Hacker News Reader

mdturnerphyson Neutrinos' maximum possible mass shrinks further

This measurement was performed in a lab in Germany. The main spectrometer of the apparatus used for the measurement was fabricated in Germany. The delivery route was almost 9000 km. https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/march-2007/deconstr...

mdturnerphyson A Two-Stroke Engine Made from Scratch Using Basic Hardware Store Parts

https://www.youtube.com/@Jeremy_Fielding

https://www.youtube.com/@StuffMadeHere

https://www.youtube.com/@PaskMakes

https://www.youtube.com/@MikePatey

https://www.youtube.com/@jamesbruton

mdturnerphyson Schiphol conducts trial with self-driving buses on airside

Except for the incredibly low ceilings in some places.

mdturnerphyson The end of the dark universe?

That's an older paper that was initially uploaded in 2018 and revised last year. The preprint under discussion is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.19459

mdturnerphyson Bourbaki dangerous bend symbol

I gave a couple of physics talks where I used the "fasten seatbelt" sign on a series of slides introducing a controversial topic (weak value amplification). I told the audiences beforehand that they just needed to stay in their seats for these slides and we'd discuss once I'd laid everything out.

mdturnerphyson Ask HN: What side projects landed you a job?

During my physics PhD I built my own Segway (and a second one with a power tool company who came to me after first asking tlb) and did a bunch of projects with a high-power laser cutter that I got funding for in our lab. I included these on my resume and they were much easier for interviewers to talk to me about than my PhD work. I think they also helped me stand out a bit. Receiving positive feedback about these projects gave me confidence to sell myself as someone who could build things.

mdturnerphyson Simple streetlight hack could protect astronomy from urban light pollution

I wonder if your eyes move around a lot. It's known that we can see flicker in things like LEDs on a clock when our eyes move fast enough that subsequent flashes are sufficiently separated in the field of vision, particularly in our peripheral vision, and I've also experienced this with LED headlights while driving.

mdturnerphyson Railway Safety Posters (2022)

The Thai anti-smoking ads are pretty straightforward/gruesome as well, and cigarette companies are required to include them on their packaging.

mdturnerphyson Akan Names

From the guidelines:

Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.

mdturnerphyson A quick look back at when Microsoft made an interactive Barney toy

My current boss worked on ActiMates. He'd probably be happy to answer questions if anyone here has any for me to pass along.

mdturnerphyson Show HN: Degrees What?

It's not just nice for that reason, that's the reason the scale exists.

mdturnerphyson Show HN: Degrees What?

I presume that's kind of the point. It's fun.

mdturnerphyson Show HN: Degrees What?

I think the point was that it's just "Kelvin" not "degrees Kelvin"

mdturnerphyson Show HN: Degrees What?

I always want to ask “degrees what?"

I once worked on a system that ran at -40 degrees. I loved leaving off the scale when giving tours and telling about it, because someone would invariably ask if I meant Celsius or Fahrenheit and then everyone got to learn where the crossing point of the two scales is.

mdturnerphyson Ask HN: Suing Facebook in small claims?

Have you confirmed that their charges aren't still showing up on your credit card statement? Merchants collecting recurring payments use updater services to update expiration dates automatically.

mdturnerphyson Twitter won’t allow retweeting tweets linking to Substack

ขอบคุณครับคุณสมศักดิ์ Glad someone called me out on not reading the article. I'll do better next time.

mdturnerphyson Twitter won’t allow retweeting tweets linking to Substack

Here's the Substack announcement of their new Notes feature that's referenced in the article as being a likely cause for this (or maybe Musk is just being Musk):

https://on.substack.com/p/introducing-notes

Edit: Correcting to acknowledge this is in the first paragraph of the article. Doh!

mdturnerphyson Building a legged robot in 80 days

James Bruton's videos might be a good place to start.

https://www.youtube.com/user/jamesbruton

mdturnerphyson Appalachian Apple hunter who rescued 1k ‘lost’ varieties (2021)

Here's a nice Wyoming PBS piece on rescuing Wyomingian varieties: https://youtu.be/KZyD74vNdcc

mdturnerphyson The Rise of Steel Part II

mdturnerphyson Tocharian Languages

Victor Mair, who is heavily cited on the Wikipedia page, has a large number of posts about Tocharian on the Language Log: https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/index.php?s=tocharian

mdturnerphyson Thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days (2018)

In the fields of physics I'm familiar with the group leader is usually listed last on papers. They get credit wherever they are in the author list, while being first or second author carries more cachet for students and postdocs who are trying to establish their careers.

mdturnerphyson Raspberry Pi security alarm – the basics

If I were to do this I'd probably start with a system from Unipi [0], either their Raspberry Pi add-on board or one of their PLCs. They're pretty handy and more versatile than standard PLC systems.

[0] https://www.unipi.technology/

mdturnerphyson A fake job offer gone wrong

The credit card applications got blocked, but I found out about them because the thieves used my email address on the applications. The most frustrating part was trying to get in contact with the right people at T-Mobile and Verizon to report and shut down the fraudulent accounts. I found out about those because of soft credit pulls on my credit report. I'm not sure if a credit freeze would have prevented them since they were just soft pulls.

mdturnerphyson A fake job offer gone wrong

They have my drivers license which contains a lot personal information but eh... proably somewhere based in india or something, I dunno.

Freeze your credit reports with all 3 credit reporting companies. Last year someone flew into Seattle from out of state with a driver license with their photo but my info, including an old driver license number. They got a bunch of cell phones and attempted to open a number of store credit cards with it. They bought a car with a fake of someone else's https://bellevuebeatblog.com/2021/04/28/64000-dodge-challeng...

mdturnerphyson The Voyage of Life

Since others have brought up religion already, I'll mention that your thoughts here are very similar to a passage in the Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 2:11-12 (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/2-...).

mdturnerphyson Soldering Wires – Here's a different way

This and the wire is able to conduct the heat away faster than it is deposited into it. With some very thin phosphor bronze wires I have seen damage.

mdturnerphyson Soldering Wires – Here's a different way

Here's the one I've used: https://www.laserwiresolutions.com/product/mercury-4/

mdturnerphyson Soldering Wires – Here's a different way

And if you have a lot of wires to strip, get a compound automatic wire stripper or a laser wire stripper.