Hacker News: BostonEnginerd

New comment by BostonEnginerd in "A supersonic engine core makes the perfect power turbine"

BostonEnginerd — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 02:54:41 +0000

Jealous sitting here in MA, where we pay $0.35/kWh and burn a ton of methane to get that.

New comment by BostonEnginerd in "FireDucks: Pandas but Faster"

BostonEnginerd — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 20:55:09 +0000

I thought I saw on the documentation that it was released under the modified BSD license. I guess they could take future versions closed source, but the current version should be available for folks to use and further develop.

New comment by BostonEnginerd in "TSMC will stop making 7 nm chips for Chinese customers"

BostonEnginerd — Fri, 08 Nov 2024 16:09:24 +0000

Do you mean US soldiers? We didn’t have a presence in Iraq in 2000, the invasion occurred in 2003.

New comment by BostonEnginerd in "Launch HN: Modern Realty (YC S24) – AI Real Estate Agent for Home Buyers"

BostonEnginerd — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 09:55:04 +0000

Yes, most of the public uses the doctor which is assigned to them when they have something go wrong.

The trouble is that it’s hard to distinguish between “friendly and nice” and “competent”. This is how people end up paying a financial advisor almost 2% to buy index funds.

It would be nice if we could rely on certification by third parties as a mark of competence, but clearly that’s not enough.

New comment by BostonEnginerd in "A chemist explains the chemistry behind decaf coffee"

BostonEnginerd — Thu, 25 Jul 2024 15:33:19 +0000

I agree. SWP coffee usually has a very flat profile to my taste. EA is far and away the better processing method.

New comment by BostonEnginerd in "Modern-day spying: sometimes old technology is more secure"

BostonEnginerd — Mon, 08 Jul 2024 01:35:34 +0000

Just a minor nitpick. To my knowledge, Archive.today is not known to be related to the Internet Archive (archive.org).

New comment by BostonEnginerd in "Feedle: A search engine for blogs and podcasts"

BostonEnginerd — Sun, 24 Mar 2024 00:43:29 +0000

Every year or so someone will reach out to me based on something I wrote. It’s really gratifying to solve someone’s problem.

New comment by BostonEnginerd in "Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants"

BostonEnginerd — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 22:18:16 +0000

There's substantial wafer capacity in the US, from silane production, through polysilicon granule production and wafer making. There are several different wafer makers in the US with both 200mm and 300mm wafer capacity.

Some of the silane and polysilicon companies are US owned, but I don't think that any of the wafer makers are US headquartered anymore.

New comment by BostonEnginerd in "CVS, Walgreens Among Companies Flagged by FDA for Selling Sketchy Products"

BostonEnginerd — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 01:01:59 +0000

I was in a CVS a few years ago where they were selling a tincture which was supposed to help children stop wetting the bed. It contained mercury. I’m not sure how they could legally sell that.

New comment by BostonEnginerd in "Heat your house with a mechanical windmill (2019)"

BostonEnginerd — Sun, 20 Aug 2023 23:29:42 +0000

Heat pumps are somewhat limited in the heat they can provide. For example, it would be difficult for a heat pump to produce several hundred degrees C temperatures for an industrial process.

For applications in their wheelhouse, though, they are absolutely amazing.

New comment by BostonEnginerd in "Gandi.net – Pricing Update"

BostonEnginerd — Thu, 15 Jun 2023 00:05:50 +0000

I had exactly the same thing happen. Ended up moving all my domains to another registrar after that happened.

New comment by BostonEnginerd in "U.S. universities are building a new semiconductor workforce"

BostonEnginerd — Mon, 29 May 2023 23:09:25 +0000

A lot of what needs to be done definitely is not rocket science, and much of it can be trained -- at least when things are going well.

One thing I do appreciate is that there is a pretty good meritocracy at the second tier fabs working on legacy nodes. I know a fair number of folks who have worked their way up into upper management with only an associates or bachelors degree.

New comment by BostonEnginerd in "U.S. universities are building a new semiconductor workforce"

BostonEnginerd — Sat, 20 May 2023 17:42:15 +0000

There are still plenty of people in the fab. They're not usually running product around in a modern automated fab, but there are always equipment issues to work through. When you have fleets of multiple tens of tools, it's always an exercise to keep them matched and in-line with each other. The majority of modern cleanrooms are "ballroom" style, where the tools all sit out in the open. Each tool has a class 1 mini-environment inside which keeps the product clean. Outside the tools is a cleanroom, but it's not as clean as inside.

Remote access has helped out a lot, but the process engineering folks will still spend a bunch of time every week on the line. The equipment engineering folks will spend time every day on the line working on things.

New comment by BostonEnginerd in "Nontoxic powder uses sunlight to quickly disinfect contaminated drinking water"

BostonEnginerd — Sat, 20 May 2023 14:05:06 +0000

Aluminum is extremely reactive. It self-passivates with Aluminum oxide very quickly. The difference between rust and AlO3 is that the AlO3 adheres well to the base metal and doesn't flake off like rust does.

New comment by BostonEnginerd in "Why does a plastic-wrapped turkey sandwich cost $15 at the NYC airport?"

BostonEnginerd — Sun, 16 Apr 2023 07:35:03 +0000

I tend to agree. In the last ten years or so, the TSA operations have markedly improved. I’m saying this as someone who flew 80k-100kmi/yr for the last 15yr.

Once precheck became a thing, time to go through security is almost always less than 5m.

New comment by BostonEnginerd in "Why does a plastic-wrapped turkey sandwich cost $15 at the NYC airport?"

BostonEnginerd — Sun, 16 Apr 2023 07:28:23 +0000

There is no competition in a lot of airports. I believe that OTG manages all of the concessions at EWR. There are a lot of options, but there’s no price competition as they’re all run by the same company.

New comment by BostonEnginerd in "Why does a plastic-wrapped turkey sandwich cost $15 at the NYC airport?"

BostonEnginerd — Sun, 16 Apr 2023 06:44:34 +0000

You know that the system is screwed up when you can hold up the Whole Foods salad bar, as being the bargain option!

I’ve found the dine-in restaurant options at EWR to be of reasonable quality, at least pre-pandemic. The food court areas are very hit or miss, even with the price gouging.

New comment by BostonEnginerd in "EU will require Apple to open up iMessage (2022)"

BostonEnginerd — Thu, 02 Mar 2023 15:23:49 +0000

Delta.chat (https://delta.chat/en/) has a decent enough UI for using email as an IM service actually.

New comment by BostonEnginerd in "A Docker footgun led to a vandal deleting NewsBlur's MongoDB database (2021)"

BostonEnginerd — Sun, 19 Feb 2023 20:25:31 +0000

I've been a subscriber for a long time now. Newsblur has been great. It's been pretty stable, and they haven't succumbed to frequent radical redesigns.

I could self-host an RSS reader, but Newsblur works well enough that I haven't bothered.

New comment by BostonEnginerd in "Ask HN: Self-hosting in 2023: Nextcloud on Linode, or...?"

BostonEnginerd — Tue, 24 Jan 2023 14:23:19 +0000

Tailscale works great for this application.