Hacker News: V99

New comment by V99 in "TiVo to charge money for skipping commercials in your own recordings"

V99 — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 06:47:57 +0000

My parents still have a couple, but I think most people's reaction to this is "TiVo still exists?" CableCARDs are going extinct and there are lots of other options to record OTA these days.

New comment by V99 in "Civilian plane crash in New Mexico tied to military GPS blocking"

V99 — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 19:44:29 +0000

In Florida a) they don't take kindly to that kind of units and b) you should be more worried about the many 1500-2000' antennas than the "mountains".

It's still pretty useful to know where you are and not die hitting an invisible guy wire.

New comment by V99 in "Examining circuit boards from the Space Shuttle's I/O Processor"

V99 — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 06:24:16 +0000

Space is big, dark, and the X-37 has significant delta-v capabilities so its position is not a consistent stable orbit like a normal satellite.

New comment by V99 in "Spirit Airlines Is Winding Down All Operations"

V99 — Sat, 02 May 2026 07:58:05 +0000

Unfortunately continuing to burn money with no hope of recovery is not a popular strategy among judges and creditor's lawyers. Customers will either get refunds or join the back of the creditor line.

New comment by V99 in "K3k: Kubernetes in Kubernetes"

V99 — Sat, 02 May 2026 07:45:41 +0000

(Former employee) They tend to either get enough traction very quickly and be supported for years, or not and be abandoned in weeks/months.

New comment by V99 in "Apocalypse Early Warning System"

V99 — Sat, 02 May 2026 03:27:34 +0000

They wouldn't have to set anything. The transponder on almost any modern plane defaults to automatically on, either immediately or at takeoff. With Mode C (reporting altitude) or S (& reporting more) and squawking 1200 (VFR).

New comment by V99 in "Ti-84 Evo"

V99 — Fri, 01 May 2026 21:08:48 +0000

These have been standard equipment (that you buy, or the school loans out) in middle-class US high school math since the 90's (and gone basically unchanged since then). The math books even have content tailored to particular models so that you'll have to buy them instead of alternatives from other vendors.

New comment by V99 in "Artemis II Launch Day Updates"

V99 — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 01:27:12 +0000

This capsule isn't part of your Netflix Household. Create an account to enjoy your own Netflix today.

New comment by V99 in "$96 3D-printed rocket that recalculates its mid-air trajectory using a $5 sensor"

V99 — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 13:27:57 +0000

What you are likely thinking of is the "selective availability" system, which intentionally provided slightly inaccurate data to civilian clients, while military receivers could decrypt the most accurate info. But this has not been used for many years now.

Other than that, GPS is a one-way system, it does not know you exist, how fast your receiver is moving or "give" different information to one client vs another.

Even if it did, this is essentially a toy and moving slower and lower than a general aviation plane.

It uses accelerometers and other sensors because they can be sampled and integrated hundreds of times a second. The $5 gps module is 9600 baud serial and provides one update/second (or maybe 5/sec depending on which part number you pick).

New comment by V99 in "The Windows 95 user interface: A case study in usability engineering (1996)"

V99 — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 17:30:06 +0000

This is not even close to the worst ideas Apple ever had, even if you're only talking about mice.

The original USB mouse (for the first iMac) was round, so you couldn't orient it in your hand without looking at it constantly.

And it came with a very short cord (because there was a port on the right side of the keyboard to plug it into). But then the laptops got updated with USB ports and they were only on the LEFT side of the case.

For at least a year or two you could not buy an Apple mouse for your Apple PowerBook and use it in your right hand, because the cord was too short to go around the case.

Eventually they shipped a "Pro" mouse with revolutionary elongated shape and longer cord. (...and optical tracking, and what looked like zero buttons, which were pretty neat)

New comment by V99 in "What's going on at Heathrow Airport"

V99 — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 18:47:27 +0000

When all you have is AI everything looks like a model, but this is trivially done with basic text parsing...

This info is in the automated weather broadcast (ATIS) audio for any towered airport.

Most large airports provide a textual version (D-ATIS), so suitably equipped pilots don't have to listen to it and scribble it down.

E.g. Heathrow now from random unofficial website: https://atis.guru/atis/EGLL

EGLL ARR ATIS T 1820Z LANDING RWY 27L…

EGLL DEP ATIS U 1427Z PILOTS ARE EXPECTED TO CHANGE TO RWY 27R AT AT 15:00 HOURS… DEPARTURE RWY 27L…

New comment by V99 in "From Nevada to Kansas by Glider"

V99 — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 09:33:12 +0000

If you don't go often enough you definitely won't make the same progress per session. You'll spend most of each session trying to remaster what you lost from the last one.

For powered flying, one a week is already on the low end... most instructors would recommend 2-3x/week.

Flying skills are very perishable, especially when first learning. This is why there are several different rules about recency of experience before you can do things like carry passengers, recurrent training requirements, etc.

New comment by V99 in "Blurry rendering of games on Mac"

V99 — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 18:45:22 +0000

The suggested filtering is just creating a new problem of assuming a 16:10 safe area exists (and external displays or other shapes don't).

Group all resolutions returned that are the same +-5% together and choose the lowest one in the desired bucket.

New comment by V99 in "SpaceX Starship 36 Anomaly"

V99 — Thu, 19 Jun 2025 09:20:56 +0000

Testing on the ground and problems with what most people would call the payload (Apollo 1 & 13), sure.

But we're comparing to SpaceX launches. Plenty of Raptor engines have blown up on the ground too.

There were 13 Saturn V's launched and all of them basically performed their mission (Apollo 6 being a bit of an exception) with 0 rapid unplanned disassemblies...

New comment by V99 in "When flat rate movers won't answer your calls"

V99 — Sun, 04 May 2025 08:29:42 +0000

Here's a couch from a retail store you've probably heard of that you can configure online for $12k.

https://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/bedford-sofa-uphols...

Personally I'd rather buy one from IKEA and use the change left over from $12k to buy.. a used truck to drive the sofa home in.. but apparently there's a market.

You can certainly go much higher for smaller companies producing actual custom stuff, using exotic materials, for a giant sectional instead of a single sofa, etc.

New comment by V99 in "Path Isn't Real on Linux"

V99 — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 02:08:41 +0000

True... `strace bash -c cat` would give more the series of stat calls they're intending to see:

newfstatat(AT_FDCWD, ".", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0700, st_size=4096, ...}, 0) = 0

newfstatat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/local/sbin/cat", 0x7fffcec2f3b8, 0) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

newfstatat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/local/bin/cat", 0x7fffcec2f3b8, 0) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

newfstatat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/sbin/cat", 0x7fffcec2f3b8, 0) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

newfstatat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/bin/cat", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=68536, ...}, 0) = 0

New comment by V99 in "Aircraft detection at planetary scale"

V99 — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 16:13:49 +0000

That's nice, but the parent explicitly cited part of US regulations where it's required, while ignoring that it's always required if equipped.

New comment by V99 in "Aircraft detection at planetary scale"

V99 — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 00:11:01 +0000

You are NOT at all (legally) free to arbitrarily turn off your ADSB on an aircraft equipped with it. 91.225(f) [1].

> Except as prohibited in [unmanned aircraft section], each person operating an aircraft equipped with ADS-B Out must operate this equipment in the transmit mode at all times unless [authorized by FAA or ATC].

A common way to add ADSB to an aircraft not originally equipped is replacing one of the lights with a uAvionics skyBeacon[2], which has a LED light + ADSB-out transmitter. So the nav light switch would control it, but you'd also now be required to have them on at all times.

[1]: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/part-91/section-91.225...

[2]: https://uavionix.com/products/skybeacon/

New comment by V99 in "Smoke in the cabin of two 737 MAX caused by Load Reduction Device system [video]"

V99 — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 00:28:08 +0000

Yes the FAA can issue what are called Airworthiness Directives and require an issue be resolved in the timeframe and manner they specify.

The timeframe could be anything, but common forms are like:

- Within the next X (flight) hours or Y calendar days

- You don't have to, but additional inspection needed every X hours or Y days until you do

- At next annual inspection

- Immediate/before flying again (usually called an Emergency AD)

New comment by V99 in "Why hasn't commercial air travel gotten any faster since the 1960s? (2009)"

V99 — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 00:54:17 +0000

JSX operates based on a loophole in the part 135 rules, but that only allows 30 seats. A CRJ doesn't have the range for (nonstop) transatlantic, bigger planes would be impractical, and smaller ones with the range won't hold 30 people.