The FCC is about to ban 21% of its test labs today. I mapped them all • Hacker News Board

Re: The FCC is about to ban 21% of its test labs today. I mapped them all

#61

Post by iamnothere » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #55

iamnothere wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t actually need a license to use the ham bands in a true emergency. Where I’m at a Baofeng can hit the local repeaters just fine. I handed them out to my family when we had a major multiday communication outage (cellular and internet were down) and set them up to listen to the repeater. I told them if there’s a life threatening emergency they can transmit. It made everyone feel a little safer. While I persona…

(assuming you're american) Legally you do, that exception only applies to amateur station, not unlicenced users. Why not get a gmrs licence instead, and give them gmrs type-accepted radios that they can use and try out and get experienced with even when not in an emergency? It's like buying cheap cars to give to people to drive for the first time in an active emergency... dangerous both to them and to others.

I’m afraid you are misinformed, FCC Part 97.403 allows unrestricted use in a true life threatening emergency. The words “amateur station” may be misleading here, they apply to the equipment not the licensed individual. See this discussion for more information: https://old.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/1fyhp9f/lets_...

GMRS may not be an option if there are no repeaters in your area.

Re: The FCC is about to ban 21% of its test labs today. I mapped them all

#62

Post by doctorpangloss » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #16

This article is excessively LLM written to the point that there’s barely any real information in between all of the unnecessary pie charts and repeated points. This move is being executed too broadly, in my opinion, but the “bad labs” problem especially in China is widely known in the industry. If you spend any time in the electronics industry at smaller companies you will encounter people who know Chinese labs that…

i think it's better to flag the article and move on. the author's replies in the thread are also LLM authored. and nothing in the article makes any sense.

Re: The FCC is about to ban 21% of its test labs today. I mapped them all

#63

Post by chambertime » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 4:13 PM UTC

doctorpangloss wrote: post #62

Aurornis wrote: post #16

This article is excessively LLM written to the point that there’s barely any real information in between all of the unnecessary pie charts and repeated points. This move is being executed too broadly, in my opinion, but the “bad labs” problem especially in China is widely known in the industry. If you spend any time in the electronics industry at smaller companies you will encounter people who know Chinese labs that…

i think it's better to flag the article and move on. the author's replies in the thread are also LLM authored. and nothing in the article makes any sense.

[flagged]

Re: The FCC is about to ban 21% of its test labs today. I mapped them all

#64

Post by WarmWash » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 4:20 PM UTC

I have first hand experience with this. It may look like a politically motivated move, but in the RF industry when you need something to pass, China is known to be much friendlier/lax than other labs.

For those who don't know, the point of these labs is to generate certified test results. The lab's job is to certify that the test was done correctly with calibrated test equipment. They then give you the results which you then give to the regulating body.

However, you are the one who knows your product and how it operates. You are present in the lab, in the room, doing the testing with them. This introduces a lot of grey area where a lab may or may not go along with what you say. Chinese labs are known for just going along with it. After all, you are the one paying them tens of thousands, and they know you probably have many other products that need certifying. It's mutually beneficial for them to be lax.

Re: The FCC is about to ban 21% of its test labs today. I mapped them all

#65

Post by jitler » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 4:21 PM UTC

WarmWash wrote: post #64

I have first hand experience with this. It may look like a politically motivated move, but in the RF industry when you need something to pass, China is known to be much friendlier/lax than other labs. For those who don't know, the point of these labs is to generate certified test results. The lab's job is to certify that the test was done correctly with calibrated test equipment. They then give you the results which…

> Chinese labs are known for just going along with it. After all, you are the one paying them tens of thousands,

Are the engineering firms going to Chinese labs because of their rubber stamp approval or because the process is “tens of thousands” as opposed to “hundreds of thousands”?

Re: The FCC is about to ban 21% of its test labs today. I mapped them all

#66

Post by CamperBob2 » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 4:22 PM UTC

Night_Thastus wrote: post #37

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed a trend of calling every single article "This is AI or LLM, I can't stand it". And really, you can't tell. Nobody can tell. Humans write badly and blandly also. It's just a trope at this point. No, you're comment is an LLM.

LLMs often have a distinct writing style. It's not guaranteed, you can get false positives and false negatives, but if you start paying attention it becomes obvious in many cases.

That obviously won't be true for much longer, assuming it's still true now, which I doubt. If you're an LLM content farmer, how hard could it possibly be to LoRA your way out of generating cliches like emdashes, 'You're absolutely right!' and 'It's not A, but B' rhetoric?

We should probably go ahead and get over it.

Re: The FCC is about to ban 21% of its test labs today. I mapped them all

#67

Post by milleramp » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 4:23 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #16

This article is excessively LLM written to the point that there’s barely any real information in between all of the unnecessary pie charts and repeated points. This move is being executed too broadly, in my opinion, but the “bad labs” problem especially in China is widely known in the industry. If you spend any time in the electronics industry at smaller companies you will encounter people who know Chinese labs that…

Yes when qualifying new equipment often the source of failing emissions is the power supply (or some other third party device) that has already 'passed' testing.

Re: The FCC is about to ban 21% of its test labs today. I mapped them all

#68

Post by CamperBob2 » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 4:26 PM UTC

alnwlsn wrote: post #49

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed a trend of calling every single article "This is AI or LLM, I can't stand it". And really, you can't tell. Nobody can tell. Humans write badly and blandly also. It's just a trope at this point. No, you're comment is an LLM.

No human* would waste the time to write a piece that is both highly polished while being so long that any useful information is spread so thinly it is essentially empty. This is how people "can tell" if it is written by AI. Not a dig at this author by the way or saying it applies to this post, just in general. *or if they did anyway, the result is the same: bad writing.

No human would waste the time to write a piece that is both highly polished while being so long that any useful information is spread so thinly it is essentially empty.

LOL, some of us spent 12 years in public schools refining this very art to perfection.

Re: The FCC is about to ban 21% of its test labs today. I mapped them all

#69

Post by chambertime » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 4:28 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #60

chambertime wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Git + claude code in yolo mode. In the first prompt, I passed it Kaparthy's gist, and had it put together a high level plan of all of the sections that needed to be written to complete a vision I provided. Essentially put together a complete wiki on everything for getting global hardware certification. I then had it loop once an hour. It would pick the next wiki to write, research it, gather raw sources, and then syn…

Do you add this as a skill or permanent prompt, making it always maintain wikis in the background? Or do you direct it to make these only when you're in the project?

There's skills if you want. I didn't want to do that since I don't feel like I need the smarts to work on the LLM wiki in every coding session. I like to keep my context clean and scoped to what I'm working on.

I am running this in a long running session that spawns a subagent once an hour. So the context of the main session doesn't get out of control.

Re: The FCC is about to ban 21% of its test labs today. I mapped them all

#70

Post by WarmWash » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 4:31 PM UTC

jitler wrote: post #65

WarmWash wrote: post #64

I have first hand experience with this. It may look like a politically motivated move, but in the RF industry when you need something to pass, China is known to be much friendlier/lax than other labs. For those who don't know, the point of these labs is to generate certified test results. The lab's job is to certify that the test was done correctly with calibrated test equipment. They then give you the results which…

> Chinese labs are known for just going along with it. After all, you are the one paying them tens of thousands, Are the engineering firms going to Chinese labs because of their rubber stamp approval or because the process is “tens of thousands” as opposed to “hundreds of thousands”?

It's cheaper and they are friendlier. They don't rubber stamp, the tests are still done, but if you are struggling to get over a .5dB hurdle they will "work with you" to snuff it out.

The tests can be 100+ parameters and every single one is a hard binary pass/fail. So a mouse fart over the line on one test and you are not compliant. Go home, re-engineer, hope you fixed the issue (it's basically impossible to test for without a full dedicated RF testing chamber), and pay for a whole new testing run.

This is where the Chinese labs come in to play, as upon seeing your .5dB issue, they may feel that maybe their antenna placement was slightly off, or maybe you say that actually the "center of noise" (a bs thing) on your product is 5cm away from the testing center point, and move it back from the antenna with a wink and a nod.

In western labs the people are just as friendly, but that antenna is definitely in the right spot, and your product goes in the same spot as everyone elses.

However you need to go to China to do all this. If you are big megacorp with huge resources, western labs are fine. If you are smaller and possibly will become insolvent if you cannot pass testing, China is the play.