Hacker News: alnwlsn

New comment by alnwlsn in "God sleeps in the minerals"

alnwlsn — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 15:43:32 +0000

I've been to a few mineral museums like this and one of the interesting ones you can come across is Asbestos. Just hanging out there on display right next to some other mineral. It forms beautiful formations just like the rest, but I've heard so many mesothelioma lawyer commercials that it's easy to forget it's a completely natural material. Also one you can pick apart like cotton and weave into a fabric - it's a flexible material, made out of a rock, which can kill you.

The asbestos formations are ones they keep behind glass.

New comment by alnwlsn in "The dangers of California's legislation to censor 3D printing"

alnwlsn — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:30:37 +0000

G0 X4.000 Y1.250

G1 Z-4.000 F100

G0 Z0.250

Here is some g-code to drill a hole. It could be drilling out a gun barrel. How can you tell?

New comment by alnwlsn in "Franklin's bad ads for Apple II clones and the beloved impersonator they depict"

alnwlsn — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 13:50:47 +0000

This was not understood to be so at the time, and the resulting court case was THE precedent that says that it is.

Franklin even won the initial case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Frankl....

New comment by alnwlsn in "Programming Used to Be Free"

alnwlsn — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 15:47:39 +0000

I also learned programming on QBASIC around the same time frame, but in my case it was mostly because all the old 90's computers were getting thrown away at that time, so there were plenty of parts around for a kid to learn about computers without breaking anything expensive.

It was pretty easy back then to find software that would work on those machines on the internet, too. I'm not so sure it would be as easy for young people to learn using yesterday's computers today.

New comment by alnwlsn in "Hobby CNC machining and resin casting (2015)"

alnwlsn — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 14:08:55 +0000

I have both, and a manual lathe and mill, and a laser cutter. 95% of everything I do is with the 3D printers. There is no indexing, no work holding, no dealing with shavings or smoke or dust or cutting oil that gets everywhere, no accidentally breaking your last end mill, no screwing up the only one of the thing you're cutting into, no cutting down stock so it fits in your machine, etc. You just press print. Setting up another machine is a right hassle by comparison.

3D printing and plastic parts isn't good for everything, but it is good enough (and easier) for a lot of things.

New comment by alnwlsn in "Show HN: Brutalist Concrete Laptop Stand (2024)"

alnwlsn — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 13:35:13 +0000

They make industrial versions of the same specifically for concrete.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=concrete+vibrator

New comment by alnwlsn in "Build your own Dial-up ISP with a Raspberry Pi"

alnwlsn — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 17:53:50 +0000

If you ever want more phone lines than that, you can pick up an old Cisco VG-224 from Ebay for less than half the price of that line simulator, and you get 24 lines. There is a configuration that will let you use it as a standalone unit where all the lines can call each other with custom phone numbers (here's some notes [1]).

The main catch is that they have a 50-pin Centronics style connector on them which you will have to break out somehow to your RJ11s. Also, they are big (1U rack) and have fans.

I've got a few of these and have been meaning to set them up with a bunch of modems and a bunch of computers, but haven't gotten to it yet. Modems do seem to work in the limited testing I've done. They do (as expected) work great with telephones, including pulse dialing.

[1] https://alnwlsn.com/z/pots/cisco-vg224.html

New comment by alnwlsn in "Remembering Magnetic Memories and the Apollo AGC"

alnwlsn — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 16:51:39 +0000

As seen on Curious Marc, where some real AGC core rope ROMs are read:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hckwxq8rnr0

They even have to work around some design mistakes made in the modules in order to read them correctly. Not many living people know more about the AGC than those guys (especially Mike Stewart).

New comment by alnwlsn in "Iran war sparks renewables boom as Europeans rush to buy solar, heat pumps, EVs"

alnwlsn — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 16:18:57 +0000

A lively Hackaday discussion from yesterday on this very topic:

https://hackaday.com/2026/03/31/solar-balconies-take-europe-...

New comment by alnwlsn in "A sea of sparks: Seeing radioactivity"

alnwlsn — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 19:58:04 +0000

This can be done at home with a little effort. Less effort if you can get dry ice easily.

https://hackaday.com/2019/01/13/see-the-radioactive-world-wi...

New comment by alnwlsn in "Build123d: A Python CAD programming library"

alnwlsn — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 17:25:42 +0000

I think most GUI CADs have some kind of API like this. In FreeCAD it's Python. In Solidworks, it's VBA or C#. I don't think any are particularly well documented or supported by tutorials.

New comment by alnwlsn in "Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder"

alnwlsn — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 16:45:49 +0000

I cannot take anyone making this argument seriously unless they are similarly furious at the expenditure on arts, humanities, historical preservation, luxury goods, entertainment, or other similar vanity projects.

Why is is that science and technology exploration ventures are held to a much higher scrutiny?

New comment by alnwlsn in "The First Video Game Was Just a Box in the Corner of a Bar"

alnwlsn — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 13:36:06 +0000

Not necessary, you can just take an additional CRT and wire it in parallel to one of the Williams tube CRTs to see what's on the screen.

That's how the Manchester Baby did it (visible in the center of the image here): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Manchest...

New comment by alnwlsn in "Is it a pint?"

alnwlsn — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 17:30:22 +0000

The (incorrect) claim is indeed made in every single metric vs "imperial" comments section I've come across.

New comment by alnwlsn in "Building a Reader for the Smallest Hard Drive"

alnwlsn — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 14:47:22 +0000

I discovered that one day when I accidentally stepped on a removed 2.5" platter in bare feet :)

New comment by alnwlsn in "HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)"

alnwlsn — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 14:25:11 +0000

You would never suspect they once made some of the world's finest test/scientific equipment.

New comment by alnwlsn in "Conway's Game of Life, in real life"

alnwlsn — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 14:33:14 +0000

When I got into retrocomputing a few years ago, I also did this. Works great with TRS-80 semigraphic characters. First, I wrote it in C with a Z80 c compiler. The, I wrote it again in assembly and it was much faster! Amazing!

New comment by alnwlsn in "Conway's Game of Life, in real life"

alnwlsn — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 14:22:33 +0000

Wow, in switches alone this would cost me $1200! Which actually isn't that bad for a one off-like this with easily available components - I've seen worse. You can of course take your chances with Aliexpress Specials but be warned: some of those cheap switches are cheap switches (sometimes, they're barely even switches). And you won't be getting them inside of 2 weeks.

I think I would have tried mechanical keyboarding switches that can take an LED and a clear keycap. Not really the same effect, but you could probably have gotten out to 24x24 for the same price.

New comment by alnwlsn in "Write up of my homebrew CPU build"

alnwlsn — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 17:45:22 +0000

You have to be a little mad to do this but exceptionally mad to do it on at least 8 independent breadboards using no less than 4 different styles of jumper wire!

New comment by alnwlsn in "Have a fucking website"

alnwlsn — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 13:41:58 +0000

I saw a meme one time that went something like this:

"AI is so cool, I asked ChatGPT to combine a card game with a flight simulator and it did it!"

"Yeah, that is pretty cool I guess."

"My question for you is, what do I do with the code it gave me?"

"What?"

"Where do I put the code to make a game?"