Hacker News: simojo

New comment by simojo in "Easyduino: Open Source PCB Devboards for KiCad"

simojo — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 19:33:48 +0000

Recently, I made an Arduino UNO that I showed to have better switching characteristics than a commercial board. It was a great project to help me understand how seemingly inconsequential routing practices can lead to issues down the line.

http://www.simonjjones.com/#/posts/golden-arduino

Cloudfare Mesh

simojo — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 23:52:17 +0000

Article URL: https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-one/networks/connectors/cloudflare-mesh/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47811867

Points: 6

# Comments: 0

New comment by simojo in "A soft robot has no problem moving with no motor and no gears"

simojo — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 14:07:38 +0000

Liquid crystal elastomers will most likely never be used in humans because, in order to drive the phase transition (mematic mesogens going from isotopic to anisotropic phase) necessary for macro scale work, the LCE has to be heated well beyond 100C. Even in non-thermal contexts, you need kilovolts to influence a doped bulk LCE. I just don't see it happening.

New comment by simojo in "Inside Nepal's Fake Rescue Racket"

simojo — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 14:27:29 +0000

to be fair, the approach is usually covered in snowpack for most of the year, so impact is minimal by foot traffic. However, most of the protection is fixed, which could have lasting effects if something were to rip out.

For other mountains with dry summits in the summers, I would agree: the effects of erosion are frightening

New comment by simojo in "Email obfuscation: What works in 2026?"

simojo — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 14:17:04 +0000

GitHub has a spot to display your email on your profile; is this obfuscated as well? Most of my current spam is from putting my email on there..

New comment by simojo in "“Disregard That” Attacks"

simojo — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 04:02:50 +0000

Today I scheduled a dentist appointment over the phone with an LLM. At the end of the call, I prompted it with various math problems, all of which it answered before politely reminding me that it would prefer to help me with "all things dental."

It did get me thinking the extent to which I could bypass the original prompt and use someone else's tokens for free.

Bare Metal Flashing of the Rp2040

simojo — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:25:35 +0000

Article URL: https://mackinnon.info/2025/04/20/bare-metal-flashing-of-the-RP2040.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47511564

Points: 7

# Comments: 0

New comment by simojo in "I haven't used a mouse for 14 years"

simojo — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 22:05:55 +0000

One of my buddies has beaten minecraft many times using only his mac trackpad. In fact, he's better than I am with a mouse.

New comment by simojo in "The American Healthcare Conundrum"

simojo — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 17:19:17 +0000

What do you see as the bad part of this? That the user is trying to farm points by copying patterns of upvote-winning users, or that there's a flood of inauthentic new users? Genuinely asking.

New comment by simojo in "A basket of new fruit varieties is coming your way"

simojo — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 19:53:48 +0000

Not if you have a local amish plug

Polymath

simojo — Tue, 17 Feb 2026 17:55:27 +0000

Article URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47050577

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

DS Standard Foundation – Alternatively Sized Keyboards

simojo — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 21:25:55 +0000

Article URL: https://dsstandardfoundation.org/about/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46892028

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by simojo in "The Mathematics of Tuning Systems"

simojo — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 21:20:31 +0000

I suppose that's why the harpejji [0] has recently gained popularity? I too have wished for an isomorphic keyboard. All of the non-stacked ones become either too wide or the keys become too skinny. Example: Dodeka Keyboard [1]. I know that the Lumatone [2] exists too, but it is too progressive for my taste :)

As a side note, the traditional keyboard size is not representative of the average pianist's hand size. David Steinbuhler [3] has been making modified traditional keyboard layouts by varying the width of the keys slightly, and people rave about it. I've had the chance to visit his shop in Titusville, Pennsylvania, where he designs them. It's a totally enhanced playing experience, even for someone like me who can play a 10th without difficulty.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpejji [1] https://dodekamusic.com/ [2] https://www.lumatone.io/ [3] http://dsstandardfoundation.org/the-standards/

New comment by simojo in "Soldering Prototypes with Enamel Magnet Wire (2020)"

simojo — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 04:11:48 +0000

This is orders of magnitude more complicated and risk prone than wire wrapping due to the possibility of cold joints, but as I understand it, this look is what people dig these days (just watch any EE youtuber). I too used to think that soldering on porto board was a great way to go about prototyping sans SBB, but you can't ignore the bomber connections that wire wrapping gives you.

New comment by simojo in "Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica"

simojo — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 15:46:15 +0000

I'm curious as to what kind of control stack Waymo uses for their vehicles. Obviously their perception stack has to be based off of trained models, but I'm curious if their controllers have any formal guarantees under certain conditions, and if the child walking out was within that formal set of parameters (e.g. velocity, distance to obstacle) or if it violated that, making their control stack switch to some other "panic" controller.

This will continue to be the debate—whether human performance would have exceeded that of the autonomous system.

New comment by simojo in "Bugs Apple loves"

simojo — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 06:43:41 +0000

Had a similar thought today while marking up pdfs with my iPad. Half of the time I'm fighting with Files' ability to persist my changes after it frequently crashes. Why market it as an iPad if marking up pdfs is so scuffed? this has been happening for years, it's like Apple's desire to add new features tops the desire to fix long lived bugs.

New comment by simojo in "Self Sanitizing Door Handle"

simojo — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 18:37:41 +0000

You have to let the engineers over-engineer. It's a healthy release.

Underactuated Robotics (2024)

simojo — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 21:18:40 +0000

Article URL: https://underactuated.csail.mit.edu/index.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46594449

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Slopes Are Empty as a Labor Dispute Shuts Down Telluride Colo

simojo — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 11:53:25 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/27/us/telluride-colorado-ski-resort-union-strike.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46419777

Points: 2

# Comments: 2

New comment by simojo in "NTP at NIST Boulder Has Lost Power"

simojo — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 17:26:54 +0000

I guess that explains why they had no qualms shutting down half of Boulder's power with a vague time horizon. After losing everything in my fridge, though, they finally turned it back on today.