ultratalk
Re:Colonization of Venus
on Tuesday May 19, 2026 @01:05PM (#48196072)
Duplicate of my previous comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47887938)
If I remember correctly, the habitable-ish cloud layers have super-fast winds that circle the planet once every 4 days or so. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_super-rotationThe Cathedral, the Bazaar and the Kitchen
Re:Today I've made the difficult decision to reduce the size of Coinba...
on Wednesday May 06, 2026 @04:02AM (#48033548)
Yeah, but communication is a two-way street. It might not matter to me that my words are unstructured, but it will to the person I'm writing to if they can't make head nor tail of what I'm saying, or worse, misunderstand it as being insulting when it isn't.
Re:Mozilla's Opposition to Chrome's Prompt API
on Thursday April 30, 2026 @07:30AM (#47960938)
With regards to search engines, Google paid billions of dollars [0] to become the default on major browsers. I guess GP's implying that something similar might happen with LLMs.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-paid-26-bln-be-def...
Re:Cursor Camp
on Thursday April 30, 2026 @04:56AM (#47959908)
Strangely enough, when I enter the "convergence point" book, my cursor gets an American flag, even though it wasn't American before. Has anyone else seen this?
Re:Can You Find the Comet?
on Tuesday April 28, 2026 @07:15AM (#47932878)
> Our telescopes actually need the (or at least an) atmosphere to function.
What about Hubble, Chandra, Spitzer, JWST, etc? As of my understanding, the only reason we haven't built radio and and other long-wave telescopes in space is because of their impractical size preventing them from being deployed in orbit.
> There are some classes of observatories, which you cannot build in space but which are still affected by satellites to some degree.
Examples?
Re:Can You Find the Comet?
on Tuesday April 28, 2026 @05:59AM (#47932389)
Opinion: We need to move our astronomical observation equipment off of Earth and onto other bodies, especially radio astronomy, which, unlike telescopes that operate in other wavelengths, is still affected by Earth's emissions in LEO/near-Earth space. We should put a radio telescope on the far side of the moon [0] to benefit from the thousands of kilometers of lunar material separating Earth's emissions from telescopes.
[0] https://doi.org/10.1109/AERO50100.2021.9438165
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Crater_Radio_Telescope
Re:Zoologist and author Desmond Morris dies aged 98
on Saturday April 25, 2026 @02:50PM (#47903615)
Is this the same guy who wrote Peoplewatching (Manwatching, I believe, is what it was called earlier)?
Re:Zoologist and author Desmond Morris dies aged 98
on Saturday April 25, 2026 @01:03PM (#47902872)
Is this the same guy who wrote Peoplewatching?
Re:GPT 5.5 biosafety bounty
on Saturday April 25, 2026 @12:57PM (#47902831)
@dang?
Re:GPT 5.5 biosafety bounty
on Saturday April 25, 2026 @12:55PM (#47902821)
Almost certainly.
Re:Panipat: The Rise of the Mughals
on Saturday April 25, 2026 @12:52PM (#47902801)
Islam and Christianity are Abrahamic religions. But some societies are both very Christian and very anti-Islam, or vice-versa.
Re:Panipat: The Rise of the Mughals
on Saturday April 25, 2026 @12:45PM (#47902748)
Yeah, the south was one of the most economically prosperous regions in the Indian subcontinent at the time. They were the centres of the spice trade, and a lot of colonial interest began there first. Because of the trade networks, a lot of outside cultural influence was part of the area's history. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all came to the Malabar and Konkan coast just a few decades or tens of decades after they starting gaining traction in the Levant and other Middle-Eastern areas. In fact, Islam's first contact with the Indian subcontinent was on the Malabar coast and near it [0]. Colonial trading posts were set up in cities on the Malabar coast like Kochi [1] first, before they were set up in the North. In fact, after he died, Vasco da Gama was buried in a church in Kochi, Kerala, for many years before his son dug him up and took him back to Portugal [2]. My point is, a lot of stuff happened outside of the Gangetic Plains area, and not much is known about it in contemporary Western historical discourse.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_India#Early_history_o...
Re:Panipat: The Rise of the Mughals
on Saturday April 25, 2026 @12:29PM (#47902639)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Re:Why Not Venus?
on Friday April 24, 2026 @05:51AM (#47887938)
If I remember correctly, the habitable-ish cloud layers have super-fast winds that circle the planet once every 4 days or so. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_super-rotation
Re:Why Not Venus?
on Friday April 24, 2026 @05:47AM (#47887909)
There was this project idea that some researchers at Langley developed in the mid-2010s called HAVOC (High Altitude Venus Operational Concept) [0] for a 5-stage mission to send humans to Venus's habitable-ish cloud layers. It never really got anywhere, but there was apparently some media attention around it for some time.
Because the nitrox atmosphere we're used to is a lifting gas in the Venusian atmosphere, you could theoretically just fill a big balloon with our atmosphere and live inside it, with lots of Teflon on the outside and suits made of Teflon to work outside the habitat. I also (kind of?) remember reading about using metal nets to capture and condense H2SO4 from the clouds and process it into water, oxygen, and hydrolox rocket fuel.
[0] https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20160006329/downloads/20...
Re:Why Not Venus?
on Friday April 24, 2026 @05:38AM (#47887839)
https://xkcd.com/397/ (the zombie feynman one)
Just a guess, but maybe it's reporting bias? Negative or evil actions might have more impetus to be understood by others than positive actions. I'd rather try and figure out why my friend suddenly started murdering the neighbours than why he's been getting his work done on time.
Re:Modern Board Games: and why you should play them (2022)
on Thursday April 23, 2026 @12:19PM (#47877616)
Interesting. Could you give some examples as to how? I want to see how well this could work out in my friend circle, who seem to be getting bored after years of mafia-ing.
Re:Modern Board Games: and why you should play them (2022)
on Thursday April 23, 2026 @11:08AM (#47876640)
I just checked it out, what's the difference between it and non-board-games like werewolf and mafia?
Re:Sneaky spam in conversational replies to blog posts
on Thursday April 23, 2026 @10:50AM (#47876429)
Out of curiosity, has anyone noticed a non-negligible presence of bots in threads on HN? I haven't, but I'm not sure if that's because I'm bad at spotting them or because HN is good at getting rid of them or because HN is a niche platform.
Re:SpaceX says it has agreement to acquire Cursor for $60B
on Wednesday April 22, 2026 @10:58AM (#47864595)
That feels more like a reflection of how terrible most GM cars are than about the inflated valuation of Cursor, which is what I infer you were trying to imply.
Re:Archive of Byte magazine, starting with issue #1 in 1975
on Sunday April 19, 2026 @10:28AM (#47824567)
What country were you in?
Re:How to make buffet breakfasts less wasteful
on Friday April 17, 2026 @06:22AM (#47804378)
I don't understand how this relates to the article or the discussion.
Re:Codex for almost everything
on Friday April 17, 2026 @05:46AM (#47804153)
I don't think that's representative of most non-CS professionals. Most people in the fields I know (mostly professors, medical doctors, and businesspeople) can use google chrome, word, powerpoint, and a little of excel decently. There are the occasional few who confuse spreadsheets and databases, but no one who thinks shutting down computers or closing windows is hard. Heck, my ageing dad managed to troubleshoot his printer without any help, and he has no formal computer experience whatsoever.
HN has a long history of patronising the "average user" in the guise of paternal figures who don't realise that what they are doing is belittling the vast majority of tech users. I'm guilty of it myself. But they're capable of a lot more than we think they are.
Ultimately, it comes down to the willingness people have to learn new things. If they're curious enough to think about how things work, they'll be fine.
Re:Codex for almost everything
on Friday April 17, 2026 @05:31AM (#47804071)
It is? :)
New research suggests Bennu's boulders might be more porous than expected
Re:Ageless Linux. We are legally required to ask how old you are. We w...
on Sunday March 15, 2026 @05:32AM (#47385716)
In my country, state schools strictly forbid students from bringing devices to school. This rule was actually introduced because of the haves/have-nots issue here, because many kids are too poor to afford devices. The schools themselves don't provide devices because it would be prohibitively expensive due to the large student population. Most private schools don't allow devices either.
Re:Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock
on Saturday March 14, 2026 @07:30AM (#47375582)
Attach hooks to the bottom of the blimp and send a guy in a heavy sled with hooks on it, with helium balloons attached to it, to the bottom of the blimp. Attach the sled to the hooks on the blimp, then get the guy to pop all the sled's balloons. The blimp will land on the ground gently, if the math is right.