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krallja

3,638 karma · joined November 24, 2008

https://jacob.jkrall.net

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/inpermutation; my proof: https://keybase.io/inpermutation/sigs/2XLmzOczlMLU_QfltncC6J1kKrmwgJ7kp2JRFFO0aIo ]

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krallja··on The Secret Life of Circuits
"She's a child!" shouted Albert.

"IT'S AN EDUCATIONAL TOY."

"What if she cuts herself?"

"THAT WILL BE A PAINFUL LESSON."

krallja··on I Wasn't Allowed Prompting ChatGPT During My Chalk Talk: This Is Discrimination (2025)
> It is, in other words, a ritual designed in 1974 and never updated.

The Chalk Talk was not invented after the IBM System/360. This entire article is clearly a joke.

krallja··on We put a Redis server inside our runtime
> Reddit

Redis?

krallja··on Live: Artemis II Launch Day Updates
> Technically GPS can work from the moon.

Well, one side of it.

krallja··on DRAM pricing is killing the hobbyist SBC market
And the Pi doesn't even come with a monitor, keyboard, speakers, or power supply!
krallja··on ASCII characters are not pixels: a deep dive into ASCII rendering
"finally"? We were playing Quake II in AAlib in 2006. https://www.jfedor.org/aaquake2/
krallja··on Piano Keys
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jank%C3%B3_keyboard available since 1882!
krallja··on Cidco MailStation as a Z80 Development Platform (2019)
I think this was posted here because of the question on Retrocomputing Stackexchange: “What was the last commercial Z80-based computer sold?” (https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/a/31883/11579)
krallja··on Cities can cost effectively start their own utilities
Californians blame it all on Enron, but that can't be the only reason, right?
krallja··on Adding iodine to salt played a role in cognitive improvements: research (2013)
Dig a well.
krallja··on Dtack Grounded archive (1981-1985)
https://www.rocelec.com/part/01t4w00000PPjBiAAL-MC68020EH16E... - the '020 is still "Rochester Active"!
krallja··on After 12 years of reviewing restaurants, I'm leaving the table
Taco Bell doesn’t use butter, AFAIK.
krallja··on I built an ROV to solve missing person cases
I got actual shivers when he found the tracks in the lake. Amazing detective work.
krallja··on I built an ROV to solve missing person cases
It’s funny that we all read forty pages of a “nobody” solving missing persons cases, and then we say “I would watch this miniseries if SOMEONE ELSE pitched it to Netflix.”

(Netflix employees have to pitch stories via agents, just like any “nobody” would, FWIW.)

krallja··on Ask HN: What does RISC-V custom chips for under $100K mean?
https://tinytapeout.com/
krallja··on KidPix
All my friend group chats have a #kidpix channel for sharing pics of our kids. It’s named after the historic software.
krallja··on MicroMac, a Macintosh for under £5
https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/mac/
krallja··on I found a 55 year old bug in the first Lunar Lander game
For accuracy, it was written in FOCAL, not BASIC.
krallja··on Embrace IPv6 before its too late
Yes. In between thinking about it and writing it down I confused “24 bits” and “16.78 million.”
krallja··on Embrace IPv6 before its too late
10.x.x.x has over 24 million addresses. Nobody has that many IoT devices.
krallja··on Things the guys who stole my phone have texted me to try to get me to unlock it
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40579119
krallja··on Things the guys who stole my phone have texted me to try to get me to unlock it
…if you find it?
krallja··on Hacking millions of modems and investigating who hacked my modem
DOCSIS?
krallja··on Lord Kelvin and his analog computer
The Pacific Science Center in Seattle, WA, USA has a Tide Generating Machine[1] attached to their Puget Sound Model[2] - it calculates the tides, and then runs pumps/opens drains to make the physical model act like the predictions.

[1]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ideonexus/5970013589/ [2]: https://pacificsciencecenter.org/exhibit/puget-sound-model/

krallja··on VW to Build €20k EVs on Its Own, Forgoing Partnerships
The way innovators erode a legacy company’s advantage is by attacking an area they aren’t worrying about. Usually, that’s cost (“Japanese cars”, x86 supercomputers), but sometimes it’s speed, power, or convenience (Amazon.com in the 90s). Car companies have had plenty of warning about cheap EVs, but the only relatively cheap ones I know about are the (discontinued) Chevy Volt, the base Tesla Model 3, and the Volvo EX30 that just came out (surprise! it’s Chinese).
krallja··on Building a Reactor
> pile

I see what you did there

krallja··on VW to Build €20k EVs on Its Own, Forgoing Partnerships
I don’t understand why it’s taking the “legacy” automakers so long to respond. This is basic Innovator’s Dilemma strategy - and yet none have a cheap EV yet?
krallja··on Ore Energy unveils battery based on only iron, water and air
This podcast is for a later-stage competitor (Form Energy), but it explains a lot of the broad strokes around the size of the problem, and why iron-air is a good solution for multi-day grid-scale energy storage: https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/whats-your-problem/the-cutti...
krallja··on Ore Energy unveils battery based on only iron, water and air
Iron-air batteries are not for applications that require energy/mass density, like laptops and electric vehicles. They’re for fixed infrastructure like grid-scale batteries, where energy/$ is the relevant function. It needs to be almost literally as cheap as dirt.
krallja··on Cement recycling method could help solve one of the big climate challenges
Call Mark Cuban, make the investments now!
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