Hacker News: thedougd

New comment by thedougd in "So you think you could be an electrician?"

thedougd — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 00:08:42 +0000

Lab Scope / Meter 2-channel Bandwidth 3MHz Sample Rate: Up to 6 million samples/sec Scale range 0-100mV to 0-400V Sweep rate 50 microseconds to 20 seconds (5 min in GMM mode)

It’s slow but it’s an oscilloscope. It graphs electrical measurements over time. They sold CRT scopes on carts for years and years.

Maybe you should move the goalposts and demand FFT or higher bandwidth.

New comment by thedougd in "So you think you could be an electrician?"

thedougd — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 12:54:36 +0000

Snap-On sells automotive scopes.

https://www.snapon.com/EN/US/Diagnostics/Products/TRITON-D10

New comment by thedougd in "So you think you could be an electrician?"

thedougd — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 12:38:03 +0000

Most people are a bad judge of quality. They just don’t know the difference between a good and bad electrician. Even more obvious stuff, like painting, I find people can’t judge quality.

So you end up with a ton of unreliable reviewers online.

These days I take recommendations from people who are picky and when I can see the results myself.

New comment by thedougd in "So you think you could be an electrician?"

thedougd — Sun, 04 Oct 2026 12:31:57 +0000

Most importantly if the water table of the surrounding soil is high enough, it will lift an empty pool, even concrete. At most you would lower the water level below the lights. You’re likely getting wet either way.

New comment by thedougd in "Analysis: EVs are now nine times cheaper than petrol or diesel to drive in UK"

thedougd — Mon, 28 Sep 2026 11:21:06 +0000

In the US, the used market for Teslas is quite strong, even into the high miles. I recently purchased a used EV and found the Teslas weren’t discounted enough from new for my liking. They moved quickly too, except for the ones with salvage titles.

I ended up getting an off-lease Hyundai EV because they tanked in value in part due to their ICCU failures, which are now covered under an extended warranty.

New comment by thedougd in "The newest ESP32 can run Linux and it's getting close to a Raspberry Pi"

thedougd — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 13:19:36 +0000

"Bermuda aims to let you track any bluetooth device, and have Home Assistant tell you where in your house that device is."

New comment by thedougd in "PCB is brought to you by Fable 5"

thedougd — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 12:58:51 +0000

Atopile is ditching their cli. They're going the wrong direction.

It seems to me the first problem with AI in PCB design is that there isn't much in the way of machine friendly interfaces for the work. I watched Codex last night generate 3d renderings in Kicad to check the layout.

New comment by thedougd in "Garry Tan wants US open-weight AI labs to 'distill' frontier models, too"

thedougd — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 11:40:47 +0000

Better hurry up. The frontier labs are making their latest coordinated push for regulatory capture.

New comment by thedougd in "I fixed a tractor using John Deere's self-repair service. Farmers aren't sold"

thedougd — Sat, 12 Sep 2026 19:32:06 +0000

Sadly service manuals aren’t commonly sold anymore and you need a subscription to a website to access factory service manuals.

It’s a shame, I use to buy the service manual when I bought the car.

New comment by thedougd in "Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit"

thedougd — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 12:28:54 +0000

Or put another way, actively tracking your every movement. Analyzing your behaviors to predict possible criminality.

What’s already happening is bad enough. What it enables to happen next is a nightmare.

New comment by thedougd in "OpenAI Jalapeño: Better than Nvidia Blackwell"

thedougd — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 01:20:18 +0000

The DSPs that could double as a sound card and “soft” modem ruined their market in short order.

New comment by thedougd in "Apple Releases New Polishing Cloth"

thedougd — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 15:16:47 +0000

The underlying data must be used to cross sell. I added a Neo to the bag and the next screen included it in the accessories list.

New comment by thedougd in "US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons"

thedougd — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 13:41:28 +0000

I want to understand if we're really comparing apples to apples. What does 'consumption' mean in these contexts? How much of the water returns to the local water table vs evaporation vs becomes waste water?

New comment by thedougd in "Buyer cancels showing after Deflock shows two cameras utilized by the HOA"

thedougd — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 13:37:58 +0000

I find this unsettling. When a private entity buys Flock, how do they _use_ it? Is it more than ALPR? Are they sharing the data with the network and offer it to the police? Can they watch footage?

New comment by thedougd in "Buyer cancels showing after Deflock shows two cameras utilized by the HOA"

thedougd — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 13:35:16 +0000

It's certainly overly broad in many circumstances. I've lived in a townhome community with overly aggressive management.

However, "There is absolutely no reason why a single family house needs to be in a mandatory HOA" is easy to refute.

HOA's provide a way for managing shared infrastructure that would not be feasible for a single home owner. Common examples of basic infrastructure include roads, storm water management, lighting, and even community wells. I would argue that is the primary purpose. Not all neighborhoods are in a municipality either.

New comment by thedougd in "Buyer cancels showing after Deflock shows two cameras utilized by the HOA"

thedougd — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 12:58:37 +0000

What about an HOA for the management of roads and rainwater runoff (ponds, etc)?

New comment by thedougd in "Suspecting court of using AI, man injected prompts in filings to try to win case"

thedougd — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 11:43:47 +0000

Any indications it works? What have you seen?

New comment by thedougd in "Why does Opus 5 feel worse to work with?"

thedougd — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:54:55 +0000

I added a system prompt paragraph explaining that a question is just a question, whether or not I’m in plan mode.

It still just takes the question as a directive and jumps to action when I’m looking for clarification.

New comment by thedougd in "U of Michigan drops first-semester grades to ‘curb mental health crisis’"

thedougd — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 16:28:44 +0000

Same experience in 2000s. I’ll never forget there was a kid on his third try to pass the mandatory Intro to Engineering class. I sure hope he moved on to a new major.

New comment by thedougd in "Someone is running mass vulnerability scans, spoofing AI bots like ClaudeBot"

thedougd — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 15:53:25 +0000

People or their agents must be accidentally committing or publishing their repository level secrets and configs with enough regularity that it’s worth scanning.