich von Däniken has died"

mahrain — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 13:22:45 +0000

When I was young and having access to internet (but pre social media) I loved looking into these theories, prompted by Discovery Channel's "Quest for the lost civilization" and stumbling upon these books from the 1970s. It felt like doing research and archaeology on the nascent internet.

I was surprised to see these ideas becoming so mainstream with Ancient Aliens, and then somehow finding overlap with the alt-right, antivax and Covid-doubters. This made me really turn off of taking this seriously.

New comment by mahrain in "CATL expects oceanic electric ships in three years"

mahrain — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 07:36:09 +0000

It would be amazing if they could leverage the container system, but instead of goods, there'd be battery containers they could just plug in to the ship. You could even charge a battery container somewhere and bring it in by (electrified) rail.

New comment by mahrain in "How elites could shape mass preferences as AI reduces persuasion costs"

mahrain — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 09:31:54 +0000

I used ChatGPT to figure out what's going on here, and it told me this is a 'neo-Marxist critique of the nation state'.

New comment by mahrain in "I don't care how well your "AI" works"

mahrain — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 12:03:50 +0000

Reading the blog post the Marxist sentiment was creeping in, and then I also saw actual Marx referenced in the footnotes.