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Ask HN: What did you find out or explore today?

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Re: Ask HN: What did you find out or explore today?

#151

Post by schnitzelstoat »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #80

My home office gets up to about 1500ppm of CO2 by the end of the workday, which explains a lot about why I often feel exhausted after the end of a long, uninterrupted session in there (especially when I’m on back to back zoom calls). I now have several plants in there that are supposed to be especially good at sucking up CO2, and my sensor reports that the current level is slightly below atmospheric ambient CO2 level…

Wow, my home office is a small box room with no exterior windows (as it's on the inside of the apartment).

I often feel tired at the end of the day and I'd attributed it to just working quite long hours, but maybe it is related to this.

Re: Ask HN: What did you find out or explore today?

#152

Post by lormayna »

neversaydie wrote: post #91
lormayna wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about AI antennas, but smart antennas[1] are a things since more than 15 years. Basically they are array of antennas that can change via software the directivity (mainly used in radar systems) or increase/reduce power transmission and direction (this is used in 5G cell). 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_antenna

There's also this, from long before the gen AI era: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_antenna

This is probably one really fascinating projects, but there is no AI behind this kind of things. It's just randomly trying new configurations and select the best ones in an evolving way.

During my master degree, I attended an antenna design course and I almost burnt my laptop trying to optimize a dipole array as a side project.

Re: Ask HN: What did you find out or explore today?

#153

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

I learned about this book / concept: Tools for Conviviality [0]:

> Illich proposes the idea of a 'convivial tool', one which allows its user to exercise their human autonomy and creativity.

This came up as I was reading about UX / UI design and trying to understand the fundamentals of how to increase human autonomy. Although my key takeaway is a bit shallow at the moment, mostly focused on applying this map towards existing tools in order to try to identify ways in which they can be modified and improved to maximize autonomy.

The Wikipedia article also references this concept of radical monopoly:

> Tools for Conviviality also introduced Illich's idea of a 'radical monopoly', which describes a technology or service which becomes so exceptionally dominant that even with multiple providers, its users are excluded from society without access to the product.

Which has extended to me wondering about what the world will look like as people are increasingly pushed to use LLMs or other AI tools in more and more interactions. And in particular, what actions can or should be taken to maximize human well-being.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tools_for_Conviviality

Re: Ask HN: What did you find out or explore today?

#154

Post by ilinx »

p_v_doom wrote: post #73
ilinx wrote: post #16

I’m reading Domain Driven Development and learning why so many of my projects have been tough to maintain. I also recently learned that you can get ancient coins for very little money if you don’t care about resale value or need them to be in pristine condition. I bought some coins from kingdoms that I’d never heard of. Many are thousands of years old! It’s fun holding a piece of history like that.

> I’m reading Domain Driven Development and learning why so many of my projects have been tough to maintain. Oooh, thats a good one. Next read the Architects paradox, Why Greatness cannot be planned and Understanding Variation and your views of the world will be forever altered. Or pick up "Architecture Modernization" by Nick Tune if you want more tools to do stuff and if you do not want to achieve enligntenment. ___…

Thanks for the recommendations! I’m actually getting to the end and wondered where to go next. Perfect timing! I’ll go ahead and order those today :).

> Where did you acquire cheap ancient coins? ebay? May be cool to get some for my dnd group

I bought most of mine on VCoins. The few I bought weren’t certified or anything, but they have lots of very well established sellers. I got a few bronze and silver coins from the Middle East and India. They were in good shape at about $10-20 US (plus international shipping). I also got some nicer Byzantine and Roman coins in the $50 US price range. I tried to group my orders from each seller to save on shipping. So far everything I’ve gotten is exactly as pictured, and the transactions have been very smooth. I got a couple more from a local dealer. The prices were a bit higher, but he was a lot of fun to talk to, which more than makes up for the price difference.

Re: Ask HN: What did you find out or explore today?

#155

Post by SonOfLilit »

biotechbio wrote: post #33

When you use a microscope to magnify something, the objective (magnifying lens) is literally taking the Fourier transform of the image. The optical system recovers up to a limiting frequency, determining the spatial resolution of the image.

Gotta say, I assumed this is some sort of virtual/imaginary thing, but it seems like there's a point in the optical system where if we placed a screen, we'd see the FT of the image coming in! And before we had digital image processing people used to place masks there to filter out low frequency or high frequency details in the image. Which is absolutely insane and I have no comprehension of how the physics works out!

Re: Ask HN: What did you find out or explore today?

#156

Post by cik »

sjw987 wrote: post #115

I've been exploring kefir. I'm looking at finding some live grains to boost the store bought variety here (10-20 varieties) up to 50-60 varieties or so, like the kefir in Eastern Europe / Russia. The store bought stuff in my country (UK) is more like a diluted, gimmicky thing. However, I believe the strains of bacteria they do include are some of the more influential ones. I think it would just be interesting to expa…

I went down a similar path, sans book. I opted to remove processed foods from my diet in its entirety - to be clear, I consider neither oil, nor vinegar to be processed. This has resulted in basically the only processed food in my life now being soy sauce.

The hard reality is that food, which I already enjoyed, tastes significantly better. Similarly, when I fall off the wagon and have some UPF (crips).. it just tastes flat. Highly recommended, even without the health benefits, frankly.

Re: Ask HN: What did you find out or explore today?

#157

Post by artemavv »

I now know that in Italian I should say 'mi piacciono' to convey my liking of things (plural), e.g "mi piacciono i libri" means "I like books", as opposed to singular 'mi piace il libro' (I like the book).

When I refer to likes of multiple people, e.g. "we like this book", I should use "ci piace il libro". Plural people speaking about liking plural books would be "ci piacciono i libri".

One of my goals for 2026 is to reach level B1 in Italian language.

Re: Ask HN: What did you find out or explore today?

#158

Post by ilinx »

rocketbin wrote: post #70
ilinx wrote: post #16

I’m reading Domain Driven Development and learning why so many of my projects have been tough to maintain. I also recently learned that you can get ancient coins for very little money if you don’t care about resale value or need them to be in pristine condition. I bought some coins from kingdoms that I’d never heard of. Many are thousands of years old! It’s fun holding a piece of history like that.

Any recommendations on where to acquire?

I buy mine from VCoins. They’re pretty inexpensive if you don’t need them certified or anything, and many sellers are very above board and professional.

Re: Ask HN: What did you find out or explore today?

#159

Post by CTDOCodebases »

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #149
torben-friis wrote: post #92

I got a handheld emulator console as a Christmas gift. Configuring shaders that emulate crt TVs, I realized I had no mental model of how those TVs worked at all. I’m used to “pixels are three little lights combining rgb colors”, which doesn’t work here, so I went on a rabbit hole and let me tell you, analog TVs are extremely impressive tech. Getting an electron beam to hit a glass, making the chemicals on it spark, c…

> Turns out that the logic in consoles of the time was tied to the speed of the beam, which in turn used alternating current’s frequency as a clock. This means that since European current changes 50 times per second rather than 60, our games played in slowmo (about 0.8x). American sonic was so much faster! And the music was so much more upbeat! Wasn't this the reason behind different versions of the game for PAL and…

> Wasn't this the reason behind different versions of the game for PAL and NTSC etc.? So I imagine the games would play quite similarly, just with a lower refresh rate in Europe?

Yes and no. Some games play at a similar speed but some (most if I recall correctly) weren't modified for the PAL market so they play slow and the image is squashed down. Street Fighter II on the SNES (PAL) is a classic example of this.

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