HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

fdavison

188 karma · joined November 4, 2013

submissionscomments
fdavison··on Google made me ruin a perfectly good website (2023)
Now I want Apple Crisp
fdavison··on A Woman Who Needed to Be Upside-Down (2012)
"While in theory there is no difference between theory and practice, in practice there is."
fdavison··on Two capacitor paradox
"While in theory there is no difference between theory and practice, in practice there is."
fdavison··on Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension
I don't know why you are being downvoted, sharecropper is exactly the right metaphor.
fdavison··on Ask HN: Great fiction books that have had a positive impact on your life?
Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine. Changed my eight year old life in 1962. I wanted to work with computers and electronics from that moment.

Oh, and all the Tom Swift Jr series.

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

fdavison··on The Myth of Self-Reliance: An encounter with Emerson’s essays
I think "I, Pencil" would blow Odell's mind.
fdavison··on Physicists finally nail the proton’s size, eliminating an anomaly
That reminded me of this video of NDT describing the size of the electron: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6kjY6ppJRE&t=71
fdavison··on Physicists finally nail the proton’s size, eliminating an anomaly
DoctorOetker's most recent theorem?
fdavison··on Americans' fear of losing their jobs grows
Because we are near full employment and they now have jobs to lose? From this morning's Washington Post: "For the first time, most new working-age hires in the U.S. are people of color"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/for-the-firs...

fdavison··on What Will the Moon Landing Mean to the Future?
Yes! That was the first thing I thought of: "I don't understand how it subtracts"
fdavison··on Air Force Reveals Tests of Supposed Record-Setting Scramjet from N. Grumman
Johnny Armstrong, the Hypersonics Combined Test Force Chief Engineer for Air Force, until his retirement in 2012, passed away just last week. He worked in hypersonics from the X-15 to the X-51 Waverider.

https://www.edwards.af.mil/News/Article/1922993/team-edwards...

https://vimeo.com/37453969

fdavison··on Radioactive ruthenium from an undeclared major nuclear release in 2017
The EPA has a website that displays a network of radiation sensors in the US:

https://www.epa.gov/radnet

Hope you never need that information.

fdavison··on Ross Perot Has Died
None of what I've read today on his passing have mentioned this interesting story of the rescue of his employees from Iran during the revolution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Wings_of_Eagles

A mini-series was produced about it starring Burt Lancaster

fdavison··on Was There a Civilization on Earth Before Humans?
I really enjoyed the whole Giant series by Hogan.

Star Trek Voyager had an episode with the idea of an ancient saurian species that left earth many millions of years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distant_Origin

fdavison··on A Word Use That Doesn't Add Up
Literally true
fdavison··on Making Swallowing Safer for those who have trouble swallowing
I don't normally have trouble swallowing but a couple of big pills I take daily would give me trouble. A trick I learned recently was to turn my head to the side as I swallowed them. This video on youtube also describes different techniques besides turning your head: https://youtu.be/NUzRGKx79k4
fdavison··on Snopes pulls out of its fact-checking partnership with Facebook
This site on ethics routinely deconstructs the problems at Snopes: https://ethicsalarms.com/?s=snopes
fdavison··on Cortical control of a tablet computer by people with paralysis
The problem with BCI, eyegaze or speech control systems is how slow they are. There can no delay in a fast paced game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTfa0gh2WVg
fdavison··on Google to Sunset Analytic Services SDK, Transitions Mobile Analytics to Firebase
I've been burned by their dropping features and services too many times to ever gamble on them again.
fdavison··on Solving My Email Problem
I filter anything with the word "unsubscribe" into a separate folder, then add a few filters to handle the exceptions.

What is generally left in my inbox is stuff directly mailed to me that deserves attention. 90% of the stuff in the unsubscribe folder get deleted without looking beyond the subject line.

fdavison··on Fakebook: A tool exploring the 2016 U.S. election Facebook ads bought by Russia
Way better UI.
fdavison··on How our heartbeat shapes our thinking [video]
Potassium can also help. Sadly, caffeine is a major contributor to PVCs for me and I miss it.
fdavison··on XXY Oscilloscope
Seeing an oscilloscope displaying a Lissajous pattern when I was eight years old was one of the things that sparked my interest in electronics. In 1962, by cracky!
fdavison··on Petoskey stone
By brother collected these as a kid living in Charlevoix and threw a bunch into Lake Champlain, nearly a thousand miles away, in the hopes of trolling some future geologist.

My brother does stuff like that.

fdavison··on Lack of ethics education for computer programmers shocks expert
This rationalization is a slippery slope. "Good works" does not entitle one to behave unethically. Seems close to these two from the Ethics Alarms website list of Unethical Rationalizations:

21. Ethics Accounting (“I’ve earned this”/ “I made up for that”) holds that someone can eliminate or mitigate wrong doing by loading up the good side of the ethics ledger so that the bad side looks puny by comparison.

11. The King’s Pass, The Star Syndrome, or “What Will We Do Without Him?”

One will often hear unethical behavior excused because the person involved is so important, so accomplished, and has done such great things for so many people that we should look the other way, just this once. This is a terribly dangerous mindset, because celebrities and powerful public figures come to depend on it. Their achievements, in their own minds and those of their supporters and fans, have earned them a more lenient ethical standard. This pass for bad behavior is as insidious as it is pervasive, and should be recognized and rejected whenever it raises its slimy head. In fact, the more respectable and accomplished an individual is, the more damage he or she can do through unethical conduct, because such individuals engender great trust. Thus the corrupting influence on the individual of The King’s Pass leads to the corruption of others.

https://ethicsalarms.com/rule-book/unethical-rationalization...

fdavison··on Ask HN: Why are credit card chip readers so slow?
Plus your card is half-way back to your wallet before the first call is even made when you swipe it, but with the chip, you can't retrieve your card from the machine until the transaction is done. Even if the transaction took exactly the same amount of time, the chip method takes longer because your execution thread is blocked waiting for a resource to be released.
fdavison··on Can mythbusters like Snopes.com keep up in a post-truth era?
Sites like Snopes or FactCheck.org are not immune to their own political biases:

https://ethicsalarms.com/2016/07/31/bye-bye-snopes-youre-dea...

fdavison··on Popular Electronics archives
Made me tear up a bit. When I was ten, Popular Electronics was the first magazine to which I subscribed. I remember how excited I was when the May '65 issue was waiting for me when I got home from school.
fdavison··on Falling for sleep
Steve Gibson of GRC.com is a "health hobbyist" and has been experimenting with various Sleep Formulas, with some success, which you might find interesting: https://www.grc.com/health/sleep/healthy_sleep_formula.htm

He may be interested in hearing about your experiences in his forum

fdavison··on Ask HN: Oldest code you have written that is still in use?
I do software consulting in building automation and control systems, but mostly I build a mouth operated game controller for quadriplegics called the quadstick. That has been the most fun thing I've ever done.
Page 1 of 2Next →