The comparison does not imply that coding is an easy thing to do, just that it's easier than being really, really good at the bigger picture.

What Carmack did wasn't hard because writing C is hard.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49223330

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Well, if you want to use your new tool to analyze some frequencies, you need to start buying activation codes to unlock core functionality.

There are at least five different things your machine can do which need to be unlocked for USD$380-650.

https://siglentna.com/product/emi-activation-license-ssa3000...

Don't worry, though: each unit comes with 128 hours of free preview for these premium features. If the analyzer is powered on, the timer is running. Leave it on when you head home for the day? Whoopsie!

This offends me on so many levels.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49200417

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

Basically, I don't know anyone who is ever bored. Who the hell has time to click on and read random posts? The entire value of HN is that other smart people surface the top 1% of 1% of stuff I'd probably find interesting.

The notion of reading Substack posts just because I'm a subscriber seems like fantasy.

In short, I think that for the vast majority of casual posters, the aspirational upsides of joining a network are going to fall flat. Like with most aggregators, the popular things tend to be promoted more.

So, for me at least, if I'm going to get very low traffic, I'd prefer to get that very low traffic on my own website. It might be a pyrrhic victory but I sleep just a little better knowing that as one of the 1% that actually creates stuff, I did what little I could.

They told me that if I am willing to commit to at least 300 of the 4GB/32GB eMMC + BT/Wifi then they could produce them for me on demand.

I told them that it was insane to expect anyone to commit to developing a product around a platform that they would have to buy USD$30k worth of to see if it could (for example) support a particular display panel configuration using eDP.

Having this kind of chicken-and-egg problem is a quick way to doom a SoC, which is super frustrating because I definitely want to use it.

That said, outside of casual experimentation, I have almost zero need for an LLM to lay out my circuits for me. It's not just that I do have the deep knowledge, but there's so much more to board layout than routing. What parts I've worked with, what I have in inventory and on my PnP.

I also just really love laying out boards, and I'm in no hurry to give that up.

That said, I've found ChatGPT to be extraordinarily useful for part comparisons, getting second opinions on approaches, figuring out resistor divider values, troubleshooting drivers, and so much more it's difficult to enumerate.

This is the listing, right?

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007516847708.html

I've seen KiCAD running in the browser, so it's not like this isn't completely doable. It's just a question of resource allocation.

Can you speak to how you're sourcing these, and from where? (And would you sell me one?)

I'm curious to hear more about your anti-counterfeit strategies beyond just enabling encryption. I'm curious if you feel like anti-counterfeit and open source firmware are mutually exclusive. I made the choice to embrace an open firmware approach on my project while keeping the hardware closed, while knowing that if someone tries hard enough they can completely reverse engineer if they put their mind to it. Desoldering caps and x-raying PCB layers etc.

I'm also very curious to hear more about your adventure in injection molding. What starting resources do you recommend, how much did it cost? Would you do it the same way today, or have the recent innovations in 3D printing forms for injection molding present superior paths?

Finally, I'd love to hear about your certification process. What certs did you get, how much did it cost, what were the gotchas?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48959314

Points: 23

# Comments: 18

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48955423

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Anyhow, in addition to not hating LLMs, I would add "try not to use dramatic, hyperbolic devices in casual writing, it makes you sound ridiculous" to my advice.

I suspect that if we were having this debate over dinner, we would agree on far more than we disagree on. I think we're speaking past each other because we're operating with slightly different notions of what mentoring implies.

From my perspective, I think that there's an obvious and reasonable expectation that you make best efforts to be a good team player. That means doing your part to participate in planning, knowledge transfer, group morale and of course making yourself available to work through tough problems with people regardless of their skill level.

What I think is far more dubious is the relatively recent slippery slope towards the notion that someone should reasonably be expected that career progress dovetails with some sort of natural law that says you are not being a good human if you aren't willing-to-excited to spend 70% of your productive time in a semi-permanent state of continuous partial attention because the people around you demand priority access to your time and attention, above any of your personal priorities or job responsibilities, often without compensation beyond a rote "thanks".

If you can't ship inside of a deadline because your ephemeral "mentoring" took implicit priority over your actual job, then something is very wrong with people's expectations of how key talent's time should be allocated.

Someone sneezing nearby can pull you out of the flow state.

The idea that the onus is on the person who you're trying to distract to distract themselves to tell you not to distract them is just so broken if you think about it even just a little bit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80SCl6n0TEo