News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

fisian

Re:We're not done with point clouds on Friday August 14, 2026 @06:52AM (#49297040)
Posts like these really highlight how much there to think about in robotics. Below the surface of what immediately comes to mind there is just an abundance of topics to address to get an actually well working robot.
Re:Should you stop cracking your knuckles? on Sunday August 09, 2026 @12:30PM (#49232915)
Donald L. Unger got an Ig-nobel prize for cracking the knuckles on only one hand for 60 years. n=1 but evidence over a very long time
Re:Self-host your mail server on Friday July 24, 2026 @04:29PM (#49041207)
Agreed. Also being able to use as many aliases as you like (or a catch-all) is very nice.
Re:Self-host your mail server on Friday July 24, 2026 @04:22PM (#49041143)
I started hosting my email at home some months ago and it works great. However, my ISP blocks some ports necessary for running a mailserver (incoming SMTP), so I have to use an SMTP relay (which is on a VPS and does port 25 to some other port that is not blocked). Additionally, to not worry about deliverability, I let my mailserver send all outgoing mail through another service. The additional costs for this are about 2€/month.

I use Stalwart as a mail server and it was not too hard to setup (with some caveats to get it working with my SSL certs behind a reverse proxy. But nothing a bit of LLM chatting couldn't solve). All in all, it's not 100% self hosted, but works well.

However, I don't agree with the suggestion in the article to use a self hosted LLM. My mailserver needs a few hundred MBs of RAM at max, but with the spam filter this would increase like 10x-100x.

There is the --encode (and --decode) options for the `protoc` executable, e.g. `cat myobject.json | protoc --encode MyObject protofile.proto > myobject.bin`
Numberphile has a video with Persi Diaconis about the seven perfect shuffles. It gives a lot of insight and anectdotes in addition to the central theorem: https://youtu.be/AxJubaijQbI?si=ED7ufY4oPZnNxCbd
There's this numberphile video where Persi Diaconis tells a story about bridge and how the players got used to not totally random shuffled decks: https://youtu.be/RIGJH12vVCY?si=cMSx6YEr8MMFgYg6 (Starts at around 3:30).
Re:Apt Encounters of the Third Kind on Sunday June 14, 2026 @01:30AM (#48524455)
Re:You Can Run on Sunday June 07, 2026 @08:44AM (#48434281)
I interpreted it another way: the boxes are what connects the past to this written story. Without the boxes most details would be forgotten and this article wouldn't exist. The documents in the boxes were only thoroughly read by one daughter starting in 2024.
Re:Dcmake: A new CMake debugger UI on Sunday April 12, 2026 @12:36AM (#47736196)
I didn't know CMake introduced this debug adapter. This would have been very useful to me at some occasions.

Instead, I used printf debugging (aka `message(FATAL_ERROR )` debugging in CMake).

With this debug adapter, there also seem to be integrations in VSCode and CLion. I will have to try them out soon.

Re:Can You Instruct a Robot to Make a PBJ Sandwich? on Friday March 13, 2026 @05:09AM (#47362133)
I think this is a great introduction to logical thinking and coding. The overcooked scripting layer looks awesome and very polished. Reminds me a bit of Scratch (the programming language). Are you going to make it available to others?

There are also video games based on this concept, e.g. Bots are Dumb. So maybe your scripting layer it could even become its own commercial game.

Re:Buckle Up for Bumpier Skies on Tuesday March 03, 2026 @06:48AM (#47231057)
For the part which talks about turbulence damping, this page illustrates how this looks like on a smaller plane: https://turbulence-solutions.aero/technology/

(Not affiliated, just saw their demo once.)

Re:Are two heads better than one? on Wednesday January 14, 2026 @06:52AM (#46615006)
This principle is also highly relevant in safety critical systems for using redundant sensors. Just adding a second sensor is often not enough. Because if they disagree, which one do you trust.

One example of this is in airplanes.

Re:Thunderbird Pro November 2025 Update on Friday November 21, 2025 @04:43AM (#46002896)
Looking forward to the early bird launch. JMAP support from an email provider (other than fastmail) is great. Additionally, this seems like a good way to fund thunderbird apart from donations, while supporting open source email.
Re:Text case changes the size of QR codes on Friday November 07, 2025 @09:14AM (#45846596)
Another fun thing are these stable diffusion/controlnet combinations which create QR codes that at the same are AI generated art. e.g. qrdiffusion or qrbtf
Does a Banana Pi BPi-M5 fit your specs? The banana pis have pretty good networking options.
The reported 119GB vs. 128GB according to spec is because 128GB (1e9 bytes) equals 119GiB (2^30 bytes).
Re:Anticheat Update Tracking on Monday June 30, 2025 @08:32AM (#44422471)
off topic: What's the font this website uses for the code? The font ligatures seem nice, but I also would have to get used to reading code like that.
Re:Diffusion Models Explained Simply on Monday May 19, 2025 @03:39PM (#44033936)
I found this course very helpful if you're interested in a bit of math (but all very well explained): https://diffusion.csail.mit.edu/

It is short, with good lecture notes and has hands on examples that are very approachable (with solutions available if you get stuck).

Re:SSH Keys Don't Scale. SSH Certificates Do on Monday April 14, 2025 @10:23AM (#43681678)
It's just an ad for their SSH cert service...

I feel like for SSH certs to expand beyond large companies, there's the need for an open-source service which does the issuing of short-lived certs after a user authenticates. I know smallstep, but their offer feels open-core/freemium.

Re:KOReader: Open-Source eBook Reader on Tuesday April 01, 2025 @01:21AM (#43543109)
Can anyone recommend a site for buying DRM free books so I can read it with KOReader?
Re:France rejects backdoor mandate on Saturday March 22, 2025 @12:54PM (#43447028)
Denying math has a tradition among politicians: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Malcolm_Turnbull
Re:There Was a Texas Lottery Arbitrage on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @11:25PM (#43276417)
Mathematically, what you need is the binomial coefficient ("n choose k"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_coefficient
Re:DivestOS ROM shuts after ten years on Friday December 27, 2024 @03:55PM (#42525947)
GrapheneOS on a Pixel is probably the most polished and secure experience. I have installed it (and enabled sandboxed Google services) on my mom's phone (she's pretty non-technical) and she had no bigger problems in the last years.
Re:The number pi has an evil twin on Tuesday December 24, 2024 @02:39AM (#42500316)
There are the anti prime numbers (also called highly composite numbers).
Re:The number pi has an evil twin on Tuesday December 24, 2024 @01:54AM (#42500147)
Yes, the Lissajous https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lissajous_curve which also can be turned vertical (to look like an 8 instead of ∞).
Re: on Sunday October 27, 2024 @03:18PM (#41964887)
The official Raspberry Pi site [0] seems to be a much better resource than this article. It also says that the AI kit was surpassed by the AI hat+ [1] (which is a bit cheaper, too).

[0]: https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/ai-kit/ [1]: https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/ai-hat/

Older »