Hacker News: summa_tech

New comment by summa_tech in "EFF is leaving X"

summa_tech — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 22:10:30 +0000

Well, consider that the alternative is a _corporation_ manipulating the algorithm per their own _corporate_ political needs. That's really not much of an improvement. Unless you also think that corporations should have more rights to political speech than individuals, which goes even further than the usual representation of Citizens United.

New comment by summa_tech in "Sequential Optimal Packing for PCB Placement"

summa_tech — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 14:26:11 +0000

For the traditional "100 nF per pin" problem, there is an actual constraint based solution. What you _really_ want is an impedance and cross-impedance constraint on current loops through power pins. That's, ultimately, what matters: not some rule of thumb, but actual physics that attempts to quantify the board's response to the chip's changing load.

Interestingly, Qualcomm actually gives you these, but I haven't seen many (any?) other chip manufacturers do that. I wish that'd became common practice.

New comment by summa_tech in "My DIY FPGA board can run Quake II"

summa_tech — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 03:54:13 +0000

The next step up is HDI. I knew it was (still) expensive, but I did not realize it was a cost multiplier, not adder :-)

New comment by summa_tech in "Show HN: GrobPaint: Somewhere Between MS Paint and Paint.net"

summa_tech — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 04:46:26 +0000

The name of this project brought many memories of the HP 48G to the forefront of my mind, after so many years. Its 1 bpp pixelated icons and drawings were indeed called GROBs - there are collections of these online. What a coincidental but fine name for a pixel-capable graphics editor.

New comment by summa_tech in "TCXO Failure Analysis"

summa_tech — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 16:31:27 +0000

Sometimes, the bigger physical size of through-hole crystals gives them a higher Q. I, too, prefer surface-mount everything but have been defeated on that sadly ;(

New comment by summa_tech in "Data has weight but only on SSDs"

summa_tech — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 01:18:14 +0000

The self-synchronizing scrambler of 10GBase-SR and its relatives is a beautiful piece of engineering.

Interestingly, I heard that entrenched telco people were pushing for a much more complicated, SONET-ish approach. But classic Ethernet simplicity carried the day, and it's really nice...

New comment by summa_tech in "Tove Jansson's criticized illustrations of The Hobbit (2023)"

summa_tech — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 23:12:06 +0000

I... actually really liked these. And yes, sure, they aren't completely obedient to Tolkien's descriptions of the characters, but the atmosphere feels right.

But then again, I grew up with the Moomins.

New comment by summa_tech in "An Introduction to the Codex Seraphinianus, the Strangest Book Ever Published"

summa_tech — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 02:23:03 +0000

And honestly pretty great, unless you are a collector. It's well done.

The book itself is beautiful and haunting. But I don't think it's for everyone... I have a copy, and I gifted one to someone in my family who really didn't understand the point.

New comment by summa_tech in "I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed"

summa_tech — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 16:29:50 +0000

I think the issue at the core of the analogy is that factories, traditional factories, excel at making a ton of one thing (or small variations thereof). The big productivity gains came from highly reliable, repeatable processes that do not accommodate substantial variation. This rigidity of factory production is what drives the existence of artisan work: it can always easily distinguish itself from the mass product.

This does not seem true for AI writing software. It's neither reliable nor rigid.

New comment by summa_tech in "Converting a $3.88 analog clock from Walmart into a ESP8266-based Wi-Fi clock"

summa_tech — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 20:23:34 +0000

You could also consider MRAM. Which is available in larger sizes - up to 4 Mbit on SPI bus in the MR20H40, and 128 Mbit in EM128LXQ (but it gets unreasonably expensive when this big).

https://www.everspin.com/family/mr20h40?npath=259

New comment by summa_tech in "FBI couldn't get into WaPo reporter's iPhone because Lockdown Mode enabled"

summa_tech — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 14:51:33 +0000

Selective amplification of true events as well as selective reporting are bread and butter of modern propaganda. It works a lot better than saying outright falsehoods, which - in the long-term - cause people to lose faith in everything you have to say. And there's always someone jumping to your defense - after all you did not outright lie...

New comment by summa_tech in "Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design (2011) [pdf]"

summa_tech — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 23:59:43 +0000

The "interested" part does a lot of lifting though. It's really hard to explain things to uninterested people.

If the person you are explaining your project to is not interested in the technical side, presumably under the rather confused but popular theory that technical aspects are not relevant to technology ventures, you'll not be making headway. It's much better to just make up some dollar numbers and run with that.

New comment by summa_tech in "Who invented the transistor?"

summa_tech — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 20:34:11 +0000

In theory, that's true.

In practice, any unexplored corner of the field will contain surprises; these will require extra theoretical development to cover.

Usually things like imperfect understanding of materials get in the way. Pretty much the reason you need both theory and experiment to make progress in every single area of matter-based technology (i.e. not software).

New comment by summa_tech in "Who invented the transistor?"

summa_tech — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 18:14:18 +0000

To some degree, this is a consequence of the nature of the field you're working in:

* if the physics is so completely understood that you can confidently predict something will work from your sofa, and give an error-free recipe to build it, you indeed can invent from theory... but how deep can this invention be if the problems of the field are completely solved?

* if you are working in a field at the edge of human understanding, you cannot have the confidence in your ideas without having tested them experimentally; a theoretician makes at most a minor contribution to the actual inventions being realized, because he's producing - most likely somewhat wrong - hypotheses.

This latter kind of "theoretical" inventions are heavily subject to survivorship bias. Fifteen competent theoreticians make different predictions - all according to best, though incomplete, model of the world; a successful experiment validates exactly one of them, and we end up exalting the lucky winner as the "inventor".

New comment by summa_tech in "List of domains censored by German ISPs"

summa_tech — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 02:55:34 +0000

The issue is that China has done, on the whole, fairly alright for itself. So everyone with any power in the West is looking and thinking: "huh, so the freedom and rights and property were really not important for progress at all - might as well can it".

New comment by summa_tech in "Splice a Fibre"

summa_tech — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 20:01:48 +0000

Can always go splice some PCF or PMF if you like to feel appreciated for your splicing. I swear I'd rather splice 100 SM fibers than 1 PMF.

New comment by summa_tech in "Experts explore new mushroom which causes fairytale-like hallucinations"

summa_tech — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 23:23:17 +0000

The monkeys in my last experiment got there in 221 years, in particular.

New comment by summa_tech in "I'm a laptop weirdo and that's why I like my new Framework 13"

summa_tech — Fri, 26 Dec 2025 14:28:13 +0000

It's funny. I think a lot of more software-y people just don't see the need for a lot of Framework features. I deal with a lot of hardware (as a hobbyist and a hardware engineer) and I've seen every USB standard connector in the last week.

I also own something like three different Framework products (16, 13 and Desktop) and gifted two more (13 and Desktop) to people. Really, apart from the fit issues on 16 spacers and perhaps the speakers, the only really unforgivable issue is the size of the expansion cards (too small for interesting hardware like a good LTE modem).

New comment by summa_tech in "I'm returning my Framework 16"

summa_tech — Thu, 25 Dec 2025 05:22:07 +0000

It may appear to work, but it uses a lot more CPU than a decent 10G network card, despite being half the speed. I shudder to think what their 2.5G must've been if this is better.

New comment by summa_tech in "I'm returning my Framework 16"

summa_tech — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 21:37:47 +0000

I feel ya on the PCIe slot. And the on-board NICs are sub-par Realtek garbage, unacceptable both on features and quality. However, you can fit a small SFP+ card inside if you (a) cut out a correctly shaped hole in your case, and (b) turn the fan on at 40% instead of letting it turn off. The card will sit at a small angle but work fine, and with some 3D printing I even got a mounting bracket in to keep it stable. A lower profile connector, like USB 4, might fit outright.