Hacker News Reader

trothamelon U.S. bombs Iranian nuclear sites

The uranium is supposed to be uranium hexaflouride, right? That's solid at room temperature, so if the mountain collapsed onto it you would't expect to see it off-site.

trothamelon SpaceX Starship 36 Anomaly

That wasn't a launch pad - that was a test stand used to test the Startship proper without the rest of the system.

trothamelon Long live Xorg, I mean Xlibre

I've tried to switch a few times, and keep going back to X. It seems like simple stuff - the big one is that I like to remote into my system and look at the screen, and with wayland, there's no way to look at the side monitor like I can with X11 and x11vnc.

trothamelon Why common climate messaging backfires

Back when climate change was the issue of the day, there was a response I heard. Paraphrased, it's "I won't take climate change seriously until the people who tell me to take climate change seriously take climate change seriously."

For example, instead of climate conferences being virtual, they're held in person and attended by multiple leaders that fly in on private jets.

https://theconversation.com/why-are-people-still-flying-to-c...

People are sensitive to classism during a purported crisis, and so things like that tend to ruin messaging.

trothamelon FBI arrests judge accused of helping man evade immigration authorities

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1071

That's a general applicable law that prevents anyone - judge or not - from interfering with an apprehension.

trothamelon CVE program faces swift end after DHS fails to renew contract [updated]

Does anyone know what the CVE program was costing per year? I searched around a bit, but wasn't able to find the number.

trothamelon TLS certificate lifetimes will officially reduce to 47 days

I suspect it's to limit how long a malicious or compromised CA can impact security.

trothamelon TLS certificate lifetimes will officially reduce to 47 days

Question: Does anyone have a good solution for renewing letsencrypt certificates for websites hosted on multiple servers? Right now, I have one master server that the others forward the well-known requests too, and then I copy the certificate over when I'm done, but I'm wondering if there's a better way.

trothamelon ESA has a commercial launch strategy, but will member states pay?

Note that each of the 138 SpaceX launches required producing a second stage, something your numbers aren't really accounting for.

And that it seems like SpaceX is close (within a year or so) to full reusability, while rivals are still trying to work out how to reuse the first stage.

trothamelon NASA Deletes Comic Book About How Women Can Be Astronauts

Women have been astronauts for years. There are two in the International Space Station right now.

trothamelon Botswana launches first satellite BOTSAT-1 aboard SpaceX Falcon 9

Note that in doing so, they'd be reaching where SpaceX was a decade ago, and by the time they got there, it seems pretty likely that full reusability will be working a year or so from now, at least for basic earth-orbit flights.

trothamelon Learn Morse Code – CW with the Long Island CW Club

Despite the name, this isn't a local club - since 2018, they have members in all 50 states, and in 65 countries.

trothamelon Huawei targeted in new European Parliament corruption probe

Here's a recent one:

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-us-senator-rober...

trothamelon Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof

It's been a while since I saw it, but from what I remember the original airing was fairly intelligently scrambled. You have a spine of episodes that consist of the original light novel, which occur in the same order they did in that book. This introduces the characters and the main plot, and ends in a climax that has to be at the end.

You then have a series of one-shot stories from the books (and one original episode contributed by the creator of Full Metal Panic!) that get scattered throughout, as there wasn't enough content for a full season, and it would be weird to have the climax occur mid-season.

trothamelon Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof

The anime will be 19 years old next month, so it's probably not wrong to consider it such.

trothamelon Anime fans stumbled upon a mathematical proof

Oddly, the image that Scientific American chose to illustrate their article isn't from any of the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya projects, but from Aokana - Four Rhythms Across the Blue, a much more obscure title.

trothamelon A Letter to the American People

Is there anything on this list that is so time critical that it would be hurt by postal delivery being dropped to, say, twice a week? I'm not seeing anything obvious, but might see it differently.

trothamelon "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

> what if the majority of the House sides with the president?

In that case, congress is serving as a check on the court's power.

trothamelon "Ensuring Accountability for All Agencies" – Executive Order

A court can't issue an order to an army to surrender. A court can't force the president to nominate someone to be a federal judge.

There are some powers the executive has that can't be overruled by the courts. Now the question is - what?

trothamelon Court Documents Shed New Light on DOGE Activity at Treasury Department

I'd also say that there's a lot of technical detail in this, about how government systems work and what sort of access the doge-associated treasury employees have to them.

That seems like the sort of news about this that HN should keep.

trothamelon Why hasn't commercial air travel gotten any faster since the 1960s? (2009)

Yes, they are - if you count wings, which are the main point of a plane.

trothamelon Starlink and T-Mobile open satellite texting test to all

I believe I've heard they will have it when more services are available. But text-to-911 seems like it could be useful.

trothamelon Starlink and T-Mobile open satellite texting test to all – not just customers

I'm more thinking of times when I've been driving through areas with spotty cell service, rather then the actual backcountry. The sort of thing where you could drive to it, but still haven no service.

trothamelon Starlink and T-Mobile open satellite texting test to all

A very important thing about this is going to be 911 (and other emergency number) calling. Since 911 calling bypasses network locks, we'll have a world where everyone outdoors can reach help.

trothamelon The origins of 60-Hz as a power frequency

The same frequency, but not connected via AC. There are multiple DC and Variable Frequency Transformer ties between the various interconnections.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_power_transmiss...

trothamelon Feds Halt the National Electric Vehicle Charging Program

I'd suspect that if it takes 2 years to plan and build and connect EV stations, that's a problem, and we should review what's causing it to happen so slowly.

trothamelon Feds Halt the National Electric Vehicle Charging Program

I suspect the money is going out before the charging stations are being built - but if it's taking 3 years to build them, that's kind of a problem in its own right.

I don't mind the government spending money to do stuff, but spending money to not do stuff feels bad.

trothamelon Feds Halt the National Electric Vehicle Charging Program

The letter from the FHWA to states is here:

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/nevi/resources/state-pl...

It looks like it's being suspended while new guidelines are are produced.

To me, this makes sense. The program produced "more than 30" EV charging stations, which doesn't seem like a ton given that they've had 3+ years to do it. That's with over $1.5B spent already, according to https://driveelectric.gov/state-plans

I think it's reasonable to reform a program that's dramatically failing to meet its goal.

trothamelon First place in Tetris 99 using computer vision, classical AI, a lot of free time

Yes, it's part of the (leaked) Tetris Guideline.

https://tetris.wiki/Tetris_Guideline

trothamelon Many of the Pokemon playtest cards were likely printed in 2024

My car has limits the government puts on it - it has to shut off it's engine to reduce fuel consumption to hit a government mandate.

My shower doesn't use as much water as I'd like, as the government mandates a flow restrictor.

Why not printers?