<rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"><channel><title>Hacker News: hnmullany</title><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=hnmullany</link><description>Hacker News RSS</description><docs>https://hnrss.org/</docs><generator>hnrss v2.1.1</generator><lastBuildDate>Wed, 07 Oct 2026 03:59:48 +0000</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://hnrss.org/user?id=hnmullany" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"></atom:link><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hnmullany in "Mathematics of Geothermal Energy"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>If you want the ACTUAL mathematics of geothermal energy - a good place to start is the open source GEOPHIRES model which is available on github and has a UI<p><a href="https://github.com/NREL/GEOPHIRES-v2" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/NREL/GEOPHIRES-v2</a><p><a href="https://www.nlr.gov/research/software/geophires-v2-0-geothermal-energy-for-production-of-heat-and-electricity-(-ir-)-economically-simulated-" rel="nofollow">https://www.nlr.gov/research/software/geophires-v2-0-geother...</a></p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 06 Oct 2026 21:00:19 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49984072</link><dc:creator>hnmullany</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49984072</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49984072</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hnmullany in "The EPA is planning to scrap public review rules for data center pollution"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Because it's now headed by an ex-lobbyist for the chemical industry</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 11 Sep 2026 21:38:49 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49665745</link><dc:creator>hnmullany</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49665745</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49665745</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hnmullany in "I've factored the RSA keys of a Certificate Authority from the 90s"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>No that was above my pay grade. They met with the engineering leads directly.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 09 Sep 2026 15:32:02 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49628235</link><dc:creator>hnmullany</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49628235</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49628235</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hnmullany in "I've factored the RSA keys of a Certificate Authority from the 90s"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>For 4.51, it was $100k per cert slot. We were just trying to cover the cost of the engineering team.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 09 Sep 2026 15:24:54 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49628121</link><dc:creator>hnmullany</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49628121</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49628121</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hnmullany in "I've factored the RSA keys of a Certificate Authority from the 90s"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I was the product manager with responsibility for root certificates in the Netscape 4.51 browser. It's crazy to see someone factor it 25 years later.<p>Just to reply to some people in the comments. Yes, we knew export grade encryption was weak - that was the point - that the NSA could decrypt it - and the govt. required us to do it anyway.<p>FWIW - we had the goal of expanding the list of root authorities in the 4.5x release - and this might have been the first release to monetize the root slots because Netscape was under severe pressure to generate revenue.<p>(Also - Verisign hated that we were expanding competition and tried to convince us to implement a program that would re-restrict the list to a set of "responsible" companies aka Verisign and one or two others. We declined.)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 08 Sep 2026 12:58:18 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49609743</link><dc:creator>hnmullany</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49609743</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49609743</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hnmullany in "How Blackwing Pencils are Made [video]"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I was a private equity analyst in the 90's and we owned Berol - one of the classic American pencil companies. Their classic wood pencils were made the exact same way - batch oriented and quite labor intensive.<p>Their next gen process was a fully automated continuous process co-extruder that extruded a core of hot graphite surrounded by a cellulose/wood mixture. That continuous string of graphite/wood composite was pulled down a two hundred foot line where it was cooled, sealed, painted twice, varnished, cut, capped with erasers and boxed. The whole line could be operated with two people.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 10 Aug 2026 17:15:05 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49246719</link><dc:creator>hnmullany</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49246719</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49246719</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hnmullany in "Why American ambulance rides are so expensive"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I worked in private equity as an analyst in the 90's - we looked at an ambulance service that was up for sale - the underlying operating margins (before you load on debt) were pretty reasonable, although I don't remember the details.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 10 Jul 2026 11:11:47 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858365</link><dc:creator>hnmullany</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858365</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858365</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hnmullany in "Why American ambulance rides are so expensive"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I worked in private equity in the 90's and looked at one of the big regional ambulance service companies that was up for auction. The underlying operating margins were fairly reasonable - the private equity owned companies only have issues because of their debt load.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 10 Jul 2026 11:09:42 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858350</link><dc:creator>hnmullany</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858350</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858350</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hnmullany in "Om Malik has died"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think the strength of the "vouch" is understood to be much weaker in Silicon Valley - it's more like - I've talked to this guy for 30mins to an hour and I can vouch that he (or she) is not a waste of time for you to talk to them for a similar amount of time. It's not a vouch that they're the next Steve Jobs or you have diligenced their background.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 26 Jun 2026 10:02:23 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48684661</link><dc:creator>hnmullany</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48684661</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48684661</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hnmullany in "The Great Intermediary Panic"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>On every tech that would have made HTML5 an effective application platform (databases, advanced AV, animation) - Apple has been 5-10 years behind Google and Firefox, and in many cases simply vetoed or wouldn't implement.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 22 Jun 2026 08:05:27 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48627196</link><dc:creator>hnmullany</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48627196</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48627196</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hnmullany in "The Great Intermediary Panic"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Flash didn't disappear when internet technologies got better. Flash disappeared because Apple refused to distribute it on iPhone - partly because Adobe couldn't effectively shrink it down to early generation iPhone technical capabilities - but partly because they didn't want a competitor to the iOS SDK.<p>Then Apple effectively vetoed - explicitly and through lack of investment) futher improvement in audiovisual web platform technologies (e.g. the custom shaders that Adobe wanted to make part of the nextgen filter spec) during the critical period where developers were making their platform choice for mobile.<p>Apple has been no friend to the further evolution of the web.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 21 Jun 2026 14:27:58 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48619273</link><dc:creator>hnmullany</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48619273</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48619273</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hnmullany in "Challenging the Narrative of European Decline"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>You might want to look up the value of those "fat pensions" - a lot of them are substantially less than US Social Security.<p>e.g. in Ireland, the state contributory pension (aka what you paid egregious social security taxes for) maxes out at about $18,000 per year. The equivalent pension from US Social Security is about $45,000.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 18 Jun 2026 12:41:36 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48584455</link><dc:creator>hnmullany</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48584455</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48584455</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hnmullany in "Mycorrhizal Fungi, Nature's Key to Plant Survival and Success"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I don't see any on data on nutrition in that reference.<p>Organic grown food tends to be higher in anti-oxidants and secondary metabolites, possibly because the plant immune system is activated more frequently due to better microbial biodiversity. From what I remember at least - it doesn't maintain any advantage in macronutrient density (carbs/nitrogen etc.)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 23 May 2026 16:21:37 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48248935</link><dc:creator>hnmullany</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48248935</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48248935</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hnmullany in "Mycorrhizal Fungi, Nature's Key to Plant Survival and Success"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Organic grown food is more nutritious and I'm glad we have a significant percentage of farms who have gone organic, but the yield gap is very well documented. Organic fertilizers release nutrients slowly and unpredictably and can't match artificial nitrogen for plant uptake.<p>E.g. a 25% average yield penalty in this meta-analysis:<p>Alvarez, R. (2022) ‘Comparing Productivity of Organic and Conventional Farming Systems: A Quantitative Review’, Archives of Agronomy and Soil Science, 68(14), pp. 1947–1958. doi: 10.1080/03650340.2021.1946040.<p>I studied the productivity benefits of adding beneficial fungi as part of my master's thesis. On average they provide a yield benefit, but it's not ubiquitous and they're far more likely to work in arid and semi-arid soils that have poor microbial diversity in their baseline. They don't tend to be as effective in temperate soils - partly because they have to compete with existing soil microbes.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2026 13:30:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48235605</link><dc:creator>hnmullany</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48235605</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48235605</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hnmullany in "Accelerando (2005)"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I think he peaked in the aughts - his latest stuff is ho-hum.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 17 May 2026 11:08:06 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48167833</link><dc:creator>hnmullany</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48167833</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48167833</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hnmullany in "GitHub's Fake Star Economy"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>I came across one of these in 2018 with a "hot" open source company raising a Series B. An impressive star ramp (about 300% YoY growth) before the (high-priced/competitive) raise and three months later Github had revoked almost all the star growth from the previous year, resulting in a 20% YoY record. The company eventually got acquihired.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 20 Apr 2026 11:18:32 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47832716</link><dc:creator>hnmullany</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47832716</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47832716</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hnmullany in "Solar is winning the energy race"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Battery chemistries for grid storage are moving toward commodity elements and rapidly reducing reliance on rare earths. Sodium and Iron/Air batteries can take over fairly easily.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 29 Mar 2026 11:08:16 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47562124</link><dc:creator>hnmullany</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47562124</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47562124</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hnmullany in "Solar is winning the energy race"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Just a note that 46,000 is a 2050 target - which covers current demand AND all the growth in electricity and heat demand over the next 25 years.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 29 Mar 2026 11:03:46 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47562104</link><dc:creator>hnmullany</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47562104</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47562104</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hnmullany in "Solar is winning the energy race"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Solar still makes sense economically in the US without explicit subsidies - that's why it is still getting built.<p>But the Trump admin is also with-holding permits and cancelling long distance transmission that would allow it to reach non-local markets. The fossil fuel industry is also sponsoring astro-turf campaigns on the local level to ban new deployments.</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sun, 29 Mar 2026 10:59:55 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47562086</link><dc:creator>hnmullany</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47562086</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47562086</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New comment by hnmullany in "An Update on Heroku"]]></title><description><![CDATA[
<p>Heroku got a lot of attention and funding within Salesforce at least for the first few years - they grew from about $1M in ARR when they got acquired, and I think they peaked at around $200M (second hand - so I don't know if part of that was funny-money revenue allocated from Enterprise agreements.)</p>
]]></description><pubDate>Sat, 07 Feb 2026 14:35:30 +0000</pubDate><link>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46924217</link><dc:creator>hnmullany</dc:creator><comments>https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46924217</comments><guid isPermaLink="false">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46924217</guid></item></channel></rss>