Top all-time · #19781
Jouke Waleson
Personal blog · blog.waleson.comprogrammingaiculture
Jouke Waleson writes Software etc., a personal blog at blog.waleson.com about programming, ai and culture. Since 2015, 3 different Hacker News readers have linked it 36 times, most often “Bakelite to the Future – 1950s rotary phone ESP32 Bluetooth headset”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-03, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linked for posts on Bakelite and modular industrial dashboards. The comments only point to other Bakelite resources, such as a collection site and a video, and do not judge this blog's writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Random thoughts on software by Jouke Waleson, Co-Founder and CEO of Comper.
Most-linked posts?
- Bakelite to the Future – 1950s rotary phone ESP32 Bluetooth headset2 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2024-10-29
What Hacker News says?
Shameless plug for those who like rotary phones: I converted mine into a fully functional bluetooth headset, including dialing phone numbers with the rotary dial. The HN post didn't do well but it got featured on hackaday. https://hackaday.com/2024/10/31/bakelite-to-the-future-a-195... https://blog.waleson.com/2024/10/bakelite-to-future-1950s-ro... Creating an alt mode for a bluetooth rotary numpad shouldn't be diff…
Comment linking /2024/10/bakelite-to-future-1950s-rotary-phone.html
on “Show HN: Rotary Phone Dial Linux Kernel Driver”Submitted Parsing 10TB of Metadata, 26M Domain Names and 1.4M SSL Certs for $10 on AWS as a story · 257 points
HN discussionCheck out this chunky industrial Bakelite switch with a resonant thunking spring clicking action that you have to overshoot each of the four rotations by 45 degrees before it clicks. It feels so good, it's nice to just turn around and around just for pure audio and kinesthetic pleasure. So much better than a Tesla iPad control. (Never mind the gorilla!) https://www.youtube.com/shorts/o_n5W2I2p_M It's from the Amster…
Comment linking /2024/10/bakelite-to-future-1950s-rotary-phone.html
on “Before pixels: Modular industrial dashboards”Submitted UUIDs in MySQL are really not random as a story · 86 points
HN discussionHaha, is this a coincidence or did you take inspiration from my 2016 blog post? "Parsing 10TB of Metadata, 26M Domain Names and 1.4M SSL Certs for $10 on AWS" http://blog.waleson.com/2016/01/parsing-10tb-of-metadata-26m... We used a lot of the same tech: python, golang, S3, 32 core machines. Anyway, nice read and good use of Hetzner.
Comment linking /2016/01/parsing-10tb-of-metadata-26m-domains.html
on “Processing 40TB of code from 10M projects with a dedicated server and Go”Submitted "Security is our top priority" is meaningless as a story · 84 points
HN discussionVery cool but I think my wireless bluetooth one is even cooler ;) https://blog.waleson.com/2024/10/bakelite-to-future-1950s-ro... It actually supports using the rotary dial to call phone numbers on your smartphone.
Comment linking /2024/10/bakelite-to-future-1950s-rotary-phone.html
on “I converted a rotary phone into a meeting handset”Submitted The software that I love as a story · 70 points
HN discussionI built something cool for a client a couple of years ago. When sorting on price (or title, or anything), it shows you the price range (or title..) in that page ($100 - $350) on mouse hover in a tooltip. Surprisingly it's not something I've ever seen anywhere else. This way you can instantly jump to the price range you are interested in. http://blog.waleson.com/2011/03/design-pattern-pagination-wi... I think no one…
Comment linking /2011/03/design-pattern-pagination-with-useful.html
on “Pagination 101”Submitted AI Text-to-Speech models have accents too as a story · 66 points
HN discussionVery nice job! Last month I also adapted a rotary phone but I replaced the insides with a Bluetooth chip (and some more). Now I can use it as a headset for my smartphone or laptop. While you had to learn about SIP and voltage converters I had to learn about Bluetooth and digital audio protocols. Looks like we both had fun ;) https://blog.waleson.com/2024/10/bakelite-to-future-1950s-ro...
Comment linking /2024/10/bakelite-to-future-1950s-rotary-phone.html
on “Exploring and having fun with rotary telephones”Submitted The unreasonable effectiveness of i3, or: ten years of a boring desktop env as a story · 56 points
HN discussionSure: https://blog.waleson.com/2022/03/the-worlds-first-cowboy-key...
Comment linking /2022/03/the-worlds-first-cowboy-key-fob.html
on “Export all bike details (such as encryption key) of your VanMoof bikes”Submitted AI programming tools should be added to the Joel Test as a story · 21 points
HN discussionAs you were submitting this question I was finishing this on-topic blog post. https://blog.waleson.com/2024/05/the-long-long-tail-of-ai-ap... Short answer: Yes I think so.
Comment linking /2024/05/the-long-long-tail-of-ai-applications.html
on “Ask HN: Do startups building on OpenAI have a defensible moat?”Submitted The long long tail of AI applications as a story · 20 points
HN discussionCheck out Amsterdam Bakelite Collection, founded/curated by Reindert Groot. It isn't actually a museum you can visit at this moment, but it's a huge beautiful collection, with lots of interesting photos and articles and newsletters online, and parts of it surface in museums around the world from time to time. http://www.amsterdambakelitecollection.com/ Other interesting Bakelite links from previous Hacker News discu…
Comment linking /2024/10/bakelite-to-future-1950s-rotary-phone.html
on “Bakelite – first commercial synthetic plastic”Submitted Things I Didn't Build Yet as a story · 20 points
HN discussionOk funny anecdote: I once did a special assignment for the CEO of Mendix to build a convertor for MS Access apps to Mendix. So, yes, I can confirm that this is roughly true ;) I wrote a short post about it on my blog: https://blog.waleson.com/2022/10/access2mendix.html
Comment linking /2022/10/access2mendix.html
on “RIP Low-Code 2014-2025”Submitted Why you and I will never have a 15 hour work week as a story · 7 points
HN discussionAw snap! I had this exact idea last year but didn’t build it yet. See GitShuffle here https://blog.waleson.com/2022/11/things-i-didnt-build-yet.ht... I even bought gitshuffle.com Great to see it in a working version! I think there’s serious potential in this if you do it on your team’s own code. It would be a fun game to play with your colleagues on a Friday afternoon.
Comment linking /2022/11/things-i-didnt-build-yet.html
on “GitHubGuessr”Submitted Just Play Factorio as a story · 6 points
HN discussionhttps://blog.waleson.com/2022/03/the-worlds-first-cowboy-key... Source code here: https://github.com/jtwaleson/cowboy-bike-remote-ble I’m currently working on finalizing the PCB version, the first one had some flaws so the battery drained really quickly.
Comment linking /2022/03/the-worlds-first-cowboy-key-fob.html
on “Ask HN: Small scripts, hacks and automations you're proud of?”Submitted Bakelite to the Future – 1950s rotary phone ESP32 Bluetooth headset as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted The time I literally dropped a server as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Future of Programming Systems – four thoughts as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Three Thoughts on Dark Code as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Rhyme Is a Parity Bit as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why Only Type-Hints? as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Always Optimize the Feedback Loop as a story · 3 points
HN discussion