Hacker News Reader

mwattsunon We need a lot more electricians

I was an electrician in the US Navy but couldn't get an electricians job out of the Navy without starting over. We could help this shortage if we did more to qualify military electricians as civilian electricians when they leave the military.

mwattsunon Why Not Mars

I have written anything because it's hard to describe. I'm sort of working on it. As for books, I didn't think I had any but just realized I went through a phase where I read nothing but Arctic and Antarctic exploration books. I related to the extremes we find ourselves in and the fear we feel when we realize there is no hope of rescue should something go wrong and it seems highly likely something will go wrong.

This one is my favorite:

The Worst Journey in the World

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

But I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention Shackleton's amazing expeditions

mwattsunon Why Not Mars

I've spent long periods of time underwater with about 120 others. I've seen how people slowly go mad under those conditions so I always come around to how they are going to keep people mentally fit during those long months in deep space. It's probably much lonelier out there between Earth and Mars vs the space station with it's constant view of Earth and of possibility of rescue.

mwattsunon Cory Doctorow wants you to know what computers can and can’t do

A fanatic is a person who consciously over-compensates a secret doubt.

- Aldous Huxley

mwattsunon Woodworking through the mind of an engineer

I have a buddy who retired around the same time I did who turned his hobby into a retirement project on YouTube. Like Matthias, he also worked on low level code for devices (Philippe Kahn's Fullpower.) In this regard I think YouTube is great for providing retired people a good way to share the knowledge they've accumulated over a life time and make a little money in the process.

Ward's electrical and electronic repair

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

mwattsunon Remote work changed their lives. They’re not going back to the office

Managers need to stop thinking they are paying for a programmer's time and start paying for results. Paying for time is like paying for lines of code. Do you want to maximize results or do you want to maximize time/LOC?

mwattsunon Remote work changed their lives. They’re not going back to the office

Good point. To me this isn't a pandemic related issue at all, but an issue of a programmer's right to control his or her work environment. I think managers should ask themselves this question: Why do think traditional public libraries ask people to be quiet and not speak or make noise?

The trap I fell into after I stared working in an office is working from home on the weekends to do the important parts that required concentration. I was giving them free hours but I didn't see it that way because I was salaried. I was giving up my free time so I could perform the job.

I think there needs to be programmer's Bill of Rights (I can't speak to other professions) At the time I couldn't articulate the problems I had with an office but now realize they include:

- I'm sensitive to 60 HZ fluorescent lights that have a low flicker and hum. I get headaches

- I have chemical sensitivities. Many of the chemicals in offices make me feel sick.

- I'm hypervigilant due to trauma suffered in the military. When people are walking around in my field of vision I automatically stop what I'm doing to evaluate their threat level. With the rise of mass shootings in society, I imagine this would be even worse for me.

- I drag in the afternoon, which I can fix with a 30 minute nap at home. It was not possible to do this in an office.

- Sometimes I get really stuck on a problem and get very frustrated. I found the best way for me to fix this was to go surfing, no matter what time of day. I'd usually come back from the surf session with a fix for the problem. Again, not possible working 9 to 5 in an office.

There's more, but you get the idea

Edit: A post supporting some of my claims and more has appeared on HN

"Toxic workplaces can harm your physical and mental health, Surgeon General says"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33298690

mwattsunon Remote work changed their lives. They’re not going back to the office

My experience may be illustrative of why you should let some employees WFH. Out of the Navy, I got hired as a programming intern assigned to work on the database for "Mouse Works" for the Macintosh, which became "Microsoft Works" after Microsoft decided to publish it. I wrote the database and more. I also managed all three releases from 1984 to 1993 as the build engineer.

I did this all while working from home in Santa Cruz. Our small team all worked from home because the owner didn't want to spend money on an office. We got together every few weeks to compare notes and integrate our work.

After Works, I went to work for companies that required me to be in the office, which was the rule for the time. I found I couldn't perform in an office because there were too many distractions. I need peace and quiet to think, and never found that in the many office settings I worked at. I produced some passable work, but nothing like I had been able to do at home.

If your employees tell you they need to work at home to produce their best work, believe them.

mwattsunon Post-pandemic, the battle between Uber and Lyft is looking more one-sided

Airports are a different animal and I refuse to do them if I can help it. Uber drivers in the SF Bay Area compete aggressively for airport runs, so if that's any indication then I'm not surprised Uber is better for your airport. It's easy to break a rule at an airport and get a ticket, it's always a mad rush, and some passengers are cranky and get mad if you don't act like their personal driver in regards to luggage handling. Some drivers can't figure out there are much easier ways to make good money.

mwattsunon Post-pandemic, the battle between Uber and Lyft is looking more one-sided

As a former driver, I concur that Lyft is better than Uber for a couple of reasons: customer service and serving the needs of the poor. I was able to actually get a human at Lyft to talk to several times to resolve issues in favor of the customer. The bill was corrected on the spot. I was never able to get a human at Uber for any reason at any time.

For the poor, I did a lot of runs taking older low income patients to dialysis clinics. Several rides were set up before hand where I took mentally disabled people to clinics (I was instructed not to drop them off in between home and the clinic if they requested.) Admittedly, Lyft is not a charity, so they're probably making good government money, but I like that Lyft made the effort to help the less fortunate and gave me the opportunity to feel like I was doing something that mattered.

mwattsunon Ask HN: Did you know the US launched a test nuclear missile two days ago?

I've been around a long time and I don't know when anyone ever paid any attention to these tests. The only reason I do is that I was on a missile equipped submarine.

mwattsunon Who killed nuclear energy and how to revive it

They're probably recorded automatically but logs are still taken as way to ensure human eyes are on the indicators, like security guards have to scan a waystation point to prove they were there. I haven't been in a plant for over three decades so I don't know either.

One thing I carried with me through life was to "always trust your indicators." It's too easy to look at an anomaly and conclude the gauge is broken.

mwattsunon Who killed nuclear energy and how to revive it

Working in nuclear under normal operations is boring anyway and consists mostly of watching gauges and other indicators. At least on the submarine we'd scram the reactor and run drills. I'm sure civilian nuclear is less exciting than this. I had one buddy who did it for a career, but just one that I know of.

mwattsunon Who killed nuclear energy and how to revive it

The accident at Three Mile Island and the film "China Syndrome" turned the public against it in America. The prejudice still lingers. I was working as a reactor tech on a nuclear submarine shortly after and decide before I got out that there was no future in nuclear. I became a computer programmer instead. Alvin Toffler's book "The Third Wave" convinced me to do this.

mwattsunon We thank Miss Mary Tsingou (2020)

Great article! I'm glad people are making an effort to update the historical record. Los Alamos is a special place that I enjoyed visiting recently because of the history. William S. Burroughs went to boarding school there and then later Feynman and all the rest came along. The landscape seems to leave a deep impression on everyone who spends time there. I'd always heard Taos was a magical place, but I felt that much more at Las Alamos.

mwattsunon Annotated version of Boole's 1847 “Algebra of Logic” (2019) [pdf]

Awesome. We learned AND gates and the like by learning how elevator controls work. Everyone is familiar with elevators, so no one had any problem learning it. Teaching courses could learn a lot by looking at how the Navy teaches.

mwattsunon Annotated version of Boole's 1847 “Algebra of Logic” (2019) [pdf]

In the Navy when I went to Electricians Mate School in 1979 before going on to Nuclear Power School, we studied Boolean Algebra with this manual:

Navy Electricity and Electronics Training Series: Module 13—Introduction to Number Systems and Logic

http://www.tscm.com/NEETS-v13-Logic.pdf

Boolean logic, or Boolean algebra as it is called today, was developed by an English mathematician, George Boole, in the 19th century. He based his concepts on the assumption that most quantities have two possible conditions  TRUE and FALSE... Boolean algebra is used primarily by design engineers.

I became fascinated with it. Most of my buddies went to the nuclear industry when they got out but I got out as soon as I could and went into computers.

Fun fact: Boole's youngest of five daughters Ethel [2] married Wilfrid Voynich, who acquired the Voynich Manuscript in Italy in 1912 [1].

[1] The Voynich Manuscript is one of the world’s most mysterious books written in code. The manuscript gets its name from Wilfred Michail Voynich (1865-1930), George Boole’s son-in-law. Several attempts by world class codebreakers (including Alan Turing) have failed to definitively unravel its meanings.

https://georgeboole.com/news/the-mysterious-voynich-manuscri...

[2] Ethel Lilian (1864–1960), who married the Polish scientist and revolutionary Wilfrid Michael Voynich and was the author of the novel The Gadfly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethel_Voynich

mwattsunon US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor design

People on submarines tend to know the systems they are responsible for very well since their life may depend on it. In this case they knew which valves to turn to stop the flow.

mwattsunon US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor design

I was on the sub for three years. I am not aware that we had any incidents with the reactor. We had a pipe break and start to flood the sub, but that wasn't nuclear related. In the shipyard we had an incident where the neutron detector pegged high but it was determined to be caused by TIG welding.

https://www.twi-global.com/technical-knowledge/job-knowledge...

mwattsunon US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor design

The Nuclear Navy has an extremely high bar for safety, hence no nuclear accidents. Unlike the Air Force apparently, which sometimes loses hydrogen bombs. Go Navy!

https://www.google.com/search?q=air+force+lost+hydrogen+bomb...

mwattsunon US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor design

We never had a single problem with it in the years I was on board. There were few moving parts besides the control rods and a few valves. When I stood watch on the steam throttle the reactor power would spike when I opened the throttle up. I tell my kids I've controlled a nuclear chain reaction with my bare hands.

mwattsunon US regulators will certify first small nuclear reactor design

"The SMR’s 12 modules, each producing 50 megawatts"

So each module is a little smaller than the reactor of the 1960's era submarine I served on and is based on the same pressurized water technology. I was a "nuke" so had to go in the reactor compartment several times. As far as I can remember, the reactor was about 10 feet in diameter. We went in the shipyard for refueling after the lifetime of the rods, which was 15 years. I could never understand why we didn't build these for civilian use (cost I figured) but now we will. Cool.

https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/news/2022/22-...

mwattsunon Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips

> Demand for semiconductors is overwhelmingly not created by the military

That may be true, but semiconductors are absolutely crucial to the military. I suppose the military has their own fabs locally located in partnership with Intel, AMD, IBM, TI, etc...

mwattsunon Senate passes bipartisan bill to subsidize U.S.-made semiconductor chips

We support strategic defense industries [1] in the U.S. so I don't understand how offshoring chip making was ever allowed to happen

[1] As a former sub sailor, I'm aware that we kept submarine building capability afloat at New London, CT and Newport News, VA even when there is no current demand, but this was long ago and may no longer be true

mwattsunon Deepest infrared image of universe

That's as far away as I've ever been from light, except Northern Alaska. The lack of human made noise of any kind was also disconcerting there

mwattsunon Deepest infrared image of universe

It would have been cool to meet some researchers and have a chat, but I spent a few days hanging out with the town folk who live in Delta. It's a nice town. I went for pizza in a bar bowling alley. They're not all Mormon and for all I know modern Mormons drink. I counted a Baptist and a Catholic church.

The bar unironically had a poster from the 70's or 80's that no one felt the need to update:

https://imgur.com/a/s6Y6O1J

I was very lucky, because I had just driven on 70 in the Eastern part of Utah where there was no service for about 120 miles (remember that monolith? out there), and I was just about to head out into the Great Basin. In other words, I broke down a couple of miles from the only repair shop in hundreds of thousands of square miles.

mwattsunon Deepest infrared image of universe

My car broke down in Delta, Utah in Jan 2020. I was helped by beryllium miners who worked the mines in the area [1]. Beryllium does not expand or contract when heated or cooled, making it ideal for the frame of the James Webb telescope. Coincidentally, I broke down inside a cosmic ray telescope array named with the same last name as mine: The Lon and Mary Watson Cosmic Ray Center [2]

The people in that area are probably celebrating right now, just not with alcohol because they are mostly Mormon. If any of you are on Hacker News reading this, thank you!

[1] https://www.upr.org/utah-news/2022-03-25/beryllium-is-a-crit...

[2] https://www.space.com/36975-telescope-array-site-tour-photo-...

mwattsunon Observations on 6 Years of Journaling

I used to verify all my quotes but it's really not clear in many cases because there's a lot of misattribution. I resign myself to thinking it's the thought that counts. Otherwise I'd be all day fact checking.

I can't find it on quote investigator so someone probably made it up. I have experience that it is true and that's what counts for me

https://quoteinvestigator.com

mwattsunon Observations on 6 Years of Journaling

I've written my own program that loads and saves my files with encrypted zip files. C# and .Net make this a breeze to implement. I use a long password so even if someone gets the file it will be hard to crack. I don't encrypt that many files, but sometimes I need the option.

mwattsunon Observations on 6 Years of Journaling

I've taken a course in Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) so part of my writing is to practice it