HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

earthbee

333 karma · joined August 5, 2021

submissionscomments
earthbee··on Fossil shows mammal sinking teeth into dinosaur
It's not exactly a new phenomenon. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/archaeology/g3051/f...
earthbee··on Study finds billions of nanoplastics released when microwaving containers
I don't think anything Auronis was expressing outrage, nothing they wrote even hints at it to me. They just seem to be expressing a line of reasoning.
earthbee··on New study sheds light on the origin of animals
I'm one paragraph in and the article has immediately contradicted itself saying animals first appear in the fossil record 574mya and their arrival appears as a sudden explosion 539 to 485mya, which 574mya is outside of. It then says people believe animals evolved before the Cambrian period but can't explain why they're missing from the fossil record. Except there are plenty of known fossils from the Ediacaran, the period directly preceding the Cambrian. That's a helluva lot of problems in one paragraph so I think I'm gonna stop reading there.
earthbee··on How my children (n=2) acquired absolute pitch
I've heard that all people with absolute pitch will lose it once they get older into their 40s or 50s, as their sense of pitch drifts away from reality and everything will sound slightly out of pitch to them from then on.
earthbee··on RoboCat – A Self-Improving Robotic Agent
Most people who can program aren't programmers
earthbee··on Lung cancer pill cuts risk of death by half
1.4% of all cancers is still a huge number of people helped in absolute numbers given around 40% of people will get cancer.
earthbee··on Parachute use to prevent death, trauma when jumping from aircraft (2018) [pdf]
They solved aircraft safety back in the 50s, but big parachute is keeping the research suppressed so they can sell more parachutes.
earthbee··on GitHub is down?
Seems to be working for me
earthbee··on Humans have reclaimed ‘land size of Luxembourg’ since 2000
So roughly two deciwales?
earthbee··on Ask HN: Why is the hunger for RAM never satisfied?
Software expands to use whatever system resources are available. If overnight we all got ten times the RAM, within a few years all new software would require ten times the RAM.
earthbee··on Ask HN: Is Reddit Down for You?
Nope, working fine here
earthbee··on Reckless American 777 Pilots Refuse NTSB Interviews
Unions should be interested in the reputation of their members. By supporting bad pilots they're making them all look bad.
earthbee··on Yes, Crypto Is All a Scam
I've exchanged crypto for goods and services, it's money for all my purposes.
earthbee··on US general warns troops that war with China is possible in two years
Admiral not General, and the article pretty clearly says could not would
earthbee··on Chronophoto
I feel I'd be doing better at this game if I was a car person. The only time I've got the year spot on was with a photo of the toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein. The worst I did was guess 1960 on a black and white photo taken almost directly above of some cars on a road, it was actually 1980.

Fun but tricky

earthbee··on Inside the 1040ST
"Some 3rd parties produced boards that could contain a Blitter chip, but I’m not aware of anyone directly adding one to the board."

My 520ST was upgraded with 2.5MB of RAM and an added blitter chip, so it did happen. I still have the computer and it was still working the last time I powered it up a few years ago.

earthbee··on Smoking is associated with lower cognitive function in older adults
My mother has COPD from being a life long smoker. Because her lungs aren't working 100% her blood oxygen is often lower than optimal, I'm starting to be able to notice when her blood oxygen is low because her sleep pattern gets weird and she starts making silly mistakes in the tasks she's doing.

So that's one way smoking can be a cause of lower cognitive function.

earthbee··on The all in one web editor for M68K
It doesn't seem to like "clr.l (a6)+" for some reason.
earthbee··on Why on Earth are flowers beautiful? (2018)
The idea I came up with when I first heard this question is that flowers are often markers of a healthy ecosystem and food web with lots of animals and plants which may be sources of food, even if the actual flowering plant itself isn't edible.

Of course the "why did this" evolve questions are usually impossible to answer, though it can be fun to think about possibilities.

earthbee··on Dropzone and IK+ Creator Archer Maclean Has Passed Away
My mother used to play Dropzone while I was at school, she got amazingly good at it. A very impressive game for the time, extremely smooth graphics on the Atari 8-bit. I was playing it just a few days ago on an emulator, great game. I've also played Whirlwind snooker as a kid, another impressive game, I didn't realise the same guy was behind both.

Rest in peace

earthbee··on Scientists Discover Two ‘Alien’ Minerals in Meteorite
The very heavy atoms that we can create usually have incredibly short half-lives and decay in a tiny fraction of a second.
earthbee··on Anybody else going to quit Twitter?
I've been trying to quit twitter for years but there's some people I like who use it and despite dipping into Mastodon about every six months for the past five years, I've still struggled to find anyone I care about following there.
earthbee··on MIT engineers develop stickers that can see inside the body
I'm not sure why they're delaying things by focusing on making it wireless "so it can be wearable". A few years ago I wore a portable heart monitor for a three days and it was very much wired and it was fine, you get used to it. If you have a useful medical device that can help people then release a wired version now and go for wireless later if you really want to.
earthbee··on ArchiveTeam File Format Wiki
Wow, that is very comprehensive. I looked up some obscure stuff from the 80s and it's there. Not just an unhelpful stub either, it has actual significant useful information.
earthbee··on Why wasn't the steam engine invented earlier? Part II
Maybe because trial an error improvement isn't possible if you're actually flying the vehicle? Just a guess.
earthbee··on Does the Tank Have a Future?
I think every half way capable military on the planet is seeing the news and videos coming out of Ukraine and thinking, hmm, must invest in anti-drone technology.

A decade from now what's happening in Ukraine won't work against most major military powers. The drones we're seeing are very slow and very low but modern anti-aircraft systems aren't optimised to detect things this small and low so are getting away mostly untouched, but there's no significant technological hurdle against modifying existing systems or developing new ones that work against this type of threat.

earthbee··on Ask HN: Favourite open source game?
Yes! I'm always having a quick game of Inertia, Pattern or Slant while waiting for things to download, compile or just because I felt like it. It's nice having so many tiny little fun games available.
earthbee··on Apple Shipped Me a 79-Pound iPhone Repair Kit to Fix a 1.1-Ounce Battery
Or they and other phone manufacturers could just stop building phones that are purposefully difficult to disassemble or repair.
earthbee··on Shaped Charges – Sheet of copper going through 1ft of solid steel (2010) [video]
EFPs are similar but distinct from shaped charges. Shaped charges use a conical liner that forms a jet that is only really effective over a limited range, the liner on EFPs is usually flatter and is designed to form a projectile that is effective over much wider ranges.
earthbee··on Success in Canada means moving to America
If you look at the GDP per capita graph for most developed countries it has a similar shape

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=canada+gdp+per+capita%2...

Page 1 of 3Next →