Hacker News Reader

rickyconnollyon Long Before Trees Overtook the Land, Earth Was Covered by Giant Mushrooms

Dude in article pic looks like he's an expert on mushrooms

rickyconnollyon It's 100 years since Fritz Haber found a way to synthesise ammonia

Yes, Fritz Haber is pretty much single-handedly responsible for starting the chemical weapons race that ravaged soldiers and citizens alike during the great war.

Edit: Although Victor Grignard, on the Allied side, deserves a fair scoop of the blame as well.

rickyconnollyon The Nazi's comprehensive graphic standards manual

And a PDF of the manual itself, if you want to try your hand at reading German printed in tightly-spaced Fraktur:

http://ia700306.us.archive.org/16/items/OrganisationsbuchNSD...

rickyconnollyon Human brain boiled in its skull lasted 4000 years

Now I am completely freaked out. I could have no brain and not even know it!

rickyconnollyon The Pirate Bay is down

+1. Since my ISP blocked TPB, I've moved to kickass.to

rickyconnollyon MTU Study: 3D printers may soon be in every home

3D printing is rather useful in the research lab. For example, most biological research labs will have a piece of kit called an electrophoresis chamber. This is essentially a plastic, watertight box with two wire electrodes inside. These chambers will cost upwards of 800 dollars.

I drew up plans for my own electrophoresis chamber in Sketchup, uploaded it to Shapeways (https://www.shapeways.com/model/1240729/sds-page-tank-v6.htm...), and got it printed and sent to me for less than 70 bucks. Wiring it up cost less than a dollar.

By the way, does anybody know of similar services that are even less expensive? Shapeways seem to specialize in making little trinkets and gadgets, so I suspect my rather large, bulky box cost even more than it needed to.

rickyconnollyon [dead]

Buy one of those stickers and nobody will ever have to know!

rickyconnollyon The "Amen Break" and the Golden Ratio

You can find the 'golden' ratio, as well as any other ratio you fancy, within any complex dataset, such as the waveforms of an audio file or the spirals on a sea shell. The golden ratio meme is like numerology, once you know what it is, you will see it pop up everywhere.

rickyconnollyon Coffee shops look to oust 'laptop hobos'

If anything, it affects us less. All the fake tan and glitter make us nigh-impermeable to the elements

rickyconnollyon Zen Photon Garden - Ray Tracing in the Browser

You either die a hero...

http://zenphoton.com/#AAQAAkACAAEgfwAzAgIBhwHtAV7/AAAB7QFeAc...

rickyconnollyon Oh, My Hand: Complaints Medieval Monks Scribbled in the Margins of Manuscripts

>Now I've written the whole thing: for Christ's sake give me a drink.

Equally as likely to be uttered by a modern-day graduate student on the Nth draft of his presentation.

rickyconnollyon Quake 3 bots left running for 4 years, find optimal strategy?

This submission deserves more attention that it is getting!

rickyconnollyon HELLO, NSA

Apparently 'pork' is one of their keywords. I wonder why.

rickyconnollyon Using Metadata to Find Paul Revere

You ʃhould have uʃed the long ʃ in this article

rickyconnollyon Sealed bottle garden still thriving after 40 years without fresh air or water

It looks like the bottle is sealed with cork, which is permeable to both air and moisture.

rickyconnollyon First Independent Testing of Cold Fusion Device

A nitpick: the study the article links to is published on Arxiv, rather than an academic journal. This implies these findings have not yet been subjected to peer review. Since the authors have previously stated their support of Rossi, this somewhat detracts from their claim to be independent and academic.

rickyconnollyon Why babies in every country on Earth say 'mama'

Their story checks out.

Using google translate, I can't find a single language that does not have a 'mama' or something very similar.

rickyconnollyon Gitmo Is Killing Me

He doesn't want to release the prisoners, he wants to transfer them from military to civilian control so they can be tried in a public court. The later, as I understand it, is beyond the President's remit (but I stand to be shown otherwise).

rickyconnollyon Explosions near Boston Marathon finish line

Authorities ID suspect as Saudi national in marathon bombings, under guard at Boston hospital

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/authorities_under_susp...

rickyconnollyon Ƀ — Universal Bitcoin Logo Alternative

Outrageous. How am I supposed to designate voiced bilabial fricatives and ask for Bitcoin donations on the same page?

rickyconnollyon Diamonds Are Bullshit

That's pretty cool. Does he have a writeup of the process?

rickyconnollyon Viruses Have No Color

I'm a biologist and I use viruses (adenovirus to be specific) to insert genes into mammalian cells in vitro. I do this to study the function of said genes. To make a usable stock of virus, I infect a small number of viruses into particular cell line, wherein the viruses replicate and give me an 'amplified' stock.

When I harvest the amplified viruses, I use a centrifuge to separate them from the rest of the cellular crud. The viruses separate into a distinct, narrow, blue-white band in the centrifuge tube. It seems that concentrated virus has a distinct color, despite being made up of colorless viral particles.

How can this be so?

rickyconnollyon Did Glee Rip Off a Jonathan Coulton Cover?

I'd like HN's resident piracy advocates to weigh in on this.

rickyconnollyon How Tide Detergent Became a Drug Currency

But I still don't get it. Why Tide in particular? Why not any other high-price bulk retail product? Why not gourmet coffee grounds, for instance?

rickyconnollyon A New Look for Facebook

By god, it's like timeline^2 !

rickyconnollyon Laconic History of the World

Ditto for Kuwait's label of 'Iraq'

rickyconnollyon Cards Against Humanity: Results of "pay what you want"

Looks great. You know how to tread the fine line between 'minimal' and 'too minimal'

rickyconnollyon Cards Against Humanity: Results of "pay what you want"