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swamp40

3,000 karma · joined December 26, 2012

Electronic design engineer, specializing in ultra-low power Cortex M0+ designs.
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swamp40··on Drones are the new drug mules
Grenades used to cost $8. Crazy how cheap that stuff is.

I just saw Ukraine drone-dropping Russian landmines back onto Russians. Fields full of free munitions.

swamp40··on Drones are the new drug mules
The drones will soon be autonomous. The technology is already here, just not well distributed. EW (except for EMP pulse) will be a dead end.

They are already tracking down signal sources and targeting them. The drones fly around till they get a signal maximum then look down.

I have also seen enemy analog video snooping where they watch the drone take-off point and geo-locate it to bomb.

swamp40··on Drones are the new drug mules
The Ukrainian drone frames are almost all 7"-10" carbon fiber pieces machined out from a sheet in China. About $15. Speedybee (Also China) took over the ESC and controller market by undercutting everyone by 50%. The blades can't be 3D printed because they need to be smooth and strong, but China again sells them for $1. Motors, China. Ukrainian volunteers are assembling them en masse.

China is also selling the same stuff to Russia. Some local manufacturing is being attempted (for instance I have seen a Ukrainian made ESC board and Russian steel frames) but China pricing and quality is really difficult to compete against.

Russia is beginning to ramp up drone production in real factories and I suspect they will eventually out-produce Ukraine, who is easily building 10K/month right now.

swamp40··on Operation Triangulation What You Get When Attack iPhones of Researchers [video]
If I were in charge, I would attack 90% Taiwanese and 10% of my real target. And I would leave Chinese comments everywhere. So I doubt you can point fingers so easily. These are some smart people.
swamp40··on Fake chips, I got stung
If you are insinuating Arrow, Digikey, Mouser, we buy NXP from all these same sources and have never seen a problem.

They all have traceable lot codes and and entire chains of custody that go directly back to the manufacturer. And during Covid we were checking.

That traceability is the reason people buy from them instead of brokers. If you could prove what you are saying it would be a huge scandal.

How do you qualify them as being fakes?

swamp40··on Tiny device is sending updated iPhones into a never-ending DoS loop
I noticed last night our iPad can request Personal Hotspot access even when my iPhone Hotspot is off. There is 0 delay between pressing the hotspot button and my phone beeping. And you can do it as often as you like.

It certainly doesn't go through the internet. I suspect it is direct ipad to iphone communication. I'm going to turn Bluetooth off tonight and see if it goes away.

swamp40··on Be My Eyes’ AI assistant starts rolling out
Being blind is dangerous. Let people decide for themselves what level of risk is acceptable to them.
swamp40··on Be My Eyes’ AI assistant starts rolling out
Goodbye braille.
swamp40··on Amazon will invest up to $4B in Anthropic
If you can train a machine using video, and get it to repeat what you have taught it...and then manufacture millions of them - you have an (almost)-zero-marginal-cost revolution just like you had for software development.

Plus, it's replacing $$$ humans. 4X the productivity while paying for itself in a few months.

swamp40··on Amazon will invest up to $4B in Anthropic
> aren’t that many killer products

You've got to be kidding me. Maybe for text. But what about video training neural nets? I could list killer products for days.

swamp40··on Turning an old car into a powerful generator
120VAC is a waste if you are trying to generate power locally. Unless it's just for a few days or a week.

Better to have 12VDC backups of whatever you need. Lights, refrigerator, fans, electronics. Like a semi cab. Then a wood stove for heat and cooking.

Then the 12VDC can come from solar, wind, batteries, car engines, bicycles, etc.

swamp40··on Quantum Resistance and the Signal Protocol
There are 20 bitcoin wallets worth more than a billion dollars each.

I think it will be pretty obvious when someone gets a quantum computer working.

swamp40··on iPhone 15 USB-C port is 100% standard; MFi certification rumors wrong
> if the manufacturers get together and come up with a replacement, technically superior standard, then it will be permitted

You can see how that is next to impossible, though. You need to test in millions of phones over several years to verify that something is good. Which means it has to get into production. But that isn't allowed. A Catch-22 situation.

swamp40··on iPhone 15 USB-C port is 100% standard; MFi certification rumors wrong
They fail constantly in cheap Chromebooks. And then there is no other way to charge the laptop, so it is junk unless you get inside and replace it.
swamp40··on iPhone 15 USB-C port is 100% standard; MFi certification rumors wrong
The thin pc board inside the USB-C connector is prone to breaking. Angled insertion/removal also leverages the pins soldered to the mainboard and can eventually break them loose.

The Lightning connector was superior in many ways. I have no idea why everyone is celebrating this downgrade.

Now no one is ever able to improve on the connector reliability because the EU has frozen the design forever by enshrining it into law?

swamp40··on TSMC warns AI chip crunch will last another 18 months
Very doubtful. They are already at 7nm.

I'll bet 3 years. Using mostly stolen IP, because they aren't allowed to buy it.

swamp40··on Taming the Flame of Aging: Key Pathway for Chronic Inflammation Revealed
> More importantly, animals receiving STING inhibitors displayed significant enhancements in spatial and associative memory.

I don't suppose there is some herbal STING inhibitor already available OTC?

swamp40··on Senators propose law that bans members of Congress from trading stocks
Ask professional loophole writers to write a law inhibiting their own wealth.

Even more jaded, they will propose it to large media fanfare, but then delay the actual vote for months while they all voice their support for it.

Then they will allow any Senator to vote FOR this if they need a local boost in their approval numbers. But obviously they will carefully make sure that the bill fails by a few key votes.

swamp40··on Ask HN: Is the market bad, or am I having the worst luck job hunting?
Post a screenshot of your resume, with identification redactions. You have 500 programmers here on this thread ready to give you free advice.
swamp40··on Understanding battery performance of IoT devices
I've always been curious how the Ring video camera can go "Live" 5 seconds after you click a button on a web browser, but still last for months on a small battery.
swamp40··on The first room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor?
The video text says: "The sample was thermally deposited on a copper plate."

The video headline says: "Magnetic Property Test of LK-99 Film".

That's how copper acts with a moving super magnet[0], so the video doesn't really show anything.

[0] https://youtu.be/KrH3t1H6fOc?t=50

swamp40··on The World Bakes Under Extreme Heat
> The winters get shorter every year.

Chicago was 6 months of winter this last year. Hate to see how it used to be.

swamp40··on Llama 2
Donating a kidney.
swamp40··on A biological camera that captures and stores images directly into DNA
I've always wondered if the plant/animal shapes and sizes were represented literally in a 3D mapping of the DNA. Like we could already have a picture of what it will become, if we could just decode the DNA sequences properly.

Like we have the sequence of numbers for a jpg, but we've never seen the picture.

swamp40··on A gigantic landslide shows the limit to how high mountains can grow
They would mostly stop because now the Earth is nicely round. Most of the original bumpiness created during Earth's creation has been smoothed out. That's probably what he meant.
swamp40··on Apple Reveals 'Vision Pro' Headset
See-thru is a lot easier design-wise. It would be my choice if it was possible.

Otherwise, a live image works too. Doesn't even need to be 3D.

swamp40··on SEC Sues Binance and CEO Zhao for Breaking US Securities Rules
Whistleblowers get a percentage of the fine. They were sabotaged from within.

But all the bigwigs are offshore.

swamp40··on Effect of repeated low-level red light on myopia prevention
Would love to solve this one day.

Almost positive its a recent phenomenon. Would like to know that as well.

Tesla's father chastised him for reading by candlelight. Thought it would "spoil his eyes".

swamp40··on Black holes might be defects in spacetime
If the sphere had infinite density, wouldn't that mean that every atom in the universe would be inside? So how could our atoms be outside?
swamp40··on Black holes might be defects in spacetime
Because we exist. If infinite density existed, our atoms would be in there.
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