Hacker News Reader

runjakeon NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart

perceived nostalgia, because a lot of that supposed nostalgia can't be defined or isn't actually true.

I would appreciate a solid explanation of which periods and aspects "Make America Great Again" refers to. I can think of a couple ones off the top of my head regarding technical progress, but I'm unsure whether MAGA helps or hinders that progress.

runjakeon NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart

I respect the J58's place in history, but it has no place in modern aviation. The ideas behind it still remain relevant, but the implementation is long, long outdated. I think it could be redesigned and reimplemented for cheaper that it would cost to resurrect and maintain the original J58.

runjakeon NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart

> Despite them being complex, high-bypass turbofan engines ARE exotic technology.

Sure, I'll concede here. I think of "exotic" as "few people/nations understand it well enough" but including the manufacture and tooling seems like a no brainer inclusion.

runjakeon NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart

You might be interested in the GE RTA :-)

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20050196667

The spirit of what you say about the J-58 is true -- it does work like that but it is still "just" an afterburning turbojet.

I personally think the path forward is a turbine -> ramjet -> scramjet architecture for an aircraft that goes zero to hypersonic.

runjakeon NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart

It is worth noting that MIL-STD-1553 can and has been retrofitted into multiple aircraft that were manufactured decades before it existed.

runjakeon NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart

Turbofans are not exotic technologies. They are well understood, and their limitations are well understood.

Presumably, an SR-71 successor would use a mix of turbofans and ramjet/scramjet to meet their performance (speed/altitude) goals, depending on whether it would be self-sufficient or use takeoff assist from another aircraft.

runjakeon NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart

Because Trump has a history of it.

See this comment for a quick set of links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49910639

runjakeon NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart

There's standards for signaling like this. One being MIL-STD-1553. Another being ARINC. And you're now seeing a lot more Ethernet and such.

Normally, the engine itself uses proprietary signaling for its systems internally, but will present a standardized interface to the avionics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIL-STD-1553

runjakeon NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart

You'd probably be using some mix of better turbofan/turbojet engines along with ramjets/scramjets and 50-60 years of materials sciences advances. So, yes.

runjakeon NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart

I never saw extraterrestrial technology or any indication of extraterrestrials existing, other than gag stuff in hangars.

All the aerospace technology I've ever worked with or heard of has a pretty clear (human) engineering lineage. None of the planes you've seen or heard of, or parts thereof, are based on extraterrestrial technology.

runjakeon NASA asked several former SR-71A staffers to help secret restart

Look, I'm certified as the world's biggest SR-71 fan. As a kid, I saw it fly a number of times, got to see it up close, and had a family member who worked as an engineer on the program. I believe it may have even been this Blackbird, 844. It impacted me so much that I later went on to work on my own black and other military aircraft.

I'm assuming that, if this rumor is true, somebody in the Trump campaign forced somebody at NASA to do this out of some misguided nostalgia. My hope is that if they're going to resurrect the Blackbird, they'll at least retrofit modern engines into the thing.

But there are much more modern, cost-effective ways to build very-high-altitude, very-fast aircraft. I'm doubtful that going manned is the right approach. It takes a lot of weight and space to carry a person and the required life support systems. That capacity could be better utilized for more fuel and sensors.

There's better technology that's far cheaper to maintain and operate. And you could potentially get hypersonic, or at least near-hypersonic, performance.

runjakeon macOS Golden Gate Is a Buggy Mess

The Mac User Guide on the site was updated to Golden Gate on launch day. There were lingering server-side cache issues that would occasionally display the Tahoe version to some users.

These should have been fixed as of a couple weeks now.

Anyone still seeing Tahoe? If so, please reply with the URL you are visiting.

runjakeon macOS Golden Gate Is a Buggy Mess

It is.

Citation: I was a NeXTSTEP developer.

runjakeon The problem is not AI code, but not knowing about system architecture or intent

And, to be clear, I don't really place any judgments on this.

Unarguably, the world's technical capabilities have increased by this shift (while decreasing the required technical understanding required of the people managing it). Albeit, with some security implications.

runjakeon Has Violence Against Teachers Become Accepted by Society?

The ugly secret is that vast amounts of teachers are leaving the field, but there's also an inexplicably vast fresh supply of new teachers coming out of universities, so it sort of perpetuates the conditions.

I don't anticipate change until this fresh supply dries up and people start asking why.

runjakeon The problem is not AI code, but not knowing about system architecture or intent

This problem has existed long before AI became useful. As technology becomes more accessible, less knowledge is required to operate it. As that knowledge becomes less necessary, fewer people acquire it. Eventually the abstraction becomes so effective that entire layers of knowledge disappears from common practice.

As a person who's a solid generalist with over 30 years in various roles, I am completely and utterly shocked at how little foundational knowledge people in "senior" roles possess across a wide variety of technical fields. I'm often treated like some wizard or oracle for knowing things that everybody in the field used to know, I just haven't retired yet.

AI didn't create this phenomenon, it's just the latest (and probably the fastest) iteration of it. I recall another particularly large iteration happened when Windows NT 4.0 Server saw mass adoption. Suddenly, people who were effectively IT technicians were now sysadmins.

Edit: grammar

runjakeon Has Violence Against Teachers Become Accepted by Society?

> but school districts seem to be so cowardly in the face of bad lawsuits

It's not so much that they're cowardly, it's that they don't have budget for the lawyers to deal even with the bad lawsuits.

That, and the court of public opinion is a thing, and it's not reasonable, and it's powerful. It takes down boards of education, gets leadership wrongly fired, and so on.

runjakeon Ask HN: Indie hackers on X (Twitter) feels like a mega bubble these days

Assuming you mean people like levelsio and marclou, I see them hyping small players all the time. Aside from that I agree with you.

runjakeon Automattic has a new board after failed attempt to put CEO on leave

It makes a lot of sense when you see their severance package. I’m going with the hypothesis this was the whole point.

runjakeon Samsung accidentally freezes its smart fridges with a software update

I think it may depend on the LG appliance. Their washers and dryers are generally rated pretty well and last a long time (personal experience). They are generally pretty self-repairable and parts aren't obscene (again, personal experience).

That said, next go around, I'm buying a top loader Speed Queen Commercial washer and dryer. The ones with analog knobs.

But yeah, I'd never buy a Samsung appliance and that seems to be universal advice among the clued.

runjakeon I said no and Apple said yes

I believe these new settings are to turn off specific undesired functionalities.

Clicking "Turn off Siri" should still act as the overall switch.

Seems to behave this way on my 27.2 Beta 2 test Mac anyway.

runjakeon 16-bit Intel 8088 chip (c. 1985)

I used to read a lot of Bukowski. I still have a very large number of his books, rare and out of print, stored in boxes.

At first, I thought this was a well-written parody. I never had one inkling about this poem or his technical knowledge. I understand what he was talking about because I was around back then and understand and suffered from these gotchas.

runjakeon I said no and Apple said yes

Your first sentence of this reply doesn't make any sense to me.

And I don't see how your second sentence relates to the first.

runjakeon I said no and Apple said yes

Try it and find out? If it doesn't now, I bet it will in the next version or two, due to all the attention it's gotten.

I'd test it myself but I use and enjoy Apple Intelligence and don't want to ruin my config.

runjakeon I said no and Apple said yes

The Internet is suggesting a bunch of hacks and undocumented defaults commands to run.

Meanwhile the Mac User Guide explains how to disable Apple Intelligence throughout Golden Gate:

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/turn-restrict-acces...

Here's the version for iPhone:

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/iphone/iph3fed3f2c3/io...

For iPad:

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/ipad/ipad3b7f1217/ipad...

runjakeon Ask HN: Is it impossible to disable Siri on macOS 27?

Trivia: the most popular method of using Siri, per the analytics, is "accidental activation".

runjakeon Ask HN: What happens when Claude Code goes away?

Hopefully by then local models will be more useful or more accessible on decent hardware.

For now, all my Codex projects include instructions to comment all code for human readers, develop unit tests, and document everything in human readable formats with a human audience in mind.

Caveat: I was a pretty decent programmer before AI.

runjakeon Everybody's Lost Their Minds

.... enjoy the articles and fight against the inevitable future?

runjakeon Warren Buffett Steps Down as Berkshire Chairman, Names Son to Replace Him

Warren's son has been a leader at Berkshire for a very long time. He was voted in by the board, not Warren.

Here's his Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Graham_Buffett

runjakeon Everybody's Lost Their Minds

I saw this post in my RSS feeds early this morning. The post was so poorly thought out, pessimistic, and full of anti-AI myths that I unsubscribed from this blog's RSS feed. I'm surprised to see it make the front page of Hacker News.