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T-shirts as a service - TSaaS? It's selling black V-neck t-shirts? What exactly am I looking at here?

Is this is a stealth project with a malfunctioning cloak?

I wouldn't get caught dead in a black t-shirt, not because I think there's anything wrong with them, but I'm a human being and choose my attire accordingly. I have odd colours, widdly bits and strings on my tops, frayed bottoms - from use, not from the factory - but I keep wearing them because they make me feel human in an ambient sea of machines and automation.

ejron Flight rules for Git – What to do when things go wrong

I'm grateful this post was made as it allowed me to find the NASA flight rules http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/news/columbia/fr_generic.pdf

However the commands are a little haphazard and as Gabe (gkop) mentions, not entirely safe.

ejron Generate raw WAV output by hooking malloc and read

This bit is amazing. I could have sworn this was in a game already.

https://soundcloud.com/glowdon/the-sounds-of-malloc#t=7:18

https://soundcloud.com/glowdon/the-sounds-of-malloc#t=8:40

https://soundcloud.com/glowdon/the-sounds-of-malloc#t=12:00

ejron ‘Remote control’ contraceptive chip available ‘by 2018’

The remote control bit worries me. Anything that can be wirelessly controlled can have a weakness that can be exploited at worst or monitored at best. It's not infeasible to have detectors to monitor emanations yielding a whole new swath of privacy issues. No one else needs to know what type of medication you're on.

ejron Ask HN: How can I sustainably run a website without charging a fee?

Have you considered VPS? There are quite a lot of hosts these days that are reasonably priced - Digital Ocean and Linode come to mind first. Initial setup is usually all about trying new things and testing and starting small may be more cost-effective at least in the short term.

Depending on how efficiently you create the site and its functionality, you may be able to get away with minimal resources.

Edit: Ah, meowface beat me to it! :-)

ejron Ask HN: Why is the 40-comment penalty being applied to Show HNs?

I've been lurking here for quite a while before I started posting and I strongly suspect it's the ratio of upvotes to comments that trigger this. There may be a "recalculation" at 40 comments for performance or other reasons, but I've seen plenty of other stories with hundreds of comments and an equal or greater number of upvotes - on occasion passing 1000 - that stay on the front page for the better part of a day.

ejron BitcoinJS

I wouldn't be surprised if there are swarms of bots doing this job already. In effect, they're like the stock market robo-traders.

ejron [dead]

Would it be feasible to launch a sealed biome into space and have it function autonomously? A bit like this fellow's terrarium linked here a while ago http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2267504/The-s...

The idea of a mini-Earth orbiting Earth monitored by cameras and fed just enough filtered light fascinates me.

ejron Building a Cloud Chamber (Cosmic Ray Detector)

That's very cool. Brian Cox did a variation on his programme with an added hot water bottle on top : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWxfliNAI3U

ejron Paris syndrome

It's the same feeling I had while visiting New York.

Madame Tussauds and MOMA were wonderful and yes, it has some other very nice parts like Grand Central Station. I didn't feel ill enough to leave America, but I did feel let down a tad.

ejron Don't Trust Google (2002)

Censorshop by Google : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google

In addition to "Right to be forgotten" : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten

ejron Ten Thousand Years

That's a very bleak and, unfortunately, accurate observation. Our curiosity that has given rise to such greatness may well be the double-edged sword of our undoing.

As horrible as this may sound, the best we can hope for is the radiation will act quickly so those venturing in will provide ample examples to those that didn't.

ejron Ten Thousand Years

It's on YouTube for anyone curious https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4sqFyCHcbg

ejron Ten Thousand Years

I wonder if we can apply the same lines to map English as we do other languages. English, largely through conquest and trade, has become the de facto language of technology and science, much as Latin was in its heyday. But we know Latin was exclusionary as the Christian clergy and the erudite were the most fluent in it. English, by contrast has democratised access to the common folk.

It was even in use in the Star Trek universe aboard Federation ships, but that may not be too unrealistic. English, I mean, not the aliens or warp drive.

ejron Ray, the self-driving forklift that is parking cars at a German airport

I don't believe these people should be marginalised to menial or tedious jobs with little appreciation and a pittance as pay. Essentially to render them invisible to the larger operation of society. This might be hopelessly naïve on my part, but I believe they can be just as productive in a different capacity.

Trade schools and apprenticeships can greatly reduce the burden society must endure in order to level the field for non-skilled labour. I don't believe white and blue colour jobs need such a strong line dividing them and so I'm sure new avenues for selling services or exchanging things of value and different definitions of what we value will emerge.

Of course, this is now getting into an area outside the scope of - and much complicated than - a robot parking system ;-)

ejron Ray, the self-driving forklift that is parking cars at a German airport

A human would need to enter the vehicle, which some may not comfortable with. Also, the system may be more reliable than some of the valets I've seen.

ejron Choose hotels by the quality of their WiFi

"Eli the Computer guy" does some pretty interesting video tutorials on YouTube. He tends to go on and on a bit, but overall he does a nice job of explaining networking basics, how to run cables, use RJ45 connectors - this is very important if you run your own wire - and setting up routers/switches.

Edit: Here's the full playlist of his networking videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL8RSFQG8do&list=PLF360ED108...

ejron Choose hotels by the quality of their WiFi

The key measure we should all be paying attention is "Confidence".

Ex: Some of the hotels in New York show very high speeds, but also "Confidence: 9.2%".

  Confidence value shows how thoroughly the WiFi has been tested at this hotel. 
  The confidence value depends on several factors, including the number of 
  speed tests taken, how recently the tests occurred, and the diversity of tests 
  in terms of the time of day, day of the week, and point within the travel season.

ejron Choose hotels by the quality of their WiFi

I can corroborate this. I did a network setup at a B&B that hadn't had any wi-fi since the place got internet.

We bumped up their ISP plan to proper business class and got an upgraded router to boot. I ran wire from it to each floor via existing conduit and set up APs. No middle-man slave master for internet and certainly anyone else can service the setup after I was done. No other contract except their ISP. Everyone was happy.

A neighbouring place just a few turns away had wireless quite early from some archaic monster and they charge a hefty fee too. I have better reception on my cell when I'm in a low valley than at that place - 2 bars max. All the guests were huddled in the lobby.

ejron A Closer Look at Transit

The main body of the text was extremely difficult to read. There's nothing wrong with the font itself, but the size is far too small and colour too faint. I had to turn off the font stylesheet to get to the text. It's too bad the same font as the sidebar section wasn't used throughout the body.

ejron Emails reveal close Google relationship with NSA

As far as I can decipher - because like most news posts, it contains a lot of words without a matching volume of content - the core of the content can be boiled down to:

  * Silicon Valley CEOs and the government had meetings on protecting infastructure
  * A BIOS infiltration plot was derailed, but details on it were technobabble, 
    according to expert : https://news.yahoo.com/60-minutes-bios-plot-may-214330769.html
  * Alleged backdoor in BIOS. Linked article on Spiegel is about routers : 
    http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/catalog-reveals-nsa-has-back-doors-for-numerous-devices-a-940994.html)
  * Government continues to enlist company help in thwarting attacks.
    Specifically targeting mobile devices. Again, details are sparse.

There's no direct evidence, and it's unlikely you'll ever find any, that Google or indeed most other companies are directly giving the government access to private data. The biggest issue is the obvious conflict of interest as noted by observers where the NSA is trying to protect infrastructure while having a means to weaken it benefits them as well.

ejron Sierra Leone's chief Ebola doctor contracts the virus

I wonder if contracting other diseases along the way had somehow contributed toward his resistance, as long as the immune system has recovered since. The plague stopped rather abruptly in the Middle Ages either due to sudden herd immunity of the survivors' immune systems or other unfavorable circumstances to its propagation.

I imagine there exist a portion of the population with a genetic mutation that is resistant to Ebola, considering it may have existed in the wild for a much longer period than its first description in the mid 70's.

ejron Bootstrap 3 Free Themes and Templates

I took this as a quick intro to snippets of Bootstrap features. Ex: Logins and stuff. It does say "pre" bootstrap so I'm sure that was the intended purpose for this.

ejron SpaceX Soft Lands Falcon 9 Rocket First Stage

Their website has been changed quite a bit and old linked videos are hard to find. I found a copy uploaded to YouTube in 2011 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSF81yjVbJE

Edit: Found the original copy on the Web Archive http://web.archive.org/web/20110615000000*/http://www.spacex...

ejron SpaceX Soft Lands Falcon 9 Rocket First Stage

Indeed. Combined, these all burn quite a large volume, but #1 is the most costly in terms of fuel, I think. It's essentially a reversal of the flight path.

ejron SpaceX Soft Lands Falcon 9 Rocket First Stage

There's deceleration involved as well. Here's a very nice video of the shuttle boosters on their way down to give you an idea of the velocities involved. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aCOyOvOw5c

An enormous amount of inertia to overcome so 30% doesn't sound so unlikely.

ejron MiniMagAsm – a minimalistic but powerful CMS in assembly language

Interesting project. I'd love to look at the source and it is available at : http://chiselapp.com/user/johnfound/repository/MiniMagAsm/tr...

  but you can visit the above address and download .zip files with the latest version

The zip file has eluded me. I may not be looking hard enough for it.

ejron Professional Airbnb squatter

The only thing I found more disturbing than the story are the comments below it. Airbnb really does need to overhaul their responses to things like these. As for the host, it's never a good idea to ignore your gut instincts and 30 days for a shady guest is not a good idea. Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but always heed the mantra, when in doubt bail-out.

ejron University of Water-Mellon

Spoiler

  Date: 1 Apr 2003 01:01:01 -0500

ejron Rome is a dependency-free, customizable date picker

Looks nice. One tinsey issue; It doesn't seem to allow me to clear the field. If I accidentally clicked on the text field, I have no way to empty the field again.

I cleared the contents of the field and clicked elsewhere, it fills the field with the last selected value.