Hacker News: aejm

New comment by aejm in "We need a federation of forges"

aejm — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 14:55:50 +0000

In the latest FOSS project I’m starting, I’m not avoiding all “open core” supposedly FOSS projects. In my experience, they’re the projects most likely to do a rug pull and change licenses. If they cannot commit to their entire project being free and open, they are less likely to actually be committed to the principles of free and open software.

While I was quite excited about some of the ideas being discussed in this project, it being VC backed is a complete non starter for me. Your claims of being built in the open don’t make me feel any better, you will eventually need to make returns for investors.

New comment by aejm in "Plain text has been around for decades and it’s here to stay"

aejm — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 11:23:37 +0000

Thank you for taking the time to reply! Agreed, it does seem like any auditor would be able to verify all this information from other sources, but I really like the idea of having multiple independent levels of attestation for my organizations important financial and legal documents.

New comment by aejm in "Plain text has been around for decades and it’s here to stay"

aejm — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 20:04:01 +0000

This is really good inspiration for some of my plain text accounting projects! Could you please go into more detail about your RFC3161 attestation of commits? I'm assuming you're signing your commits with a gpg key to assert that it was in fact you who made the commit. Do you use an external timstamping service and an external ca authority, or do you build your own chains of trust? If you were asked to attest your accounting commits, what would that look like to the auditor?

New comment by aejm in "Paraloid B-72"

aejm — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 04:43:02 +0000

This post has exactly zero relevance to my professional career or personal projects, and this is exactly the type of esoteric content I love about HN!

New comment by aejm in "Electrical transformer manufacturing is throttling the electrified future"

aejm — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 10:48:55 +0000

This. Well said!

New comment by aejm in "From Zero to QED: An informal introduction to formality with Lean 4"

aejm — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 22:00:04 +0000

No, the point of proofs in mathematics IS to prove a particular statement is true, given certain axioms (accepted truths). Yes, there are numerous benefits beyond demonstrating something is undeniably true, given certain accepted truths, perhaps more “useful” than the proof itself, but math is a method of formal knowledge that doesn’t accept shortcuts.

New comment by aejm in "Engineers investigate another malfunction on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket"

aejm — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 21:18:02 +0000

Indeed, thank you.

New comment by aejm in "Engineers investigate another malfunction on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket"

aejm — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 20:33:47 +0000

Three failures this close together is problematic! I have no insight, but I wonder if organization or cultural changes are to blame? Plus, SpaceX flouting FAA rules recently, makes me worry about their long term future.

New comment by aejm in "Examples of Great URL Design (2023)"

aejm — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 10:50:49 +0000

What’s the best way to handle url slugs that change? For example, if I have www.example.com/page/foo, and the user changes that page’s title to bar, the slug updates to www.example.com/page/bar and anyone visiting the old url gets automatically redirected to the new one. But now the old slug of foo can’t be used again (without appending some unique identifier to it, like foo-th683gh9i).

New comment by aejm in "NASA and SpaceX misjudged the risks from reentering space junk"

aejm — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 01:48:30 +0000

This article is about incorrect understanding by engineers and scientists of how different materials, in different conditions, behave during reentry:

“"During its initial design, the Dragon spacecraft trunk was evaluated for reentry breakup and was predicted to burn up fully," NASA said in a statement. "The information from the debris recovery provides an opportunity for teams to improve debris modeling. NASA and SpaceX will continue exploring additional solutions as we learn from the discovered debris."”

and

“These incidents highlight an urgency for more research into what happens when a spacecraft makes an uncontrolled reentry into the atmosphere, according to engineers from the Aerospace Corporation”.

The inclusion at the end of the article about how low the risk of space debris injuring an individual serves to tell the reader space debris hitting them is not something they need to worry about. Again, this is about experts updating and improving their models, especially as the number of space launches grows dramatically, sometimes using novel materials.

I agree people are generally very bad at understanding the relationships among probabilities, hazards, and risks. But this article cites multiple, independent experts, and specifically highlights how this is not a problem of you getting hit by space debris, which is quite anti-clickbait.

New comment by aejm in "The 1904 Olympic Marathon (2012)"

aejm — Sun, 30 Jun 2024 19:09:57 +0000

A very common quote by Paracelsus in medicine and toxicology: “All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison.” [0]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dose_makes_the_poison

New comment by aejm in "Boeing rejects claims NASA crew 'stranded' by spacecraft"

aejm — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 00:11:03 +0000

Yes absolutely. SpaceX Dragon is cleared to seat up to, I believe, four extra astronauts in an emergency.

New comment by aejm in "Boeing rejects claims NASA crew 'stranded' by spacecraft"

aejm — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 00:10:01 +0000

However, in emergency situations, the Dragon capsule can seat up to, I believe, four extra astronauts, and there are only two on Starliner.

New comment by aejm in "Boeing rejects claims NASA crew 'stranded' by spacecraft"

aejm — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 00:08:12 +0000

The leaks in question are on the service module of the Starliner spacecraft. This is a separate part of the spacecraft that is jettisoned before the main spacecraft reenters the atmosphere. Therefore, the service module, where all the leaks are that they want to understand better, would burn up in the atmosphere, and be destroyed.

New comment by aejm in "NASA releases Hubble image taken in new pointing mode"

aejm — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 12:11:07 +0000

“Once Hubble is on target, the steadiness of the telescope in one-gyro mode is almost comparable to that of a full three-gyro complement… Although one-gyro mode is an excellent way to keep Hubble science operations going, it does have limitations, which include a small decrease in efficiency (roughly 12 percent) due to the added time required to slew and lock the telescope onto a science target… If Earth or the moon block two of the fixed head star trackers’ fields of view, Hubble must move further along in its orbit until the star trackers can see the sky and its stars again. This process encroaches upon science observation time. Second, the additional time the fine guidance sensors take to further search for the guide stars adds to the total time the sensors use to complete the acquisition. Third, in one-gyro mode Hubble has some restrictions on the science it can do. For example, Hubble cannot track moving objects that are closer to Earth than the orbit of Mars. Their motion is too fast to track without the full complement of gyros. Additionally, the reduced area of sky that Hubble can point to at any given time also reduces its flexibility to see transient events or targets of opportunity like an exploding star or an impact on Jupiter. When combined, these factors may yield a decrease in productivity of roughly 20 to 25 percent from the typical observing program conducted in the past using all three gyros.“ [0]

[0] https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/observatory/design/h...

New comment by aejm in "Anti-patterns in event-driven architecture"

aejm — Sat, 08 Jun 2024 23:26:22 +0000

What are people’s thoughts on using event driven architecture in games? Specifically multiplayer games, and massively multiplayer games (MMOrpgs). Another comment mentions it was helpful, how specifically, were there any tradeoffs, do certain types of games work better?

New comment by aejm in "lsix: Like "ls", but for images"

aejm — Fri, 07 Jun 2024 01:49:42 +0000

This seems like a reasonable point. Add an option to skip slow files if needed, but don’t skip them by default as it leads to unexpected behavior

New comment by aejm in "Starship survives reentry during fourth test flight"

aejm — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 17:57:29 +0000

Definitely the coolest space video I’ve seen yet! Watching the plasma burn through the flap towards the end was unreal

New comment by aejm in "Boeing Starliner launches first crewed mission"

aejm — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 02:12:26 +0000

The helium leak was well understood and characterized before this launch attempt, see the last launch attempt. Helium leaks are not uncommon, and can be worked around.

Not reentering with this capsule would be a catastrophic failure. They are, unless something actually serious happens, certainly reentering on this capsule.

New comment by aejm in "SpaceX's fourth Starship launch approved for Thursday"

aejm — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 13:09:50 +0000

They are attempting the same just below orbital trajectory as last flight. They will not be attempting an in orbit-ish deorbit burn, as they have stated that their primary goals are getting the ship through peak reentry, and the booster to a simulated soft landing burn.