Hacker News: Ngraph

New comment by Ngraph in "All 9,300 Japanese train station, animated by the year it opened (1872–2026)"

Ngraph — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 06:20:33 +0000

Japanese from the inaka here. My contribution to this dataset: nothing. No station in my town, never was one. The nearest line is an hour by car and it's openly next on the chopping block.

New comment by Ngraph in "Making peace with your unlived dreams (2023)"

Ngraph — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 07:57:29 +0000

Japanese here. Took me years to stop looking up and wishing for what I'll never have, and just accept this is the body I've got and live with it fully.

I don't even follow baseball anymore, but every now and then Ohtani (the Dodgers guy) is in the news and the kid who dreamed of it is right back there for a minute. Not painful, just bittersweet.

New comment by Ngraph in "Samurai City"

Ngraph — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 05:59:04 +0000

Japanese here lol. "broke and hostage so they'd stay quiet" — honestly that one line taught me more about my own country than school ever did.

We get Edo as "250 years of peace" and sankin-kotai as some term to memorize for a test. Nobody ever just said the quiet part: the shogun kept his samurai poor and on a leash so they couldn't start anything. Kinda dark, kinda hilarious how well it holds up.

New comment by Ngraph in "A successful Japanese trial of a ramjet engine designed for Mach‑5 aircraft"

Ngraph — Wed, 27 May 2026 06:54:37 +0000

Roger Ramjet! Now I've got that theme stuck in my head. Pretty sure that's where "ramjet = unstoppable" got hardwired in me.

New comment by Ngraph in "A successful Japanese trial of a ramjet engine designed for Mach‑5 aircraft"

Ngraph — Wed, 27 May 2026 06:48:37 +0000

So nostalgic. AI, self-driving, ramjets — they packed it all in. And the thing that dates it isn't any of that, it's that nothing is a touchscreen. The future used to be chunky buttons.

New comment by Ngraph in "A successful Japanese trial of a ramjet engine designed for Mach‑5 aircraft"

Ngraph — Tue, 26 May 2026 00:47:30 +0000

First time I heard the word "ramjet" was as a kid watching the Goliath episode of Knight Rider. Definitely not a documentary, but the word stuck. Then the Blackbird showed up in some plane book, and that was that. Ramjets back in the news. Kid me is having a great morning.

New comment by Ngraph in "Didgeridoo playing as alternative treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea (2006)"

Ngraph — Mon, 25 May 2026 06:59:25 +0000

CPAP user here, and "have you tried taking up the didgeridoo" is comfortably the best sentence I've ever read in a medical journal. The mask works fine — it's just that I go to bed every night looking like a minor Star Wars character, so I'm very open to alternatives. And from the other comments, the didgeridoo sounds like the boring tongue exercises in a trenchcoat: same throat muscles, except you might actually keep doing it. Which is the entire problem with the tongue exercises. Study was moderate apnea so I'm keeping the machine. But I am absolutely buying a didgeridoo and becoming insufferable about it. My household has been notified.

New comment by Ngraph in "Japan’s robot wolf sells out as record bear attacks drive demand"

Ngraph — Sun, 17 May 2026 01:30:01 +0000

They do. My parents live in a mountain village in Japan and never step outside without bear spray and a bear bell. There have been some grim local stories — bears taking pet dogs out of yards. For people up there, it's a daily fear, not an abstraction.

New comment by Ngraph in "I Bought a “Junk” PSP From Japan"

Ngraph — Sat, 16 May 2026 08:38:36 +0000

Parted with my PSP years ago, but I still have a working Vita sitting in a drawer somewhere. Reading this made me get up, dust it off, and put it on the charger. Looks like the Vita's going to own my weekend.

New comment by Ngraph in "Walking slower? Your ears, not your knees, might be the problem"

Ngraph — Mon, 11 May 2026 01:09:55 +0000

n=1 here, but I've been wearing a back brace for lumbar pain and walking has slowed noticeably. Pretty confident it's the back, not the ears.

Every body part wants in on this study.

New comment by Ngraph in "Getting arrested in Japan"

Ngraph — Sun, 10 May 2026 02:33:22 +0000

Japanese, living here. I'd heard 人質司法 (hostage justice) used in news commentary but never really pictured what it looked like inside. 5-day showers, food slid through a slot, sleeping on the floor with lights on. None of that is what most people here imagine when they hear "detention."

A lot of us live with this background feeling that "if you get arrested here, you're done" even if you didn't do anything. Part of it is the system. But part of it is also a cultural thing where being suspected at all is somehow seen as your fault. The people around you start treating you differently before any verdict.

Whatever the underlying charge actually was, none of this should follow from an arrest before any conviction. You were innocent and they still put you through 35 days. As a Japanese person reading this, I'm just sorry. That shouldn't have happened.

New comment by Ngraph in "Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels"

Ngraph — Sun, 10 May 2026 01:32:25 +0000

Honestly painful to read. I tried to distribute a free utility to some friends last year and bailed somewhere mid-enrollment. Just wanted maybe ten people to download a thing. The whole flow felt designed for someone shipping to millions and I just couldn't justify it for what I was actually doing.

Hope this finds its audience on Itch.