Hacker News: idlewords

New comment by idlewords in "Pinboard's DNS registration has expired"

idlewords — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 21:24:17 +0000

Hi everyone,

The domain should be back up within the next few hours.

I had the domain set on auto-renew but unfortunately something went wrong, and I didn't get an email from the registrar about it (or it got misrouted to spam).

I've renewed the registration but it seems to be taking a while to propagate back to the .IN servers. An interim measure is setting an /etc/hosts record for pinboard.in to 64.62.134.190.

My sincere apologies for the outage. The TLS cert for Pinboard renews in October, and in my mind I thought the domain renewed at that time as well, or I would have paid closer attention. Irked at my own carelessness here.

New comment by idlewords in "L'Affaire Siloxane"

idlewords — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 04:17:49 +0000

It's fine to dump sewage overboard if you're far enough from shore. Cruise ships treat it to some extent, but ultimately it all becomes fish food.

New comment by idlewords in "L'Affaire Siloxane"

idlewords — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 19:52:52 +0000

There's a nice paper on this, ICES-2018-123 "Dimethylsilanediol (DMSD) Source Assessment and Mitigation on ISS: Estimated Contributions from Personal Hygiene Products Containing Volatile Methyl Siloxanes (VMS)". The upshot is more than half of the siloxane burden on ISS comes from God knows where (packaging, plastics, machinery, you name it).

https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/items/ff1a240e-1fb1-4b04-acb2-42e9c45...

L'Affaire Siloxane

idlewords — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 05:21:39 +0000

Article URL: https://mceglowski.substack.com/p/laffaire-siloxane

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48456808

Points: 299

# Comments: 55

How should we think about Starship?

idlewords — Wed, 27 May 2026 05:15:34 +0000

Article URL: https://mceglowski.substack.com/p/how-should-we-think-about-starship

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48289960

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

Microbial Dark Matter and the Search for Life on Earth

idlewords — Thu, 14 May 2026 00:57:05 +0000

Article URL: https://mceglowski.substack.com/p/microbial-dark-matter-and-the-search

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48129808

Points: 1

# Comments: 1

New comment by idlewords in "Why Not Venus?"

idlewords — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 12:07:12 +0000

The atmosphere has a perfectly reasonable 110 hour day/night cycle.

New comment by idlewords in "Why Not Venus?"

idlewords — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 12:06:41 +0000

I thought so too, but the phosphine signal turns out to be small but real. What everyone involved in the back and forth debate over it agrees on is the need to send better sensors.

New comment by idlewords in "Why Not Venus?"

idlewords — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 12:05:08 +0000

Landis has a ton of good papers around Venus for those who want to nerd out deeper.

New comment by idlewords in "Let's talk space toilets"

idlewords — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 01:00:16 +0000

Give it a few hours!

New comment by idlewords in "Let's talk space toilets"

idlewords — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:59:35 +0000

Thanks so much! I'm delighted you enjoyed the piece.

New comment by idlewords in "Let's talk space toilets"

idlewords — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 23:19:58 +0000

It's not an absurd question. The threshold value is the one that breaks surface tension and effectively pulls waste away from the body. It will be more than a few hundredths g but less than 1g.

Unfortunately we have basically no data on the effects of partial gravity, in this context or any other. We can try flying partial-gravity parabolas in aircraft and simulate a Martian toilet the same way they tested the design for Skylab; I don't think this experiment has been done.

New comment by idlewords in "Let's talk space toilets"

idlewords — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 21:19:31 +0000

You can try it with small capsules and tethers, but it's still a pain.

New comment by idlewords in "Let's talk space toilets"

idlewords — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 19:08:04 +0000

The hose is the same but there are different funnel attachments (the part looks kind of like the cup from a jock strap, and is longer and narrower for women)

New comment by idlewords in "Artemis II is not safe to fly"

idlewords — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 05:12:03 +0000

It's all flat files on the server

New comment by idlewords in "Artemis II is not safe to fly"

idlewords — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 18:15:35 +0000

Thank you! Like NASA, I hope to up my operational tempo.

New comment by idlewords in "Artemis II is not safe to fly"

idlewords — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 18:14:43 +0000

They do not, except for some of the avionics.

New comment by idlewords in "Artemis II is not safe to fly"

idlewords — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 13:00:08 +0000

I never worked at NASA. Maybe you're confusing me with Casey Handmer, who has also written on this topic?

New comment by idlewords in "Artemis II is not safe to fly"

idlewords — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 12:57:51 +0000

I'm sorry it bugs you!

New comment by idlewords in "Artemis II is not safe to fly"

idlewords — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 12:57:16 +0000

I think you mean Artemis IV (the moon landing)? Artemis III is now a near Earth orbit mission to dock with whatever mockup lander SpaceX or Blue Origin can throw up in time.