Hacker News: voidpointer

New comment by voidpointer in "APC–2 – A professional record cutter for producing original playback discs"

voidpointer — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 12:04:53 +0000

To implement groove packing digitally, you don't need to put that process in the signal chain, do you? You can digitize the master, analyze it, and determine the required spacing at various points on the record. You then feed that information back to the machine to control the cutting processes, as the analog signal is transferred directly to the record. No digital buffer in the signal path.

New comment by voidpointer in "United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert"

voidpointer — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 15:11:22 +0000

I think this is just the way the decision tree works in safety-sensitive areas where many human lives are at stake. The catch-all in the decision tree, if there is no exact solution, is always the "get to safety at all costs" option. There will be some window of trying to resolve an issue (here: telling everyone to shut down devices) and when that does not resolve the issue, the catch-all kicks in. That's just the pattern and in an environment like an airplane, where margin for error is slim to non-existant, there is no deviation from that pattern.

New comment by voidpointer in "United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert"

voidpointer — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 12:47:16 +0000

In general and long-term I agree with what you are saying. I assume this was a new/unknown situation. (On the other hand, the article links to other similar stories, so maybe I am cutting them too much slack). If "electronic device names" are of concern, there should be an established protocol to deal with them. Especially if this keeps happening.

New comment by voidpointer in "United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert"

voidpointer — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 12:08:13 +0000

> Was any of this a good idea? No, probably not, but people need to calm down.

I can understand the safety concern - and I think the decision to turn around was ultimately the right call. Especially given that they had called for people turning off BT for some time.

The fact that the device was not turned off suggests to me that the owner did not know they were the cause of this. If they had done this by intent and were set on going through with it even after the turnaround was initiated, they would have also had the sense to drop the device into some other seat or leave it in the lavatory...

If it turns out they did this with full intent, there should be some _appropriate_ consequence

New comment by voidpointer in "United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert"

voidpointer — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 11:56:13 +0000

So, how did it eventually show up? Owner's phone goes off/airplane-mode, watch starts advertising; someone else wants to connect their BT headphones and sees the name of the watch?

New comment by voidpointer in "United Airlines 767 returns to Newark after Bluetooth name sparks alert"

voidpointer — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 09:10:56 +0000

According to the article, it was a Fitbit device belonging to a teenager... Chances are, the kid selected that nickname for the device a long while ago and forgot about it, and was probably unaware that the device was using Bluetooth at all, and that they should turn off their fitness tracker when the announcement came through...

At the same time, some people in the comments under the article are more or less calling for the death penalty for the kid...

New comment by voidpointer in "I work in Hollywood. Everyone who used to make TV is now training AI"

voidpointer — Wed, 13 May 2026 09:51:27 +0000

Maybe you have a point there. An optimistic outlook would be that AI allows people to create content that can compete with the polished, mass-produced, standardized stuff without the prohibitive budget requirements. The pessimistic view is that it leads to more isolation, where everyone only "creates" for themselves.

New comment by voidpointer in "I work in Hollywood. Everyone who used to make TV is now training AI"

voidpointer — Mon, 11 May 2026 12:24:08 +0000

Isn't the scenario you are describing the ultimate collapse of art and culture as we know it? If everyone sits at home and creates the content that they want, what do we talk about? How do we engage in shared culture if there is nothing to experience together?

New comment by voidpointer in "My insulin pump controller uses the Linux kernel. It also violates the GPL"

voidpointer — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 10:40:48 +0000

Why is this relevant for understanding how the IP works or even tweaking it? Whatever is relevant for that matter will most certainly not be a modification to the Linux kernel that the android system is running. It will not fall under the GPL that the kernel is licensed under. Can someone explain why this dispute is worth having beyond a theoretical legal debate on whether they should hand out the particular source tree from which their kernel was built (if they even built it)?

New comment by voidpointer in "Sync Engines Are the Future"

voidpointer — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 15:13:47 +0000

Probably a silly question, but if you take this all the way and treat everything as a DB that is synchronized in the background, how do you manage access control where not every user/client is supposed to have access to every object represented in the DB? Where does that logic go? If you do it on the document level like figma or canvas, every document is a DB and you sync the changes that happen to the document but first you need access to the document/DB. But doesn't this whole idea break apart if you need to do access control on individual parts of what you treat as the DB because you would need to have that logic on the client which could never be secure...

New comment by voidpointer in "A day in the life of a prolific voice phishing crew"

voidpointer — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 10:04:15 +0000

The relative ease with which called-IDs can be spoofed seems to be one of the major "tools" with which scammers can gain the trust of their victims (or trick other systems into believing that they are the victim). Most of the non-technical folks I know will also more or less blindly trust a caller-ID. Fortunately, many scammers (at least here in Europe) are still calling you claiming they are interpol following up on your Paypal account being breached whilst a +233... number shows on your phone.

New comment by voidpointer in "Serverless Horrors"

voidpointer — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 20:10:14 +0000

Absolutely but that tradeoff should be for the customer to make.

New comment by voidpointer in "Show HN: AI dub tool I made to watch foreign language videos with my 7-year-old"

voidpointer — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 14:15:27 +0000

Reading speed at that age will vary greatly. Reading subtitles while also having to follow the picture takes away focus and that makes it hard much harder for an inexperienced reader. My daughter, who picked up reading very naturally would have been able to follow sub-titles at age 7 without much trouble. My younger, 7-yo son on the other hand, who is more average in reading ability wouldn't be able to keep up with subtitles yet. Average reading speeds at age 7 seem to be 60-100 words per minute where subtitles are more at the 100-150 words per minute range. So for above-average readers, it will be possible but for the average, they won't be able to keep up consistently.

New comment by voidpointer in "Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bug for nearly 10 years"

voidpointer — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 12:59:53 +0000

I did experience the issue with an FIIO headphone DAC too. Basically, when connecting the device, the balance slider in audio settings would get initialized to what seemed to be a random value. I am using several other audio interfaces (both USB and Thunderbolt) as well for music production/recording and I have never seen that issue with any of those devices. I suppose it is an interoperability problem between the USB audio class driver and core audio that only manifests for certain types of devices. Still, if it is common enough for people publishing apps to fix it, Apple should get it sorted out.

New comment by voidpointer in "John Locke's recipe for Pancakes (2021)"

voidpointer — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 07:17:03 +0000

Texture-wise it should be very different due to how the gluten will develop. Taste-wise you are probably right. It’s mostly a substrate for the butter and syrup.

New comment by voidpointer in "John Locke's recipe for Pancakes (2021)"

voidpointer — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 09:34:09 +0000

In order to get close to how these might have tasted in Locke's time, one shouldn't be using modern white flour which is a 19th century development. Using (stone-milled) whole wheat might come closer to how things were in the 17th century. (Also better for your glucose levels)

New comment by voidpointer in "Own the problem, not the solution"

voidpointer — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 13:59:35 +0000

The cover-band analogy isn't so great; the issue where a specific solution becomes a proxy for solving some problems that no one bothered to fully understand is real though. Describing problems and doing thorough discovery is hard and silver bullets are attractive. The cargo-cult analogy is quite fitting for a lot of hyped-up topics.

When you go to a car dealer and tell them your problem is getting from A to B, guess what their solution is going to be...

New comment by voidpointer in "Project Gutenberg is no longer fully blocked in Germany"

voidpointer — Thu, 28 Oct 2021 16:28:54 +0000

What I'm not getting: If Project Gutenberg is US based, how can they be dragged in front of a German court at all? How could a German court enforce anything on a US based entity? So couldn'd PG's response just have been to ignore the case? What would have happened then?

New comment by voidpointer in "Heat energy leaps through empty space, thanks to quantum weirdness"

voidpointer — Mon, 16 Dec 2019 15:13:29 +0000

Thanks. drinks-another-coffee

New comment by voidpointer in "Heat energy leaps through empty space, thanks to quantum weirdness"

voidpointer — Mon, 16 Dec 2019 15:08:07 +0000

This is going to be a dumb question I fear... If, as the article says, photons can't travel through a vacuum how are we able t see the stars (let alone distant galaxies)? Is it just because space isn't enough of full vacuum, or what am I missing?