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bprater

3,816 karma · joined January 13, 2008

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bprater··on Passkeys Are Not a Trap
Passwords always risk a transferrable oops: "Hi friend, this is the bank calling. We've got a big issue: what's your password so we can fix it?"
bprater··on Magic Lantern Is Back
More backstory: before the modern generation of digital cameras - Magic Lantern was one of the early ways to "juice" more power out of early generations of Canon cameras, including RAW video recording.

Today, cameras like Blackmagic and editing platforms like DaVinci handle RAW seamlessly, but it wasn't like this even a few years ago.

bprater··on How to Give a Good Talk
Start your talk by telling a little story about yourself and bridge it to your topic. In many of the talks I've listened to - I've felt more connected instantly to the speaker than any other technique, including comedy.
bprater··on Bootstrapping a side project into a profitable seven-figure business
ProjectionLab offers a lifetime plan. How does this factor into profitability - as they'll never be able to bill this subset of customers again (for the same product)? At what point does this group of users start to degrade the performance of the business - simply because there is no more input for their required output?
bprater··on Show HN: Chili3d – A open-source, browser-based 3D CAD application
Two CAD other projects using OpenCascade worth checking out: Beegraphy and BitbyBit. Beegraphy uses the Rhino/Grasshopper modeling style and BitbyBit sticks with Cascade's ethos.
bprater··on Show HN: I wrote a modern Command Line Handbook
Any alternatives to Gumroad in buying this?
bprater··on Alphabet spins out Taara – Internet over lasers
Half a can of soda. The main electronics controller visible in the photo is likely 20x20 or 30x30mm, the standard for FPV style drones.
bprater··on Just use fucking paper, man
Try different writing devices, too. I love gel pens and mechanical pencils.
bprater··on After my dad died, I ran and sold his company (2018)
"Plus, margin is hard to rally the team around."

"Growth is tangible."

Love the way he packaged this!

bprater··on DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate
DJI isn't just a drone company. They've been actively moving into audio/video production very rapidly. If this ban sticks, they will lose their FCC license, and your Pocket 3 camera (or any DJI device) will no longer be able to connect to your phone.
bprater··on DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate
This is the correct answer. DJI will happily geofence any area in America to be able to keep selling their project here.
bprater··on DJI ban passes the House and moves on to the Senate
Correct. This is why all the drones come with screens on the sticks now.
bprater··on iMessage with PQ3 Cryptographic Protocol
From the article:

>> Although quantum computers with this capability don’t exist yet, extremely well-resourced attackers can already prepare for their possible arrival by taking advantage of the steep decrease in modern data storage costs. The premise is simple: such attackers can collect large amounts of today’s encrypted data and file it all away for future reference. Even though they can’t decrypt any of this data today, they can retain it until they acquire a quantum computer that can decrypt it in the future, an attack scenario known as Harvest Now, Decrypt Later.

bprater··on Jar Jar Binks: The greatest thing that ever happened to Star Wars
This site needs to be removed from Hacker News.
bprater··on Rolls-Royce calls off bets on electric planes, says low-carbon fuel is future
Batteries are heavy. Teslas are very heavy cars. Aircraft are extraordinary light, compared to ground-based vehicles. Even in flight, large aircraft will burn a lot of their fuel during ascent. Electric powered aircraft get to drag around the heavy used batteries until recharge. And then you have to figure out how to refuel. Until a significant change in battery density, electric planes aren't going to be a thing.
bprater··on High-Speed AI Drone Overtakes World-Champion Drone Racers
Only if it's using non-vision sensors. Plenty of FPV drones fly at night, and it's all down to pilot expertise.
bprater··on A celebration of roguelike games
If you want to try Rogue Light, Vampire Survivors has been a blast to play. Similar: Brotato.
bprater··on Google Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro
In case you are curious - they are still holding 120Hz for their flagship, the Pixel 7 Pro.
bprater··on What software engineers can learn from the rapid collapse of Fast
If you want to use a traditional credit card (inside of Paypal or GPay), your options are currently limited. Shopify has the best implementation of this tech with ShopPay ... if you pay at any Shopify merchant, you have the option for Shopify to remember your digits. This streamlines checkout to a click or two. That's the big USP of models like this - speed of checkout.
bprater··on 43 km line of sight with USB WiFi stick (2005)
As a reference, folks that fly quadcopters, drones and flying wings often will transmit at 1 to 2 watts of power using line of sight. (Yes, at the edge of legal.) .02 watts is an insignificant amount of power for radio transmission.
bprater··on Ask HN: How to track flying objects?
Differential GPS is what drones use for light shows or mapping or anything requiring high fidelity. This gives them centimeter-level precision, at the cost of a large sensor array on both the ground and the drone. If you are adding this to a drone, you'd also need to include orientation and other parameters in your data stream, as you'd only be getting XYZ from GPS. Unfortunately, no simple hardware exists for your request.
bprater··on Over 7k SOL ($1.2M) got lost on Solana NFT mint due to a hack
From the article: "The website asked for permission from a Phantom wallet, and it actually drained all SOL from their wallet." It's possible that he didn't spend all his SOL on this project.
bprater··on Mastershot – Web based video editor
Possible to allow dragging the video directly to the timeline?
bprater··on New York Governor announces 100% workforce reduction for non-essential services
This is accurate. Also, most folks that do go to the Hospital with Covid-19 are staying much longer than people who have pneumonia. That means hospital beds that can't be recycled as quickly to get to the next wave of individuals.
bprater··on Teardown of a $1.25 LED Lightbulb
This has impacted the video production business in a positive way over the last couple years. Previously, we had to put on gloves, find a 30 amp fuse and use hot tungsten lights to put together a production. Now folks are using high-quality LED-based lighting, running off battery power, and significantly smaller than a generation ago.
bprater··on A new type of genetic profiling
Lots of paywall entries in Hacker News today. How are you folks viewing the articles?
bprater··on World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency
11,000 scientists, in fact.
bprater··on Drones flying in formation acting as a 3D display (2018)
Differential GPS is needed to achieve this accuracy. At some point in the future, vision systems + coded lighting may suffice, but for now, more elaborate tech is needed to keep these machines in tight formation.
bprater··on Drones flying in formation acting as a 3D display (2018)
Drones like this use DGPS. GPS is inherently inaccurate when you need centimeter level precision, especially with spinny bladed machines in formation. DGPS uses a ground station that helps the drones gain the accuracy they need, but it's much more complex than a simple GPS unit.
bprater··on Tell HN: Stripe brought my business to a dead stop
Folks have been complaining about Paypal in the same way. You buy yourself some safety as a company if you separate your payment gateway from your merchant accounts.

For instance, Authorize.net allows you to bolt on a merchant account, but retains the tokenization of the customers digits. So if one merchant account was restricted, a quick phone call to Authorize.net would allow you to switch over to another ready-to-use merchant account. And you could continue billing via existing subscriptions.

This is similar to the conversation about domain name hosting. Do you allow your name host to also be your web host? Or do you diversify to hedge against getting locked out?

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