Hacker News: DanTheManPR

New comment by DanTheManPR in "Ian's Secure Shoelace Knot"

DanTheManPR — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 15:09:28 +0000

It's just a good knot. The only downside is that it is very slightly more complex than a regular shoelace knot (you pass-through both loops instead of just one). But otherwise, it's only upsides: completely secure, unties exactly as easily and quickly as a regular shoelace knot, and it even lays more horizontally than a regular shoelace knot.

New comment by DanTheManPR in "Solar and batteries can power the world"

DanTheManPR — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 15:50:05 +0000

This is basically correct in the sense that we cannot simply just force everyone in, say, Minnesota to install electric baseboard heating, rooftop solar, and a battery pack, and then expect them to stay warm. There are periods of extended extreme cold and low solar flux where you would simply not be able to warm everyone's house - that's just physics.

But there are a lot of extra things you can do as an intermediate steps to dramatically close the gap. The main ones are:

1. Homes can be renovated to improve insulation 2. Cold weather heat pumps can handle most mild winter conditions efficiently 3. Electricity doesn't all have to be locally generated - it can be transmitted from other parts of the country. 4. You can keep using fossil fuel peaker plants, and still have incredible reduced overall emissions

New comment by DanTheManPR in "Oil nears $110 a barrel after gas field strike"

DanTheManPR — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 19:36:09 +0000

The West is getting very cavalier about murdering the government officials of other countries.

New comment by DanTheManPR in "Ask HN: Share your personal website"

DanTheManPR — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 18:34:39 +0000

http://www.danielbeaver.net/

New comment by DanTheManPR in "The R47: A new physical RPN calculator"

DanTheManPR — Tue, 11 Nov 2025 19:46:14 +0000

It's probably not a necessity - I'm sure I could adapt to just using my smartphone if I put the time into learning some of the math apps. I still use my ti-89 for everyday calculations. It's a handy device; more portable than a laptop, and better UI than a smartphone. I don't deny myself from using a tool I like.

New comment by DanTheManPR in "US High school students' scores fall in reading and math"

DanTheManPR — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 18:06:47 +0000

I'm much younger than you, but I had the experience of having a difficult-to-find-info-on-the-internet subject for a high school paper, and the opporunity to researching the subject at a well stocked library. There was a lot of friction to the process that I wasn't used to, but the serendipity aspect was absolutely revelatory. There is something fundamentally unfiltered about walking past shelves of books with titles on subjects you never even knew existed.

New comment by DanTheManPR in "China completes green belt around Taklamakan Desert"

DanTheManPR — Sun, 08 Dec 2024 21:44:58 +0000

Is Chinese high speed rail infrastructure really substandard or lacking maintenance as you claim?

New comment by DanTheManPR in "We are shutting down Ondsel"

DanTheManPR — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 16:07:50 +0000

I've had multiples of my students get into legal trouble over the years from using these. Just understand that almost all of these professional level software packages phone home even after being cracked, so you basically have to airgap your computer if you use them. It's a major reason why I steer them towards open source CAD packages, and towards the pro level CAD packages with usable free hobby licensing.

New comment by DanTheManPR in "How the iPhone 16's electrically-released adhesive works"

DanTheManPR — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 15:12:30 +0000

The current collector also takes up relatively more volume, on top of the packaging (the wall thickness would be the same, and it's not a trivial part of the volume of small cell batteries).

New comment by DanTheManPR in "Show HN: Hestus – AI Copilot for CAD"

DanTheManPR — Wed, 04 Sep 2024 17:59:32 +0000

I've been a Mechanical Engineer for a similar length of time, using Solidworks and Creo, and I concur. I've released many thousands of parts over the course of my career, and I don't think of the modeling itself as a major time sink (provided you have some decent training, and are using a thoughtful approach and not fighting the software). If the AI copilot could actually do all the modeling based on prompts, that would be pretty interesting, especially if it could create a feature try that I could tweak.

Automatic drafting is something that I think might be a good target for doing some AI research on. Your prompt exists in the form of the solid model, and it's feature tree and parameters. The output is the lay out views and annotations. It's okay if the output isn't perfect, as I would expect to be reviewing it and doing some tweaks.

Helping with all of the ERP processes involved with releasing and maintaining engineering documentation would be a HUGE time saver. If I could ask a copilot program to start a change request, and give it some basic descriptions of what I'm changing, it would be massively helpful if it could start pulling relevant files, and auto-filling the right requests/forms/whatever to do that process.

New comment by DanTheManPR in "An FDA approved device offers a new treatment for tinnitus"

DanTheManPR — Tue, 16 Apr 2024 03:22:29 +0000

I've always wondered that too. In very quiet rooms I hear quite intense ringing. I have distinct memories as a young child of wanting a fan turned on in my bedroom at night because of the sound of silence was ringing. It seems like what people describe as tinnitus, but... I don't seem to have any of the hearing loss that is always described as causing tinnitus. I can quite clearly high pitched noises such as CRT monitors and ultrasonic mosquito repellent. I don't have a history of working with loud equipment or going to concerts, and in any case that doesn't explain why I would hear it in childhood. It all doesn't quite correspond with with a lot of the causes and symptoms I hear described.

New comment by DanTheManPR in "Most people think the U.S. crime rate is rising. They're wrong"

DanTheManPR — Mon, 25 Dec 2023 04:19:30 +0000

Here's an anecdote: I haven't been the victim of any type of crime for the last 15 years, whereas I had multiple break-ins and near violent encounters in the 00s and 90s. My neighborhood and city (I live in Northeast Minneapolis) feels dramatically safer than it did when I was younger. My relatives in the burbs think it's some sort of crime infested hellhole. I'm inclined to think that a actually, crime IS dropping and that people who think that it isn't watching and reading a lot of media that is filling their heads with nonsense.

New comment by DanTheManPR in "WinUAE 5.1.0"

DanTheManPR — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 22:12:09 +0000

...what is this? The page has no About section or any explanation of what WinUAE is.

New comment by DanTheManPR in "280M e-bikes and mopeds are cutting demand for oil far more than electric cars"

DanTheManPR — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 17:19:59 +0000

It's a class 1, so it will assist up to 20mph. I typically cruise at around 15mph on my own (I'm in a similar weight class as a rider). For getting around my town, trips are not much longer than my car.

New comment by DanTheManPR in "New Windows updates cause UNSUPPORTED_PROCESSOR blue screens"

DanTheManPR — Thu, 24 Aug 2023 18:27:49 +0000

What keeps me trapped using Windows on my main home workstation is simply that a lot of the professional software I use is Windows-only, and always will be.

Fortunately, the advancements in Proton and better cross-platform support for a lot of software has let me use Linux on my gaming computer and notebook. There are a few games which I can't play, but honestly there's so many options available that I don't miss them much. I don't think I'll ever completely eliminate Windows from my life, I think around 2021 was The Year Of Linux On The Desktop for me.

New comment by DanTheManPR in "The Precipitation Problem"

DanTheManPR — Tue, 27 Jun 2023 16:03:26 +0000

Humans have been putting a lot conscious effort into modifying our world for our own benefit. We've converted a huge amount of our land area into farmland and cities for our own use, which has had a lot of upsides for our current lifestyle. But rampant dumping of pollutants into the atmosphere hasn't usually had a lot of upsides, whether it be lead, or CFCs, or CO2. Climate change is not a directed endeavor with a goal, and so it's not surprising that it causes a lot of havoc.

New comment by DanTheManPR in "The Pentagon’s $52k trash can"

DanTheManPR — Fri, 23 Jun 2023 12:52:48 +0000

I'm guessing that what's happening here is that Boeing could be making more money doing something other than building trash cans, and so is sending an absurdly exorbitant quote to their customer to communicate "stop buying this".

New comment by DanTheManPR in "McDonald's just dropped a brand new Game Boy game"

DanTheManPR — Tue, 13 Jun 2023 20:59:05 +0000

I just tried the rom out on my flashcart, and it boots and plays on a real gameboy.

New comment by DanTheManPR in "CEO: Raspberry Pi stock to hit 1M units monthly, starting in July"

DanTheManPR — Fri, 02 Jun 2023 14:52:06 +0000

This is the killer aspect of the RPi, that there are tons of well supported drop-in software solutions for it. Other boards can be made to work, but the RPi will just work.

New comment by DanTheManPR in "SpaceX Starship rocket explodes minutes after launch from Texas"

DanTheManPR — Thu, 20 Apr 2023 16:37:39 +0000

I was surprised to see so much equipment right next to the launch vehicle in the video. Would all that have gotten damaged during the launch?