Hacker News Reader

_Microfton Blitzortung – real time lightning strikes around the world

"Since the attenuation of VLF waves is smaller for west to east propagation and during the night, thunderstorm activity up to distances of about 10,000 km can be observed for signals arriving from the west during night time conditions. Otherwise, the transmission range is of the order of 5,000 km."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_atmospheric_signal ("sferic")

_Microfton Ask HN: Problems in Need of Open-Source Hardware?

Have you tried searching Github? I bet there is tons of stuff happening on Github as well.

https://www.google.com/search?q=open+soure+hardware+site%3Ag...

Are you interested in developing a particular type of hardware? Mechanical, electronical or other? You could try searching for particular file types, e.g. KiCad schematics files on Github/Gitlab for example.

_Microfton Helen Fisher, who researched the brain’s love circuitry, has died

Ah, that Helene Fischer published works on nocturnal respiratory issues though.

_Microfton Ask HN: What are you working on (August 2024)?

> riding an ebike with a triangular battery pack that looks identical to one some HNer built here

You might be thinking of jacquesm and this bike:

https://jacquesmattheij.com/long-range-ebike/

_Microfton Ask HN: What are you working on (August 2024)?

You‘re lucky! Not only has OP been posting that for a while already but dang is also supportive of it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=david927

_Microfton Ask HN: What are you working on (August 2024)?

Cool, this look great, thanks for sharing. Scanning the front page, I actually think the maker of this [0] is active here on HN and [1] also made it here before.

[0] https://howtoware.co/invisible-computers

[1] https://howtoware.co/wyldcard

_Microfton Telegram founder Pavel Durov arrested at French airport

The discussion you are thinking about is neither dead nor flagged. Overly active discussions get downranked automatically:

„Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action.“, see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

_Microfton NASA announces Boeing Starliner crew will return on SpaceX Crew-9

He’s also covering space topics for Ars Technica and you can certainly expect an article on this in the next few days.

This one is from yesterday, maybe it will receive an update? https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/as-nasa-nears-major-de...

_Microfton Microwaves: A Haven for Bacterial Diversity

OP might not have been correct but ranting like this hardly makes anything better, do you think?

_Microfton Climate policies that achieved major emission reductions

Wasn’t there news not long ago that China has been building solar power (peak capacity) with an equivalent power of five nuclear power plants per week? Even accounting for much lower cumulative output, this is far more than they have in the pipeline for nuclear power.

_Microfton What if Germany had invested in nuclear power?

Russia controls almost 40% of the uranium conversion capacities and 46% of the enrichment capacities. China is also controlling some amount, leaving only 36% of the conversion (Canada, France) and about 42% of the enrichment capacities under control of allies.

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-nuclear-power-industry-graphi...

_Microfton What if Germany had invested in nuclear power?

This is sad but we can find some solace in that providing demand/an initial market by this, it basically jumpstarted the mass-production of photovoltaics, leading to price decline and thereby mass-adoption of solar power in my opinion.

_Microfton Researchers make breakthrough in fight against Covid

There's a helpful animation of how a spike protein attachs to a cell and how it moves the virus closer to the host at the end of the article. It also visualizes the how an antibody attaching to a small section of the spike protein interferes with the motion of the virus towards the cell.

_Microfton RP2350 PicoDVI Preview

Maybe this is just not the microcontroller you are looking for?

_Microfton Open Source FPGA Expansion Card for the Apple II

If you are as curious as I were what the card looks like, then have a look at this:

https://github.com/a2fpga/a2fpga_core/blob/main/boards/a2n20...

I always find it impressive how integrated our electronics have become and how few components are required to achieve what would have taken large, crowded PCBs in the past.

_Microfton Making 'food out of thin air'

This seems misleading? In that case you could as well argue that our food was made from pure energy (photons from the sun) which might make it sound like we had Star Trek replicators - which we obviously do not have.

_Microfton What the hell is a luminiferous theremin?

If that concerns you, then you might want to conduct the experiment with a „non-artificial“ light source. Use a candle that you wave your hand around to modulate the signal if you like. If you suspect that it‘s not visible light but infrared that affects the effect, then selectively shield visible light with a (black) garbage bag and try again.

_Microfton What the hell is a luminiferous theremin?

If this is a comfort, GP, then check out this prediction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant_problem

Single digit orders of magnitude off are suddenly not even so bad ;)

_Microfton What the hell is a luminiferous theremin?

Unfortunately, this is not possible. Gravity-wave detectors are incredibly, incredibly more sensitive than what you might have expected.

The only devices that are currently able to detect gravity waves are huge interferometers [0]. Light gets reflected many times in the arms of these interferometers and after having travelled a distance of approximately 1000km (over 600 miles), the change in length effected by gravity waves is in the order of a fraction of the diameter of a proton (a millionth of a billionth of a meter shouldn't be off by to much).

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

_Microfton What the hell is a luminiferous theremin?

If you are lucky, you can get these starting at 1,20€ apiece on AliExpress.

Edit: yes, currently available for 1,29€ in the bundle sale ("Free shipping for three or more items"). Whenever possible, try to get the ones without pre-soldered header pins and solder them yourself. Soldered pins bend very easily during shipping.

_Microfton What the hell is a luminiferous theremin?

I think they were rather saying that separating the functions of the device like input device, sound generation and output can have superior results because it becomes possible to combine different (and maybe better suited) parts. This makes a lot of sense.

On the other hand I do not agree with them that a combined device is as useless or bad as they make it sound.

_Microfton What the hell is a luminiferous theremin?

Cover it and see if the signal goes away. Then take it to a dark room and shine light on it.

If it goes from sound to silence in the first case and from silence to sound in the latter, you can be reasonably sure that light has an effect.

If you want to rule out other radiation, you can try shielding the contraption.

_Microfton DIY, 8mm film scanner Kotokino Mark IV (2020)

That's exactly the mirror that gives (D)SLR's the R ("reflex") in their name. It's in the path between sensor and lens and redirects the image towards the view finder. When taking a picture this mirror moves out of the way and the image is projected on the film/sensor instead. The advantage of that system is/was that the photographer can preview the image as it will get captured.

_Microfton DIY, 8mm film scanner Kotokino Mark IV (2020)

They are advancing the film one frame at a time and are taking static images. There's a switch getting actuated that triggers image capture once the film has advanced. The first video in the article has close-ups of the process.

_Microfton DIY, 8mm film scanner Kotokino Mark IV (2020)

From the article: "To minimize jitter of the system, and to enable 22 shots per minute, the mirror must be moved into the permanent up position."

This makes it sound like they are using an electronic shutter instead which circumvents the lifetime issues.

_Microfton Deep-Tempest: Using Deep Learning to Eavesdrop on HDMI

Maybe you find this interesting as well:

https://www.windytan.com/2023/02/using-hdmi-radio-interferen...

_Microfton Dear AI Companies, instead of scraping OpenStreetMap, how about a $10k donation?

This old comment by patio11 (Patrick McKenzie, the one behind „Bits about Money“ and the blog at kalzumeus.com) on this topic might be of interest:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10863978

It explains why companies have a lot less problems with invoices than with donations.