Hacker News Reader

jakemoshenkoon Mutiny at the big five is part of the future of work

I think that's a really efficient way to find a local maxima. In my opinion, companies need competition to drive continued innovation.

jakemoshenkoon LEGO built a life-size, drivable Bugatti from over a million Technic pieces

I regularly sit on creations out of my daughter's duplo.

jakemoshenkoon It’s easy to become obese in America. These 7 charts explain why

That sounds like a problem with the definition of overweight, which probably uses BMI. BMI doesn't seem to scale well to athletic builds.

jakemoshenkoon The fightback against the Bitcoin energy guzzlers has begun

I don't think you understand. Theoretically with an efficient grid there should only be one "market rate" for power. Bitcoin miners would pay market rate regardless of where they are geographically. Certain places pay a vastly reduced marginal rate to generate power, and there are a number of ways to handle the delta between the generation cost and the market rate. One way is to give those who paid for the generation infrastructure (locals in this case) cheap power. That results in bitcoin miners becoming locals. Another way is to just sell it on the open market at market rate, and give the money back to locals. In this latter scenario, the market rate would likely drop a small amount due to the increased supply, and the locals who are now being compensated in dollars rather than an energy surplus, could use those dollars for more productive things like food, or startup capital.

There are actually (at least) two distortions being exposed here:

1. Power being sold for below market rate

2. Someone being able to join the original investor pool (i.e. become a local) and reap the benefits of an earlier investment by the municipality

jakemoshenkoon Comparing City Street Orientations

Got any more information about "Manhattan burned to the ground"? I can only find two "great fires" that may be relevant, and neither of them gave Manhattan a do-over.

The Commissioner's plan is the reason Manhattan has a grid system, and the page for it doesn't reference any fires.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioners%27_Plan_of_1811

Finally, the streets before the Commissioner's plan took effect are still rather small and twisty.

jakemoshenkoon The Near Future of Electric Cars: Many Models, Few Buyers

... the coolant in the car to warm up before the heater starts blowing hot

You conveniently truncated the quote to change the issue. If they wanted heat, they have to wait longer than 15s.

jakemoshenkoon Critics say WeWork is an overvalued real-estate play

They will almost always allow you to sublease though, which is its own horrible time sink to find a replacement tenant.

jakemoshenkoon Is the open office layout dead?

What do they actually do for noise mitigation though? If people can't take calls in them without disrupting others, and if someone could theoretically still shout at their neighbor when they need to have a discussion it sounds less than ideal.

jakemoshenkoon Goodbye Amazon

As of this time I can't actually find their listing on Amazon, but it's likely that they're "Ships from and sold by Amazon.com" as the traditional retailer, and not using FBA with their own webstore.

jakemoshenkoon A new upstream project to break up Docker into independent components

Because there are no engineers storming the office of the CTO demanding that they buy Moby. There is a lot of brand value in the name Docker.

jakemoshenkoon Plasma wings could change the way airplanes are designed and flown

Manned multicopters have already happened. [1] MIT has also demonstrated a variable pitch quadcopter. [2]

If they can use plasma laminar detachment and reattachment to somehow simulate a variable pitch propeller, while still getting some weight savings over a design with multiple swashplates, then yes I think it should help the quadcopter design scale up to larger propellers. That's a big if though, since to simulate a negative angle of attack I'm guessing your propeller design would have to be pretty inefficient with all plasma turned off.

I'm not entirely sure why you want this though, since the single large rotor is more efficient. There was a novel design a few years ago with one large rotor for lift and three smaller ones to counter torque and provide control. [3]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L75ESD9PBOw

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy5Ky50eGJs

[3] http://www.geek.com/science/weve-been-designing-quadcopters-...

jakemoshenkoon Railroad Diagram Generator: A tool for creating syntax diagrams

One of my favorite tools generates these for regexes, taking much of they mystery out of the syntax:

http://regexper.com/#(%3F%3ARailroad%7CRegex)%5Cs%2BDiagrams...

jakemoshenkoon Amazon EC2 Container Registry

PM for Quay.io here, my contact information is in my profile if you would like to discuss ways in which we can improve the product. We are always looking for ways to deliver the best possible experience.

jakemoshenkoon New York City's MTA Exposed (2005) [pdf]

You don't have to eat the cost of the overlap, and they don't send you a new metrocard, they credit the credit card you used to purchase the metrocard. You never stopped getting unlimited metrocards, but you are credited for the overlap. E.g. your $100 card gets borked on the 15th of the month, you buy a new card on the 15th, through the next 14th, and you get $50 credit for the 15th through 30th. You've essentially sold 1/2 of your original unlimited back to the MTA and changed the date of your cycle.

jakemoshenkoon Tesla’s Model S Gets “Ludicrous” Mode, Will Do 0-60 in 2.8 Seconds

Here I am trying to imagine a vehicle with infotainment but without a steering wheel. It raises so many questions!

Do you assume that we will purchase self driving cars frequently enough that the infotainment will keep pace? Do you anticipate purchasing a personal train or fighter jet? Do the handlebars on a motorcycle count as a steering wheel?

jakemoshenkoon The performance and physics of the fish kick

If you read the article there is more to it than just staying under water. The stroke is basically like the dolphin kick on your side. They mention that it may be more efficient because you are able to pull in more water laterally than vertically due to not breaking the surface of the water, or having vortices hit the ground. It would be interesting to see if this could actually impact swimmers in other lanes.