Hacker News Reader

nixon In lawsuit, AT&T blames Cambridge, Mass. for crappy wireless service

The company said it looked at other locations in the area, but none would work, either because the owners didn't want cell antennas on their buildings...

So either multiple owners are refusing to host antennas at any price, or AT&T just doesn't want to pay market rent in Harvard Square.

nixon Some pragmatic notes on CSS3 matrix3d transforms

Homogeneous coordinates are not linear algebra. Translation is simple, but few people actually understand how the perspective transformation works - it's a convenient hack but if you try to figure it out from scratch you may be surprised by what's going on.

nixon How to Reset Your Sleep Schedule, Seriously

This works even better if you don't build a campfire.

nixon If the Earth Stood Still

They modeled gravity but not the atmosphere. So the most drastic effect isn't even mentioned - the much longer day length would roast the planet on one side and freeze it on the other.

Also, no mention of what the weather would be like without Coriolis "force" - no cyclones, no prevailing westerlies, no geostrophic winds. Would you get one big Bénard cell or multiples? (Currently there are six).

I suspect that these changes would be much more dramatic than the ones they discuss. Surely some hard SF writer has thought through this further?

nixon Thoughts on Google's "Terrain" maps

I don't think the terrain tiles get much attention. For a while it was really excited about irrigation ditches, then a few months ago lots of river rapids showed up. Hopefully they'll make the relief shading layer available in styled maps at some point.

nixon Acupuncture's molecular effects pinned down

We need a new term for anaesthetic acupuncture which distinguishes it from the much broader benefits claimed by acupuncture advocates.

Anaesthetic acupuncture is physiologically plausible and supported by experiment. But any headline about it gets generalized to "acupuncture works" which is misleading.

nixon Drawing mathematical functions by hand

see also Cassidy Curtis's Best Homework Ever (pdf): http://www.math.brown.edu/~banchoff/BHE.pdf

nixon The GitHub Stoplight

At one startup we had a similar setup but using perl and a serial-controlled power switch. It began with a stoplight but in december we brought in an xmas tree and put on strings of green, yellow, and flashing red lights. For a while "the tree is green" was pleasingly literal.