Hacker News: quailfarmer

New comment by quailfarmer in "The Bromine Chokepoint"

quailfarmer — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 04:50:50 +0000

Given the importance of DRAM, I imagine they would get their own plane if required.

New comment by quailfarmer in "How kernel anti-cheats work"

quailfarmer — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 07:39:39 +0000

The real “competitive” game is not players playing against other players, but hackers playing against anti-cheat. “Billiards is not as good a game as Physics”

(https://mag.uchicago.edu/billiards)

New comment by quailfarmer in "Baochip-1x: What it is, why I'm doing it now and how it came about"

quailfarmer — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 06:31:53 +0000

On the other hand, Pandora’s box has been opened, and the double-edged sword of cryptography has been unleashed on the world. Having open source security/trust systems is valuable.

New comment by quailfarmer in "I pitched a roller coaster to Disneyland at age 10 in 1978"

quailfarmer — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 18:23:34 +0000

I sent this to Apple in 2007. Never heard back :) https://i.postimg.cc/52G8rGZJ/File0004.jpg

New comment by quailfarmer in "Minecraft Java is switching from OpenGL to Vulkan"

quailfarmer — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 08:32:42 +0000

Damn, this will break Minecraft on my original machine, an Acer C720 Chromebook modded to run Linux. The Intel HD4400 iGPU doesn’t support Vulcan!

I always appreciated that MC would run on virtually any hardware, especially as a kid without access to anything nice.

New comment by quailfarmer in "Run Pebble OS in Browser via WASM"

quailfarmer — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 22:21:33 +0000

I’m very mixed about WASM. It’s clearly a very cool technology, and enables cool things by allowing native performance without needing multi-platform support.

But at the same time, it provides a vector for foreign, non-free software to run on my computer. Every time someone sends me a Google doc blocking printing/copying (on _my_ computer!), it makes me want to join a monastery.

New comment by quailfarmer in "TikTok users can't upload anti-ICE videos. The company blames tech issues"

quailfarmer — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 18:10:45 +0000

Disagree. The most valuable feature of a fraction of people having guns is that the risk of someone having a gun discourages the most extreme harassment, even if no gun is ever fired.

New comment by quailfarmer in "Doing gigabit Ethernet over my British phone wires"

quailfarmer — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 10:07:55 +0000

You don’t need niche hardware to do this, if you’re handy with a soldering iron! You can quite easily modify devices intended for use on AC lines, for any conductor!

http://www.helicopting.de/

I used this to get an Ethernet link to the roof of a building using an old antenna feed line someone had left.

New comment by quailfarmer in "Starlink satellites being lowered from 550 km to 480 km"

quailfarmer — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 07:17:55 +0000

You’re comparing to GEO communication sat orbits, which are highly coordinated and expensive real estate, reserved for small numbers of vehicles.

New comment by quailfarmer in "Starlink satellites being lowered from 550 km to 480 km"

quailfarmer — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 07:15:44 +0000

For these large constellations, vehicles are generally raised slowly at the beginning of their lives, and debris spreads out as it decays downwards. A significant increase in debris at 550km would have an impact on all orbits below it, including all vehicles raising through that debris zone.

New comment by quailfarmer in "Starlink satellites being lowered from 550 km to 480 km"

quailfarmer — Fri, 02 Jan 2026 07:07:55 +0000

Yes, it’s absolutely a trade off against prop (argon) lifetime, energy spent thrusting, and atomic oxygen degradation of plastic components. The benefits of increased drag for these shells of thousands of vehicles must be worth it.

New comment by quailfarmer in "Adafruit: Arduino’s Rules Are ‘Incompatible With Open Source’"

quailfarmer — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 09:22:57 +0000

+1, if only for the documentation. If you haven’t, skim through it: https://pip.raspberrypi.com/documents/RP-008373-DS-2-rp2350-... it’s truly unlike any reference manual I’ve ever read. I will happily pay a few extra cents at modest volumes for a chance to get the detailed technical details and opinions from the design team.

New comment by quailfarmer in "Adafruit: Arduino’s Rules Are ‘Incompatible With Open Source’"

quailfarmer — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 09:18:28 +0000

Adafruit is pretty clearly the front-runner these days in the educational/hobbyist market, Arduino (and even SparkFun) have fallen by the wayside. My only gripe is the focus on micropython these days, it can introduce a barrier later in the learning process when you eventually need to leave the nicely organized sandbox. They still support the “Arduino” C++ libraries, but uPy is the default.

New comment by quailfarmer in "EFF launches Age Verification Hub"

quailfarmer — Thu, 11 Dec 2025 08:59:25 +0000

I’m not sure why the age of majority in the region of the server would be relevant. The user is not traveling to that region, the laws protecting them should be the laws in their own region.

New comment by quailfarmer in "Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban"

quailfarmer — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 17:50:41 +0000

Since about 10 years ago, online platforms are a major part of how many people speak, publish, and associate.

New comment by quailfarmer in "Roc Camera"

quailfarmer — Fri, 24 Oct 2025 06:40:52 +0000

Kudos for making this exist, it was an inevitable place for the conversation to lead, and I’m actually glad it was “hacked” together as a project rather than forced into a consumer product. The camera specs don’t really matter here, this is about having the conversation. If this catches on, it will be a feature of every smartphone SoC.

On one hand, it’s a cool application of cryptography as a power tool to balance AI, but on the other, it’s a real hit to free and open systems. There’s a risk that concern over AI spirals into a justification for mandatory attestation that undermines digital freedom. See: online banking apps that refuse to operate on free devices.

New comment by quailfarmer in "$912 energy independence without red tape"

quailfarmer — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 23:24:00 +0000

The fact that this is the most appealing option is an indication that our electrical system, both equipment and code, are failing to address people’s needs. If you get a quote for a hybrid (on and off grid) system, they’re absolutely unaffordable.

New comment by quailfarmer in "Solar panels + cold = A potential problem"

quailfarmer — Sun, 28 Sep 2025 05:42:09 +0000

High voltage, low RDSON FETs are (slightly) more expensive, and these products are cheap. A better design would use a higher-voltage rated input switch with poor (slow) switching performance, like an IGBT. Don’t design critical infrastructure around EcoFlow hardware.

New comment by quailfarmer in "Evolving the Multi-User Spaceport"

quailfarmer — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 19:55:31 +0000

> Liquefaction is a process where saturated, loose soil loses its strength and behaves like a liquid, often occurring during events like earthquakes.

That would be quite an environmental impact!

New comment by quailfarmer in "I tried to replace myself with ChatGPT in my English class"

quailfarmer — Tue, 05 Aug 2025 06:16:45 +0000

Part of the issue is with the purpose as you describe it. Sure, at top 10 schools, a trial by fire would result in much needed “growing up” as the gifted but undisciplined (speaking for myself and many users of this site) students find their way to more durable motivations. But at the vast majority of schools, a trial by fire would end with a lot of students burned.

Perhaps that begs the question, if those kids can’t handle self-directed education, why are we putting them there in the first place, but that’s definitely a grey area, and there are hundreds of thousands of students who are smart enough to do well in higher education and skilled work, but weren’t disciplined enough to handle what you’re describing as freshmen.