Hacker News Reader

lavezzaon Federal safety official slams Tesla, regulators for misuse of its Autopilot tech

I've seen people rationalize Hitler, so I'm at least second ;)

lavezzaon Federal safety official slams Tesla, regulators for misuse of its Autopilot tech

Ok, that's a fair criticism of my reply. I think I'm preconditioned to take any date Elon throws out with a huge grain of salt, enough to not really put any faith in it. Others could definitely be misled.

lavezzaon Federal safety official slams Tesla, regulators for misuse of its Autopilot tech

They just hang a weight off the steering wheel. A lot simpler than building something that scrolls the volume button.

lavezzaon Federal safety official slams Tesla, regulators for misuse of its Autopilot tech

Also a Tesla owner (Model 3, have the FSD upgrade). I think Elon has a particular way of seeing the future. There are people that say FSD will never happen. But do they really mean that? Will people in 10,000 years be using a steering wheel?

Elon sees FSD happening between 2020 and 12020. There is no know reason that it can't happen. Well let's assume if we work real hard we can do it in 5 years instead of 5000. If it takes 15 or 50 or 100 years, no matter. That's basically the same, but the earlier we start the sooner we have it.

Of course, there are those who think there is some spiritual/religious component to true AI that we'll never be able to simulate. But Elon either disagrees or things that level of AI isn't required for FSD.

lavezzaon Federal safety official slams Tesla, regulators for misuse of its Autopilot tech

Changing the volume via the left scroll wheel is also accepted as steering wheel input. I normally flick the volume up one level. When the next nag starts, I flick down. I find this easier than applying turning force (which I agree has too high a threshold). I need to be driving on the highway for more than an hour before I bother turning on autopilot, so just like you I don't really use it that much.

lavezzaon Elon Musk donates $1M to plant trees after testifying that he’s cash-poor

Elon has a charitable foundation. This donation could have come from those funds. I'm assuming those funds would not be considered part of this wealth in regards to his cash-poor status.

lavezzaon CERN migrates to open-source technologies

I know I'm late to the discussion, but I've worked on a very large LabVIEW program with ~10 active developers and source control was extremely important. But I'm talking about SVN with the option to lock files. If by source control you mean "distributed, file merge-based" source control like git, than I would agree there aren't good options for LabVIEW. But a central repo with file locking, small changes and LabVIEW graphical diff worked fine.

lavezzaon Tesla Arcade

No. I have a Model 3 and there are several games in the arcade. I've played the old-school lunar lander while waiting to pick people up. The racing game is new, I'm guessing the software update will be pushed out soon.

lavezzaon SpaceX Is Raising $500M at a $30.5B Valuation

Falcon 1 launched successfully on the last 2 flights (F1-4 & F1-5). But only F1-5 had a paying customer. F1-4 was a dummy test payload.

lavezzaon Introduction to Ada and SPARK (2009) [pdf]

This looks like a good place to start. http://iment.com/maida/computer/redref/index.htm

lavezzaon SpaceX Successfully Completes First Mission to Geostationary Transfer Orbit

I don't think a lot of SpaceX employees actually live in Hawthorne. Long Beach, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, El Segundo, etc.

lavezzaon SpaceX Successfully Completes First Mission to Geostationary Transfer Orbit

I think most other providers feed telemetry into STK (http://www.agi.com/) to get the animations. There really isn't that much effort involved if using STK.

lavezzaon High-school teen builds one-man submarine for $2,000

"Mendham High School student Justin Beckerman builds one-man submarine" -from the article (highlights on the side)

lavezzaon Ask HN: Congress is Passing an Internet Sales Tax: Why Doesn't HN Care?

A little more difficult than that. I grew up in Pennsylvania. My zip code was for the town next to the township I lived in. There were taxes for stores in the town that weren't levied on the township (two different local gov'ts). Also, PA doesn't tax clothing while Maryland a few miles away does. So every item you sell would have to be categorized in some way (and maybe differently in different areas). So, every delivery address would have to be accurately mapped to multiple, overlapping taxing authorities (state, county, local, school district, etc.) and every item you sell would have to be mapped to multiple tax categories (clothes and shoes not taxed in A, clothes (but not shoes) taxed in B, shoes (but not work boots) taxed in C, etc.)

lavezzaon SpaceX Grasshopper Flies High

http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/se7_JpbtPwA&rel=1

Version with different music. Heard it works in other countries.

lavezzaon Orbital's Antares rocket makes test flight

Aerojet, the company that reworks the old engines before sending them to Orbital, purchased 36 engines. That's enough for 18 Antares rockets. That will cover the current CRS contract and maybe a follow-up or some commercial satellite launches. Beyond that Aerojet has a license to manufacture US-made copies of the engines. That isn't as easy as following a recipe, but it is something they are working on.

lavezzaon SpaceX’s Autonomous ‘Grasshopper’ Rocket Makes Milestone Flight

It is the exhaust of the gas generator. You can see a good view of it here: http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=37

You can read about the Gas-Generator Cycle for rockets here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas-generator_cycle_%28rocket%2...

Basically, a small amount of fuel and oxidizer are bled off into a gas generator and used to power the turbines that feed the fuel and oxidizer into the rocket engine.

lavezzaon SpaceX Launching Dragon Capsule to Space Station

Two of the pods have 5 thrusters. Those pods have two thrusters point "up". That give a total of six pointing "up". These are the thrusters used for the deorbit burn and having two extra is for redundancy

lavezzaon Elon Musk’s Mission to Mars

They formed United Launch Alliance (ULA) for EELV.

They formed United Space Alliance (USA) for the Space Flight Operations Contract.

lavezzaon Mars to Earth at an average of 29 kbits/s

I'm not sure about Curiosity in particular, but I work in the space industry and can say that commands are normally timestamped and encrypted. The encryption stops someone from commanding the spacecraft, the timestamp stops someone from recording a transmission and resending it later.

lavezzaon Mars Curiosity Operating System: VxWorks

From their careers page: "Our Flight Software Group currently has opportunities developing software for embedded flight hardware using Linux and VxWorks as well as ground simulation software using Linux."

lavezzaon Former Apple Exec goes to JC Penney and slashes prices by 40%

I had a roommate years ago that worked as a salesman at CarMax. He had about the authority to haggle as the kid taking your order at McDonalds. I think the volume is so high that if you don't want it at the marked price, someone tomorrow will. Of course, that was years ago at one lot. YMMV.