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davenporten

Re:Ask HN: Any Interesting Niche Hobbies? on Monday April 13, 2026 @11:35AM (#47753545)
I got started by just going out and actively looking for indications of any sort of life. I mentioned tracking is more than looking for paw/hoof marks in the mud, but that's exactly what I start with: I would track herds of mule deer (which is not difficult to do).

From there I would just notice other sorts of signs: broken branches, scratchings, scat. Most of my research went into identifying what I was looking at rather than how to track, if that makes sense. Honestly, most animals are pretty easy to track (not to say you'll always catch up to the animal, that can be difficult depending on what it is you're after) a lot of it is just being intentional when you go out and keeping your eyes open.

You can challenge yourself by going out and looking for specific animals. I did this with a falcon that I had heard lived somewhere in a forest near me. I did a fair bit of research into how falcons behave, when they're active, etc. But there are some things I did not find anywhere online.

In particular, when you get into a falcon's territory the woods become silent! No bird songs, no skittering of squirrels, just silence. I didn't realize this at first, but after a few attempts I found that whenever I got into a particular area all the nature sounds went on mute, haha. I didn't know this signaled the falcon, but it made me hone in (I thought maybe I'd find something else).

There are people who are way better trackers than me, I'm sure there are a lot of really valuable books/videos you could watch, but it's really something you can go out and do right now. Again, you need to manage your expectations, the fun is in the tracking, it's a special treat to actually find the animal, though of course that does happen. It can also be a really valuable skill: I once was out tracking deer and came across fairly fresh bear prints; I immediately turned around and headed home, haha.

And yes, I did eventually sight the falcon, her babies gave her away, and she was magnificent!

Show HN: NRC nuclear licensing RAG pipeline and regulatory embeddings dataset

https://huggingface.co/datasets/davenporten/nrc-regulatory-embeddings

I've been building an AI system to automate parts of the NRC Combined Operational License process: gap analysis against the Standard Review Plan, FSAR strength scoring, and RAI prediction using vector similarity to historical NRC requests. I intended this as a SaaS business, but was ultimately beat to the market.What I think is the most interesting artifact is the dataset: 37,734 chunks of NRC...

( Read More... | no comments | on HN )
Re:I Ported Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii on Wednesday April 08, 2026 @12:13PM (#47692227)
Hahaha! Yes! We need more of this in the world, love it!
Re:Ask HN: Any Interesting Niche Hobbies? on Wednesday April 08, 2026 @10:33AM (#47690794)
Animal tracking. I picked it up in college and it has been a real source of joy and a true challenge. It's also something you can do almost anywhere: urban, suburban, rural, out in "the wild."

A lot of people think of it as looking for paw/hoof marks in the mud, but tracking can actually be quite involved, requiring you to understand the environment and ecology as a whole.

For example, tracking birds is outrageously difficult and when I first started out I didn't think it was possible. But the more I learned about birds, their habits (per species), their environment, I started to see signs everywhere. It really got my eyes open and I started seeing the same old places in completely new ways!

And in terms of contributing something, there are all sorts of apps/organization that can help you identify different species and in turn you give them data in the form of pictures, location, etc. I use iNaturalist myself, but there are others.

Re:Show HN: Brutalist Concrete Laptop Stand (2024) on Wednesday April 08, 2026 @10:24AM (#47690685)
I 100% would not want this on my desk, but I absolutely love it!

Just the execution of making it is impressive. Have you worked in concrete before? Or were you just like youtubing it the whole way?

I came across this article just this morning saying AMD researchers, who hitherto have relied on Claude Code heavily, have noticed degraded performance in the recent update: https://www.theregister.com/2026/04/06/anthropic_claude_code...

Claude Code and Glasswing are not the same, but presumably they have a lot of overlap under the hood. I feel like while AI is certainly advancing in major ways, there will always be the up and down of new software releases.