News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

johschmitz

Re:Tiny Little Office on Thursday October 15, 2026 @02:02AM (#50099807)
I guess the PDF wouldn't have to be stored in the application/URL? Just a tool to load it, fill+annotate+sign it and export back to disk.
Great project overall, I like it a lot. Please fix it on Firefox. Tested with Firefox for Linux and layout was broken compared to Chromium based browsers. Additionaly, I also noticed in the mobile version on Android (Chrome) when switching to another app and back it breaks the guitar sound simulation and it gets completely distorted.
Re:Dutch Train Map Simulator on Wednesday August 12, 2026 @07:08AM (#49270575)
Not obvious, I switched to desktop mode to be able to see something on mobile. Suggestion: have the menu collapsed at the beginning, at least on mobile layout, then it would be much more obvious how to use it.
Maybe provide an option for the user to bring their own API key for prettier results.
Re:Show HN: SIMD Viterbi Decoder in Rust on Wednesday August 05, 2026 @06:43AM (#49180942)
Performance result are presented here as far as I understand: https://github.com/brian-armstrong/fec#performance
Re:Reverse centaurs are the answer to the AI paradox on Saturday July 11, 2026 @03:35PM (#48875062)
I am reading on mobile and actually preferred the pluralistic link, glad you posted that one.
Reminds me of the granny knot "advice" which I also saw on hackernews for the first time many years ago and which changed my live:

https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/grannyknot.htm

If you don't know about this problem yet, I strongly recommend to cross check if you have been tying it wrong for years!

Re:Claude Fable 5 on Tuesday June 09, 2026 @05:01PM (#48467710)
As far as my understanding goes the bottleneck for what you are talking about is hardware not software, so open source won't help that much for the foreseeable future.
Re:Open-source self-driving for 325 car models from 27 brands on Saturday January 24, 2026 @03:33AM (#46741988)
The control messages are transmitted via CAN bus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN_bus

The exact message content and protocols are reverse engineered.

Some cars use FlexRay instead of CAN bus but that has only experimental support.

Re:Training my smartwatch to track intelligence on Friday January 16, 2026 @05:24PM (#46653027)
Since this talks about sleep quality I want to add something that was almost unknown to me for over 30 years. Smartwatches AFAIK don't have CO2 sensors. It seems to me though, that that would be extremely useful for sleep quality tracking. I have just a couple of years ago found out that CO2 levels are having the highest impact on my sleep quality besides temperature. I can highly recommend getting a CO2 sensor to get a good feeling for that effect. Also understand how much air is available in your room and how much CO2 your body produces per hour. I totally underestimated this until I was able to measure it. In a small sleeping room with closed doors the amount of CO2 will reach unhealthy levels at the end of the night.
Re:MCP-B: A Protocol for AI Browser Automation on Thursday July 10, 2025 @08:18AM (#44520160)
At the end of the day you often need to consider the energy efficiency of a system which is also reflected in the cost of operating it. For use cases where this is relevant the suggested MCP approach potentially offers large benefits compared to what's probably meant here by "AI". However, the disadvantages of public access discussed in other threads need to be considered as well, therefore, I expected this only to be used for certain niche use cases. Testing and retro fitting non-public websites come to mind.
I never hated on Signal, on the contrary I recommend it too many people but I can say that the energy consumption on Android is in many cases abysmal for multiple years now and related issues in the Github issue tracker are being ignored. This is for me unacceptable for someone claiming to build high quality software and accepting my donations.

Related issues:

https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/13704 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/12341 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/10336 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/9729

Re:MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia on Friday November 15, 2024 @01:54AM (#42144501)
Reminds me of https://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/grannyknot.htm

I wonder if what you describe is kind of the reason for this.

Nice.

Feature request: In the top/overview view I would like to be able to tap on each room and then the pivot point should move to the center of that room. After a double tap or tap on the top view button the pivot point should move back to the apartment center point. This will help zooming easily into each room from above.

Re:Flowblade: Open-Source Video Editor on Wednesday January 17, 2024 @02:08AM (#39024274)
You might want to try out the one build into Blender: https://www.blender.org/features/video-editing/
I like this one much better https://youtu.be/RKfG3lWCZ80 at 4:20 onwards. Also explains the difference between slip and skid.
Re:Teardown of the TM4313 GPS Disciplined Oscillator on Tuesday July 11, 2023 @03:38AM (#36677652)
I did this back in the day using a ublox LEA-M8F module for my PhD work following the instructions posted here: http://www.opendigitalradio.org/lea-m8f-gpsdo I also experimented with RTK which this module is capable of. Now there's probably a more up to date ublox module available which could provide even better results using multi frequency GNSS etc.
Re:Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to? on Wednesday August 18, 2021 @11:42AM (#28222851)
ASUS Zenfone 8. One of the very few relatively small Android phones with 5G connectivity, good camera and a flagship CPU (Snapdragon 888) and not way too expensive.
Why not charge based on typical "packages" containing a certain number of interactions with the service?
True, it doesn't seem to work so well, see screenshot: https://pasteboard.co/KgkhOEo.jpg
Re:Unix – The Hole Hawg of Operating Systems (1999) on Saturday July 31, 2021 @03:45AM (#28016219)
Linux Mint is that "windowing environment that simply works" for me. I've been putting it on my dads computer for about 10 years now (he is turning 66 now) and it was always working very well with minimum support. Definitely much better than Windows with its reboot for each update nightmare.
How I understand it he is saying Google is willing to pay for "being wrong" or rather "behaving in certain ways". Now it is just kind of a fee and both sides are happy. Maybe not the perfect situation for the customers but between the two parties and with the current legal framework the deal makes sense. Doesn't it? Should we be surprised about any of the two parties optimizing their position within the given constraints? I think it is quite clear that if another outcome is desired the constraints need to be changed.