contingencies
Re:Show HN: Subvocal – Talk to your computer without making noise
on Monday November 02, 2026 @01:40PM (#50341480)
Much respect for actual innovation. I hope you get filthy rich.
From your comments it seems to reach this point you tried at least open source lip reading software, IMUs, variant antenna mounting strategies, various frequencies, and then gathered training data. You articulated strongly why the product is desirable and why the failed modes were dead-ends. I hope you can deliver on your pre-orders and are able to scale and/or sell the IP for a strong exit.
Re:Ask HN: Which TV do you recommend for privacy?
on Sunday November 01, 2026 @09:56PM (#50332611)
If you want 55", this is the way. Otherwise just buy a computer monitor and use it as a TV. I bought a 55" digital signage display a month ago on sale for AUD$400, that's about USD$280.
Re:Show HN: A language model that lives in a boot sector
on Sunday November 01, 2026 @12:56PM (#50327929)
Sounds like a fun place to work!
Re:Prospero: A new coding harness for a more civilized age
on Sunday November 01, 2026 @05:54AM (#50324437)
typing is a lot quicker and easier on the brain
It depends what kind of work you are doing. It's certainly not quicker for general discourse, even if you are a fast typer.
Re:Prospero: A new coding harness for a more civilized age
on Saturday October 31, 2026 @01:42PM (#50318250)
I can heartily recommend switching to private local speech to text voice input with Handy. https://handy.computer/about
Re:Study: Schoolwide phone bans show no significant impact on mental h...
on Friday October 30, 2026 @01:02AM (#50300033)
I was suggesting that one can't generalize from an Icelandic case because any effect perhaps isn't visible for local reasons. That's perfectly correct.
Re:Study: Schoolwide phone bans show no significant impact on mental h...
on Friday October 30, 2026 @12:59AM (#50300009)
Another strong contender!
Re:Study: Schoolwide phone bans show no significant impact on mental h...
on Thursday October 29, 2026 @10:07PM (#50299013)
... for youth in Iceland aged 13 to 15 years in February 2016, February 2018, and November 2023.
Apparently they did not control for medication or supplements, such as vitamin D treatments, artificial UV light exposure, or antidepressants.
Alternate interpretation: when it's dark for half the year your mental health isn't dominated by phone access. School's probably a social, cognitive and energy highlight in the otherwise permadark day.
Re:After 28 years walking across the globe, he's almost home
on Thursday October 29, 2026 @05:25PM (#50296285)
Absentee parenting is a novel concept; in ages prior it was the norm. That said, I'm on board with being there for the kids, all the evidence is positive. Unless you're English, in which case: chin up, keep calm and carry on! That's another contributing factor: the guy possibly went to boarding school.
Re:Alleged Chinese spy had 'close relationship' with Nvidia boss Jense...
on Thursday October 29, 2026 @05:05PM (#50295968)
"These days" are ending. Nothing about the current geopolitical climate, global supply chain, energy price, or socioeconomic reality of inter-generational quality of life chasm is stable. Taking a trillion dollar bite out of a bubble beneficiary is a clear opening move for a novel government with restored oversight and an eye on the books.
Re:After 28 years walking across the globe, he's almost home
on Thursday October 29, 2026 @05:01PM (#50295896)
As a retired cycle tourist myself who hosted a few world-spanning cyclists and a friend of a well known late Italian Vespa globetrotter, I would say: this is actually the critical audience (often subconsciously) personally justifying why their own life is so boring: "my way is the right way: everyone else is irresponsible". Deep down they feel threatened by the notion that their life may be boring BECAUSE OF THEIR OWN DAMN CHOICES. News at 9.
But yeah, they are all half-mad or worse (read: "interesting people"); military service isn't going to have zero impact either, people deal with it different ways.
I find it telling he doesn't have flags on his kit.
Re:Alleged Chinese spy had 'close relationship' with Nvidia boss Jense...
on Thursday October 29, 2026 @04:45PM (#50295641)
Gee that's pretty much an antitrust case right there. Sell NVidia while you can.
Re:Zero click, silent, remote Android DoS
on Thursday October 29, 2026 @07:44AM (#50287473)
This sort of thing can make sense in manufacturing where you want to clear evidence of tests run, etc. For example, it is common to run optical test suites and then program the optics within a phone to account for imprecision rather than attempt to manufacture for a lack of it. Source: Drinking in Dongguan with the head of optics manufacturing for the company subcontracted to produce the iPhone optics assembly some years ago.
Re:Getting debug access on a Brother printer over Telnet
on Thursday October 29, 2026 @07:41AM (#50287446)
1982: The movie Tron came out.
1984: The Japanese launched an OS called Tron.
1989: US officials feared Tron could undercut US dominance in computers.
2026: Tron is mostly found dominating printers, and an AI far beyond anything envisaged in the movie Tron explains it to humans.
Truth is stranger than fiction.
Re:Zero click, silent, remote Android DoS
on Thursday October 29, 2026 @06:31AM (#50286910)
At a guess it was an MMI / USSD code for factory reset. Allegedly the code:
*2767*3855#
Re:Unveiling The Grid: PCBs made in America, twice as fast as Shenzhen
on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @05:47PM (#50281393)
In Guangdong standard turnarounds 2020-2022 were 1-2 days (unpopulated) and 3-4 days (fully populated) outside of holiday periods or special cases (>4 layers; exotic substrates; oddball components; custom through-hole soldering). Faster was available for extra money. I'm sure it's accelerated since then. About 9 calendar days international delivery from China is often achieved these days as noted by others and myself.
Re:CNC Stone Carving
on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @05:39PM (#50281280)
I think they moved them to Canary Wharf and covered them in glass.
Re:Kentucky man becomes the first humanist granted religious exemption...
on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @04:29PM (#50280444)
Possibly out of date statistics including farm machinery and motorbikes sold to Africa. In Southeast Asia, I've noticed that cities are mostly now all automatic scooters but in country areas many people still prefer manual. Manual is more intuitive for tackling hard topography and very bad roads.
Re:Ink droplets in motion snag top prize in Nikon Small World contest
on Wednesday October 28, 2026 @04:56AM (#50270807)
Another class of biological thing that look broadly similar under magnification are fern spores. I guess moss spores too but I haven't seen those.
Re:A Man from the Future: Why Johnny Can't Stop Abstracting
on Tuesday October 27, 2026 @04:17PM (#50265185)
You have great humility John! I'd never heard of the mylar system, that's interesting. I guess it was a conceptual though not technical antecedent to the 1980s' ever-present Magna Doodle, as according to the BBC the origin story was "In 1974, four engineers at Pilot Pen Corporation of Japan began searching for a dustless chalkboard".
Re:A $300B 'Debt Wall' Is Looming over Private-Equity Backed Companies
on Tuesday October 27, 2026 @04:06PM (#50265039)
I'm currently monitoring Wonder who are apparently spitballing a harem of (sometimes twice-)failed food businesses together under some kind of faux-tech banner for an IPO funded by investment banks. Buying other businesses they claim 'growth' through site count. When reality bit recently they fired their CTO and got a new one whose primary skill seems to be media grandstanding, more like the CEO. Inside comments from ex executives are the CEO's management style is horrific. All indications are investment bro vs public culture dominates. Billions down, but no sign of cashflow positive operations.
Re:The US Government Is Hiding Secret Court Ruling About How It Spies ...
on Tuesday October 27, 2026 @04:01PM (#50264955)
Great to see unfettered public discussion of such matters. Oh wait, "You've read your last free article."
Re:Antique Fonts Collection – Restored 19th Century Typefaces
on Tuesday October 27, 2026 @03:18PM (#50264339)
Agree. There's some impressively modern looking output, however. Quite elegant. Seems like a relevant place to repeat a quote I collected:
There was a romantic tradition, in this country at least, of the drifter Typesetters, who were good enough at the craft to find work wherever they traveled. They'd work in one town until they wanted a change and then drift on. They had a reputation for being well read, occasionally hard drinking, strong union men who enjoyed an independence particularly rare in the 19th century. - Clark E. Coffee (founder of Graphion, a phototypesetting company in SF)
Re:A $300B 'Debt Wall' Is Looming over Private-Equity Backed Companies
on Tuesday October 27, 2026 @03:11PM (#50264224)
pass it off to some unsuspecting schmuck
Which in some cases means the general public via IPO.
I think we’re about to find out real quick who is actually good at business and who was just shuffling cheap leveraged money around trying to look important and smart.
Sounds like a prescient proxy for AI vs humans.
Re:One of the Greatest Inventions in the History of Human Transport
on Tuesday October 27, 2026 @12:46AM (#50254805)
Specific to the context of proving there is no insurmountable challenge in having multiple disparate mass transit operators provide combined services in an efficient fashion, they are the obvious poster child. This may be true even while I share similar conclusions to your own analysis when considering the broader failures in their society.
Re:A Man from the Future: Why Johnny Can't Stop Abstracting
on Monday October 26, 2026 @07:50PM (#50252834)
Tangents and tangerine dreams :)
Re:One of the Greatest Inventions in the History of Human Transport
on Monday October 26, 2026 @07:02PM (#50252399)
Where and in which case? I'm referring to mode-change connections. Of those, two of the last two I've had failed. That's a 100% failure rate. When queried, the station staff said the metro don't communicate with them so adaptive schedules are impossible.
Re:A Man from the Future: Why Johnny Can't Stop Abstracting
on Monday October 26, 2026 @06:58PM (#50252363)
I would imagine that such people stay off opine and commentary style forums because their instant capacity to recall authoritative sources makes wrongful and derivative discussion tedious. To some extent, with the speed of LLM search and recovery today, we might all be heading that way. Indeed, interesting HN traffic of late appears to have waned. No doubt someone will say I'm hallucinating and all's normal. No, I'm not hallucinating.
Re:One of the Greatest Inventions in the History of Human Transport
on Monday October 26, 2026 @04:31PM (#50250485)
In Sydney we are very close to Asia so the shame of our rotting train system finally caused the city to invest in modern driverless underground transit, termed 'the metro'. I believe planning began in the 1990s and it only really launched about 5 years ago, so 20 years or so in the making. This system is much faster, cleaner and more modern than the older surface rail, largely helped by the fact it's way underground in most sections due to a lack of surface land availability. However, it frequently stops or requires maintenance and is run by a totally separate bureaucracy than the rail system, who apparently refuse to communicate despite having shared stations. This leads to situations such as one encountered this weekend whereby the rail operator had track work scheduled on a major section of their route, and simultaneously the metro system had disrupted service, such that a great number of passengers were stranded. More importantly, even when it is working they do not coordinate arrival times, such that it is exceptionally common to arrive on one mode, where the platform faces directly the other mode, but it has just departed. 30 seconds of scheduling either side would greatly increase efficiency, but it's nobody's department. This is the sort of thing they do perfectly in Japan, but Australia is a country of 1000 little scams with everyone fervently minding their own scam. We urgently need to replace corrupt humans with AI.
Re:OpenShell – A safe, private runtime for fleets of autonomous AI agents
on Thursday October 22, 2026 @06:01PM (#50201678)
A Hindu at heart! On a more grounded note, YIL terrestrial root terra comes from Proto Indo European as evidenced in Sanskrit तृषा (tṛ́ṣā).