Hacker News: apcragg

New comment by apcragg in "Announcing Tinker"

apcragg — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 19:55:55 +0000

Funny timing that they are announcing their first product days after Matt Levine highlighted their lack of a public product or direction in the Money Stuff newsletter.

New comment by apcragg in "Mysterious New Jersey drone sightings prompt call for 'state of emergency'"

apcragg — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 22:22:31 +0000

AAL578 flew by Tom's River (Bay Shore area, where the photos were taken) around 20:43 on December 8th which is right when the photos were taking, on a heading that would result in an observing on the ground looking at the port side of the aircraft, just as seen in the picture.

New comment by apcragg in "Mysterious New Jersey drone sightings prompt call for 'state of emergency'"

apcragg — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 22:12:06 +0000

6 and 7. If you squint and lean on a bit of confirmation bias, photo 9 looks like a commercial airliner with the Alaska Airlines livery.

New comment by apcragg in "Mysterious New Jersey drone sightings prompt call for 'state of emergency'"

apcragg — Wed, 11 Dec 2024 22:00:14 +0000

The photos I've seen posted look very obviously like commercial airliners and helicopters with their navigation lights on. You can even make out the American Airlines livery on the tail!

https://www.app.com/story/news/local/new-jersey/2024/12/11/d...

New comment by apcragg in "My $500M Mars rover mistake"

apcragg — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 00:57:56 +0000

They almost certainly had flight spares but with two weeks until your launch window, there is zero chance you are deintegrating multiple systems, swapping in the spare, reintegrating, and re running your acceptance test campaigns. And that is assuming that they damaged a subsystem. Back powering the entire spacecraft could have wrecked your power system and anything connected to it. You'd have to disposition every part of the system that was touched. It's much more involved than just swapping in the spare and sending it.

Canonical's Snap API Is Down

apcragg — Fri, 27 Jan 2023 20:53:45 +0000

Article URL: https://status.snapcraft.io/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34551710

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

Windows Subsystem for Linux Is Officially Released

apcragg — Wed, 23 Nov 2022 17:16:51 +0000

Article URL: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/the-windows-subsystem-for-linux-in-the-microsoft-store-is-now-generally-available-on-windows-10-and-11/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33721877

Points: 24

# Comments: 6

New comment by apcragg in "What happens when a reservoir goes dry"

apcragg — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 21:02:31 +0000

Marc Reisner's book Cadillac Desert talked about this as far back as 1986.

New comment by apcragg in "The case for bad coffee (2015)"

apcragg — Sun, 17 Jul 2022 22:58:36 +0000

Absolutely! I enjoy my daily routine and all of the nuances associated with it (whether that's just the result of addiction is a different conversation). I was just suggesting that the parent comment doesn't need to use coffee for their caffeine fix if they don't enjoy it.

New comment by apcragg in "The case for bad coffee (2015)"

apcragg — Sun, 17 Jul 2022 21:37:52 +0000

It sounds like you'd be better served by caffeine pills then. No need to bother with a delivery mechanism you don't enjoy when there are easier solutions out there!

New comment by apcragg in "PhD students face cash crisis with wages that don’t cover living costs"

apcragg — Mon, 23 May 2022 17:27:23 +0000

The UC Health system serves the general public through direct services and their research and teaching functions.

New comment by apcragg in "Tesla Asking Owners to Limit Charging During Texas Heatwave"

apcragg — Sun, 22 May 2022 16:34:12 +0000

Efficient doesn't really mean anything without an thorough understanding of the local energy grid. Distributed solar mixed with wind and some gas peakers? Sure, probably better from a GhG perspective to use restive heat, even if it isn't cheaper cost wise. Running your house on a coal heavy grid with long transmission lines? Yeah, gas is probably better in the short to medium term unless you can get a good deal on solar panels and storage.

All of that's kinda moot though since modern heat pumps are insanely effective, relatively cheap to install, and work down to sub-zero Fahrenheit temperatures using only air-source exchangers.

New comment by apcragg in "Tesla Asking Owners to Limit Charging During Texas Heatwave"

apcragg — Sat, 21 May 2022 15:36:08 +0000

That's very much not true about heaters. The most common systems in the US are gas, heat pumps, and oil. Resistive heat is nearly always an emergency backup in places that get meaningfully cold for any amount of time.

New comment by apcragg in "Tether starting to lose its peg too, after Terra did"

apcragg — Thu, 12 May 2022 15:46:31 +0000

"sure, my house's foundation is made of cardboard, but have you considered that the empire state building could also be destroyed in a large enough earthquake?"

New comment by apcragg in "U.S. takes unprecedented steps to replenish Colorado River's Lake Powell"

apcragg — Mon, 09 May 2022 18:07:45 +0000

Pistachios and Almonds use 4x less acreage than Alfalfa, hay, clover, etc. These feed and grazing crops use almost exactly equal acre-feet of water per acre as pistachios and almonds. It's a convenient direction to finger point at if you want to distract from the impact of animal feed agriculture.

https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Statistics/PDFs/2020_Ag_Stats_Review...

New comment by apcragg in "U.S. takes unprecedented steps to replenish Colorado River's Lake Powell"

apcragg — Mon, 09 May 2022 18:05:11 +0000

For sure! Even Buy-and-dry schemes seem to be struggling with political backlash and those landowners are being fairly compensated in voluntary transactions. It's not going to be pretty when the junior water rights holders are cut off for good.

New comment by apcragg in "U.S. takes unprecedented steps to replenish Colorado River's Lake Powell"

apcragg — Mon, 09 May 2022 17:50:15 +0000

There is plenty of water in the south west, we just use most of it to grow animal feed in the desert. Even worst, much of that water is subsidized by the US Government which allows farmers to grow that animal feed in the high plains where it would be economically infeasible otherwise. We have engineered this problem to the benefit of a small number of ranchers and farmers and seem determined to blame it on everybody else.

Confluence Exact Match Search Is Still Broken, 13 Years Later

apcragg — Fri, 06 May 2022 17:46:52 +0000

Article URL: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-14910

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31287932

Points: 20

# Comments: 3

New comment by apcragg in "US Navy wirelessly beams 1.6 kW of power a kilometer using microwaves"

apcragg — Sun, 24 Apr 2022 00:25:20 +0000

I'm also not convinced that they're even out of Far-field. That looks like a roughly 5m dish, which at 10GHz is still in the radiating near field at 1km. I wouldn't be surprised if the main lobe is entirely incident on receiving aperture. That's a neat demo but it does not demonstrate truly radiating power between two distant points. They've essentially built a fancy a wireless cellphone charger.

60% is also almost certainly not total system. A portable antenna like that by itself, with no path loss or other losses, would likely have an aperture efficiency of about 60%. A planar patch antenna like the one used to receive would be similar.

New comment by apcragg in "Oven Stoves and Heat Walls (2008)"

apcragg — Wed, 29 Dec 2021 03:58:29 +0000

Less that its so common, more that a small percent of people cause all of that pollution. They usually convince themselves they are being environmentally friendly because "I just use the wood I already have from my land!!" And the rest of us suffer their refusal to use a modern heating source.