HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

obmelvin

1,093 karma · joined October 24, 2015

<my_username> is my gmail

Wording below directly taken from ChuckMcM's profile (https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ChuckMcM). I feel the same way.

Important: If you are looking at this profile because you thought something I posted was Wrong, dismissive, disrespectful, douchebaggish, what have you, I would really like to hear from you so that I could understand how you got that impression. I won't get mad, I won't "retaliate" I just want to hear what you have to say. It is important to me to communicate clearly and if something I said struck you that way then I failed and I would like to correct it.

Note: Any comments on this site attributed to me are my opinions and not those of any current, past, or future employer. Consider yourself so notified.

submissionscomments
obmelvin··on Nissan's third generation e-POWER powertrain
You may be interested to read / watch videos of Audi's RS Q e-tron they raced in the Dakar Rally and even won with this type of powertrain - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_RS_Q_e-tron
obmelvin··on My weird new hobby: Wandering around Tokyo on Google Maps
A few years ago while driving/moving from IL back to CA, I saw a Polaris Slingshot towing a U-Haul trailer across Illinois, Iowa and then we saw it again in Nebraska later that day. It was awesome!!

I probably have a picture if anyone really wants to see (I am definitely a car spotter)

obmelvin··on Accelerating GPT-5.6 Sol Ultrafast
I agree with the diminishing returns on spend, but worth noting that when on an Enterprise seat and paying API rates, I'd say that you can easily spend above 200/mo before seeing the curve begin to flatten

Obviously there are a ton of ways to spend money / tokens and people have different levels of experience that will put this ceiling at very different levels for different people.

obmelvin··on Pixel Watch 5
I'm quite curious. Friends I've talked to have been very pessimistic about accurately measuring blood sugar via a watch.

If they are actually able to get an optical measurement which is good enough for MoM or WoW trends, I'd agree it's pretty big even if they can't provide anything precise enough for real time / daily use. Just being able to roughly validate diet changes for women with PCOS could be very impactful and that's the smallest of the 3 populations you called out.

obmelvin··on Magnitude 7.4 Earthquake – 5 km S of San José del Palmar, Colombia
I don't see the point of focusing the conversation on Mexico City. You may be far enough from the fault line to have plenty of time to react, but not everyone does (as you acknowledge). You may not have tsunamis, but that doesn't change the fact that one needs to know WHAT to react to.

You are welcome to think it is ridiculous for needing 5 seconds to process what alert is going off. But the simple reality is no good disaster plan should assume that everyone will immediately understand what is happening.

obmelvin··on Magnitude 7.4 Earthquake – 5 km S of San José del Palmar, Colombia
Before one can action one needs time to read and process whether the alert is for earthquake, tsunami, child abduction, etc
obmelvin··on NASA figured out how to keep its Voyager 2 probe running for another year
I can't edit, but realize GP said 'project', so my comment would've been more helpful to the parent of that comment.
obmelvin··on NASA figured out how to keep its Voyager 2 probe running for another year
FWIW, that project appears to be a passion project from someone who has gathered materials. It is NOT real JPL simulator code.
obmelvin··on NASA figured out how to keep its Voyager 2 probe running for another year
In most cases that would indicate an organizational failure. However, if something is trillions of miles away, and wrong commands could break communication etc, I'd probably just stick with the most experienced person as well.
obmelvin··on A.I. companies are recruiting electricians and carpenters by the thousands
It can also be less
obmelvin··on Engineering management after the cost of code collapsed
You discount people's blogs based on them having a non-western name? Maybe I've misunderstood your comment, but the domain is just their name.
obmelvin··on Apple's new SpeechAnalyzer API, benchmarked against Whisper and its predecessor
To be clear, I'm talking about high word error rate with parakeet vs whisper, not post processing and cleaning up my speech. Re: being faithful to what was said, one small example, Whisper will often put ellipses when I pause.
obmelvin··on Apple's new SpeechAnalyzer API, benchmarked against Whisper and its predecessor
Parakeet is certainly faster on my machine (m3 max), but I can't stand using it over Whisper for dictating my prompts. It makes a lot more mistakes, possibly because (like you mentioned) large portions of the speech will pause / stutter as I think about what to include.

With whisper v3 turbo, I can almost always live with the few mistakes because the overall stream-of-thought word-salad I provide is still clear at a high level. The bits and pieces of context seem to help, that I might leave out if typing and focused more on traditional conciseness / clean writing. With parakeet, I needed to do frequent editing even for shorter bits of speech.

I realize some applications prioritize the latency.

obmelvin··on Herdr: One terminal to rule them all
I get your point completely. I was (naively, I suppose) pretty surprised when I realized how low most people's threshold is to add a logo and claim a client/brand.

I've seen VCs very much encourage this (and shadier) behavior. There's a line between hustling / being an entrepreneur and actively trying to mislead people... clearly we don't all see that line being in the same place (:

edit: to be clear, I didn't mean to make such a broad statement about VCs. I'm sure plenty of people do this on their own

obmelvin··on Herdr: One terminal to rule them all
I've seen a lot of companies list logos if just a single engineer or team is using the product.
obmelvin··on Apple is about to make Hide My Email useless
Physical machines can be confusing too :)

When I was in Italy last summer, I couldn't figure out how to pay with my card at the machine in a small town, where you'd park to walk into an ancient city on a hill*. I asked two Italian woman for help and even with being able to read the Italian + having paid with coins themselves, they struggled to help me understand the combination of steps required to pay with card.

obmelvin··on Show HN: Claudraband – Claude Code for the Power User
It isn't ones duty to develop for everybody. If someone makes something for their own use case and shares it, that's fine.
obmelvin··on Claude Sonnet 4.6
I believe they just mean setting the model back to 4.5
obmelvin··on Apple introduces new AirTag with longer range and improved findability
And people have economic issues in Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America.

People of all ethnicities all over the world steal. Plenty of immigrants work extremely hard and don't steal.

I truly can't believe my statement was 'controversial' and down vote worthy. I mean who cares about the HN points...but really??

obmelvin··on Apple introduces new AirTag with longer range and improved findability
People steal due to economic issues, not their ethnicity.
obmelvin··on Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration
I could've made my comment more clear. Definitely missing a statement along the lines of "and then after creating, you click 'set up billing' and link the accounts in 15 seconds"

I did edit my message to mention I had GCP billing set up already. I'm guessing that's one of the differences between those having trouble and those not.

obmelvin··on Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration
I don't understand the multiple posts / comments I've seen about this.

I google `gemini API key` and the first result* is this docs page: https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/api-key

That docs page has a link in the first primary section on the page. Sure, it could be a huge CTA, but this is a docs page, so it's kinda nice that it's not gone through a marketing make over.

* besides sponsored result for AI Studio

(Maybe I misunderstood and all the complaints are about billing. I don't remember having issues when I added my card to GCP in the past, but maybe I did)

obmelvin··on The Framework Desktop is a beast
During peak hours (4-9pm daily) in San Diego you can be paying nearly $1/kWh (generation + transmission cost) to SDGE, so at least in certain areas, the running cost is very much relevant even for consumers.
obmelvin··on OpenAI says it has evidence DeepSeek used its model to train competitor
Agreed. They accomplished a lot with distillation and optimization - but there's little reason to believe you don't also need foundational models to keep advancing. Otherwise won't they run into issues training on more synthetic data?

In a way this is something most companies have been doing with their smaller models, DeepSeek just supposedly* did it better.

obmelvin··on Mysterious New Jersey drone sightings prompt call for 'state of emergency'
You're arguing with me about points I haven't made.
obmelvin··on Mysterious New Jersey drone sightings prompt call for 'state of emergency'
I haven't made any claims about the recent sightings. Some have clearly been planes and people are just looking up more.

My original point was and is that there are many laws restricting what the military is able to do domestically.

obmelvin··on Mysterious New Jersey drone sightings prompt call for 'state of emergency'
1) there was a very public delay to shoot down anything even remotely above people. They just aren’t going to shoot something down over a city

From the WSJ article I mentioned: “ Federal law prohibits the military from shooting down drones near military bases in the U.S. unless they pose an imminent threat. Aerial snooping doesn’t qualify, though some lawmakers hope to give the military greater leeway”

2) as you probably know, the pilot doesn’t really guide the missile…calling the pilot an idiot just clearly shows you have an axe to grind. Also, it’s not like the seekers are calibrated to take out balloons.

3) regarding EW - the tech is obviously still evolving and not always deployed “ U.S. officials said they didn’t know who operated the drones in Nevada, a previously unreported incursion, or for what reason. A spokeswoman said the facility has since upgraded a system to detect and counter drones.”

Also, it is certainly possible to harden drones against EW as is being done in Ukraine on an evolving basis

obmelvin··on Mysterious New Jersey drone sightings prompt call for 'state of emergency'
The military isn’t allowed to shoot down drones in the US. There was a WSJ story last month about drones flying over Langley for 2 weeks. All the general could do is stand on the roof and watch
obmelvin··on Forced to upgrade
Fair :) I was overlooking that this latest computer could be an older intel machine that didn't receive the latest OS, thus won't still still have years of security only updates.
obmelvin··on Forced to upgrade
Why can't your dad keep using his existing computer? Sure, if you make your living on the computer the new laptops are great. But if he's just checking email, photos, etc - I don't know why his computer needs to become a paperweight
Page 1 of 17Next →