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thdrdton Ex-Googler's startup comes out of stealth with simple, clever robot design

Cheap 3 axis CNC machines are very dumb (I broke a home built machine once because there were no end stops and I programmed it wrong (stepper motors are very powerful)).

And there are professional CNC machine costing waay more than this robot.

I think you are comparing apples with oranges. The price is also for a development kit. So I can imagine the price could be at least half if they sold a few thousand of them.

thdrdton 13% of my website visitors block Google Analytics

This is exactly how you recognize a good internet marketeer. They don't focus on getting a lot of traffic, they focus on getting the right traffic.

thdrdton Frank Gehry started off building cities with his grandma

Personally I like his forms. But I sometimes wonder if he is a good architect. Maybe he should be called a great artist.

The same can be said about some website/app designers. Beautiful designs but barely useable. Maybe those designers should also be called artists.

thdrdton Ask HN: What's the best piece of software you use every day?

I like Blender a lot. Especially since v2.8.

How you can rearrange the interface. The shortcuts. How fast it is.

thdrdton Researchers create air filter that can kill the coronavirus

You are right. 'die' refers to falling apart.

I am not an expert but I believe the reproduction of a virus is more 'chemical' than 'biological'.

thdrdton Don't close your MacBook with a cover over the camera

If they take the efford to alter the circuit they might as well place a camera somewhere else, listen to all your network traffic, install a (hardware) keylogger and what not.

I think you are taking this too far.

People who fear to be tracked buy a laptop in a random store and don't use a provided one.

thdrdton Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3995WX Spotted

I am not sure if this is true for the benchmarks but last week they fixed a bug in (I believe) hair rendering. Render times went from 45 to 5 minutes.

So it all depends in what is being rendered and how a render core is optimized for it.

Also things like b-tree calculations and other algorithms might influence this.

thdrdton Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3995WX Spotted

Well the comparison is between CPU and GPU. Will there come a point that an affordable CPU is faster than a GPU?

Maybe that time will come but I am not sure if that will happen soon.

thdrdton Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3995WX Spotted

If you look at the Blender benchmarks you see that the 64 core Threadripper is faster than any GPU. But the price is steep for that CPU (almost $4000). So while CPU's can be faster the question is if it is relevant. Because you still need a GPU next to that Threadripper for some graphics (if you need graphics).

thdrdton Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3995WX Spotted

I'm not sure your CPU will be faster. I'm using Blender on a Ryzen 9 3900x with a RTX 2070S.

The CPU is never faster than the GPU. CPU + CUDA is way faster, but when I use OptiX (RTX) it is unbelievable how fast it is.

The GPU Raytracer just shines here.

The Blender benchmarks: https://opendata.blender.org/

thdrdton Code only says what it does

"...an excuse to comment rarely"

Well you can also look at it from another angle: unnecessary comments are a distraction and make code less readable.

You are not writing comments just to comment. You write them to make things clear.

Sometimes I also write comments to explain what, but most of the time those are written in large peaces of logic with multiple steps that cannot (or should not) split into multiple functions. But even then those comments tend to be in the form of 'why'.

For example: "// First we do this // Then we do this because.. // And as last step we do this because..."

My personal rule for comments:

If I come back in half a year, would I still understand what is going on here? No? -> Comment!

thdrdton Code only says what it does

Yes, I think your example is better because "// Set the value of b to the number of iterations we'll be making" is almost the same as "/ Set the value of b to 3" when the code explains that `b` is used for the iterations.

thdrdton A terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day at Slack

Yep. I once worked at a company that had backups of all the data. Until they needed a backup and discovered they were not readable. Months of work were gone.

thdrdton Code only says what it does

The only time I place comments is exactly this: to explain why.

Today I just had this example. I placed a little sleep in a loop. But there is absolutely no way to know why it is there. So I inserted a comment to explain the loop is DOSing a server by constantly requesting it and the sleep will reduce the load on that server.

Those comments are not only for others but also for yourself. Even weeks from now it is easy to lose track on why you did things the way you did.

Comments on why are very helpful.

thdrdton I Got My Attention Back (2017)

I believe it is more than the Fear Of Missing Out.

We are very curious creatures.

It can be caused by not liking your job and looking for a way out.

It can be a dopamine addiction.

Most distractions are very easy to process so when you are doing hard work it might be tempting to look for something more easy on the brain.

'Social' is designed to distract us. So unless you turn off all knobs it is hard to ignore.

I believe treatment is done step by step. For most people cold turkey is very hard to do. But the first step is to see for yourself if distractions cause a problem (why change if it is not a problem?).

thdrdton I Got My Attention Back (2017)

Another way to look at it is: stop context switching (all the time).

Personally a lot of context swithing is giving me stress and is draining my energy. It also makes me less productive. So I believe the article is spot on.

thdrdton Bible API

There are some nice talks from Jordan Peterson about the significance of the Bible and it's stories. It has a lot of positive reactions even from atheists.

Maybe you also can appreciate them.

thdrdton The science of mask-wearing hasn’t changed, so why have our expectations?

I don't know why you are downvoted. There is growing evidence that the virus mostly spreads as aerosol and that the amount of particles you inhale dictates how sick you get. The so called super spread events account for over 80% of the transmission.

Bad ventilation and dry air keeps the airosols floating around making it easier for people to inhale them. The spread in meat factories is one example.

But a mask still can prevent a lot of airosols. While also being limited. There was research that shows a lot of air escapes above and below the mask if someone coughs or sneezes.

thdrdton Photographer creates photo portraits from paintings with AI

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ganbrood

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ganbrood/

thdrdton Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper in a new gigapixel image

It's old software but I believe this can also stitch 'flat' panorama's:

http://hugin.sourceforge.net/

See "Stitching flat scanned images": http://hugin.sourceforge.net/tutorials/scans/en.shtml

thdrdton LinkedIn is copying the contents of my clipboard on every keystroke

Well the moment you allow access because you think the app has good intentions it can misuse it later.

Maybe the popup should not show when the user presses 'paste'. But I believe awareness is the first step.

thdrdton Anti-algorithmic music: How Bandcamp is helping artists beat the odds

The "Selling Right Now" feature on the homepage shows it's success. Some years ago you could read what was being sold. Today it's scrolling too fast :)

thdrdton LinkedIn is copying the contents of my clipboard on every keystroke

When you install software from JetBrains and have the registration key on your clipboard it will autofill it into the key input field.

There are so many programs using this that it all boils down to trust.

Personally I don't trust LinkedIn so I keep away from them. But in this case they still might have a valid reason for this.

The fix: be more transparent about why the app is doing it. And the browser/OS could show a popup every time an app reads the clipboard to make the user aware of this.

thdrdton Show HN: Program “Greppy”, a 2-wheeled robot, using a new robotics language

Looks like this is what Bret Victor is promoting for years: a real-time feedback loop with your code and the outcome.

This would also be very nice for game development as Bret Victor demonstrated multiple times.

great!

thdrdton The Antic Cyber Graphics Software (2002)

Wow nice to read.

I started with 3D Studio in DOS because I once saw a FLI file of a rotating clown's head. I was blown away by the lighting and decided to track down the software it was made in an start using it.

It would be great to see that animation again. Does anyone have a source?

thdrdton Software should be designed to last

Software that lasts is software that is a joy to use.

Imho the tech, how good you are at programming is all not very relavant when the user doesn't like to use your software.

I have written a small CMS for a company which was replaced twice but every time they ditched it to return to my old simple version.

This is just one example but I think that should be in people's minds when they create software that lasts: people must enjoy using it.

This can even apply to a command line program.

thdrdton Hardcoded secrets, unverified tokens, and other common JWT mistakes

But doesn't JWT sometime force people to use it in an insecure way because of how it is designed?

In a JavaScript browser app without backend server it is impossible to use it safe. The token must be visible to JavaScript which is unsafe by default.

You also need to store both the token and refresh token in your app which makes the refresh safety feature useless.

I still don't get JWT. It solves requesting an auth server all the time but when the token is stolen it can be used until it expires. This can be solved by setting the expiration very low but then the auth server is still requested all the time.

thdrdton Tesla lags auto industry in quality, finds new J.D. Power study

Direct link to the 2020 Initial Quality Study page: https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2020-initial...

thdrdton Is WebP really better than JPEG?

Some time ago I experimented with a reduced color palette and dithering while keeping the fill alpha info. It reduced the file size a lot while keeping the alpha.