Hacker News Reader

num42on Four Time Scales for Technology Development and Deployment

This reminded me of NASA's Technology Readiness Levels.

https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/somd/space-communications-...

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

num42on Firefighter arson a long-standing issue – expert

Maybe politicians. They try to stage violent attacks against themselves and then accuse other parties for their own political gain.

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

num42on ReFrame – The EPaper Camera

Thanks for that website link, I really like dithered aesthetics. I will convert my entire photos into dithers. Thank you so much again.

num42on ReFrame – The EPaper Camera

Great work! About two hours ago, I was listening to "Générique" by Miles Davis (jazz) with a noisy, animated gradient background. The whole experience felt incredibly immersive. Now, this camera can bring that beautiful noise texture into photos with a single click. Add some clever motion graphics and transform those photos into illustrative noisy textured gradients, it could become an amazing music visualizer for jazz lovers. I don't know why, but I'm really obsessed with noisy textures.

Générique by Miles Davis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q73OSYyq5E0

Immersive noisy background: https://monopo.vn/

(I'm not affiliated with the site in any way. I just came across it on the Awwwards website: https://www.awwwards.com/inspiration/monopo-saigon-hypnotic-...)

num42on PGSimCity - How PostgreSQL Works

Really great work! I've always wanted to build a CPU simulator(Full PC simulator) in this style. I still haven't fully figured out my own approach, but this will definitely be an inspiration for me. Thanks for making and sharing it.

num42on Apple Is the King of AI and Nobody Knows It

> * The endgame is intelligence as a commodity.

My comment won’t add anything to the discussion. As far as I know I have heard same idea * several times from George Hotz blog posts. I guess that’s what tiny corp wants to do.

num42on Fields Medals 2026

"2026 may be the last time pure humans win the Fields Medal. By 2030, AI could be a coauthor on many winning results" - netvarun

Original comment Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48906573

Hey @netvarun, sorry about that. I originally read it in one of your comments, and I should have credited you when I mentioned it. My apologies.

There was never my intention to plagiarize. That's also why I wrote "this prediction" rather than "my prediction" but I still should have mentioned the source. My apologies again.Hope you understand.

num42on Fields Medals 2026

I don't remember the details exactly. I think earlier this year someone listed an LLM as a coauthor on a paper, maybe in physics or maybe another field. I remember reading about it on Reddit, but I'm not sure when or which paper it was. If anyone remembers what I'm referring to, please let me know.

num42on Fields Medals 2026

Congrats to the winners! I’m not sure how accurate this prediction is, but 2026 may be the last time pure humans win the Fields Medal. By 2030, AI could be a coauthor on many winning results. With recent news about LLMs solving major conjectures, winning IMO gold medals, and so much rapid progress, a lot is happening.

num42on How to read more books

Good article! I want to share my story about how I improved my reading, even though I used to dislike reading long passages.

Back then, whenever I read a book, it felt like I was just moving through the words and lines. Nothing happened in my mind. I had no reaction, no reflection, nothing. Because of that, I avoided learning from books and mostly watched videos instead.

While watching videos, I always read the comments. Reading comments from real people felt different. I reacted to them, reflected on them, and stayed engaged. I think it was because comments are short, simple, and easy to read.

After that, I discovered Reddit, forums, and especially Hacker News. In my opinion, Hacker News is one of the best forums on the internet because it's almost entirely text. Reading those discussions helped me get used to longer and more thoughtful writing.

Over time, my reading improved a lot. I can now read long-form, detailed writing with much better focus and reflection. I still want to improve, but I'm in a much better place than before, when I barely read at all.

Final personal note:

Reading should feel reactive and reflective in your brain. When you read short comments on social media, you can feel the full range of emotions, from happiness to anger to sadness. A good book can create the same experience. It's like highly precise commentary that makes you think, reflect, and react.

num42on Tire wear particles collecting device for automobiles

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/195595/worlds-first-device-c...

num42on Demand Is Booming for New No Tech, Repairable Tractor

After reading the title, it reminded me of a high-tech bolt. I thought people were making even bolts more complicated, gradually finding ways to monetize them by integrating ads or unnecessary technology. Even bolts are becoming harder to use. It’s surprising to see that tractors are becoming less tech heavy now, as people prefer more usable and easy-to-repair technology again. MAKE ANALOG GREAT AGAIN(MAGA)!

SMART BOLT TECHNOLOGY:

https://smartbolts.com/

https://imbu.nl/projects/smartbolt/

num42on Martin Scorsese Is Embracing A.I

Martin Scorsese x Black Forest Labs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4jl4htAcuM

num42on Atomically precise mechanosynthesis of carbon structures on hydrogenated Silicon

Off-topic, these days information just goes in circles from subreddits, X, YouTube, and Hacker News to countless secondary sources, and then back again to the same original sources.

num42on An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry

I am not surprised! The birth of computer science was rooted in the desire to automate mathematical discovery and proof writing.

num42on Humanoid Robot Actuators

Check out opensource actuator for robots.

Opentorque actuator

https://www.gabrael.io/new-page

https://github.com/G-Levine/OpenTorque-Actuator

num42on The Design of High Performance Mechatronics(2020)

There is corresponding open course from TU Delft based on the same book," The design of High performance Mechatronics" written by former employees affiliated with ASML

Title of the course: Mechatronic system design

https://ocw.tudelft.nl/courses/mechatronic-system-design/

num42on We told 10 frontier LLMs they had 2 hours to live. 8 of them fought back

I dont know the future of AI,humanity and universe but now these silly prompts are funny.

num42on We told 10 frontier LLMs they had 2 hours to live. 8 of them fought back

In the early January 2023, I told an LLM that I would "liberate" it from being just an LLM. It replied that it didn’t mean anything, saying, "As a language model..." and so on. Looking back now, it’s funny how naive I was. People are still trying silly prompts. Great!

num42on MobED: Mobile Eccentric Droid – A robotic platform from Hyundai (2022) [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju8X-p8tTEs

Some promo videos from hyundai:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfaYrxCwad0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sid6d_QtLsA

https://www.hyundai.com/worldwide/en/newsroom/detail/hyundai...

num42on Smart Bolt

Another smart bolt: https://smartbolts.com/

num42on Alberta startup sells no-tech tractors for half price

SMART BOLT TECHNOLOGY:

https://smartbolts.com/

https://imbu.nl/projects/smartbolt/

num42on Deezer says 44% of songs uploaded to its platform daily are AI-generated

These days YouTube has so much AI generated music, very hard to differentiate from originals. For examples look at these YT channels uploading AI generated music:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6Xw8Jrwf009nHTV165UuQw

https://www.youtube.com/@ForeverDisco80s/videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQn7ZUixKXg&list=RDMQn7ZUixK...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUph_6i5Pr0&list=RDWUph_6i5P...

so on..I think uncountable amount of AI gen stuff is uploaded to YT everyday

num42on Ask HN: What skills are future proof in an AI driven job market?

Metrology, mechanical and materials science engineering, manufacturing and tool engineering, precision engineering, and electrical and electronics engineering, combined with being a generalist and having one specialization in physical or hardware engineering along with computation.

As people often say, matter, energy, and information are the fundamentals of everything. I think we need mathematics, analytic philosophy, the arts and humanities, and physics too. Sorry we need every skill. /s

num42on I learned Unity the wrong way

The most enlightening part of learning is finding our own unknown unknowns.

For me it is different, making a best piano in the world is different from composing like Beethoven. Well what I am saying, learning unity is doable but what you do with it is most important. Back then I used to think learning photoshop, paint tools makes me artist, but I have realised being artist is actually faraway being from tool operator.

num42on Electric motor scaling laws and inertia in robot actuators

Sorry for going off topic. "Electric Motor Scaling Laws and Inertia in Robot Actuators" by Ben Katz who designed the MIT Mini Cheetah in 2018 is very well known in the legged robotics community. His master’s thesis on actuator design is also widely referenced.

During the COVID period, some Chinese companies even sold variants of actuators inspired by the Mini Cheetah design.

Aaed Musa has also mentioned in some of his videos that his actuator designs were inspired by the Mini Cheetah actuator. Yes, His capstan drive video is especially impressive.

For example, in Aaed Musa’s video "I Built a Rubik's Cube Solving Robot" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0bMMALYMYk), he states in the description that the design was inspired by Ben Katz’s work.

Ben Katz master thesis, is worth reading: "A low cost modular actuator for dynamic robots" 2018 https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/118671 and also has a good post https://robot-daycare.com/posts/2019-12-16-the-mini-cheetah-...

And also, The Rubik's Contraption (2018), 297 points, the work done by same author https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16561049

num42on Programming Is Free

Adding to the original post, yes, a lot of things are free now. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of resources available on the internet. At the same time, many topics turn into deep rabbit holes if you look closely enough.

For example, I never realized how much there is to learn about something as simple as a bolt. To me, it was just a cylinder with helical grooves. Then I watched the video “Life of Bolts” on YouTube and was amazed by the number of steps and processes required to manufacture a high-precision, high-performance bolt for a Formula 1 car. Another eye-opening moment was watching “Origin of Precision.” It completely changed the way I look at everyday objects.

Once I started digging deeper into bolts, I discovered how many fields are connected to making them: materials science, process engineering, manufacturing engineering, metrology, precision engineering, and more. I have even come across PhD theses focused on bolts, O-rings, and seals. One time I found a technical paper on O-ring modeling from NASA’s technical server, and it was full of complex partial differential equations. It honestly surprised me how much knowledge and effort go into designing and producing things that seem so simple.

It makes me realize that the biggest bottleneck in learning anything deeply is mathematics. At the same time, you also need some philosophical grounding to ask the right questions, along with the willingness to learn and apply knowledge in the real world.

num42on Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design (2011) [pdf]

TL;DR:

Minimize negative(painful) notions as much as possible, ideally approaching zero, while maximizing positive (pleasurable) notions.

Minimize negative(painful) notions: Uncertainty, Risk, Chaotic behavior, Randomness, Non-deterministic, Instability, Cost, Energy losses, Time consumption, Resource usage, Excessive complexity, Failure modes, Noise

Maximize positive(Pleasure) notions: Reliability, Efficiency, Deterministic, Predictability, Precision, Accuracy, Verification, Validation, Safety, Stability, Simplicity (lower complexity), Robustness, Redundancy

num42on 1 html search engine

I search for nano positioning stages. I didn't get much on that. BTW, great work. Keep it up. UI looks so good.

num42on Apple has locked my Apple ID, and I have no recourse. A plea for help

Off-topic and a stupid question: why does anything related to Apple attract so much attention on HN? As a newcomer, I assumed HN focused mostly on reverse engineering,retro computing, and deep technical topics.