<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: schobi</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=schobi</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Tue, 21 Apr 2026 17:03:36 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=schobi" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by schobi in "Fets and Crosses: Tic-Tac-Toe built from 2458 discrete transistors"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Brilliant to get this done all the way through.<p>Once you introduce a HDL and start optimizing, I would expect more than half of the transistors to be redundant. But you would end up with a circuit that you will not understand any more.. But that could give an important lesson in chip design and HDL compilers.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 28 Mar 2026 07:33:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47552411</link><dc:creator>schobi</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47552411</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47552411</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by schobi in "Show HN: Red Grid Link – peer-to-peer team tracking over Bluetooth, no servers"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Well... I have a hard time imagining to get location by yelling "where are you? " "by the trees!"
It really sounds immensely useful to know last location (while they were still in range).<p>Use case: I was out, picking wild lingonberries in the forest with a group of ~10, some kids. At a "secret" location, with everyone wandering off in a direction they see more of them. Shouting did not help much.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 21 Mar 2026 08:51:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47465270</link><dc:creator>schobi</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47465270</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47465270</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by schobi in "New 'negative light' technology hides data transfers in plain sight"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Maybe I skipped over it, but the (suspected) narrow band emission of their diodes is something that could be detectable.<p>Electronic warfare is not about listening, but just seeing the location of the emitter. If you had someone with a different thermal camera/ camera with SWIR, you might see that something is just not right.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 14 Mar 2026 09:46:45 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47374967</link><dc:creator>schobi</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47374967</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47374967</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by schobi in "Simple screw counter"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Christopher Helmke just shared another trick <a href="https://youtu.be/tSvwcUbL95Q?si=YunTp0p5Duu754cX" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/tSvwcUbL95Q?si=YunTp0p5Duu754cX</a><p>It is a clever mechanism to separate a wide range of parts. Like a vi Rating feeder, but without adjusting the device for different object sizes. It is a rotating tube, slightly angled.<p>How would that help?
Say - you have just one tube to seperate parts. You drop your first box of washers and route them into a sequential storage. They you do the next box with bolts on the same device and drop them into another sequential storage.<p>They dispensing remainds still manual as mitxela showed.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 03 Mar 2026 22:01:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47239675</link><dc:creator>schobi</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47239675</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47239675</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by schobi in "Simple screw counter"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>A beautiful balance of effort and benefit.<p>I don't know any better, but the screw counting mechanism seems awkward. Imagine the set has 10 components..<p>I'm surprised there is no standard solution to this - like a tape and reel solution? A counting and dispensing gun that works for different sizes? But how much more would anyone pay for M3 bolts on a tape?<p>Helmke had a tube feeding his dispensers in one of the videos, with bolts lengthwise. That tube idea could be used for a manual dispenser - imagine a drink dispenser, but giving 3 bolts. Maybe easier to store away, but just as awkward to load.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 03 Mar 2026 08:34:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47229777</link><dc:creator>schobi</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47229777</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47229777</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by schobi in "Show HN: A luma dependent chroma compression algorithm (image compression)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Image and video compression has become a field that is painfully hard to enter.
State of the art is complex and exhaustive, the functionality of reference encoders and comments/versions among them is really a lot.<p>We are well beyond where a dedicated individual can try an idea, show that it is better and expect that others can pick it up (e.g. in standardization). It is not sufficient to run a few dozen images and judge by yourself, you are expected to demonstrate the benefit integrated into the latest reference encoders and need a sponsor to join standardization efforts.<p>For educational purpose? Sure - do whatever you want - but any discussion "is it novel" or "is it useful for others" is moot, unfortunately.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 08 Feb 2026 07:26:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46932115</link><dc:creator>schobi</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46932115</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46932115</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by schobi in "Show HN: LocalGPT – A local-first AI assistant in Rust with persistent memory"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I applaud the effort of tinkering, re-creating and sharing, but I think the name is misleading - it is not at all a "local GPT". The contribution is not to do anything local and it is not a GPT model.<p>It is more like an OpenClaw rusty clone</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 08 Feb 2026 06:49:33 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46931907</link><dc:creator>schobi</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46931907</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46931907</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by schobi in "Ask HN: What's the current best local/open speech-to-speech setup?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Oh... Having a local-only voice assistant would be great. Maybe someone can share the practical side of this.<p>Do you have the GPU running all day at 200W to scan for wake words? Or is that running on the machine you are working on anyway?<p>Is this running from a headset microphone (while sitting at the desk?) or more like a USB speakerphone? Is there an Alexa jailbreak / alternative firmware as a frontend and run this on a GPU hidden away?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 24 Jan 2026 08:32:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46741985</link><dc:creator>schobi</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46741985</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46741985</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by schobi in "Researchers develop a camera that can focus on different distances at once"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It is a new neat idea to selectively adjust focus distance for different regions of the scene!<p>- processing: while there is no post processing, it needs scene depth information which requires pre computation, segmentation and depth estimation. Not a one-shot technique and quality depends on computational depth estimates being good<p>- no free lunch. The optical setup needs to trade in some light for this cool effect to work. Apart from the limitations of the prototype, how much loss is expected in theory?
How does this compare to a regular camera setup with lower aperture? F/36 seems excessive for comparison.<p>- resolution - what resolutions have been achieved? (maybe not the 12 MPixels of the sensor? For practical or theoretical reasons? ) What depth range can the prototype capture? "photo of Paris Arc de triumphe displayed on a screen". This is suspiciously omitted<p>- how does the bokeh look like when out of focus? At the edge of an object?
The introduction of weird or unnatural artifacts would seriously limit the acceptance<p>Don't get me wrong - nice technique! But to my liking the paper is omitting fundamental properties</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 27 Dec 2025 10:48:13 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46400814</link><dc:creator>schobi</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46400814</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46400814</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by schobi in "Researchers develop a camera that can focus on different distances at once"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It even requires depth information -<p>While this methods has no post processing, it requires a pre processing step to pre-calture the scene, segment it, estimate depth an compute the depth map.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 27 Dec 2025 10:21:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46400685</link><dc:creator>schobi</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46400685</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46400685</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by schobi in "Show HN: Coderive – Iterating through 1 Quintillion Inside a Loop in just 50ms"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I'm confused by the claims..<p>You try to compute something that supercomputer can't - by not computing it? Instead the formula is stored in a data structure.
But once you need to access all the values you still have something that does not fit the memory and needs to be computed.<p>I can't judge on the Java side, but suggest to pick a better example on how this can be useful.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 26 Dec 2025 09:15:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46390510</link><dc:creator>schobi</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46390510</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46390510</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by schobi in "Open source USB to GPIB converter (for Test and Measurement instruments)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Linux mainline kernel just had support for GPIB added. <a href="https://hackaday.com/2025/12/16/after-decades-linux-finally-gains-stable-gpib-support/" rel="nofollow">https://hackaday.com/2025/12/16/after-decades-linux-finally-...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 24 Dec 2025 12:13:26 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46374906</link><dc:creator>schobi</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46374906</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46374906</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by schobi in "A triangle whose interior angles sum to zero"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>This sounds more like a Matt Parker video idea - get a bunch of people, three theodolites to measure angles accurately, a good location and start measuring angles for line of sight and see how well this determines the earth's radius.<p>Rough estimate - with an excellent 0.5" angular resolution and 35km triangle this could work.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 29 Nov 2025 09:03:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46086128</link><dc:creator>schobi</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46086128</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46086128</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by schobi in "Show HN: Find matching acrylic paints for any HEX color"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>It would be interesting to learn how this was created.<p>Did you buy all these colors and paint and scan them?
Did you analyze the shopping images of the bottles and classify them into hex colors?
Or maybe just group by the color names given in the storefront listing?<p>Vastly different efforts, different "accuracy", but still, each methods has its use. But knowing what to expect would be nice.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 08 Nov 2025 07:53:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45854946</link><dc:creator>schobi</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45854946</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45854946</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by schobi in "Show HN: Clearcam – Add AI object detection to your IP CCTV cameras"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Closed circuit television (CCTV) is a term to describe video transmission that is not broadcast. Traditionally with BNC cables going to a control room, monitors and recorders.<p>I think this software-only post is meant for IP cameras / surveillance cameras. Internet is the oposite of closed circuit.<p>Maybe CCTV is used as a synonym for surveillance now in some regions of the world, but certainly confusing for a non-native speaker.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 24 Aug 2025 14:00:08 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45004306</link><dc:creator>schobi</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45004306</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45004306</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by schobi in "Purple Earth hypothesis"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I agree with the overall discussion, but in the last link (Curtis Mobley Ocean Optics Book) the argument is broken.<p>Mobley plotted two graphs of the solar irradiation and a black body fit. The only difference is supposed to be the x axis with a plot over frequency or wavelength. This is a non-linear mapping and a different shape is expected. But the result is that the peak irradiation level is at either 501nm or 882nm (when converted back). That can't be right. The labeling of the x axis does not change the maximum.<p>What he meant to do was to plot either the solar irradiation in W m^-2 nm^-1 or as the number of photons. With lower energy photons (towards the red) the same irradiation level will consist of more photons. This shifts the maximum number of photons towards higher wavelengths. 880nm sounds plausible.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 27 Jul 2025 07:19:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44699466</link><dc:creator>schobi</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44699466</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44699466</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by schobi in "Chemical process produces critical battery metals with no waste"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>So far it sounds reasonably environmental friendly and good that they have a pilot plant running.<p>A few questions remain unanswered though: 
What can the current plant already do? It sounds like a multi-day sequential process per batch. How many batteries could that give?<p>The mixed metal product also contains nickel-manganese-cobalt. But certainly with a lot of other stuff and not in the exact ratio you would put in a battery. Even if we were to continoue with NMC batteries (LFPs are more common today). It looks like a first concentration step to get the interesting 10% of the rock. What separation process still remains? I expect a concentrate still to be much more useful than bare rock.<p>What are the overall economics?
I understand that you won't need the separate mining as Olivine is considered waste and has already been piled up. But is that an economic benefit? (cheaper?) Environmental? Or time to market? (you don't need another mining permission for more capacity).<p>Is it just a more green but more expensive extraction from unused Olivine? Or will this replace all other dirty extractions mining soon? (too good to be true)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 27 Jul 2025 06:42:10 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44699337</link><dc:creator>schobi</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44699337</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44699337</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by schobi in "Efficient Computer's Electron E1 CPU – 100x more efficient than Arm?"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I would not expect that this becomes competitive against a low power controller that is sleeping most of the time, like in a typical wristwatch wearable.<p>However, the examples indicate that if you have a loop that is executed over and over, the setup cost for configuring the fabric could be worth doing. Like a continuous audio stream in a wakeup-word detection, a hearing aid, or continous signals from an EEG.<p>Instead of running a general purpose cpu at 1MHz the fabric would be used to unroll the loop, you will use (up to) 100 building blocks for all individual operations. Instead of one instruction after another, you have a pipeline that can execute one operation in each cycle in each building block. The compute thus only needs to run at 1/100 clock, e. g. the 10kHz sampling rate of the incoming data. Each tick of the clock moves data through the pipeline, one step at a time.<p>I have no insights but can imagine how marketing thinks: "let's build a 10x10 grid of building blocks, if they are all used, the clock can be 1/100... Boom - claim up to 100x more efficient!"
I hope their savings estimate is more elaborate though...</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 26 Jul 2025 08:01:29 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44692291</link><dc:creator>schobi</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44692291</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44692291</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by schobi in "Experimental surgery performed by AI-driven surgical robot"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Great writing!<p>If you didn't catch the reference, this is referring to the recent vibe coding incident where the production database got deleted by the AI assistant. See <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44625119">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44625119</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 26 Jul 2025 07:35:53 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44692177</link><dc:creator>schobi</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44692177</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44692177</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by schobi in "CCTV footage captures video of an earthquake fault in motion"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>A previous discussion of the M7.7 quake in Burma/Myanmar from March 28, 2025 was provided by Sean Wilsey. He explained the earthquake and context and discussed the CCTV footage around 6:30 <a href="https://youtu.be/CfKFK4-HNmk" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/CfKFK4-HNmk</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 26 Jul 2025 07:22:11 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44692106</link><dc:creator>schobi</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44692106</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44692106</guid></item></channel></rss>