<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: Stratoscope</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Stratoscope</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Wed, 23 Sep 2026 13:32:26 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=Stratoscope" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[What would happen if the Yellowstone supervolcano erupted now]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="https://theconversation.com/end-of-humanity-blow-by-blow-account-of-what-would-happen-if-the-yellowstone-supervolcano-erupted-now-288649">https://theconversation.com/end-of-humanity-blow-by-blow-account-of-what-would-happen-if-the-yellowstone-supervolcano-erupted-now-288649</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49790064">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49790064</a></p>
<p>Points: 14</p>
<p># Comments: 1</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 21 Sep 2026 17:05:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://theconversation.com/end-of-humanity-blow-by-blow-account-of-what-would-happen-if-the-yellowstone-supervolcano-erupted-now-288649</link><dc:creator>Stratoscope</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49790064</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49790064</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Stratoscope in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (September 2026)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Location: Menlo Park, CA<p>Remote: Yes, or hybrid if nearby<p>Willing to relocate: Possibly<p>Technologies: Python, Ruby, C, C++, C#, JavaScript, TypeScript, PowerShell, Flask, SQL, PostGIS, Shapely, Unity, Unreal Engine, multiple assembly/machine languages, Windows user code and kernel drivers, Google Maps and other map APIs, geographic and airspace data<p>Résumé/CV: <a href="https://www.geary.com/resume.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.geary.com/resume.html</a> or <a href="https://www.geary.com/resume.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.geary.com/resume.pdf</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelgeary/" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelgeary/</a><p>Email: mike@geary.com<p>Hi, I'm Michael Geary. I've programmed in many languages and environments over the years. Some of my current interests are:<p>• Developer experience. I love helping my fellow developers solve problems, and building tools to make their jobs easier and more enjoyable.<p>• Aviation and geographic data. For example, airspace and obstacle data importers for Wing; election results and voter information maps for Google; many interactive maps for other companies.<p>• Hardware interfacing. In a way, I am a "full stack" developer, but my stack may involve a front end to a piece of hardware rather than the cloud. I first got into programming via ham radio, so RF hardware remains an interest.<p>• Designing and building APIs. Too often an API is designed by exposing the internals of whatever system provides the API. My philosophy is the opposite: start with the apps. I like to build a series of sample apps before starting on the API. This way I can imagine what API will make those apps and others like them easy to build.<p>• Talk with users! I don't like to sit in a back room cranking out code. I want to make sure it's the right code for what my users need, and that it's easy to maintain and improve as we learn more about what they want.<p>• Technical and general interest writing.<p>Open to full time or contract.<p>I look forward to talking with you!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 01 Sep 2026 15:30:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49523328</link><dc:creator>Stratoscope</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49523328</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49523328</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[How an MIT research project became a global programming language]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="https://news.mit.edu/2026/how-mit-research-project-became-global-programming-language-0831">https://news.mit.edu/2026/how-mit-research-project-became-global-programming-language-0831</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49522436">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49522436</a></p>
<p>Points: 3</p>
<p># Comments: 1</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 01 Sep 2026 14:24:04 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.mit.edu/2026/how-mit-research-project-became-global-programming-language-0831</link><dc:creator>Stratoscope</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49522436</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49522436</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Stratoscope in "The Road to MS-DOS 2.0"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>16KB and no floppy drive. That was my first PC!<p>I could get the extra 48KB memory for less than IBM charged. More importantly, double sided floppy drives were already on the market but you couldn't get them from IBM at any price.<p>So I went to a local component supplier and got a pair of double sided drives. They worked "out of the box" in DOS, but unsurprisingly, only side 1 of each drive showed up as A: and B: drives.<p>So I wrote a TSR to add C: and D: drive letterss which were side 2 of each drive.<p>It was super easy.<p>Later I heard about a fancier TSR that combined side 1 and 2 of each drive into a single drive letter with twice the capacity.<p>But that was a much more complicated task, and I was happy enough with my four-drive-letter solution.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 18 Aug 2026 08:05:20 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49342812</link><dc:creator>Stratoscope</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49342812</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49342812</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Japan Aims for the Moons of Mars]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/japan-aims-moons-mars-021058808.html">https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/japan-aims-moons-mars-021058808.html</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49336490">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49336490</a></p>
<p>Points: 5</p>
<p># Comments: 0</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 17 Aug 2026 19:39:14 +0000</pubDate><link>https://www.yahoo.com/news/science/articles/japan-aims-moons-mars-021058808.html</link><dc:creator>Stratoscope</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49336490</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49336490</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Stratoscope in "Engineer used 360-degree cam hidden in bag of snacks to steal DRAM process tech"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Full title:<p><i>Engineer used 360-degree cam hidden in bag of snacks in attempt to steal DRAM process tech for China — IT security team pinpointed perp due to camera's leaky wireless signals</i></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 17 Aug 2026 13:42:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49330720</link><dc:creator>Stratoscope</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49330720</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49330720</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Engineer used 360-degree cam hidden in bag of snacks to steal DRAM process tech]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/nanya-engineer-used-360-degree-cam-hidden-in-snacks-in-attempt-to-steal-dram-process-tech-for-china-it-security-team-pinpointed-perp-due-to-cameras-leaky-wireless-signals">https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/nanya-engineer-used-360-degree-cam-hidden-in-snacks-in-attempt-to-steal-dram-process-tech-for-china-it-security-team-pinpointed-perp-due-to-cameras-leaky-wireless-signals</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49330719">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49330719</a></p>
<p>Points: 3</p>
<p># Comments: 1</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 17 Aug 2026 13:42:57 +0000</pubDate><link>https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/dram/nanya-engineer-used-360-degree-cam-hidden-in-snacks-in-attempt-to-steal-dram-process-tech-for-china-it-security-team-pinpointed-perp-due-to-cameras-leaky-wireless-signals</link><dc:creator>Stratoscope</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49330719</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49330719</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Hoover Dam is losing power. Inside the 'slowest-moving train wreck in history']]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/general/ar-AA29M1PK">https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/general/ar-AA29M1PK</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49262913">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49262913</a></p>
<p>Points: 18</p>
<p># Comments: 0</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 11 Aug 2026 19:01:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/general/ar-AA29M1PK</link><dc:creator>Stratoscope</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49262913</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49262913</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[NASA modded space station's laptops so everyone could use the same charger]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/space/nasa-modded-space-stations-laptops-so-everyone-could-use-the-same-charger-standardizing-iss-chargers-eliminated-useless-weight-and-reduced-failure-points">https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/space/nasa-modded-space-stations-laptops-so-everyone-could-use-the-same-charger-standardizing-iss-chargers-eliminated-useless-weight-and-reduced-failure-points</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49223852">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49223852</a></p>
<p>Points: 3</p>
<p># Comments: 0</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 08 Aug 2026 17:28:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/space/nasa-modded-space-stations-laptops-so-everyone-could-use-the-same-charger-standardizing-iss-chargers-eliminated-useless-weight-and-reduced-failure-points</link><dc:creator>Stratoscope</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49223852</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49223852</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Stratoscope in "Bonsai: Janestreet's UI Library"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Thanks for the correction! It was a long time ago that I used TypeScript, and making things worse (for my memory) it was an Angular project.<p>So today, most people and teams avoid the parts of TS that require compilation into different JS, and --erasableSyntaxOnly lets you enforce this, right?</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 03 Aug 2026 21:29:39 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49161691</link><dc:creator>Stratoscope</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49161691</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49161691</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Stratoscope in "Bonsai: Janestreet's UI Library"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>The other one I read about was parameter properties in constructors.<p>And thank you for the correction! It was quite a few years ago that I used TypeScript, and I think the landscape was different then.<p>Making things even fuzzier in my mind, this was an Angular project, and it was hard to keep track of what was Angular and what was TypeScript.<p>It sounds like people these days actively avoid the parts of TypeScript that require translation into different JS code.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 03 Aug 2026 21:24:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49161638</link><dc:creator>Stratoscope</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49161638</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49161638</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Stratoscope in "Bonsai: Janestreet's UI Library"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>That is true only if you confine your TS code to be pure JS plus type annotations.<p>There are TS constructs that require compilation into equivalent JS, such as enums and namespaces.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 03 Aug 2026 19:38:15 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49160420</link><dc:creator>Stratoscope</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49160420</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49160420</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Stratoscope in "The Mysterious Case of the JetBlue Flight That Went into Free Fall"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p><a href="https://archive.ph/AWMz8" rel="nofollow">https://archive.ph/AWMz8</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 03 Aug 2026 17:37:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49158987</link><dc:creator>Stratoscope</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49158987</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49158987</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Mysterious Case of the JetBlue Flight That Went into Free Fall]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Article URL: <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/mysterious-case-jetblue-1230-airbus-free-fall.html">https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/mysterious-case-jetblue-1230-airbus-free-fall.html</a></p>
<p>Comments URL: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49158986">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49158986</a></p>
<p>Points: 4</p>
<p># Comments: 2</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 03 Aug 2026 17:37:21 +0000</pubDate><link>https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/mysterious-case-jetblue-1230-airbus-free-fall.html</link><dc:creator>Stratoscope</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49158986</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49158986</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Stratoscope in "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (August 2026)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Location: Menlo Park, CA<p>Remote: Yes, or hybrid if nearby<p>Willing to relocate: Possibly<p>Technologies: Python, Ruby, C, C++, C#, JavaScript, TypeScript, PowerShell, Flask, SQL, PostGIS, Shapely, Unity, Unreal Engine, multiple assembly/machine languages, Windows user code and kernel drivers, Google Maps and other map APIs, geographic and airspace data<p>Résumé/CV: <a href="https://www.geary.com/resume.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.geary.com/resume.html</a> or <a href="https://www.geary.com/resume.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.geary.com/resume.pdf</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelgeary/" rel="nofollow">https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelgeary/</a><p>Email: mike@geary.com<p>Hi, I'm Michael Geary. I've programmed in many languages and environments over the years. Some of my current interests are:<p>• Developer experience. I love helping my fellow developers solve problems, and building tools to make their jobs easier and more enjoyable.<p>• Aviation and geographic data. For example, airspace and obstacle data importers for Wing; election results and voter information maps for Google; many interactive maps for other companies.<p>• Hardware interfacing. In a way, I am a "full stack" developer, but my stack may involve a front end to a piece of hardware rather than the cloud. I first got into programming via ham radio, so RF hardware remains an interest.<p>• Designing and building APIs. Too often an API is designed by exposing the internals of whatever system provides the API. My philosophy is the opposite: start with the apps. I like to build a series of sample apps before starting on the API. This way I can imagine what API will make those apps and others like them easy to build.<p>• Talk with users! I don't like to sit in a back room cranking out code. I want to make sure it's the right code for what my users need, and that it's easy to maintain and improve as we learn more about what they want.<p>Open to full time or contract.<p>I look forward to talking with you!</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 03 Aug 2026 15:01:43 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49156701</link><dc:creator>Stratoscope</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49156701</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49156701</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Stratoscope in "Don't be a meat proxy"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>For anyone unfamiliar with the meat reference, here is Terry Bisson's delightful 1991 short-short story, "They're Made out of Meat":<p><a href="https://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/TheyMade.shtml" rel="nofollow">https://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/TheyMade.s...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 03 Aug 2026 09:24:56 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49153304</link><dc:creator>Stratoscope</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49153304</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49153304</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Stratoscope in "The Cold Email"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Here's my cold email story.<p>In the Netflix series The Good Place, there is an AI character named Janet, who helps assist people who have gone to that place where you go after you die.<p>One quirk when you're in the Good Place: you can't use swear words. If you try to say "fuck" it comes out "fork".<p>Janet is portrayed brilliantly by D'Arcy Carden. Her dad is Dennis Erokan, who published MicroTimes and BAM (Bay Area Music) Magazine and produced the Bammies award festival. MicroTimes was one of those big thick magazines like Computer Shopper, full of interesting ads and a few articles.<p>After I discovered this, I found Dennis' email and wrote to him:<p>---<p>Hi Dennis!<p>Yes, I know it's usually D'Arcy who gets the autograph requests.<p>My friend Ro and I recently finished watching The Good Place. What a wonderful series!<p>I always enjoy learning about the people who worked to create a great show like this.<p>After a bit of research I was like "What the fork? Janet's real life dad is the MicroTimes guy!"<p>So I checked my archival drawer and found one of my old MicroTimes from 1996.<p>Ro lived in New York in the late 1980s, and she flew to SF a few of those years just to go to the Bammies.<p>Her secret hope was to somehow get acquainted with Steve Perry. But she did see Ted Nugent staring at her in a bookstore. So that was at least a consolation prize.<p>Ro's birthday is coming up later this month. I stealthily searched eBay and got the 1986 and 1988 BAM Magazines with the Bammies Scrapbooks.<p>I wonder if you could autograph these? I would be more than happy to take you out for lunch or dinner at any of your favorite places up in your neck of the woods. Or I could just bring them to your office or any location you want if that's more convenient for you.<p>And if we can work out a time when Ro could join us (probably easier on a weekend), she would be delighted to meet you!<p>---<p>Dennis was quite tickled by this. We took him to lunch at his favorite restaurant, he signed our MicroTimes and BAM magazines, and we all had a great time sharing stories about some of the people we knew.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 30 Jul 2026 07:59:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49107179</link><dc:creator>Stratoscope</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49107179</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49107179</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Stratoscope in "Substack writers, you need a website"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>What if I'm 74? ;-)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 29 Jul 2026 12:21:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49096508</link><dc:creator>Stratoscope</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49096508</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49096508</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Stratoscope in "Substack writers, you need a website"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Excellent point! In fact I do have an automatic monthly donation to The Internet Archive.<p>Of course the URLs all change in archived pages, but at least the content is there for anyone motivated enough to find it.<p>A funny coincidence... I registered geary.com (my last name) in 1994, and just used it for email. A few years later I got a letter from a group of civic boosters in Geary, Oklahoma. They even enclosed a Geary Water Tower T-shirt which I still have. They saw that I didn't have a website up on this domain and asked me if they could have it.<p>I explained that this would be impractical since it was also my email address.<p>So they registered gearyok.com instead and put up a website built around Java applets. Oops.<p>But it got me thinking. I put up a static page (frequently edited by me) that I called Geary Central: A Guide to Gearys on the Net. This page is still up:<p><a href="https://www.geary.com/oldsite.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.geary.com/oldsite.html</a><p>Naturally I gave Geary, Oklahoma top billing for inspiring this.<p>A few years after that I changed geary.com to a MoinMoin wiki devoted to the same topic, and moved the old static page to its current location.<p>Just a few days ago, someone emailed me about how they had stumbled onto my oldsite.html page and enjoyed this "blast from the past".<p>In 2011, my old ISP decommissioned the server I had the wiki on. I was planning to migrate it to something more modern like Drupal, but the time and effort weren't worth it to me at the time.<p>I did find the latest version of the "new" Geary Central on archive.org and shared it in my reply:<p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20110927053309/http://www.geary.com/" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20110927053309/http://www.geary....</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Jul 2026 21:28:01 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49090149</link><dc:creator>Stratoscope</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49090149</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49090149</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by Stratoscope in "Substack writers, you need a website"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>> <i>I think that one should at least have one's own domain instead of example.substack.com.</i><p>I thought about this question when I recently started writing a few articles on Substack.<p>I chose not to use my own domain, even though I have a few.<p>Why? I want my writing to outlive me.<p>When I am no longer able to pay for domain renewals, my own domains will expire. Hopefully {my-hn-username}.substack.com will still be around.<p>Time will tell.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 28 Jul 2026 20:56:52 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49089795</link><dc:creator>Stratoscope</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49089795</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49089795</guid></item></channel></rss>