Hacker News Reader

simontlbton Montreal adopts bylaw banning insults against police, municipal employees

At least we still have a functioning democracy over here. We can still complain about this specific issue if it matters to us.

simontlbton Google: Lake Ontario/Lake America name change in the U.S. will appear in Maps

Ontario is not simply the name of a Canadian province; the name has Indigenous roots. Replacing it with the name of an Italian explorer would be deeply disrespectful to First Nations communities. You should probably rename the Michigan state too along with its lake if you have such disrespect for First Nations.

simontlbton Our decision on Cursor following its acquisition by SpaceX

OpenAI / Sam Altman is probably even shadier than musk

simontlbton Simulation Theory Misses the Point

I dislike writing perfectly and english is not my first language. I find using AI an efficient way to carry my thoughts to a wider audience. I may rewrite it at some point using my own words.

simontlbton An Hypothetical Universal Assembler

Core part of making a self-replicating machine. If you guys got questions let me know!

simontlbton Kinematic Self-Replicating Machines (2004)

I've been thinking about self-replication for several years. You basically need a robot arm, a small foundery, the spining part of a lathe, a rolling mill to make metal sheet and copper cable. Some way to coat the copper cable (Don't remember) You can use the foundery to produce silicon carbide and graphite. You need a 2d motion system to move the robot arm (maybe 2). You need a system to expend the volume of the machine so that a machine can give birth to another machine. You can bootstrap from that. Initialy photolithography will not be include since you can buy something similar to a rasberry pi for like 2 $. Eventually the more you bootstrap you can create self-replicating factory like machines that can output entire cars from input code.

To fetch the raw materials you should use a form of symbiosis. I assume the raw materials are iron, silicon, carbon, copper, (Rasberry pi lol)

Just contact me If you got time/money to do that I will give you 3d sketches.

Also there is another process you might want to implement if you want to make solar panels. Personally I would just plug it on the grid (for earth based usage)

After that its mostly a job of good programming you want the part you created without new processes (ex: photolithography) to still work after the bootstrap process.