Hacker News Reader

jpm_sdon Cottagecore Programmers

Another TJ who's an occasional HN poster might have some insight here. @tjic is the author of "Escape the City: A How-To Homesteading Guide"

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=tjic

jpm_sdon For climate and livelihoods, Africa bets big on solar mini-grids

OnePower is another organization doing this very successfully in Lesotho

https://1pwrafrica.com/

jpm_sdon Why do transit agencies keep falling for the hydrogen bus myth?

Transit agencies don't have the technical expertise to distinguish truth from lies in cleantech marketing. They aren't the only ones, see the over-inflated valuations of both Nikola and Tesla as two (very different) stories of companies successfully lying to investors and the general public about the magical capabilities of their novel transportation platforms.

jpm_sdon Planes are having their GPS hacked. Could new clocks keep them safe?

They're taking CRPAs off the ITAR list later this year, supposedly.

https://insidegnss.com/crpas-to-be-removed-from-itar-list-op...

jpm_sdon ARPA is funding cheap community-owned gigabit fiber to neglected neighborhoods

This is American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) not Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, DARPA, ARPA-[E|H|I], etc.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPA#Acronym

jpm_sdon The Shape of a Mars Mission

Don't miss part 1 (2023) for context.

https://idlewords.com/2023/1/why_not_mars.htm

Seems like the most conservative approach would be to send the return vehicle first, empty. Once it's landed safely on Mars and all systems look good, it would be reasonable to send the human crew in a 2nd vehicle?

jpm_sdon Microsoft deletes official Windows 11 CPU/TPM bypass for unsupported PCs

Do you have a TL;DW? It's an hour long video

jpm_sdon Alan Turing's "Delilah" project

Delilah was the far superior system Turing never quite got to productionize, while the low-fi "Project X" was actually used for conversations between world leaders.

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

jpm_sdon Ask HN: How do you prevent the impact of social media on your children?

I have 3 daughters. This is kinda working for us, with ongoing negotiation.

- No phones before 8th grade

- Phones start out locked down (talk/text only)

- Enable select apps (e.g. Camera, Duolingo) with proven responsible behavior.

- No social media apps or accounts

- Youtube and similar are blocked at the router at home

- Computer (Chromebook) use is supervised, mostly

- No phones when you have a group of friends over. Yes I will confiscate them.

jpm_sdon In the Belly of the MrBeast

Yes, the 21st century is the age of simulacra and simulation. Post-truth society.

jpm_sdon Yeah, America can still build stuff

Nice charts. These are great too:

https://jabberwocking.com/top-20-charts-of-2024/

jpm_sdon I live my life a quarter century at a time

Because by then you've mostly finished spending money on raising your own children.

jpm_sdon I live my life a quarter century at a time

Depends on how 50-75 goes!

jpm_sdon An autumn bike adventure down the US portion of the Eastern Divide Trail

I ride, but I don't have time for serious bikepacking right now. Three kids, two dogs, full time job, etc.

jpm_sdon I live my life a quarter century at a time

Great story, and a thought-provoking title. I LLOLed at "We’ll just tell Steve you did move."

I'm 45, so I'll mark my 2nd quarter-century in the not-too-distant future.

Very approximately, so far:

0-25: learning

25-50: doing

50-75: TBD

jpm_sdon An autumn bike adventure down the US portion of the Eastern Divide Trail

When I retire I'm just going to do this all the time.

jpm_sdon All clocks are 30 seconds late

Time Cube redux?

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

jpm_sdon A man keeping hope, and 70-year-old pinball machines, alive

If you ever find yourself in Alameda, California, definitely check out the Pacific Pinball Museum. It's a non-profit with a ton of playable machines dedicated to restoration and preservation.

https://www.pacificpinball.org/

jpm_sdon A Private Life – Nikolai Tolstoy Remembers Patrick O'Brian

I have also completed three "circumnavigations" with Patrick Tull. Incredible story, amazing narration.

jpm_sdon A Private Life – Nikolai Tolstoy Remembers Patrick O'Brian

This interview with Dean King from the (now-completed) podcast "The Lubber's Hole" presents a different viewpoint.

https://lubbershole.podbean.com/e/episode-220-dean-king-inte...

jpm_sdon Polyamory doesn't liberate; monogamy doesn't protect

I've observed a number of poly relationships from the outside, as a friend of one or more of the participants. I've also been in a monogamous relationship for >20yr and I've lived on both coasts of the US in that time.

Generalizing wildly, "going poly" seems to be driven by one partner's selfishness and the other partner's desire to please. It has resulted in breakup of the original dyad in 100% of cases.

jpm_sdon Why is it so hard to buy things that work well? (2022)

I thought this was the most interesting point in the article:

>>>

People often think that having a high degree of internal distrust is inevitable as a company scales, but people I've talked to who were in upper management or fairly close to the top of Intel and Google said that the companies had an extended time period where leadership enforced trustworthiness and that stamping out dishonesty and "bad politics" was a major reason the company was so successful, under Andy Grove and Eric Schmidt, respectively. When the person at the top changed and a new person who didn't enforce honesty came in, the standard cultural norms that you see at the upper levels of most bi

jpm_sdon Why is it so hard to buy things that work well? (2022)

Yeah it reads as completely unedited. Needs another pass.

jpm_sdon Why is it so hard to buy things that work well?

It will make everything even more disposable than it is today. Products will be cheap and they will last a few months before breaking.

jpm_sdon Parkinson's Law: It’s real, so use it

In a larger organization, you inevitably have a more hierarchical management structure, as well as multiple projects going in parallel. Prioritization and scope creep become significantly more difficult to manage. Only a small and specialized group of people talk directly to customers, which breaks the feedback loop you're talking about. And it's much easier for an individual engineer to go down an unproductive technical rabbit hole.

Many product categories are not well matched to the rapid iterative development style you are describing for your server side chat system, due to the significant costs involved in updating products that are already deployed.

jpm_sdon Parkinson's Law: It’s real, so use it

Unfortunately it doesn't scale at all, either to larger teams or to cross-disciplinary projects (e.g. hardware & software combined).

jpm_sdon Splash pads are fountains of fecal material; CDC reports 10K illnesses

Pretty sure this is the grossest thing I've ever read on HN!

Chlorination isn't sufficient:

"maintaining germ-killing chlorine concentration is especially difficult for splash pads because the jets and sprays aerosolize chlorine, lowering the concentration.

Still, in most splash-pad linked outbreaks, standard chlorine concentrations aren't enough anyway."

jpm_sdon We are shutting down Ondsel

I tried plasticity and found it unusable. I couldn't fathom how to design anything without dimensioning!