Hacker News: MassPikeMike

New comment by MassPikeMike in "Oura says it gets government demands for user data"

MassPikeMike — Sat, 23 May 2026 15:49:00 +0000

Judging by ads for cell phone service, most people pay more than that per month to be monitored by the Feds.

MIT researchers revive 40 year old triangular zipper concept

MassPikeMike — Sun, 10 May 2026 18:39:08 +0000

Article URL: https://www.tomshardware.com/3d-printing/mit-researchers-revive-40-year-old-triangular-zipper-concept-now-made-possible-by-3d-printing-creates-shape-shifting-robots-and-deployable-structures-3d-printed-y-zipper-turns-floppy-tentacles-into-rigid-beams-in-seconds

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48086558

Points: 11

# Comments: 0

New comment by MassPikeMike in "California farmers to destroy 420k peach trees following Del Monte bankruptcy"

MassPikeMike — Wed, 06 May 2026 04:30:44 +0000

Similarly, in 1790s America, farmers west of the Appalachians were growing plenty of corn, but because of bad roads the only feasible way to transport it to the much larger markets east of the mountains was as whiskey. When Alexander Hamilton imposed a tax on distilled spirits, the result was a "Whiskey Rebellion" in which George Washington himself rode out at the head of an army against other American citizens.

New comment by MassPikeMike in "I won a championship that doesn't exist"

MassPikeMike — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 22:51:17 +0000

Ever since the invention of the printing press, every new communication technology has reduced the effort needed to widely disseminate information-- and misinformation! So you could say this is nothing new. On the other hand, this is remarkably little effort.

New comment by MassPikeMike in "Men who stare at walls"

MassPikeMike — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 04:13:20 +0000

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." -Blaise Pascal

New comment by MassPikeMike in "Michael Rabin has died"

MassPikeMike — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 15:14:44 +0000

This collection of "Rabinisms" [1] (thanks to the Internet Archive for keeping it from being lost) can give you some of the flavor of the delightful experience that it was to take one of his classes. RIP.

[If P = NP,] then all of modern cryptography collapses. On this happy thought... (1998-11-24)

I'm one of those people who is just never wrong. I mean, not one of those people. I'm like everybody else. Nobody is ever wrong. (1998-12-08)

After all I said, put here the word "obvious". (1998-12-15)

I am going to show that in one round the probability of not reaching agreement is less or equal to 2. ... Yeah, we're establishing new ground in probability theory. (1998-12-17)

It's more than 10 years old. It's either classical or incorrect. (Fall 1998)

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210509160248/http://www.eecs.h...

New comment by MassPikeMike in "Creating West Coast Buddhism (2024)"

MassPikeMike — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 21:19:03 +0000

The article "FTFY Buddhist Ethics" [1] comes to a similar conclusion about the development of West Coast Buddhism but isn't on board with it. IMHO an interesting contrarian take.

[1] https://vividness.live/ftfy-buddhist-ethics

New comment by MassPikeMike in "Ask HN: Have you successfully treated forward head posture ("nerd neck")?"

MassPikeMike — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 16:23:13 +0000

I have this problem despite adjusting my monitor height properly.

I consulted a practitioner (in Taiwan, so I'm not exactly sure how to describe her.) She directed me to do the following: stand on tiptoe closely against a flat wall where the ceiling is higher than I can reach on tiptoe. Keep forehead against the wall. Reach upwards, keeping the part of forearms nearest the wrist against the wall. Inhale and exhale, relaxing muscles and stretching to reach further and further upwards with fingertips. Do this for at least 30-45 seconds, relax, repeat a few times daily.

I am not good at sticking to the program but it does seem to be helping

Dabao board features open-source hardware RISC-V MCU

MassPikeMike — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 02:10:17 +0000

Article URL: https://www.cnx-software.com/2026/03/04/dabao-board-features-open-source-hardware-baochip-1x-risc-v-mcu/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47256631

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

"bunnie" Huang prepares a dev board for Baochip's "mostly-open" X1 RISC-V MCU

MassPikeMike — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 12:57:59 +0000

Article URL: https://www.hackster.io/news/andrew-bunnie-huang-prepares-the-dabao-a-dev-board-for-baochip-s-mostly-open-x1-risc-v-mcu-1b7cad7fa2ea

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47231612

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Dabao evaluation board for Baochip-1X

MassPikeMike — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 03:50:58 +0000

Article URL: https://www.crowdsupply.com/baochip/dabao

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47227791

Points: 6

# Comments: 0

Triangle: A Two-Dimensional Quality Mesh Generator and Delaunay Triangulator

MassPikeMike — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:36:43 +0000

Article URL: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~quake/triangle.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46894042

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

The Inverted Panopticon

MassPikeMike — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 12:44:47 +0000

Article URL: https://shanakaanslemperera.substack.com/p/the-inverted-panopticon

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46836166

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

State Department confirms federal censorship shield law incoming

MassPikeMike — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 23:22:51 +0000

Article URL: https://prestonbyrne.com/2026/01/28/state-department-confirms-federal-granite-act-incoming/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46803198

Points: 51

# Comments: 24

Enabling C threads in a Python/WASM environment

MassPikeMike — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 14:53:53 +0000

Article URL: https://yosefk.com/blog/enabling-c-threads-in-a-python-wasm-environment.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46499427

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by MassPikeMike in "Show HN: One clean, developer-focused page for every Unicode symbol"

MassPikeMike — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 17:33:49 +0000

See also the very comprehensive presentation at https://codepoints.net . For example https://codepoints.net/U+2248?lang=en

New comment by MassPikeMike in "I'm returning my Framework 16"

MassPikeMike — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 20:41:35 +0000

OP wrote:

"My current laptop is an aging X1 Carbon generation 7... A few months ago a few keys of the keyboard stopped working. I decided it was time to look for a replacement."

Isn't that like deciding to replace your bike because some of the cables are rusted? Like a new set of cables, a new keyboard is a small expense compared to a whole new laptop.

Like replacing bike cables, swapping in a new Carbon X7 keyboard might be slightly challenging for an amateur. iFixit calls the keyboard replacement "moderate" in difficulty [1] taking about an hour with a new keyboard running about a hundred bucks. But it would be a simple job for a repair shop. So it seems hard to justify the expense of a whole new one rather than just the new part.

Of course, sometimes you just want a new laptop, because the bike analogy breaks down a little: unlike bikes, newer ones are inherently faster.

[1] https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Lenovo+ThinkPad+X1+Carbon+7th+G...

New comment by MassPikeMike in "Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015 (2015)"

MassPikeMike — Sun, 07 Dec 2025 03:16:53 +0000

This puts me in mind of the words of George Bernard Shaw:

‘The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.'

New comment by MassPikeMike in "By the Power of Grayscale"

MassPikeMike — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 02:39:00 +0000

I am usually working with historical documents, where both Otsu and adaptive thresholding are frustratingly almost but not quite good enough. My go-to approach lately is "DeepOtsu" [1]. I like that it combines the best of both the traditional and deep learning worlds: a deep neural net enhances the image such that Otsu thresholding is likely to work well.

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.06081

The Ofcom Files

MassPikeMike — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 14:34:21 +0000

Article URL: https://prestonbyrne.com/2025/10/16/the-ofcom-files/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45617262

Points: 3

# Comments: 1