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Liftyee

1,219 karma · joined November 19, 2023

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Liftyee··on County with 37 Data Centers Asks Schools to 'Conserve Electricity'
Smarter device would just require a little more cost. Current devices can work with no code, just analog electronics.
Liftyee··on How many of the 170k English words do you know?
Far too slow to complete and too many clicks. I'm surprised it's not using a binary search method easy-hard-easy ... Then it could show an in progress metric.
Liftyee··on How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart
A factor not mentioned is Japan's cultural sense of duty and honour. I don't think employees in the West generally feel such dedication or perfectionism towards their company but in Japan it helped make all these efficient and meticulous changes possible, and avoids issues of privatisation like neglecting maintenance / short term profit maximisation.
Liftyee··on Abandoned and Little-Known Airfields
I read about the clandestine midnight destruction of Meigs Field, Chicago - somehow the first one I happened upon. The mayor had the runway bulldozed in the night so that no one could have time to object. Unbelievable and mildly infuriating story.

Apparently the main motivation was to have a legacy...

Liftyee··on Want your images back? That'll be $5
Regardless of whether this is legal or not, I think this move is subjectively scummy. I know that profit maximisation means going against common ideas of what is "a nice thing to do", but there's a line that's been crossed here between "the business has to support itself" and "trying to exploit and milk our customers".

Honestly, if storage costs were an issue, I would have preferred they delete it with notification than sell hope at a ransom.

Wonder if there any startups that have grown without resorting to these low blow tactics - just the idealised free market of "we provide such a good service that you're willing to pay us our fair price".

Liftyee··on Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding of the economy is that money is earned when someone creates value. Just "giving people money" without having the corresponding value be created increases demand for valuable things without increasing supply, leading to inflation and the costs of said things going up.
Liftyee··on Every Frame Perfect
I see Kiro's guess and raise you an anecdote. I just turned animations off on my Android device, and instantly it feels faster and more responsive.

Maybe software programs got faster with our faster CPUs but all the animations just made everything feel slow.

Liftyee··on Only 2.5% of 12,779 tech job listings are entry-level
I wonder if there's a tragedy of the commons effect with hiring. No individual company wants to spend to train employees when they can just use the pool of trained employees from other companies.
Liftyee··on A 10 year old Xeon is all you need
Very intriguing. This might be the use for my e5-2430 V2 X2 server that's been lying around. DDR3 is (relatively) cheap now too. Could fit 192GB of RAM in it and play around for much cheaper than a new GPU.
Liftyee··on Show HN: Continue? Y/N: A 60-second game about AI agent permission fatigue
I haven't used local agentic AI yet for programming projects. Hence, -187 score

The filter for "commands I would run myself" and "commands I would let an agent run" are very different it seems.

Liftyee··on Dropbox CEO Drew Houston to step down
It would be a shame to see Dropbox decline. They're the last big player to maintain a Linux sync client that just works reliably. I've tried to host Nextcloud and tried Syncthing as well, but Dropbox has always worked for when I just want the problem solved without worrying about something going down.

Open to recommendations...

Liftyee··on A fundamental principle of aeronautical engineering has been overturned
Interesting finding, but hardly fundamental. My fluids lectures taught that there's form drag ("pressure drag" in the article) and skin friction drag. The two trade off with each other depending on Reynolds number. Keeping the flow laminar reduces skin friction drag (suggesting smooth skin), but keeping the flow attached for longer (e.g. by inducing turbulence, or injecting air...) reduces form drag (at a cost of increased skin friction due to turbulence).

Reads like they've discovered a neat way to delay flow separation while maintaining laminar flow, but the underlying principles have not changed. "Smooth thing low drag" was never a rule and only works at certain scales.

Liftyee··on My two-part desk setup (2025)
I suspect those people lack the practical skills needed to construct such a table, and the time/motivation to create with their own hands instead of purchasing.
Liftyee··on Hindenburg’s Smoking Room
I also suspect the modern digital news cycle and potential lawsuits have impacted the levels of risk acceptable. In China, with devastation in living memory, the population are generally willing to take more risks, and there's less of a culture of litigation. Plus, there's always the government who can dampen any viral social media outburst.

Of course, some standards (fire safety) are important. Looser standards are allowable where the customer can make a reasoned judgement of risk.

Liftyee··on Hindenburg’s Smoking Room
It's counterintuitive, but I've heard an explanation that the alternative - they decide to dispose their cigarette into the bin full of flammable paper waste - is much worse.
Liftyee··on Googlebook
I would like this feature to save screen space, but what happens when a window isn't maximised? The menu bar items get orphaned? Or you have differing behaviour?
Liftyee··on I hate soldering
Hard to justify for a beginner? Sure.

"Can't tell the difference?" is not true, once you're dealing with small enough parts.

Can I use a magnifier to solder 0.4mm pitch parts? Sure. Would I prefer a binocular microscope? 100%, every time. Both usable, not the same.

Liftyee··on I hate soldering
This sounds like an opinion written by a "clean hands" computer scientist. Electronic engineers have it easy with their soldering - mechanical engineers deal with much more stubborn oils, greases, metal swarf...

Isopropyl alcohol removes all the soldering residue. Personally, all it took is decent equipment and some practice to make soldering enjoyable. It can be frustrating at times, but usually the problem is (lack of) heat, flux or patience.

Liftyee··on Screenshots of Old Desktop OSes
I'm curious - how often do you use the scrollbar? For me, almost never (or only as an indication of progress through a document). I'm scrolling only with wheel or arrows or PgUp etc.

Perhaps though this is learned behaviour from scrollbars being tiny. I'd rather have the extra screen space. The scrollbar is usually a nuisance when I accidentally touch it (touchscreen) and the page jumps away.

Liftyee··on First tunnel element of the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel immersed
I'm amazed that engineers can make submerged tunnels work and that leaks don't (literally) sink the whole plan.
Liftyee··on Singapore introduces caning for boys who bully others at school
I was only punished like this once as a child. I don't remember what it was for, but I only remember the punishment. So anecdotally, it doesn't seem to work.
Liftyee··on Motherboard sales 'collapse' amid unprecedented shortages fueled by AI
I should have upgraded my GTX 1060 6GB last year.

Last year I said I should have upgraded my 1060 last year.

I bought it second hand 7 years ago and it is still the same price.

I don't do much gaming, and it runs Immich / etc light inference just fine. One thing I don't regret is getting 32GB of DDR4 when I built the system around the time of the GPU upgrade.

Liftyee··on Shrdlu
Neat little example of what's possible even using a restricted and standardised language. One could imagine using this as an interface layer for humans to interact with robots or industrial systems today. Of course, it would still be slower than an old-fashioned control panel with tactile, individual controls - but there may be some niches in which this language-based contextual control method has advantages.
Liftyee··on ASML became the chokepoint for cutting-edge chips
If ASML could do it, China will also do it. It's just a matter of development time and resources, both of which are plentiful in China.
Liftyee··on Easyduino: Open Source PCB Devboards for KiCad
Neat project. These popular "commodity" devboard designs have been remixed and copied so much that it was just missing an open-source design to slot into many existing projects. I can imagine designing a board using one of these designs as a "template" but adding whatever capabilities I need, then knowing it fits a standard footprint.
Liftyee··on The woes of sanitizing SVGs
I'm not familiar with the details of real software development, so I don't know why it's not possible to just "not give the SVG part of the code internet access" or "perform sanitization on post-decoding (url, hex, etc) data".

Is it because the SVG parser/renderer being used is an entire library, and it would be prohibitive to write your own SVG parser/renderer or insert your own code into the existing one?

Liftyee··on The Joy of Folding Bikes
Praised by most customers, probably. As an engineer I appreciate Bike Friday's attention to detail and I own a good few "artisan" devices myself, but the reality is that most people want a mass-produced bike that is "good enough" within their budget.

There's no doubt that your bike is higher quality than the Decathlon one, but the average customer doesn't appreciate how well engineered it is or how many patents (??) are involved.

Liftyee··on USB Cheat Sheet (2022)
Out of curiosity, what do you use the higher 20gbps transfer speeds for? Video production?

I use USB-C displays, but they run in DP Alt mode. I don't have many (any?) storage devices that can max out a 20gbps connection, and usually don't exceed 5gbps

Liftyee··on USB Cheat Sheet (2022)
The wires count seems to be the number of conductors in the cable (i.e. the number of wires you'll find if you cut a cable in half, including ground and power).

It's true that the actual data is sent over a lower number of diffpairs.

I suspect the shield is not included in the number of wires, since all USB cables have a shield (not sure if usb 3.0 has an extra return ground wire for high speed).

Liftyee··on The West forgot how to make things, now it’s forgetting how to code
I wonder if the real problem is short-term thinking in culture and incentivised by markets. By optimising next quarter's profits over investing in long-term growth and capability, things like this happen.
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