Hacker News: Rebelgecko

New comment by Rebelgecko in "Artemis II safely splashes down"

Rebelgecko — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 06:05:18 +0000

I imagine if there was a medical emergency they'd worry less about capsule recovery and safe shutdown. IIRC because the sat phone wasn't working, they had to wait an extra 15 mins to power down the capsule (I guess so they could use its radios?). In an emergency I imagine they'd just leave it as-is

New comment by Rebelgecko in "Artemis II safely splashes down"

Rebelgecko — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 01:23:54 +0000

It seems like they had limited telemetry for a short period before they did any audio

New comment by Rebelgecko in "The best seat in town"

Rebelgecko — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 01:14:49 +0000

The author actually brought up commuters! I thought the LA Metro bathrooms are more relevant for that use case, so it seems weird that the author ignores those while focusing on bathroom programs for the homeless (not that homeless people don't deserve bathrooms, but the picture they paint of regular every day folks in Paris is not comparable to the skid row bathroom users)

LA Metro has a mere 120 miles of track vs Paris's 150 miles, but in our defense they had a 90 year head start :)

New comment by Rebelgecko in "The best seat in town"

Rebelgecko — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 20:43:30 +0000

I don't really understand why the author is dumping on LA's toilets so much while praising how Parisian toilets are so useful for everyday people like commuters. The LA Metro program, which is expanding and seems to be very successful, has very different goals and challenges than the skid row public bathrooms.

New comment by Rebelgecko in "HBO Obtains DMCA Subpoena to Unmask 'Euphoria' Spoiler Account on X"

Rebelgecko — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 18:25:03 +0000

I think they algorithmically show you content designed to provoke engagement

New comment by Rebelgecko in "Port of LA turns to electric terminal trucks to to slash dwell times"

Rebelgecko — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 22:00:58 +0000

>CA has the 2nd highest electricity cost in the country. No where in the article do they mention cost savings, nor end-to-end carbon footprint savings.

I imagine for APM, reducing dwell time has more impact on the bottom line than fuel costs. At the end of the day, they're a for-profit company so they're gonna do what makes the most sense for their shareholders.

The crazy thing about electric vehicles is that mile for mile, electricity is nearly always cheaper than gas. Even for me, paying residential rates in California, my EV is still cheaper than a hybrid! And APM has a contract for like 10Mw from LADWP, they're probably paying 1/3 of what I do for electricity. It's a pretty sweet deal- I can't imagine it's possible to get a 67% discount on diesel just by buying in bulk.

Plus, the port is one of the biggest polluters in the area. Wilmington has like 2x higher cancer rates than LA in general. If this saves a few hundred lives/year, would it be a worthwhile use of taxpayer money? How much? (and to be clear, unless you have actual data it's not clear to me that this is "losing" money at all. The port has like 20Mw of solar panels, that's a lot of electricity to take advantage of on sunny days)

New comment by Rebelgecko in "Artemis II crew see first glimpse of far side of Moon [video]"

Rebelgecko — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 21:28:56 +0000

They've actually already on course to go around the moon for a couple days! There's been the option of performing some some minor course corrections to make sure they look back around to the right Earth orbit, but I think those haven't actually been necessary

Source: NASA's YT channel + way too many hours playing KSP. Skipping the course correction burn yesterday gave them the opportunity to try and unclog the liquid waste valve

New comment by Rebelgecko in "Families Can Now Eat Some Fish from Hudson River for First Time in 50 Years"

Rebelgecko — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 06:28:53 +0000

Correct, for some individuals a single fish exceeds the recommended monthly max serving. But by splitting a fish with family members you can reduce your PCB consumption to acceptable levels (that's polychlorinated biphenyls, not circuit boards)

New comment by Rebelgecko in "How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?"

Rebelgecko — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 20:36:21 +0000

I thought that was Cortana? Copilot is the new keyboard button, kinda like the Windows key

New comment by Rebelgecko in "F-15E jet shot down over Iran"

Rebelgecko — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 16:37:50 +0000

Since when is a warship's bridge "civilian infrastructure"?

New comment by Rebelgecko in "Artemis II crew take “spectacular” image of Earth"

Rebelgecko — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 21:52:52 +0000

I saw someone point out on reddit that this probably the first digital picture of the whole earth (well, 1 side of it) taken by a person

Apollo used film and it's been a long time since anyone has gone past LEO

New comment by Rebelgecko in "Renewables reached nearly 50% of global electricity capacity last year"

Rebelgecko — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 17:35:27 +0000

Batteries are also getting cheaper and cheaper

New comment by Rebelgecko in "AI for American-produced cement and concrete"

Rebelgecko — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:13:51 +0000

Concrete has entered the agentic era

New comment by Rebelgecko in "NASA Artemis II moon mission live launch broadcast"

Rebelgecko — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 20:25:56 +0000

Each Artemis launch costs something like $4b (that's the incremental cost of a new rocket, it's much higher if you amortize the design costs).

IMO the program is not optimized for cost or sustainability, it's optimized for creating jobs in various congressional districts. Of course that provides a certain amount of political sustainability to the so-called Senate Launch System.

I just don't see a future where NASA can afford multiple SLS launches per year to maintain a continuous Lunar presence

New comment by Rebelgecko in "Artemis II Launch Day Updates"

Rebelgecko — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 20:18:30 +0000

NASA is something like the third biggest space program in the US

New comment by Rebelgecko in "NASA’s Artemis II Crew Launches to the Moon"

Rebelgecko — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 19:52:44 +0000

I think in general space exploration is a great use of taxpayer money, but the artemis program doesn't seem great from either a "science per dollar" or "novel accomplishment per dollar" standpoint.

If the goal was just to flex on the rest of the world I would've much rather we focused on going somewhere new or returning to the moon in a more sustainable way

New comment by Rebelgecko in "South Korea Mandates Solar Panels for Public Parking Lots"

Rebelgecko — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 22:19:22 +0000

The cost of the 10ft poles (at least in the US, SK might have different pricing), is drastically higher than the panels themselves

New comment by Rebelgecko in "Make macOS consistently bad unironically"

Rebelgecko — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 23:49:37 +0000

Or at least consistent opinions

New comment by Rebelgecko in "‘Energy independence feels practical’: Europeans building mini solar farms"

Rebelgecko — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 18:25:28 +0000

Cheap home solar installations usually have a disconnect- do they not use those in larger scale installs?

I'm also surprised they aren't using batteries to capture overproduction. They've been clutch in the US, and we're not exactly pushing the envelope of green energy nowadays

New comment by Rebelgecko in "John Bradley, author of xv, has died"

Rebelgecko — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 05:48:20 +0000

Vox Day isn't any better