Hacker News Reader

chuckwfinleyon IAC confirms existence of a Super-earth in the habitable zone of a Sun-like Star

The wiki on lagrangian points also has a bunch of useful info on this stuff. Gravity is absolutely incredible

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point

chuckwfinleyon Show HN: I made an open-source laptop from scratch

This is incredible work for anyone, let alone a high schooler. Seriously impressive!

I hope this turns into something I can buy (maybe a diy kit), in the future!

chuckwfinleyon Jeju Air jet black boxes stopped recording before crash: transport ministry

"The analysis revealed that both the CVR and FDR data were not recording during the four minutes leading up to the aircraft's collision"

How does this even happen where two systems would stop recording data. This story seems to get weirder and weirder. I'd always been under the impression that black boxes were really highly secure and extremely rigorously developed to specifically prevent data loss in situations like this.

Bad enough for the accident to occur, but to not have accurate telemetry and recorded data from the onboard systems is definitely going to make an already hard investigation very much harder

chuckwfinleyon Scientists uncover how the brain washes itself during sleep

Exactly, evolution also will leave things at "good enough for function". It may well be that our sleep cycle so happened to level off at "good enough" considering our other evolutionary constraints.

Definitely an area of study that seems interesting to me.

chuckwfinleyon Why Greenland is of growing strategic significance

Ha! I said this the other day to a friend as well. The 'typical' (Mercator) view has Greenland looking nearly as big as the continent of Africa. Reality is that it's about 1/4 the size of the mainland US. Still a lot of land but not as big as a lot of people seem to assume.

I honestly have no idea how basic math (sphere to flat projection) escapes people.

chuckwfinleyon Salesforce will hire no more software engineers in 2025, says Marc Benioff

TIL that the likeness of Einstein was licensed. Proceeds go to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which is fitting considering his support and investment:

"Albert Einstein is one of the founders of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. To him, the university represented a combination of the commitment to his Jewish identity and his belief in the universal values of the pursuit of truth and respect for every human being."

No paywall link: https://archive.is/2024.03.27-141124/https://www.bloomberg.c...

chuckwfinleyon Who killed the rave?

https://archive.is/2025.01.01-212538/https://www.ft.com/cont...

Non paywalled link

chuckwfinleyon Spinal cord injuries from mountain biking exceed hockey, other high-risk sports

Yep definitely agreed on the existing padding, it just seems that, given the article, more is needed in some fashion.

chuckwfinleyon Spinal cord injuries from mountain biking exceed hockey, other high-risk sports

This is interesting and I don't doubt the problem exists, but just considering the physics of a person riding a bike, it seems tough to envision an effective safety system.

Maybe expanded use of those "bike airbag helmets"? I can't imagine a mountain biker wearing a bunch of bulky padding and still being able to participate in the sport.

chuckwfinleyon Bye-bye Windows gaming? SteamOS officially expands past the Steam Deck

As far as I know, you can drop back to desktop mode on SteamOS and be on your way.

chuckwfinleyon Bye-bye Windows gaming? SteamOS officially expands past the Steam Deck

Mainly packaging and bundling everything together in one drop-in package for every day users to get access to. I've run Linux for 20+ years now, and gotten steam games working a few times over that period of time. Not hard, not impossible, but is probably more than the average Windows user wants to figure out.

SteamOS is really about bringing that final experience to the most number of people, and I am really supportive of their efforts!

chuckwfinleyon A feature-rich Hacker News client

Harmonic is great, been using it a long time now. Prior to that I used Materialistic... I'll give this other one a try but I've been totally happy with harmonic, so it'll take a lot to move me I think.

chuckwfinleyon Why was there a wall near runway at S Korea plane crash airport?

This exactly. The biggest problem was that it came down with no gear or flaps (as far as I'm aware at least).

chuckwfinleyon The Adrian Dittmann Story

I think this hits the nail on the head. I do believe it would be very unlikely for Elon to be using the dittman account as much as it is used. That is the simplest possible explanation.

chuckwfinleyon Supernovae evidence for foundational change to cosmological models

It is sure seeming like LCDM needs some work. It's not really clear if a timescape approach solves the outstanding issues though