Hacker News Reader

contingencieson Everybody’s home. No one’s coming over

Many people seem too pent up in presenting some version of themselves to actually relax (social anxiety), which I partially put down to the decline of drinking, the traditional equalizer. Many people just aren't comfortable in themselves, and alcohol therefore represents a threat to their carefully constructed cardboard cut-out caricature.

Then there's the 'all about me' meme, where people are horrid conversationalists who can't entertain an idea unrelated to self-reporting, with personalization expectations on consumption: little Bobby needs X, little Harry has to Y, little Prescilla can't Z, and woe betide anyone who doesn't do the done diet. Another element of conversation failure is the distinct lack of experience and interests in such a great swathe of the population, who seem to vacillate between survival mode and televisual fiction forays. I've also noticed many people hit their 40s and seem to decide celebrating the bands and foods they followed in their youth may be their most persistent wont and love, with seemingly zero ambition to explore further. Woe betide anyone who would wish to continue learning and exploring, contemplate art, find echoes in history, or seek to discuss pressing global issues and their potential future trajectories.

I always try to teach the young'uns Eleanore Roosevelt's quip: Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.

Other good quotes here (fortune implementation): https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup

contingencieson In an $80 motel room, a discovery to shed light on the origins of life

As magnification increases, your main spend requirement is glass. Light is now cheap in the form of LEDs, as are condensers/collimators (which are not strictly required). IMHO at most magnifications you will get better relative image quality enhancement from adjustable through-light and correct focus than from a prospective upgrade to collimated light. Cheapest way in is a mono 'zoom tube' system which incorporates configurable magnification and ties directly to an industrial CCD camera. This is 'digital native' and obviates the need to pay for additional elements including a rigid stand, a stage, a revolving nose piece, and multiple high grade objectives. If you buy online, you can get a lot of value for cheap. However, you then need to fudge a stage, a light source, and a condenser, none of which are hard. These systems are super fun because you can route HDMI or USB to a big screen and share exploration with others. If you find microscopic critters, you can even record videos of them doing their thing. If you want more detail resolution, you can patiently twiddle or automate the focal adjustment then do focus stacked images. However, to get really good results you need to start getting in to things like chemical staining, frozen sample preparation before microtome sample slicing, oil-immersed objectives, and high quality glass, at which point you are really better off with a traditional microscope. Once you have the platform it's the glass that costs money.

contingencieson In an $80 motel room, a discovery to shed light on the origins of life

Perhaps they only offer insights in to the origins of a major branch of clickbait.

contingencieson A new world airport and its baggage

I drank a lot of beer in a certain Chinese city with some guys who were the top engineers for a major global baggage system provider. They were posted there over a period of years simply because, according to them, the architect's fantasy didn't touch base with anyone who knew the first thing about baggage logistics before construction commenced. The result was an airport where, regardless of how short your flight was or how busy the airport was, for the first few years of operations it would take an extra hour or more of waiting before any baggage would emerge. They said it was hands down the worst designed airport they'd ever been in: and they'd been in most of them.

contingencieson My brother's new high rise apartment doesn't allow individual internet services

Had this in China years ago. The solution was we dressed up a worker from my fiber optic provider in a borrowed cable provider uniform to haul the cable. It took months to arrange, but I was pretty amused when it worked!

contingencieson How can this Amazon scammer keep going, not shipping any goods?

Something like random customs inspection, disaster (ship stuck in Hormuz), etc.

contingencieson DoorDash Spent $1.4M Trying to Stop Mamdani from Becoming Mayor. Now We Know Why

https://libroot.org/posts

contingencieson Sherline Tools Is Going Out of Business

I don't doubt that your company (or any other established manufacturer of non-trivial systems) moving production overseas will necessarily engage in training to support that transition.

However, this does not change the reality that Sherline made extremely basic machine tools. China makes superior and more complex machine tools than Sherline ever did: by far. This knowledge was not 'stolen' in any conspiratorial sense: they have produced metal lathes since the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE) and modern engine lathes since the 1930s with significant national production since 1949 and CNC lathes since 1973. I should think Russia and China would have collaborated on early modern machine tool production, and this could not be characterized as 'theft'.

Today, most cutting tools, accessories, and machine tools are made in China. The notion China needs to steal knowledge from the west for general equipment is frankly laughable. For specialist equipment, yes there's a lot that Japan, Europe and the US lead in. However, I don't think that's in any way related to Sherline's former or current position as a budget/hobbyist focused entry-level brand.

contingencieson Sherline Tools Is Going Out of Business

Likewise, how do you attempt to fix US manufacturing if you are tariffing Canadian aluminum?

contingencieson Sherline Tools Is Going Out of Business

I also found the GP ridiculous. China probably made more lathes this year than the US has had in its entire history. You can get a complete lathe chuck assembly for 25 bucks. A small casting for maybe double that. I bet you could build a functional system for 100 or less at a quantity of one, including logistics. And if you knew what you were doing and had a mill, hand tools or a 3D printer to start with, within 3 days. They do not need to steal anything, they already are the world's most knowledgeable nation regarding machining fundamentals, supply chain, design tradeoffs, and maintenance. They have more trained machinists than anyone. The notion Sherline had any unique IP or that China needed to copy them is laughable.

contingencieson Autism is genetic – and why this information matters now

Not especially. I'm working on feeding people more efficiently which sounds dystopian but disintermediates the population from some corporations who currently dominate such matters and have not shown themselves to be morally or environmentally responsible. I would make a lot more money if I worked on military drones, financial leeching apparatus or AI bullshit like everyone else, but at this point I would prefer to have less and be better behaved.

contingencieson Autism is genetic – and why this information matters now

thick_skin certainly isn't your play is it ;)

contingencieson Autism is genetic – and why this information matters now

Don't blame others. Inaction is the only thing between you and a better world. Go do something about it.

contingencieson Autism is genetic – and why this information matters now

It has infinite patience as a teacher in an infinitesimal number of detail oriented specific areas where others would fail. It can maintain perspective on longer term goals and repetition and such through proven autism treatment pathways like CBT/speech therapies where humans be prohibitively expensive or would tire. That's surely something? It can reinforce bringing detail out to generalities. That helps for some. I'd say pedagogy and communications therapy are therefore both clear areas of promise.

These are viable for the population as a whole, not just people with autism or identified learning difficulties.

contingencieson A software thing I built: GPS on a 25MHz 486-SX

In Y2K I built a Linux on PC104 solution with GPS, bonded dual-channel mobile 9600 baud data links, and a (slow) image feed. It was kind of special to see the data coming over the mobile network in those days: this was before mobile data using basic PSTN modem tech! Very lossy and slow, as the algorithms did not account for mobile voice compression.

contingencieson Saving Jet Fuel

Manual processes: Most takeoff/landing processes, navigation waypoint input/confirmation/naming/registration, ATC, regulatory, ground service, gate allocation, boarding, cargo loading, radio, one could go on...

I'm not a pilot, but there are other pilots here, and their opinion is very close to mine: the post is BS.

contingencieson Saving Jet Fuel

It's a by-word for expert systems with management conception as well as multi-domain comprehension these days. Reasoning through failures in one sensor domain with limited data from other domains within a fixed period following strict risk protocols at 3:01AM is the sort of thing AI would excel at versus humans.

contingencieson Saving Jet Fuel

It will never work because you have too many human processes in the loop. This HN share by the author is selling the idea of consulting to obtain nominal efficiency on a well established process to human organizations who are structurally opposed to it, subject to human regulators who are structurally opposed to it, in an industry that is famous for aversion to change. Nice try drumming up clients, but realistically you're not going to move the mountain a millimeter on this one. Quicker to wait for AI airports, AI ATC and AI airlines than selling to humans at this point. 20th century humanity just about spitballed together a working system, but making it efficient is not going to happen on our watch. We would do well to admit it.

contingencieson Most people prefer traditional architecture

TLDR: Architecture optimizes for what is cheap to construct and meets the needs of the commissioning entity at the time of construction. This is often about a big facade, a dream, grandstanding or power dynamics instead of livability or community experience, particularly street acceptance. It's no wonder people prefer older architecture: it was necessarily more reasonably scaled, often more ornate and particular (since hand tools were used anyway: why not make it beautiful?), and featured now basically unavailable materials like giant timber beams which present more softly.

contingencieson I can't stop thinking about Papua New Guinea

I have a small collection of traditional PNG artifacts. Spears, masks, oars, axes, etc. I really like them and consider them generally very under-valued as evidence of the dominant technologies over the majority of human history.

Some good places to see them are the Asian Museum in Lisbon, the Wereldmuseum in Rotterdam, the Ethnology Museum in Berlin.

contingencieson Steam Frame starts at $1059

In constrained plane environments https://github.com/vk2diy/hackbook-m4-mini works well and has long battery life. I fix the screen to the seat using adapted helping hands and use a wireless keyboard/mouse for input. Super comfy as long as your eyes can deal with the reduced distance (look down the aisle occasionally).

contingencieson The Interim Computer Museum

In the same vein if you're in Sydney check out the Australian Computer Museum https://acms.org.au/ https://maps.app.goo.gl/UKtUrrDpDnfAWn6d6

contingencieson Reconstructing Concurrency Invariants Through Medieval East Asian Logic

On a less medieval and more ancient basis, from the original 白馬非馬 ("A white horse is not a horse.") we can derive the following suitably high-gravitas philosophical truth-revelatory statements:

競態非態 ("A race race condition is not a condition.")

釋後非釋 ("Use-after-free is not free.")

隱後非隱 ("Things hidden are not.")

單向交接非交接 ("A one-way handoff is not a handoff.")

contingencieson Silicon Valley Is Transforming the Military-Industrial Complex

Inter-national wars are fought with technology, so this makes sense. However, I believe from an optimist perspective that ideas of global citizenship and environmental awareness / macro humanism are already in the post-formative, snowballing stages of disrupting nationalism, and without an anachronistic national affinity amongst the citizenry, countries are objectively becoming obsolete.

Wireless broadcast media, PSTN, air travel, international post, international financial networks, global supply chains, the internet have all contributed to this, but AI will drive it home: AI governance in particular. Once one nation adopts it, the benefits will be obvious and expand rapidly. Few yet realize how transformative the changes will be.

contingencieson Extinct Tasmanian tiger's 'snap' unlike any living mammal's bite

Very importantly, the biodiversity of mature old growth forest is exceptionally distinct to a bunch of 20 year old (often single or few species) trees. Take parrots for example. Many rely on old trees with openings or hollows for nesting. Without sufficiently old trees, they literally can't live there. The growth of such critical habitat often takes 100+ years, whereas fungi, reptiles, orchids, insects, and bryophytes may never recover from clear-felling.

contingencieson 100s of flights cancelled at UK airports due to ATC issue

Sorry wouldn't fit ;)

contingencieson Extinct Tasmanian tiger's 'snap' unlike any living mammal's bite

If you're not someone's flamebait LLM bot: citation please. I find it very hard to believe that an endangered species chooses to live solely in recently planted forest, particularly with focused legal defense from such an esteemed and long-running NGO as the Wilderness Society. I find it far more likely you are incorrect, and frankly spouting nonsense.

There is nothing 'advanced' and 'sustainable' about clear felling old growth forests supporting endangered species, if you are lucky enough to have them as Australia is (they are vanishing globally at an insane rate). It is about as nuanced as shooting your children in the head.

contingencieson Extinct Tasmanian tiger's 'snap' unlike any living mammal's bite

The government of Tasmania is still allowing logging of the forests which is utterly insane. See for example this current court case: https://mailchi.mp/wilderness/swift-parrot-court-case

contingencieson Private German rocket makes history, reaches orbit from European soil

all the questionable ones are in Tesla

Let's not also forget that NASDAQ changed the rules right before listing SpaceX... resulting in forced index fund procurement of sinking equity. Not sure how 'public policy' that is (arguably separate), but in reality global prime market listing rules are pretty high-significance effectively Federal or even international monetary policy. Well done Elon! Can't fault you for execution!

contingencieson Asahi Linux on M3

Me too, M4 and keen to run Linux, partly because every damn system update bloats the system by 20GB but no memorably useful novel feature actually emerges and partly because it's long term stable. That said, at this stage in my career I appreciate a working system that doesn't require umpteen kernel recompiles!