Hacker News: ginkgotree

New comment by ginkgotree in "Playa Phone"

ginkgotree — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 17:09:56 +0000

Brings whole new meaning to "Burner Phone." Nice.

New comment by ginkgotree in "Wind and solar overtake fossil fuels in Germany for the first time"

ginkgotree — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 17:26:25 +0000

Now they just gotta get the good ole DB to run on time.

New comment by ginkgotree in "Zombie unicorns are haunting Silicon Valley"

ginkgotree — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 07:59:05 +0000

2015 era VC isn't aging well

New comment by ginkgotree in "Accidentally deleted subscriptions for chat integrations (Slack and MS Teams)"

ginkgotree — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 19:44:15 +0000

five bucks says this was Claude

New comment by ginkgotree in "I am retiring from tech to live offline"

ginkgotree — Fri, 29 May 2026 15:23:43 +0000

This is a great choice

New comment by ginkgotree in "EU weighs restricting use of US cloud platforms to process government data"

ginkgotree — Sun, 17 May 2026 19:45:10 +0000

The EU is great at debating. They'll still be debating this in 10 years.

New comment by ginkgotree in "I hate soldering"

ginkgotree — Tue, 12 May 2026 14:41:13 +0000

I love soldering.

New comment by ginkgotree in "Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons"

ginkgotree — Sun, 03 May 2026 15:11:31 +0000

Yep.

New comment by ginkgotree in "Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons"

ginkgotree — Sun, 03 May 2026 15:11:26 +0000

Cool. But how about they also do something to help prevent the entire EV market going to China.

New comment by ginkgotree in "New mechanical panoramic film camera from Jeff Bridges"

ginkgotree — Fri, 01 May 2026 06:07:55 +0000

Dammit. Now Im out $4.5k. Most people should not buy this. I shot 200+ rolls last year, and specialize in rare / expired films. There are some people that will buy this and use it as a tool, and this is going to sell out. I can't wait to shoot on it.

New comment by ginkgotree in "Roboticist-Turned-Teacher Built a Life-Size Replica of Eniac"

ginkgotree — Fri, 01 May 2026 05:22:00 +0000

This is a pretty great flex. Because it's awesome.

New comment by ginkgotree in "A Guide to CubeSat Mission and Bus Design"

ginkgotree — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 03:38:07 +0000

Yep, It's layer cake of pain, for the joy of getting to orbit. Agree, your approach makes sense to tackle the layer you are on now - which is just the "wiring" I'm in the cUAS space currently with a missile startup (which has many similarities to small sats), with that said, I have some contacts in the Small sat / commercial new space industry that would be interested in this. I also do have a small sat concept I hope to get into orbit when I have the time to make a flat sat prototype to sanity check the payload. Feel free to shoot me an email scott@orcrist.com - would love to stay in touch on this project and see where I can help, and potentially be a customer

New comment by ginkgotree in "A Guide to CubeSat Mission and Bus Design"

ginkgotree — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 01:42:37 +0000

very cool! This was quite literally manually scraping manuals and spec sheets, and plugging into excel for me. Rather that be for Size, Weight, Power budget, or even interfaces. I'd love to see a drag and drop tool the plops out an ICD, power budget, etc. One observation I've had on my missions: compatability is often a mess of drivers and just getting components to talk to one another, and the details are behind NDAs and export laws, etc. GRanted, even just solving the early phases of ICD and the general (does this mission fit in an 8U/12U, etc bus), would be a massive help. Very cool project that I could see becoming a paid tool

New comment by ginkgotree in "A Guide to CubeSat Mission and Bus Design"

ginkgotree — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 15:43:16 +0000

I also recommend Space Mission Analysis and Design, by Larson, known as SMAD in the industry

New comment by ginkgotree in "Show HN: Free textbook on engineering thermodynamics"

ginkgotree — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 12:27:17 +0000

Solid textbook! And just saw your video course on fluid mechanics, really great stuff. I'll order myself a copy of your book :)

New comment by ginkgotree in "A Guide to CubeSat Mission and Bus Design"

ginkgotree — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 12:18:52 +0000

I've launched Cubesat missions commercially, and wasn't aware of this text (unclear when it was published). Many of the Space Mission txts are designed around larger (classical) satellite buses and aren't written for "how do you get a payload / mission to LEO for ~$1M" The book is spot on that F' is where it's at for the future of Small Satellites OBFS, the flight computer section is also pretty remarkably helpful - as in this is very practical "how you get it done and here is the history" versus pie in the sky theory. And per other comments, yes, it is rather US centric. Here is the reality, if you are putting a cibesat in orbit, 95% odds your best path is a SpaceX Falcon 9 Rideshare, which means you will be operating with a US FCC Launch license and coordinating with the FCC equivalent in your own country where you which to downlink to. That is the one area the book doesn't cover, Space law. You can get burned easily on "Space lawyers," charging ~$1500/hr to prepare an FCC license, helping you with ITAR (yes many components on a satellite are "arms" technology). If you get to the right person, there are a few small legal service shops in the US that will help you submit your launch license paperwork for a reaosnable fee. And lastly, integration and deployer. Believe it or not, there are foreign nation states (not the US) operating these deployer services that are adjacent to inteligence services that will do everything from spy on you to sabotage your mission if they don't like it (I've had it happen). All in, launching a small satellite is an amazing endeavor, and getting it to orbit and getting first downlink can be a very real challenge. It's an amazing time we live in that we can do such things

New comment by ginkgotree in "Show HN: Free textbook on engineering thermodynamics"

ginkgotree — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 02:29:49 +0000

This is awesome. Also, this quote feels relevant: "Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics." - David Goodstein's States of Matter, Introduction

New comment by ginkgotree in "An update on recent Claude Code quality reports"

ginkgotree — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 04:50:21 +0000

When will they fix it? This is what is important.

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

ginkgotree — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 21:20:34 +0000

yep - an armed Florida man paying low taxes

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

ginkgotree — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 21:20:09 +0000

With all do respect, I do not want to live in anything remotely close to the Chinese CCP. (laughs in Free Floridian)