Hacker News Reader

c_o_n_v_e_xon Sam Altman's home targeted in second attack

>People who shoot someone or throw bombs at someone even though that someone never did something against them

I think the point is that there's going to be an increasingly large percentage of the populace who think that the AI bosses / billionaire class did indeed do something against them.

c_o_n_v_e_xon Super Micro Shares Plunge 25% After Co-Founder Charged in $2.5B Smuggling Plot

Having previously worked in a few DCs in SG, I was incredulous when I saw those sales figures.

c_o_n_v_e_xon Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story

I suppose the extreme take would be that it becomes a de facto bounty hunting platform

c_o_n_v_e_xon Samsung releases new all-in-one heat pump for residential use

>Having everything in one unit is a recipe for a single point of failure disaster.

They're optimizing for something other than resilience.

c_o_n_v_e_xon Dude, where's my supersonic jet?

I agree with your market analysis. Private jets are often referred to as "time machines" given how much time HNW / exec travelers can save. There's a market segment that's willing to pay a high premium for reduced travel time.

c_o_n_v_e_xon Dan Brown: The human species has never created a technology it hasn't weaponized

Humans weaponizing water flow (or lack there of) has been routinely used through out history.

c_o_n_v_e_xon Installing a mini-split AC in a Brooklyn apartment

You're paying for:

- Trade licensing fees

- Liability insurance

- Medical insurance

- A vehicle to move equipment around

- Vehicle insurance

- Tools to complete the job

- The time taken to drive to your residence

- The time taken for the quote itself

- The expertise required to correctly spec/quote equipment

- The tradesperson driving to the city office

- The tradesperson applying AND paying for a city permit to do the work

- The tradesperson driving to a supply house

- Purchasing the equipment on credit

- Transporting the equipment back to your house

- Ripping out and disposing the old equipment (if applicable)

- The time and expertise to install the equipment correctly

- The time vacuum out the lineset

- The time charge the equipment properly with refrigerant

- The time commission the system and make sure it's running properly

- The tradesperson driving BACK to the customer house to be present for a city inspection

c_o_n_v_e_xon Ask HN: What are you working on? (July 2025)

email sent!

c_o_n_v_e_xon A Quantum Gravimeter for GPS Backup

>Terrestial transmitters can be much closer.

Making them nice targets for the enemy

c_o_n_v_e_xon Ask HN: What are you working on? (July 2025)

Living in Australia and interested in buying a business, I can attest to biz4sale-type sites being a real problem.

c_o_n_v_e_xon Trump exempts phones, computers, chips from ‘reciprocal’ tariffs

There's a lot more to manufacturing than "just" being a line assembly worker.

The factories have to be designed and built. This includes all of the manufacturing processes, equipment, tooling, automation, etc. All of which are done by reasonably paid, middle class engineers and trades.

Then you have all the 2nd order businesses that get stimulated. Energy must be provided. Mines, mills, refineries, etc. to make the raw materials. The packaging for the end products. Logistics for supplies and end products.

All of the value above used to be in the US but has been captured overseas for decades now.

c_o_n_v_e_xon USAID funding freeze disrupts global tuberculosis control efforts

Labelling Singapore as a petro-state is a stretch. Collecting taxes from refining is a very different thing than reaping the benefits of royalties from oil production.

c_o_n_v_e_xon Nvidia Stock May Fall as DeepSeek's 'Amazing' AI Model Disrupts OpenAI

This was also in the news last year: https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell...

c_o_n_v_e_xon Nvidia Stock May Fall as DeepSeek's 'Amazing' AI Model Disrupts OpenAI

SG is very small country and yet someone was buying 1/3 of the volume of the US market in Q3.

The DC market in SG has a very low vacancy rate meaning there's very little available space.... i.e. where are all those GPUs going if the market has very little space available?

To play's devils advocate, this could be an Nvidia reporting quirk with all of sales in SE Asia being reported as "Singapore" but even then, the numbers still piqued my interest.

c_o_n_v_e_xon Nvidia Stock May Fall as DeepSeek's 'Amazing' AI Model Disrupts OpenAI

https://techwireasia.com/2023/12/what-did-singapore-do-to-nv...

Having previously worked in the DC space in Singapore, when I read the sales numbers, I was in disbelief. IMO, there was only a very low probability that all those GPUs remained in Singapore...

c_o_n_v_e_xon Celestial Navigation for Drones

Not NSA - you'd have someone from US Bureau of Industry and Security tracking you down (no pun) for most likely violating export controls if you were to openly share information on building the technology.

Celestial tracking is a dual use technology (See 7A004 or 7A104) - https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/documents/regulations-docs...

c_o_n_v_e_xon UK's hardware talent is being wasted

There's very good simulation tools available but scrappy startups can rarely afford them. You also need to people who know how to use the tools appropriately.

c_o_n_v_e_xon Wends of Texas

6th gen Texan here with a very german sounding last name. My dad's side of family immigrated from Switzerland through Galveston. The original surname was sprinkled with umlauts. Someone tried Americanizing the name so people could pronounce but we still have pronunciation problems... and with the new spelling, French people think I'm one of their own.

c_o_n_v_e_xon Study asks: Can cell phone signals help land a plane?

There were far fewer planes in the air before GPS. In order to squeeze more planes into the same volume of air (aka "airspace density" or "airspace efficiency") you require high performance navigation systems. GPS isn't just used for navigation (getting from point A to point B), it's also for helping maintain separation between planes.

The US's navaid infrastructure is old. Not all airports have the "luxury" of ILS.

c_o_n_v_e_xon Why don't you move abroad?

>You reach a point where you are a foreigner wherever you are.

I left the US in 2009 to move to Singapore. After 14 years in SG, I moved to Australia. During my time overseas, my accent has picked up hints of Australian. When I go back to the US, one of the hardest things for me is being asked "where are you from?" I get the same question in Australia. The lack of belonging is tough.

c_o_n_v_e_xon Cargo Airships Are Happening

Or you try to capture water that's already condensed... cloud droplets.

c_o_n_v_e_xon Air Con: $1697 for an on/off switch

In theory, connected devices that control large energy loads ("large" on a household level of energy consumption) can be coordinated at scale to "attack" the power grid via instantaneously switching 1000's of units on and off at the same time.

That being said it's more likely the hardware mfg is just trying to claw in more margin.

c_o_n_v_e_xon Ask HN: Where to find domain experts for 1:1 tutoring?

There's a few companies out there that provide these "expert networks." GLG or AlphaSights

Not necessarily tutors, but I run into the same issue in Product Management. I need to do customer research, but the process of finding people to speak with is time consuming and very much like sales. To have 10 conversations, I'll probably have reached out to at least 40-50 people. I have to build a "funnel" of people in order to maintain having a few conversations per week.

Note: I experience this problem at startups that don't have existing customer bases. With companies that have existing customer bases, finding people to validate ideas and get feedback is not arduous .

c_o_n_v_e_xon Eating the Birds of America: Audubon's Culinary Reviews of America's Birds

Sandhill cranes are omnivorous and have the nickname "ribeye of the sky." I've never tried myself as I no longer live in the US, but I've heard they are very good.

c_o_n_v_e_xon China's manufacturers are going broke

>The US government has put a lot of effort into isolating China from the Phillippines.

Let's not forget that some of China's isolation is self inflicted. China's nine dash line map, claiming 90% of the South China Sea, only drove their neighbors into the US's open arms.

c_o_n_v_e_xon Launch HN: Synnax (YC S24) – Unified hardware control and sensor data streaming

Using vernacular from the industrial automation industry, how is this different from a historian?

A sensor is physically wired to an input on a PLC which collects data, the historian software communicates with the PLC/DCS and saves instrument/sensor data for further review.

c_o_n_v_e_xon DUNE scientists observe first neutrinos with prototype detector at Fermilab

To jam, presumably you need to know precisely where the receivers are.

c_o_n_v_e_xon Quantum Physicists Found a New, Safer Way to Navigate

>They are a more accurate version of an IMU to use for dead reckoning. They will still drift over time.

A magnetometer is a completely different device than an IMU.

A sensitive enough magnetometer coupled with accurate magnetic maps can act as a GNSS alternative, albeit not as spatially accurate. There's a handful of companies currently working on quantum PNT and magnetic/gravity map matching solutions. I work for one of them.

c_o_n_v_e_xon Quantum Physicists Found a New, Safer Way to Navigate

All magnetic compasses are magnetometers, but not all magnetometers are compasses. Some magnetometers output absolute magnetic field strength (scalar) while vector magnetometers output heading and strength of a field.

c_o_n_v_e_xon Fiber optic drone control beats any RF jammer

Anti-jamming is the intermediate goal. Fly by fiber allows the pilot to retain control of the drone while over the battlefield.

With a completely autonomous drone in contested space (presumably with EW around), there's no way for a pilot to tell the drone "fly a little to the left to see what's behind that tree." Each drone has very specific use cases.