Hacker News: skandinaff

New comment by skandinaff in "Focused microwaves allow 3D printers to fuse circuits onto almost anything"

skandinaff — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 11:09:11 +0000

Though, I generally like the idea of circuit traces embedded directly in mechanical design of a product, I suppose this would make devices completely and utterly non-repairable. Not that there's something new in this, but imagine, debugging a 3d volumetric circuit, where chips and discrete components baked solid into medium? And I also wonder, where such super high level of integration would be necessary, other than medical/wearable/implantable devices...

New comment by skandinaff in "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (April 2026)"

skandinaff — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 11:38:18 +0000

I've been dreaming of exiting big CAD cloud prison for some time now, really looking forward to see your product!

New comment by skandinaff in "The team behind a pro-Iran, Lego-themed viral-video campaign"

skandinaff — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 11:56:25 +0000

So, does that mean that Kremlin is freeing a country..?

New comment by skandinaff in "You are not your job"

skandinaff — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 12:45:02 +0000

While that could be true, it's important to remember that these people probably grew up in a culture that had religion influence for thousands of years. In order to become atheist, one needs to renounce god, therefore have the idea of god, therefore, have some background knowledge of or about religion. That is to say, that these processes a not as simple, as one might think: take soviet union as an example - official atheist state - yet so much on interpersonal level remained based on humane values formed by thousand years of east orthodox chiristianity. And even though measly 70 years are not enough to make a significant dent in human behaviour - it did produced a lot of cynicism and misanthropy before going out the window.

New comment by skandinaff in "Google details new 24-hour process to sideload unverified Android apps"

skandinaff — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 11:45:06 +0000

To add as a sad example, mother of a acquaintance of mine got scammed into withdrawing all her money from an ATM, gave it to the scammer person, then sold her car and apartment (!) and only then became aware of what was happening. And even though she is senior (early 60s) she did work her whole life in a senior engineering role (not IT related). Point is, the social engineering is, and will be to primary tool of scammers, as it was for the entirety of humanity. And no amount of tools and locks will prevent this. To make the argument further - we know that lock-picking exists, and can be very effective, yet we're not rolling out bigger and more complex door locks every year, or mandate people having 15 doors with 10 locks each - we just acknowledge that this tech is not perfect, but good enough. So clearly, the incentive of all these changes can't be "security", it's just plain stupid.

New comment by skandinaff in "Writing code is cheap now"

skandinaff — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 13:04:01 +0000

a new kind of operating system, that instead of having all those annoying apps, will just be an agent, that does whatever stuff you need|want|it can - why not? But still, we gonna need to be able to maintain many contexts, access remote servers, local file system, sort, present data, be it local or remote. One screen, one button, philosopher's stone made of silicon

New comment by skandinaff in "Attention Media ≠ Social Networks"

skandinaff — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 08:34:11 +0000

I suppose, if we reduce this problem to it's core - the question remains - who pays for the servers? That's the reason we don't have a idealistic web platforms - or am I wrong?

New comment by skandinaff in "Sub-$200 Lidar could reshuffle auto sensor economics"

skandinaff — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 11:16:14 +0000

Well, the energy levels used in those devices should be miniscule, and the wavelengths used are well studies. The problem with x-rays - was lack of studies on health effects, and regulations on those effects. I think, since that time, we've studies radiation (be it light, rf or other parts of spectrum) much more. There is indeed a possibility that we're overlooking some bio-electromagnetic interaction effects; for instance now there is some evidence that led lights might not be harmless - but again, it's not the they affect biological structures somehow, but the lack of spectral components has some effects. It is an interesting topic to research. But, the lidar "should" be safe

New comment by skandinaff in "xAI joins SpaceX"

skandinaff — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 09:01:31 +0000

> Datacenters in space for people on earth? That's just stupid.

But if completes the vision of ancestors who thought god living in the sky

So "Lord give me a sign from heavens" may obtain a whole new meaning

New comment by skandinaff in "Claude Code is suddenly everywhere inside Microsoft"

skandinaff — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 13:05:37 +0000

Eliminate C/C++ in favor of what? Perhaps the plan is to use AI to write plain assembler? Why stop there, maybe let's do prompt in - machine-code out?

New comment by skandinaff in "LED lighting undermines visual performance unless supplemented by wider spectra"

skandinaff — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 12:14:48 +0000

True. Yet, somehow more and more cities install them blindly because efficiency. I remember when I moved to Odense Denmark in 2013 - they had LED street lights all over the place. I thought - this is the future compared to my uderdeveloped post soviet Latvia. And yet, I remeber when I moved back, streets at night looked so yellow because the city still relied on sodium lights. And my eyes felt much more comfortable. At the time I wrote it off to nostalgia or something, and here we are.

New comment by skandinaff in "Iran is likely jamming Starlink"

skandinaff — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 12:10:22 +0000

But wouldn't the position of a strong government be to trust it's people, and allow them to see the whole spectrum of information available in the world, and give them essentially the right to decide what's "right or wrong"? I don't see how being free from any information filtering on behalf of some benevolent leader is USA-centric?

New comment by skandinaff in "Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges"

skandinaff — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 10:38:22 +0000

Well, allow me to make a suggestion, that the US came up with the original idea, in 1947 - the transistor, and has been capitalizing on that ever since. Similar to how Germany had been capitalizing on the invention of combustion engine and various chemical processes for a century. Now, the curve of innovation on top of the fundamental invention (of the transistor) is in the flattening out region, where all the low hanging fruits had been taken down, and now it's about the remaining 5% of polishing - something that the labor force of well fed and comfortable nation is not really motivated to do.

New comment by skandinaff in "We Need to Die"

skandinaff — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 10:13:52 +0000

It's a fascinating book indeed, just finished the second chapter, and it is surprisingly accurate in many regards of AI representation, given it's from 1994. Will read on, thank you

New comment by skandinaff in "Is America's jobs market nearing a cliff?"

skandinaff — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 14:02:25 +0000

In the part of the world I'm form, my childhood of the 90's to early 00's was exactly the same, and I experienced explosive increase in "stuff" surrounding me. Going from landline phones and phonebooths as status quo - to mobile internet just in 10 years. But I digress. Your point made me wonder - is it possible that the culture of material wealth - is the problem here? Could we have stepped on a poisonous flower - and now suffocating in the abundance of stuff we dreamed about as young people, now realizing, but not brave enough to admit that there is no meaning in it? And the optimism we had then, was a byproduct of a tighter communities, common struggles and just the architecture of life where we had to interact and care for one another more?

New comment by skandinaff in "The fate of "small" open source"

skandinaff — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 09:44:58 +0000

On that - naive proposition; shouldn't we establish say "humanTube" - service which would strictly prohibit AI content? With all this AI slop engulfing our web 2.0 - maybe this is the time and place to establish the new web for "nerds" i.e. people who care for the real thing? Just as our current web once was a place for scientists and engineers mostly, maybe we now need something as this? I feel the flaws in my own point, but maybe it's not all hopeless?

New comment by skandinaff in "How to maintain good vision amidst the myopia epidemic"

skandinaff — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 12:14:43 +0000

Valid point. I guess then in Canada they could have a lot of such cases, as it has been a major destination for migration. In any case, sounds like an good topic for a research paper

New comment by skandinaff in "How to maintain good vision amidst the myopia epidemic"

skandinaff — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 10:58:57 +0000

I wonder, wouldn't this mean that in nordic countries, where in winter get less than 6 hours of sunlight in total, and where that sunlight is mostly obstructed by heavy clouds, would be the place with most myopia in the world? For example in Latvia where I grew up, winters last from november to march-april, the nights are long, and it can be months without any sunlight. And it gets darker once you go further north - Finland, Norway, Sweden. But back in my preschool, we had 1-4 kids per 30 in the class, with any eye problems. I myself was among those few who had hypermedia, some even got rid of it by age 10-13. And if I look at the my parents, and grandparents - even fewer had need for eye correction.

New comment by skandinaff in "The Long Trip from Silica to Smartphone"

skandinaff — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 10:50:21 +0000

"The result is silicon metal and carbon monoxide."

The article keeps mentioning of silicon metal, but wasn't silicon a metalloid at best?

New comment by skandinaff in "Show HN: I built an app to block Shorts and Reels"

skandinaff — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 10:59:02 +0000

I had the same problem, but then discovered that chrome extension StayFree (used to be called StayFocused or something) released and app for android, that can block sites on android too. Now, I just added links to all the short video pages of all major social networks, and it does work!