Hacker News: blacksmythe

New comment by blacksmythe in "How Boston City Hall was born"

blacksmythe — Sun, 22 Dec 2024 20:59:33 +0000

Sounds like one solution would be to apply a sealant that looks like bare concrete.

New comment by blacksmythe in "Caltech, long a bastion of male students, enrolls first class of majority women"

blacksmythe — Fri, 30 Aug 2024 01:50:54 +0000

Caltech - where your best just isn't good enough.

  https://www.flickr.com/photos/pixieza/79223350

New comment by blacksmythe in "30-year fixed mortgage rate just hit 8% for the first time since 2000"

blacksmythe — Fri, 20 Oct 2023 01:05:16 +0000

It is amazing how much less time it takes to pay off a 30 year mortgage if you increase the payments 10%. The first good many years are paying mostly just the interest.

New comment by blacksmythe in "Everything with a battery should have an off switch"

blacksmythe — Mon, 09 May 2022 22:47:13 +0000

I have a very cheap plastic one with a dial, which works amazing well for the cost (<$10). I don't remember where I bought it, but it looks like this one: https://www.summitracing.com/parts/sum-900003

New comment by blacksmythe in "Big cars are killing Americans"

blacksmythe — Sun, 02 Jan 2022 02:53:16 +0000

Kinetic energy is a good measure for a baseball, because essentially all of the kinetic energy is being transferred from the small object to you.

Kinetic energy is not a good measure for a car or B-52, as after the collision the large object has essentially the same kinetic energy, and a very small fraction has been transferred to you.

A bicycle is more toward the small object side, as a pedestrian is going to absorb a good fraction of the kinetic energy of the rider, which is much larger than the kinetic energy of the bicycle itself.

New comment by blacksmythe in "Generating Coherent Noise Using Fourier Transforms"

blacksmythe — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 21:01:45 +0000

  >> Taking the FFT, modifying frequency amplitudes

Modifying amplitude and phase. In the time domain you can't modify frequency amplitude without modifying the phase. If you modify just the FFT amplitude, you can end up with non-causal impulse responses.

New comment by blacksmythe in "Caltech Awards 10,000th PhD Degree"

blacksmythe — Tue, 17 Nov 2020 21:13:21 +0000

AMA95 is one of the few Caltech classes that I still think about, mostly because it was not useful. Almost all of my other classes have been useful over the years.

I wish that the math sequence for non-math majors had included linear algebra instead.

Non-pharmaceutical interventions for curtailing Covid-19

blacksmythe — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 04:54:13 +0000

Article URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025556420300560

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23755808

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Covid cases by state vs. days since masks were first required

blacksmythe — Sat, 04 Jul 2020 20:54:37 +0000

Article URL: https://twitter.com/elyodmj/status/1278441327705960448

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23734840

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

NASA-Developed Ventilator Authorized for Emergency Use

blacksmythe — Thu, 07 May 2020 15:17:28 +0000

Article URL: https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/nasa-developed-ventilator-authorized-fda-emergency-use

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23103959

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by blacksmythe in "State of JavaScript 2019"

blacksmythe — Thu, 19 Dec 2019 17:18:49 +0000

  >> makes sure to walk the trainees through the confusing states you can get into, 
  >> then we explain what happened, why, and how to correctly get out of them

Is this something you could share?

New comment by blacksmythe in "First all-electric seaplane takes flight in B.C."

blacksmythe — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 21:42:38 +0000

You have to convert the wood to charcoal to burn hot enough for a blacksmith forge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charcoal

I highly recommend a visit to Plimouth Plantation to anyone interested in 1700's era technology: https://www.plimoth.org/

Or Old Sturbridge Village for 1800's era technology: https://www.osv.org/

New comment by blacksmythe in "The 40% Keyboard"

blacksmythe — Thu, 21 Nov 2019 00:47:25 +0000

I don't travel with an extra keyboard, but I do take a mouse.

An external mouse is so much better, and hardly takes up any space.

Packt Books: Free Weekend (Sep 19th-22nd)

blacksmythe — Fri, 20 Sep 2019 20:13:51 +0000

Article URL: https://subscription.packtpub.com/register

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21030761

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Kerbal Space Program 2 - delay until after Mars 2020

blacksmythe — Fri, 20 Sep 2019 18:05:11 +0000

Article URL: https://xkcd.com/2204/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21029563

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

Verilog for all proposed RISC-V bitmanip instructions

blacksmythe — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 15:12:38 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/riscv/riscv-bitmanip/tree/master/verilog

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20778450

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by blacksmythe in "Why a mock doesn’t work"

blacksmythe — Mon, 05 Aug 2019 17:26:59 +0000

The talk that you link to: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/tdd-original/

  Ian Cooper reminds what was Kent's original proposition on TDD, what misunderstandings occurred along the way,
   and suggests a better approach to TDD, one that supports development rather impeding it.

Top apps freelancers need to run a successful business

blacksmythe — Tue, 23 Jul 2019 22:21:26 +0000

Article URL: http://www.helkeymedia.com/blog/the-top-10-apps-freelancers-need-to-run-a-successful-business

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20510753

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by blacksmythe in "Bankrupt Maker Faire revives, reduced to Make Community"

blacksmythe — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 04:38:11 +0000

"Table saws in use in the United States: Estimates range between 6 million and 10 million... in any particular year, about one table saw in 229 will be in an accident that sends someone to the emergency room." https://www.popularwoodworking.com/article/table-saw-injury-...

New comment by blacksmythe in "Choking game, also known as the fainting game"

blacksmythe — Mon, 01 Jul 2019 16:45:37 +0000

  >> bet it's considerably higher than per hour of cruising around on a motorbike..

I would imagine so as well.

"Haaf was described as an experienced skydiver with over 1,200 jumps and was a frequent visitor to Skydive Cross Keys" https://www.courierpostonline.com/story/news/local/south-jer...