News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

sveit

Re:Diagnosing the Steel Failure in the SF Transit Center on Wednesday October 30, 2019 @03:42PM (#21401696)
The Eads bridge[1] is also an example of a very early (opened in 1874) use of steel. I don't know about how over engineered it is, but it is still used for automobile and light rail today.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eads_Bridge

Re:The SpaceX Starship is a big deal on Wednesday October 30, 2019 @10:08AM (#21397883)
Starship is a devastatingly powerful space access and logistical transport mechanism that will instantly crush the relevance of every other rocket ever built.

If I am a launch provider other than SpaceX, I'm out of business in probably 3-5 years.

Re:Fifty years ago, the internet was born in Room 3420 on Tuesday October 29, 2019 @03:18PM (#21391024)
In the middle of 1966, Robert Taylor took over the directorship of Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO)[1]. It was Taylor who launched the project that produced ARPANET. This is a great history series on ARPANET, starting with "ARPANET, Part 1: The Inception."[2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Processing_Techniq...

[2] https://technicshistory.com/2019/05/08/arpanet-part-1-the-in...

Re:Starship Update on Sunday September 29, 2019 @11:34AM (#21107604)
"One of the really interesting interesting things to contemplate is the total mass to orbit capability of a large reusable system where you have a significant fleet in operation. If you've got something like Starship where you've got maybe 150 tons capable to orbit and the ship can fly, is capable of say theoretically flying four times a day but you know they call it like 75 percent uptime so theoretical three times a day, three hundred sixty-five days a year. So that's like about a thousand flights a year for the ship. The booster can do a lot more than that. This is obviously max theoretical. You've got, you know, 150 tons that service, 150,000 tons to orbit per year per ship. If you've got say ten ships you'd have [...] one and a half million tons to orbit per year. Twenty ships you've got three million tons to orbit per year. I think the total rest of world capacity, if you take all rockets on earth including Falcon, the total capacity to orbit I think is around two to three hundred tons currently. Total Earth capacity to orbit is about two to three hundred tons if all rockets launched at max rate. So we're talking about something that is with a fleet of starships a thousand times more than all earth capacity combined. All other rockets combined would be 0.1% including ours."

How is this not massively disruptive to the entire space launch industry?

Also see the Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation (APOLLO)[0]: "APOLLO measures the round-trip travel time of laser pulses bounced off the lunar retroreflectors[1] to a precision of a few picoseconds, corresponding to about one millimeter of precision in range to the moon."

[0]: https://tmurphy.physics.ucsd.edu/apollo/apollo.html

[1]: https://tmurphy.physics.ucsd.edu/apollo/lrrr.html

Re:Introduction to Svelte on Thursday August 15, 2019 @02:26PM (#20708140)
Mark Volkmann gave a great talk on Svelte[0].

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_PTdJq-1rA

Re:The Wright Brothers Conquered the Skies with Data on Monday July 15, 2019 @12:45PM (#20442571)
Check out the book The Wright Brothers by David McCullough[1]. You will see that they are anything but tinkerers, but more the founders of aeronautical engineering.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Wright-Brothers-David-McCullough/dp/1...

I use a "Hackintosh". This buyer's guide can help you if you want to build your own or by a PC that would work well[1].

[1] https://www.tonymacx86.com/buyersguide/building-a-customac-h...

Re:What if the Placebo Effect Isn’t a Trick? on Wednesday November 07, 2018 @09:32AM (#18399321)
A great book on this topic is Suggestible You by Erik Vance. He addresses some of the scientific basis of the placebo effect.
Re:The Transistor, Part 3: Endless Reinvention on Friday June 15, 2018 @02:23PM (#17322191)
This series was very well researched and written. He is starting a new series on the history of the Internet. I'm really looking forward to it.[0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17322090

This is by the author of "The Switch"[0], a history of the electronic switch. I found the series fascinating and am looking forward to this new series on the Internet.

[0] https://technicshistory.wordpress.com/2018/05/06/the-switch-...

Re:Announcing NPM 6 on Tuesday April 24, 2018 @02:09PM (#16915044)
> I'm already seeing a lot of good developers move away from node as they gain experience and realize things should be much better.

What are you seeing them move to?

Re:Capturing Starman from 1M miles away on Thursday February 15, 2018 @12:09PM (#16385641)
According to Elon Musk[0](32:30), no.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mCGbguCw2U

TradeHarbor offers a service called EmailToSign [1] that allows you to sign PDFs using your voice. [1] http://tradeharbor.com/2017/hosted-apps/
Re:2017 Solar Eclipse Path of Totality on Thursday December 15, 2016 @11:10AM (#13185558)
I'll be able to view over 1 minute of totality from my backyard. Check out http://www.eclipse2017.org/2017/every_community.htm for totality times for any town along the path.
Re:Things I Won’t Work With: Peroxide Peroxides (2014) on Friday August 05, 2016 @09:38AM (#12232203)
"Instead of being locked in a self-storage unit with two rabid wolverines, why not three?"
Re:Your iPhone just got less secure. Blame the FBI on Wednesday March 30, 2016 @12:11PM (#11390316)
Can we file a Freedom of Information Act request to have the method the FBI used disclosed?
Re:Interlocking Bricks Before Lego [video] on Saturday January 30, 2016 @12:22PM (#11002713)
I played with American Bricks at my Grandma's house as a kid. I even built a suspension bridge with them. They were great fun.
Re:Why I love Snapchat on Thursday January 07, 2016 @07:07PM (#10861875)
If you have a face-to-face conversation with a friend (assuming no eavesdropping devices are around) everything you say "self destructs". You'll feel freer to say certain things knowing that they will only persist in your friend's memory.
Re:The Okinawa missiles of October 1962 on Monday October 26, 2015 @04:24PM (#10454201)
I contact my U.S. Representative requesting the Air Force release records pertaining to the incident. We need to know that facts.
Re:Digits (XKCD) on Thursday March 20, 2014 @11:40AM (#7436201)
Now I'm going to start seeing 2048 combos.
Re:The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary on Tuesday March 04, 2014 @02:02PM (#7342302)
The Catholic Church teaches against persecution of gay people. From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition

Re:Rare 'polio-like' disease reports in California on Monday February 24, 2014 @10:52AM (#7291420)
I heard this reported on Fox News Channel this morning.
Re:Why is quality of pseudorandom number generators important? on Thursday February 06, 2014 @11:48AM (#7191261)
If I toss a coin into the air and then it lands on tails, there is a visible cause and effect. The velocity of my arm, the position of the coin in my hand, the moment of release, the air currents in the room all affect the outcome. If I could measure these to a high degree of accuracy and plug the measurements into a detailed enough simulation, I could predict the outcome. However, I can't. So I am unable to predict the outcome (hence the outcome is random).
If I saw this in my inbox, I would think it is a phishing attack. By sending a legitimate email like this, Big W is making it much easier for their customers to succumb to phishing.