Hacker News Reader

timeisapearon Ask HN: What are you working on? (August 2026)

Hosting an XGBoost-model for MLB totals predictions. It runs every thirty minutes: incorporating weather at the hyperlocal level and joins with player attributes that are provably affected by that weather. It also provides advanced decision-making tools with a Kelly Criterion calculator built in. Model still needs some calibration for bet-sizing but is very close to production-ready.

Robust historical evaluations available at https://ballcast.app/validation

timeisapearon DeepMind's WeatherNext model achieves breakthrough forecasting cyclones

https://sites.gsl.noaa.gov/desi/

timeisapearon DeepMind's WeatherNext model achieves breakthrough forecasting cyclones

Yes. AIFS directly by ECMWF and AIGEFS by NOAA. Every vibecoded weather app these days has them. Google those terms you’ll find them.

timeisapearon Dataset: Dead mental health startups, 2000-2026, coded on 18 fields

Isn’t this parent comment generated by AI?

timeisapearon Please don't spam people looking for employment. It's just cruel

You sound like a candidate for asylum? Despite the administration policy, asylum law is still on the books. Might be good to get an application in and cross your fingers for a subsequently more friendly admin.

timeisapearon We should be more tired than the model

I don’t know about being more tired than the model, but when I’ve had a particularly productive session, I feel more tired (brain fog) than during a coding session. Probably because I’ve replaced brainless typing with the cognitive load of decision-making and weighing plan approaches.

timeisapearon Operation: Epic Furious

I think we need an official HN response. This is a legitimate video game, which happens to be satire. If we as a community cannot handle this, I don't know if I want to be a part of it anymore, even though I've been here since 2014.

timeisapearon There's an Unhinged New Video Game About Trump and the Iran War

Play it here: https://epicfurious.com

timeisapearon Show HN: I visualized the entire history of Citi Bike in the browser

Is MapLibre GL a cheaper (free?) open source alternative?

Cool stuff btw. I’m trying to visualize weather model data myself (millions of points) at https://futureradar.net and have been researching client-side techniques like yours.

timeisapearon Ask HN: Looking for kids books about famous people

This was a favorite when I was growing up: "The Value of Believing in Yourself: The Story of Louis Pasteur"

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/196827.The_Value_of_Beli...

timeisapearon James Webb Space Telescope Sustained Micrometeoroid Impact to Mirror

TLDR: We knew micrometeorites would happen, just not one this big so soon. We've corrected four small ones already. We barely got away with correcting this one, because luckily there is a large performance margin built into the image gathering pipeline. We're studying how many more big whoopsies might occur and what effect that might have on the telescope's future.

I wonder if having an impact that was larger than modeled so early on in JWST's mission is a foreboding sign for its lifespan.

timeisapearon Bill Gates: Responding to Covid-19 – A Once-in-a-Century Pandemic?

No, but he is an intelligent person who leads a billion-dollar organization that is, among other things, on the verge of eradicating the historical scourge of polio.

https://www.gatesfoundation.org/theoptimist/articles/Health-...

timeisapearon FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

I'm not sure I buy the risk/market trade-off. You could replace Boeing with any car manufacturer that still has publicly traded shareholder needs.

timeisapearon Ultra Low Latency WebRTC Streaming – Open-Source Media Server

Fubo? Liked the service during trial but the 4K World Cup stream was flaky.

timeisapearon I Was Right About Mark Zuckerberg

People != the market. Anecdotally Facebook usage among my circles has dropped. Most of that activity has shifted to Instagram which Facebook, Inc. owns but the general stigma attached to it is less.

timeisapearon Tesla Model 3 Falls Short of a CR Recommendation

Living in a city, I must manually retract side mirrors when parking on small streets and extend them before driving. Often need to readjust the mirrors each time after extending them.

timeisapearon NFL Releases Finite Element Helmet Models

The model of the helmet for use in concussion studies is only as good as your model for the (more complex) system of human skin, skull, and brain suspended in cerebrospinal fluid.

timeisapearon Towards Battery-Free HD Video Streaming [video]

Worth noting that the pretty HD pictures came from a laptop hooked up to a DAC converter to simulate an analog HD video camera. The true analog camera shown on the page had nowhere near HD color resolution (though it could still recognize faces in a parking lot with 95% accuracy--impressive in itself.)

timeisapearon Google, in Post-Obama Era, Aggressively Woos Republicans

Shocked? It's called lobbying--it's been around for decades.

timeisapearon First stage of Falcon 9 has landed on Just Read the Instructions

The employees on the stream mentioned it was one of the first landings where the feed was clear the whole time. It certainly raised my heart rate watching live as the Falcon 9 hit the X on a pinhead.

timeisapearon A Physical Description of Flight, Revisited (2009) [pdf]

Yes, you're correct. Increase* L/D by decreasing drag.

timeisapearon A Physical Description of Flight, Revisited (2009) [pdf]

I think the easiest explanation to a lay person involves the observation that all surfaces in a moving fluid (e.g. air) produce lift--whether a flat plate, rotating cylinder, or extending your hand outside a car window. Airfoils are merely highly optimized shapes to reduce the (often significant) drag the lift-producing bodies have.

In an airplane, by reducing L/D enough you decrease the necessary power (which indirectly produces its lift) needed to overcome the combined weight of the aircraft (wings/body/powerplant) generated by gravity.

timeisapearon As venture capital dries up, tech startups discover frugality

Where was this general agreement and skepticism about the industry in the comments for Mims' "tech bubble" article yesterday?

timeisapearon Kodak resurrects Super 8

Or JJ Abrams. Or Christopher Nolan. Two of the most profitable and prolific directors of today.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/help-star-war...

timeisapearon A Cosmonaut on the Moon: Korlev’s N-1/L3 Plan

great book that goes into much more detail about the enigmatic Korolev who pretty much was the iron will behind the entire Soviet space program--even more so than his American counterparts von Braun/Webb etc. http://www.amazon.com/Korolev-Masterminded-Soviet-Drive-Amer...

timeisapearon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (November 2015)

Near-Miss Management seeks a creative, driven, independent-minded software developer to join our start-up to help support our existing product and clients while also implementing new features. Near-Miss provides an analytics and visualization software solution to multiple corporate clients in the chemical refining industry. Within our small team, your voice will be a valuable asset to developing our award-winning product.

Hone your already strong Javascript skills on our leading-edge visualization tools written using frameworks such as D3.js. Create beautiful interactive interfaces by transforming our talented designers’ static layouts into code using HTML, CSS (LESS), jQuery and vanilla Javascript. Create services and consume them in our full-stack Node.JS web app.

https://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/98537/web-software-de...

timeisapearon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2015)

Near-Miss Management | Web/Software Developer | Center City Philadelphia | Full-Time, ONSITE | info@nearmissmgmt.com

Near-Miss Management seeks a creative, driven, independent-minded web developer to join our early-stage start-up to help support our existing product and implement new features. Near-Miss provides an analytics and visualization software solution to corporate clients in the chemical refining industry. Within our small team, your voice will be a valuable asset to product development.

Hone your already strong Javascript skills on our leading-edge visualization tools written using frameworks such as D3.js. Create beautiful interactive interfaces by translating our talented designers’ static digital drawings into code using HTML, CSS (LESS), jQuery and vanilla Javascript. Create services and consume them in our full-stack Node.JS web app.

https://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/98537/web-software-de...

timeisapearon Ebola-Infected Health Worker Took Flight from Cleveland to Dallas 2 Days Ago

Ebola isn't spread in a respiratory manner. Unless he took some bodily fluids and rubbed them into a mucus membrane/cut of another person, no need for more fear-mongering.