Hacker News: JoeDaDude

New comment by JoeDaDude in "Come for ENIAC, Stay for UNIVAC and Skeduflo"

JoeDaDude — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 14:12:20 +0000

For a while I worked at what was then the Sperry Rand Corporation (now Unisys) which had some pride in their heritage as the descendant of the Univac Corporation founded by ENIAC inventors Eckert and Mauchly. In a glass case there was a vacuum tube circuit said to be a memory unit of the original ENIAC. No one seemed to know much about it, casting doubt on the claimed provenance of the device. The tube circuit resembled the ones shown in the photo linked below (although none of those in the photo are from ENIAC).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Women_holding_parts_of_th...

(This is a repost of an older comment I made)

New comment by JoeDaDude in "The “mechanical miracle” that ruined Mark Twain’s life"

JoeDaDude — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 21:39:31 +0000

FWIW, a glimpse of the sole surviving Paige machine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWW8rjuikXE

New comment by JoeDaDude in "Show HN: Voice driven murder mystery, Interview AI suspects with your voice"

JoeDaDude — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 15:04:16 +0000

I have an LLM running locally on my machine complete with STT and TTS. While I don't expect much, it will be fun to get my LLM to play the game.

New comment by JoeDaDude in "There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]"

JoeDaDude — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 16:03:15 +0000

In the video it claims the date is December 31, 2026 at the 4:02 mark. I wonder why the animation changed the date from the short story.

We'll see this post again on that date!

New comment by JoeDaDude in "Read the novels and forget everything else"

JoeDaDude — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 01:59:22 +0000

The "human connection to the artist" is believed to be important by some, but I disagree. People tend to create an image of a musician and are too often disappointed because, for example, they disapprove of the musician's lifestyle (the expression sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll exists for a reason), or because of disagreement with the social or political causes the musicians support. Occasionally, fans follow an artist for their commitment to their art later to discover they sell out, like their style changes to pursue mass appeal, or they sell their work to become a jingle for sugar pops or similar.

I think it is best to appreciate an artist's creation and leave it at that. To quote a film, I think it is best to "separate the art from the artist".

New comment by JoeDaDude in "I wanted a clock that never needed setting. Things escalated"

JoeDaDude — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:51:43 +0000

LED segments may be nice, but why not go full out Nixie tube? There are several kits out there, but for the DIY ethic, you can add WWV sync - and even watch the synchronization process - with this fellow's project:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smUwbzA9SEo

New comment by JoeDaDude in "NerdLens: Mirror your computer with cardboard VR"

JoeDaDude — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 16:29:11 +0000

When they said cardboard VR, I thought they meant...

https://imgur.com/gallery/what-people-really-really-really-r...

New comment by JoeDaDude in "When A.I. is a member of the family"

JoeDaDude — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 21:03:01 +0000

The almost universal opinion is that AI chatbots are damaging, misleading, dangerous, etc. etc. but I suspect there are under reported stories about how AI chatbots helped people deal with depression, grief, addiction, loneliness or some mental health condition. Ideally, the people afflicted improved their lives and no longer felt the need for an AI chatbot.

Are there any such stories or, better yet, academic papers? If so, please post.

New comment by JoeDaDude in "Ancient Roman Board Game"

JoeDaDude — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 19:32:18 +0000

I always like to hear about ancient board game reconstructions. Like music and religion, games are something every culture creates. Another recent example is the case of Liubu, a game from ancient China for which the rules were lost. Still, a reconstruction is being attempted by Carnegie Melon:

https://projects.etc.cmu.edu/liubo-lab/

New comment by JoeDaDude in "Alternate clock designs and time systems"

JoeDaDude — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 15:27:17 +0000

I had a notion to make a 24 hour clock with just one hand. There is actually a watch company selling such a device and their tagline is that the watch "will change your conception of time". I'd like to see if that is true.

Making a 24-hour clock looks to be relatively straight forward. Most clocks rely on pulses from a piezo electric crystal. Divide the pulse frequency by two with a D-flip flop and the clock goes half as fast.

New comment by JoeDaDude in "Local, CPU-Friendly, High-Quality TTS (Text-to-Speech) with Kokoro"

JoeDaDude — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 01:15:38 +0000

Was just thinking of making exactly that. I have made Kokoro the voice of my local LLM (qwen 3.6). What do you use for a Japanese tutor app?

New comment by JoeDaDude in "The oldest surviving animated feature film at 100"

JoeDaDude — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 14:43:59 +0000

For those interested in the subject, animation has quite a history before Disney came onto the scene. I suggest this book:

Before Mickey: The Animated Film 1898-1928 by Donald Crafton

Personally, I remain impressed to this day with the pioneering work of Winsor McCay, the cartoonist who created Little Nemo. Perhaps the best example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW71mSedJuU

New comment by JoeDaDude in "Job: Head of Stonehenge"

JoeDaDude — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 14:55:37 +0000

* Must be willing to perform human sacrifices during select astronomical events?

Space race: Why Portugal is reaching for the stars

JoeDaDude — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 20:38:09 +0000

Article URL: https://www.dw.com/en/space-race-why-portugal-is-reaching-for-the-stars/a-77303795

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48362327

Points: 6

# Comments: 1

New comment by JoeDaDude in "The Science of Weather and the Nature of Science"

JoeDaDude — Fri, 29 May 2026 19:52:57 +0000

The article states that "Lamarck, on the other hand, used French terms" to describe the clouds unlike Luke Howard whose Latin names such as cumulus, nimbus, cirrus, etc., which stuck and are still with us.

What were Lamarck's names for the clouds?

New comment by JoeDaDude in "Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart"

JoeDaDude — Fri, 22 May 2026 03:01:33 +0000

Cool! How would navigation actually work? Dead reckoning? Inertial? Stellar reference? Pulsar navigation?

Also, the dashed red line is --- SPOILER ALERT! ---- only part of the trajectory in the film, as there is another leg of the voyage not shown.

New comment by JoeDaDude in "Train Your Own LLM from Scratch"

JoeDaDude — Tue, 05 May 2026 07:18:14 +0000

Coincidentally, I just started on Build a Large Language Model (From Scratch), a repo/book/course by Sebastian Raschka [0][1][2]. Maybe it is a good problem to have to have to decide which learning resource to use.

[0] https://github.com/rasbt/LLMs-from-scratch

[1] https://www.manning.com/books/build-a-large-language-model-f...

[2] https://magazine.sebastianraschka.com/p/coding-llms-from-the...

New comment by JoeDaDude in "Spotify adds 'Verified' badges to distinguish human artists from AI"

JoeDaDude — Sat, 02 May 2026 01:47:25 +0000

This "human connection" is over rated IMHO. We create an image of a human musician and too often become disappointed fans because, for example, we disapprove of the musician's lifestyle (the expression sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll exists for a reason), or because of disagreement with the social and political causes the musicians support. Occasionally, fans follow an artist for their commitment to their art later to discover they sell out, like their style changes to pursue mass appeal, or they sell their work to become a jingle for sugar pops or similar. I think it is best to appreciate their creation and admit the person creating it may not be someone to place undue adulation on. To quote a film, I think it is best to "separate the art from the artist".

New comment by JoeDaDude in "The Overtom Chess Computer Museum"

JoeDaDude — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 13:26:04 +0000

I realize this museum is more about hardware but software that implements the game also deserves its place in history. To that effect, here is a writeup on Microchess made for the Kim-1 microcomputer:

https://www.benlo.com/microchess/index.html

New comment by JoeDaDude in "The Overtom Chess Computer Museum"

JoeDaDude — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 01:12:32 +0000

Very cool! Wouldn't it be even cooler if the museum could score a couple of the very oldest machines? I'm talking about the El Ajedrecista machine (1912)[1] and Caissa [2][3] (named after the goddess of Chess[4]) built by Claude Shannon.

[1]. https://www.chessprogramming.org/El_Ajedrecista

[2]. https://www.computerhistory.org/chess/stl-430b9bbe92716/

[3]. https://mitmuseum.mit.edu/collections/object/2007.030.005?qu...

[4]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ca%C3%AFssa

Technically, these electro mechanical machines may not qualify as computers, but still, what a scoop it would be to get them!