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pesfandiar

1,002 karma · joined April 5, 2014

https://www.pesfandiar.com
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pesfandiar··on Houthis used Claude Code to develop missile guidance software: Anthropic
They probably used Microsoft Windows and Google Chrome too.
pesfandiar··on Ask HN: What physical publication do you still buy?
And weekly is the right cadence for seeing the bigger picture for news too.
pesfandiar··on Kimi K3-256k
"256k ought to be enough for anybody"
pesfandiar··on CarPlay Is Additive
There are legitimate reasons to get help from LLMs when writing, including being an ESL. The comment has substance.
pesfandiar··on Don't post generated/AI-edited comments. HN is for conversation between humans
Hear hear. And like many other aspects of accessibility, it will help a huge number of people who may not have any severe issues. e.g. non-native English speakers using LLM-powered edits.
pesfandiar··on Raspberry Pi Pico as AM Radio Transmitter
Mea culpa.

Without the proper knowledge or measurement equipment, I observed that the audio would fade out after a 30 cm distance. Combined with running it for mere seconds to test and record a demo, I assumed to be in the clear with the spirit of the regulations. Appreciate the reminder to be responsible with RF.

pesfandiar··on Raspberry Pi Pico as AM Radio Transmitter
Highly recommend his Pico-based microcontroller course: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDqMkB5cbBA4GisLzRSqw...

The PWM-based modulation is interesting, but as an amateur, I couldn't fully understand it or trust that the radio receiver reliably picks up the duty cycle as amplitude.

pesfandiar··on In Tehran
> We're not the world police.

That has been the bargain since WWII though. Pax Americana meant the US owned and enforced a global order, in return international trade and finance ran on its platform. Most Americans can't fathom how bad the alternative is to not being the world police.

pesfandiar··on Time Station Emulator
I'm surprised and impressed that this works. I would've guessed phones have enough RF shielding and low-pass filters in the audio path to prevent this.
pesfandiar··on Starting a startup at 25, 35, or 45 is not the same decision
The financial gains from starting a startup have a wildly varied distribution. The analysis won't be very practical if we assume any meaningful exit at any age. Not sure how a "weak exit" is considered the most common outcome.
pesfandiar··on Ask HN: Share your personal website
https://www.pesfandiar.com/blog/ I recently started writing blog posts again as I'm messing around with microcontrollers
pesfandiar··on Warren Buffett steps down as Berkshire Hathaway CEO after six decades
Poe's Law could very well apply here.
pesfandiar··on Ask HN: Is it just me or techno-optimism died in the past few years?
The signs of techno-feudalism have always been around in fragments (platform/cloud landlords, rent-seeking, gig work, ...), but the promise of hitting gold, the idea of democratized innovation, and the reliance on mass tech labour fueled the techno-optimism. Now, the heavily power-centralizing nature of AI and the shrinking reliance on tech labour have diminished the optimism.
pesfandiar··on Chips for the Rest of Us
That might change if geopolitical tensions fragment the global supply chains.
pesfandiar··on Ask HN: What were the best books you read in 2025?
As a parent, I found "The Anxious Generation" by Jonathan Haidt insightful and eye-opening.
pesfandiar··on C++ move semantics from scratch (2022)
Mathematics doesn't need to remain backward compatible.
pesfandiar··on Replacement.ai
It's wrong to assume the owners will share the productivity gains with everyone, especially when reliance on labour will be at its lowest, and the power structure of a data/AI economy is more concentrated than anything we've seen before. IMO, the assumption that some form of basic income or social welfare system will be funded voluntarily is as delusional as thinking communism would work.
pesfandiar··on Ask HN: When will the AI bubble burst?
Do you mean the bubble in the financial markets, or disillusionment of capital assuming they get to lay off half the employees for the same output?
pesfandiar··on Ask HN: Anyone switched from software to physical world engineering?
Can I ask what drew you to civil?
pesfandiar··on Ask HN: Anyone switched from software to physical world engineering?
For sure. The engineering jobs typically have a lower pay and you'd have to start out as a junior, so higher income won't be a reason for the switch.
pesfandiar··on Ask HN: Should we stop worrying that AI will replace developer jobs?
The delineation between programming and software engineering is arbitrary at best. Everybody understands the "engineering" in software engineering has nothing to do with other certified engineering practices, so the hair splitting here strikes me as mere gatekeeping of titles. Responsibility and accountability for outcomes have always been a requirement regardless of the title.
pesfandiar··on Google has eliminated 35% of managers overseeing small teams in past year
It's a rather awkward role as you have to carve out a maker's schedule within a manager's schedule [1]. As others have mentioned, it only makes sense as the person ramps up for full management or decides against that career path.

[1] https://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

pesfandiar··on Claude Sonnet 4 now supports 1M tokens of context
Your analogy would be much better with giving workers a work horse with a mind of its own. Trucks come with clear instructions and predictable behaviour.
pesfandiar··on Ask HN: US expats/nomads, how do you find remote-out-of-US jobs in US?
I imagine it's a very crowded and competitive market to work remotely for US companies (and not through a sweat shop agency). The fact that a candidate has emigrated from US shouldn't typically be a big factor.
pesfandiar··on What caused the 'baby boom'? What would it take to have another?
> There's a chance a highly-automated future could reduce our neccesary working hours to those boomtime levels.

This has been the dream since the dawn of time (agriculture is automating food production to some extent). The gains in increased productivity is rarely if ever distributed back to the workers though. We have concrete data on wage stagnation when productivity has been increasing in the past few decades. What makes you think it's different this time?

pesfandiar··on OpenAI delays launch of open-weight model
The society has accepted that computers bring more benefit than harm, but LLMs could still get pushback due to bad PR.
pesfandiar··on Ask HN: Would limiting game size to 5–10 MB spur the creation of novel games?
I've played many creative games created for PICO-8 (mostly on itch.io). The system specs are limited (not just the download size), and yet it has led to innovations around simple game mechanics. They're too niche for app stores though.
pesfandiar··on Ask HN: How to regain the ability to read with focus and learn
Weaning off of social media and other engagement traps would likely help with attention span too.
pesfandiar··on Why Companies Use AI to Cut Costs Instead of Building Ambitious Projects
It's easier to destroy teams than to build anything profitable.
pesfandiar··on You’re a little company, now act like one (2009)
Perhaps it looks less AI generated without perfect punctuation.
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