Hacker News Reader

icarus_drowningon SpaceX set to launch ‘used rocket’

As I understand it, the main difference is that the Falcon rockets are (or are eventually meant to be) much less dependent on refurbishment between launches. The Space Shuttle required extensive and expensive work between launches to the extent that many critics[1] claimed that it wasn't truly "reusable". (IMHO, while the shuttle program definitely didn't achieve its goals, it seems like calling it "reusable" is fair).

As for gliding back: the Falcon booster does not actually achieve orbit-- when the main engine cuts off, it is on a ballistic trajectory back to the ocean. While it may be possible to design some sort of gliding apparatus to "save" a booster on a sub-orbital trajectory, it is (again, as I understand it), much simpler to simply adjust that trajectory via a boostback burn that reverses or slows that trajectory, and to then perform a suicide burn[2] to recover the stage, either on a barge or (on lower orbit missions) back on a land-based pad.

I am not a rocket scientist, nor do I have experience in the space industry-- these thoughts are just based on what I've read following the SpaceX reusability program as closely as I can for the past few years.

I do play a lot of Kerbal Space Program, though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Space_Shuttle...

[2] http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/10307/what-is-a-sui...

icarus_drowningon George R. R. Martin Still Uses A DOS Word Processor

I seriously hope he's got a backup strategy for that DOS box.

icarus_drowningon Drop Dropbox

It means that a bunch of people who once thought they were somehow above or apart from politics find that they are not, and that the things that happen in the world constitute news of real interest to hackers. That's growth.

Unless the views that "unite" them are repulsive. If Rice's viewpoints were the polar opposite and we were all jumping on the bandwagon to boycott dropbox because they didn't support torture enough, would that be "growth"?

Of course not.

You don't like Rice's views on this issue, and want to convince people-- including the HN community-- that she was wrong on this issue, and that her views on other issues (warantless wiretaps, etc.) are dangerous for a business like dropbox. Moreover, you don't want to support dropbox now that Rice is a board member. Fine. But to claim that just because we all (or at least most of us) disagree with her views, that in and of itself means that we're "growing" as a community is genuinely dangerous-- because at some point, most of us are going to be wrong about something, and arguing on ideological merit is going to be the only thing that can "save" us. Simply saying that "we all agree, and that's growth" will just ensure that we're all wrong forever.

icarus_drowningon Time-Machine-style backup with rsync

I found that just running an Automator script for the "new disk image from selection" command on the root of the drive worked perfectly-- set an iCal event to run that script once a day, and you're done.

Be sure to test this to make sure it restores, but in my case it works flawlessly.

icarus_drowningon Time-Machine-style backup with rsync

The integration with OS reinstall works very well, and is pretty seamless from the user's perspective. I used to do two backups-- a local TM backup and a separate cloud backup, but I found it was actually easier to just use Automator to up mount my TM volume once a day, image it, and send that up to the cloud. When my TM volume failed last year, I just pulled the latest image and put it on a replacement drive, and I was back up and running.

TM has had a few problems, but by and large it is one of the quiet successes in OS X, and probably my favorite feature if the OS. Why Microsoft hasn't put something like it in Windows is baffling to me.

icarus_drowningon A Sneak Peek at Eric Schlosser's New Book on Nuclear Weapons

Also, if you're looking for a short, but surprisingly informative video on the matter, Scott Manley's "WTF is rocket fuel anyway" video is fantastic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jI8TuufCp0M

icarus_drowningon Those Mac Pros are going to be expensive

Well at least you expect the downvotes. Which leads me to wonder why you thought this comment would be informative and helpful in the first place.

icarus_drowningon Logic Pro X

The Normalize on export function in Logic is works weirdly well too, especially considering you have almost no control over it. I almost always leave it on and in 5 years of professional composition work, have only chosen to switch it off once or twice-- and only because it was pushing some audio artifacts to the forefront that I had previously corrected.

icarus_drowningon Logic Pro X

No 32-bit plugins is an interesting choice. Logic 9 can be launched in 64-bit mode with a 32-bit bridge that opens/closes based on whether or not you have any 32-bit VST/AU plugins trying to run. I've got a couple of Sonnox plugins that aren't available in 64-bit which is going to keep me off Logic X until they [Sonnox] get their act together.

Edit: Clarifying a poor use of a pronoun.

icarus_drowningon Logic Pro X

The drum stuff seems new, but at first glance looks quite gimmicky. As a professional composer, the last thing I want to see is a picture of a drumkit and various performers in the middle of my DAW interface.

icarus_drowningon Logic Pro X

Yes, they almost always control something important. In VST/AU instruments they're often assigned to crossfade volume so that you get a natural tone colour change across the dynamic range.

icarus_drowningon Logic Pro X

I used to use Reason (way back in version 3), and now am a full-time Logic user for all my music production. I'd say this is a pretty fair characterization, although I actually use Logic with VST/AU instruments to do essentially the same thing I used to do in Reason.

icarus_drowningon Logic Pro X

I spend about 8 hours a day in Logic Pro 9, and while I haven't used Ableton a ton, I get the impression that Ableton Live is more geared toward synthetic/electronic and live performance applications, whereas Logic is a more generally focused DAW that competes more directly with things like Pro Tools.

icarus_drowningon The Physics Behind Traffic Jams

Late merging makes better use of available road bandwidth. That's not anecdotal, that's simple math.

icarus_drowningon Apple Updates The Mac Pro

Seemed like they were really focusing on external expandability via Thunderbolt 2.

icarus_drowningon Hacker News is depressing

The issue I take with Dave Winer is that he seems to feel as though his accomplishments or contributions somehow elevate his words beyond criticism.

This is exactly why Dave Winer wrote this post.

The thing is, he probably has a point in criticizing the community. But he has a longstanding inability to respond to criticism properly, to the point where he just insults and name-calls people who disagree with him.

This is why he wants a twitter like "block" from HN. Because he'd rather block HN and the people who take issue with his ideas than actually have an argument.

[UPDATED: fixed poor wording]

icarus_drowningon Hummingbird – A fresh take on music notation

Sure, but I'd argue that's because the key signature is wrong. The correct way to notate that is with either a modal key signature a la Bartok or notate it as D with a constant natural on the C, showing that the tonal center is D while clearly notating the departure from the traditional major scale.

icarus_drowningon Hummingbird – A fresh take on music notation

How is "tell[ing] you what key the piece is in" different that defining tonic/dominant/leading tone relationships? Those relationships are the product of the whole/half step pattern that the key signature communicates. It isn't just important that G has 1 sharp, and it is F. That sharp actually defines the leading tone.

icarus_drowningon Hummingbird – A fresh take on music notation

If the leading tone is "si", what do you call sharped sol?

icarus_drowningon Hummingbird – A fresh take on music notation

Additionally beam groups convey a huge amount of information-- there's a reason, for example, that 6/8 is typically beamed in 2 groups of 3, whereas 3/4 is grouped in 3 groups of 2. Understanding the micro- and macro-pulse relationship make sight-reading much easier, in addition to subtly informing performance.

icarus_drowningon Hummingbird – A fresh take on music notation

I disagree with making different clefs the same. Clefs are different for a reason-- they attempt to keep most notes on the staff. Bass and Treble have won out over competing clefs (if you ever want a challenge, trying reading the various versions of C Clefs like alto/tenor) because they keep most notes on the staff most of the time for most instruments. (Violas, Celli, Trombones, and a few others excepted).

There's also the fact that Treble (G) Clef and Bass (F) Clef are a perfect fifth away from Middle C, which reinforces the importance of perfect fifths in the system of major keys, but I suppose that's a small consideration overall.

icarus_drowningon Hummingbird – A fresh take on music notation

Might I suggest that barlines remain connected vertically on both the grand staff and on instruments in the same family? This is a very easy and intuitive way to make a score readable, especially when it involves large groups of instruments (such as orchestral scores).

icarus_drowningon Hummingbird – A fresh take on music notation

What you mean by this is that the key signature tells you what the tonic is, and, conversely, what the supertonic, mediant, subdominant, dominant, etc. are.

Whenever I teach key signatures this is the biggest thing I try to impart: key signatures are more than just accidentals, they define the roles each pitch plays.

icarus_drowningon Homeworld 2 Backgrounds

The Point Defense Systems mod for Homeworld 2 is one of my favorite things to play: http://www.moddb.com/mods/point-defense-systems

Adds more realistic weapon layouts, focusing on large capital-ship battles a la the Honor Harrington novels. Looks stunning during actual gameplay:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-IPZhoM664

I used to keep a Windows partition around just to play this game/mod.

icarus_drowningon Copyright Trolls Order Wordpress To Hand Over Critics’ IP Addresses

Anonymity is different though. Every single transaction is public, yes, but that only leads you to a bitcoin address, which is trivial to change. Perhaps there's a way to unmask them (even if you are smart about changing your "bitcoin identity"), but it is far more anonymous than many other options.

icarus_drowningon Facebook's New Feed

As a teacher, I'm somewhat sad that text will be less important, but I can't say that I blame Facebook for emphasizing images over words. While it might be nice to tell 7th graders that they should be able to write because the internet is based on text, it's always been true that any day that might change. And it isn't like writing skills will be less important, just harder to explain to insular children of the middle class.

icarus_drowningon Mir – Ubuntu's new display server

To be fair, they give other reasons for dropping Wayland. You might not believe them, but you're hardly giving them much of an argument.

icarus_drowningon 25 Years to Mac - How Ubuntu Pushed Me Away from the PC

You think you could have condensed this down to your best 3 points instead of a wall of text that includes a good portion of the original article? I understand you want to be thorough, but a handful of good retorts is better than a whole load of mediocre ones.

icarus_drowningon How to land an airplane if you are not a pilot

Honestly, this is what I expected the article to be: "Step 1: Turn on ILS. Step 2: Have a beverage and flip the fasten seatbelts sign on-- here's where it is on the instrument panel."

icarus_drowningon Apple - Think Twice

I would agree, but do note that one iPhone was dropped in a cup of tea, which I can't really blame on Apple, and the other on cement, which I likewise can't really blame on Apple.

The macbooks both had bad video cards, which I do blame Apple for. But one was fixed in less than an hour, the other RMA'd and returned in 48 hours. This after almost 3 years of continuous use. I can put up with 2 or 3 days of repair after that many years of trouble-free life.

This kind of service and reliability led me to buy an iMac from them as my work computer and I haven't had a single problem with it.