Hacker News: andrewl

New 'Super Ice' 10 Times Stronger, Bringing It Close to the Strength of Concrete

andrewl — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 21:42:38 +0000

Article URL: https://www.sciencealert.com/a-new-super-ice-is-10-times-stronger-bringing-it-close-to-the-strength-of-concrete

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50079280

Points: 15

# Comments: 5

New comment by andrewl in "Solar panels that plug into your wall"

andrewl — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 15:04:12 +0000

A lot of people in the U.S. are trying to innovate. I think the problem is the fossil fuel industry has been paying government, probably for decades, to implement legal roadblocks at all levels, from individual homes up to states and regions, to non-fossil fuel energy. I think they've also had a hand, at least at the propaganda level, in pushing back on electric vehicles.

Personally, I'd love to see the United States, and the rest of the world, decrease its reliance on oil. We won't get off it in any of our lifetimes, but we should move in that direction. I like diversifying. Any bit helps. Solar in Australia and Arizona. Maybe less so in northern Maine. Wind turbines where there's wind. I personally don't have any aesthetic objection to them. I think they look kind of cool. And certainly better than smokestacks. And so on.

Want to protect yourself against cancer? Get vaccinated

andrewl — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 01:12:54 +0000

Article URL: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/one-in-eight-new-cancers-are-likely-caused-by-infections-theres-an-easy-way-to-protect-yourself/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49903143

Points: 7

# Comments: 4

New comment by andrewl in "The Beatles have permeated research papers across academic disciplines"

andrewl — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 17:05:40 +0000

I wonder how the Beatles count compares to the count of references to Alice in Wonderland, which I think are especially frequent in papers on physics and mathematics.

Where a solar storm could take down the US power grid

andrewl — Mon, 07 Sep 2026 14:51:56 +0000

Article URL: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2026/07/weather/solar-storms-power-grid/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49599079

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by andrewl in "Apple caught off guard by AI demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio"

andrewl — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 13:42:20 +0000

Paul Graham discusses this in his essay The Submarine: https://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

As you say, Apple would not be a trillion dollar company without a great product, but you can build something great and also aggressively market it. Nobody is saying they got where they are just with marketing.

New comment by andrewl in "Requests to remove DHH impression from Neovim website prompts heated argument"

andrewl — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 13:29:08 +0000

I just now learned of DHH’s views by reading the Github discussion. I think the quote should be removed. But I do not think that, without further information, we should condemn someone for using the quote in the first place. And that is because it’s a big world, and you can’t know everything. And I at least do not investigate someone’s political positions before I quote them. If I read that DHH said "Tests are money in the bank" I might have quoted him here or on some other site. And that’s because I didn’t stop to investigate his positions before quoting him, not because I endorse his positions.

I also am not going to dismiss the work of all the other Neovim contributors and stop using it.

New comment by andrewl in "Executable Is a SQLite Database"

andrewl — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 19:46:02 +0000

I like a hierarchy, too. Presumably the underlying engine could be a database but it would at least appear to the user as a tree. But with the option to find files with SQL or a SQL-like language. I would love to be able to find files based on all kinds of metadata that was available for searching with the OS’s file system, and not using any special tools. I’m thinking things like EXIF data, audio file metadata, text file line count, and so on.

New comment by andrewl in "Executable Is a SQLite Database"

andrewl — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 12:58:38 +0000

Yes. In this interview Michael Stonebreaker, one of the original developers of PostgreSQL, discusses (among other topics) replacing the file system with a database :

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

New comment by andrewl in "388 years ago, Galileo worked out why human giants can't exist"

andrewl — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 15:30:35 +0000

J. B. S. Haldane discussed this in his essay On Being the Right Size:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Being_the_Right_Size

New comment by andrewl in "Folding Paper Globes"

andrewl — Sun, 02 Aug 2026 18:12:23 +0000

The site doesn't give you printouts you can fold into a globe, but it is very informative. You highlight countries, drag them around, and their size adjusts to whatever degree of distortion you'd get for any land mass at the given longitude. So you can, say, highlight Greenland and drag it on top of Brazil and see how they compare. You can highlight and drag countries, US states, Canadian provinces, and Australian states. Hovering over an entity shows you area and population.

New comment by andrewl in "A shell colon does nothing. Use it anyway"

andrewl — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 14:54:09 +0000

I think Bash won as Bityard says above, in the sense that COBOL won, which was because it was everywhere (approximately) and then when another system was being built to do something in COBOL’s niche COBOL was the obvious choice. Once it was sufficiently established it won by inertia and absolutely not because it was the better language. Or maybe it was the better language in its time, but it certainly is not now. And note I’m only talking about COBOL’s niche, of mainframe-based processing in the banking, insurance, state and federal payroll and similar areas.

OpenAI Acknowledges GPT-5.6 May Accidentally Delete Files

andrewl — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 16:53:39 +0000

Article URL: https://www.infoworld.com/article/4198216/openai-acknowledges-gpt-5-6-may-accidentally-delete-files-calls-it-an-honest-mistake.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48969718

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

This Factory was severely short on workers. Then it offered flexible work

andrewl — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 14:50:29 +0000

Article URL: https://www.npr.org/2026/07/08/nx-s1-5876084/manufacturing-flexible-part-time-work

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48881636

Points: 8

# Comments: 0

New comment by andrewl in "Vint Cerf, “father of the Internet”, is retiring"

andrewl — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 13:20:59 +0000

Quoting from an earlier comment in this discussion:

There's always some nincompoop who brings that up. Al Gore deserves credit for what he did as a senator and vice president. He helped to pass legislation that enabled the NSFNET backbone to grow and to permit commercial traffic to flow on the government-sponsored backbones in the US. Had he not done that, it's pretty likely that the commercial sector would not have seen an opportunity to create a commercial internet that all of us can enjoy, so he does deserve some credit for what he's done.

— Vint Cerf, Tracking the Internet into the 21st Century <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf0rjtnwC9A>

New comment by andrewl in "The vintage beauty of Soviet control rooms (2018)"

andrewl — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 12:26:39 +0000

To me they look oppressive and bleak. They are interesting, to be sure. But I don’t find them beautiful. And aesthetics are subjective, of course. I can well believe others find them beautiful.

New comment by andrewl in "Footage Shows Cop Stalking Woman After Surveilling Her with a LPR"

andrewl — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 15:43:29 +0000

The linked article does not say what happened to him, but if you Google his name there are lots of hits. This one says he was fired:

https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/monroe-county-deputy-arr...

New comment by andrewl in "Reducing tick density along recreational trails in Ottawa, Canada"

andrewl — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 23:49:39 +0000

I think it's that they need humidity or else they dry out. So hot and humid is fine. Hot and arid is what they have a problem with.

New comment by andrewl in "Reducing tick density along recreational trails in Ottawa, Canada"

andrewl — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 23:46:34 +0000

Can you give us some more detail on the nematodes, or point us to an article?

New comment by andrewl in "How to corrupt an SQLite database file"

andrewl — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 14:01:26 +0000

It’s impressive. To admit fallibility is to be honest. It represents confidence.