Hacker News: jabits

New comment by jabits in "Love C, hate C: Web framework memory problems"

jabits — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 18:05:07 +0000

Thanks for sharing this work.

New comment by jabits in "John Carmack talk at Upper Bound 2025"

jabits — Fri, 23 May 2025 16:21:50 +0000

Or maybe instead of spending time with your dad on a bs menial task, you could spent time fishing with him…

New comment by jabits in "Stoicism's appeal to the rich and powerful (2019)"

jabits — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 17:18:21 +0000

Well now it sounds like you are disagreeing for it's own sake. There may be a name for what you describe, but it's not what is commonly understood as Stoicism.

And in my many years, I have never found shouting at another person to be a healthy thing.

New comment by jabits in "FDA proposes ending use of oral phenylephrine as OTC nasal decongestant"

jabits — Fri, 08 Nov 2024 08:15:11 +0000

Well, I guess I’m here because of one of these miracle drugs. My kidneys would have crapped out year ago without it. I guess call me a fan…

New comment by jabits in "Notepad++ is 21 years old"

jabits — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 23:25:46 +0000

You might take a look at [SciTE](https://scintilla.org/SciTE.html), a light weight wrapper around Scintilla, with lua scripting support. It’s been my non-IDE editor for years on Windows and Linux…

New comment by jabits in "Migrating from DokuWiki to Obsidian"

jabits — Wed, 21 Aug 2024 01:09:17 +0000

Thanks, I’ve been looking for something like this.

New comment by jabits in "Apple Debuts VisionOS 2"

jabits — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 19:24:36 +0000

Who is going to be schlepping around external drives?

New comment by jabits in "Veo"

jabits — Wed, 15 May 2024 07:51:54 +0000

Even in Upper Michigan near Lake Superior we sometimes had stunn, colorful Northern Lights. Sometimes it seemed like they were flying overhead within your grasp

New comment by jabits in "GPT-4o"

jabits — Tue, 14 May 2024 06:54:06 +0000

I’m kind of glad it does this so I know that it understood what I asked. A good presenter will do this as well when responding to questions.

New comment by jabits in "US ICBM Launch Center Virtual Tour"

jabits — Thu, 09 May 2024 06:15:38 +0000

This is roughly correct. In addition to the immediate ground launch crew votes (in reality a squadron is 5 launch centers, i.e. capsules, all interconnected to a total of 50 missiles, and as stated two launch control centers need to successfully “vote”), there is always an airborne launch control center flying over ready to provide a second vote after a specific time-out period. In fact one of our primary nuclear safety and control concerns was to keep refreshing the ALCC access timer.

New comment by jabits in "US ICBM Launch Center Virtual Tour"

jabits — Wed, 08 May 2024 02:48:29 +0000

In answer to your first question, in the field that would be the primary blast door, a penetration that went through the capsule to a chamber with another larger blast door out to the elevator. At the other end of this chamber is the passage to the generator room. We were obviously equipped to go quite some time “off-grid”.

I am assuming the view is from one of the training simulators which are used exact, suspended control centers with a viewing window.

We had no maps in the capsule. Any targeting we did was normal 3-d coordinates, technically we really did not have a “need to know” where the coordinates were located.

New comment by jabits in "US ICBM Launch Center Virtual Tour"

jabits — Tue, 07 May 2024 23:43:22 +0000

I have to believe it was pretty stressful on your end too! One of the biggest pressures of the job was dealing with all the classified and the stuff you had to deal was the same I’m sure.

Hope you are well!

New comment by jabits in "US ICBM Launch Center Virtual Tour"

jabits — Tue, 07 May 2024 23:40:37 +0000

No we did not. We were heavily trained and frequently evaluated but never believing it was real in that sense. Things happen in the world for which increased level of readiness occurred, but as the fixed pillar of the Strategic Triad, we were always in a higher state of readiness.

New comment by jabits in "US ICBM Launch Center Virtual Tour"

jabits — Tue, 07 May 2024 22:03:29 +0000

Actually the chairs were pretty comfortable. They were locked down to survive (in theory) the shaking resulting from nudets. The deputy launch commander’s was on a long track so he could slide back and forth to gather the redundant messages and reset alarms. The commander sat facing the missile light board.

New comment by jabits in "US ICBM Launch Center Virtual Tour"

jabits — Tue, 07 May 2024 21:49:31 +0000

Yes, we were strapped in for quite a shaking…

New comment by jabits in "US ICBM Launch Center Virtual Tour"

jabits — Tue, 07 May 2024 21:08:07 +0000

I’ve oftened wondered that over the years. Maybe that’s why the young ones are usually on the front lines. Another related possibly more difficult, is how many of us would have turned the key without prior world tensions occurring. Before each alert we received a pre-departure briefing on current world conditions. I think an out-of-the-blue order would have been very difficult… We periodically lost a crew member due to internal personal changes with respect to one’s willingness to follow through. One of my early Commanders pulled himself off and left the service to become a Greek Orthodox priest and is still at it today.

New comment by jabits in "US ICBM Launch Center Virtual Tour"

jabits — Tue, 07 May 2024 20:28:11 +0000

Indeed it can be. There was a lot of action in the O club in one’s off days. We oftentimes thought however that these a-launch crews probably had it worse, except at least it would be more quiet without all the active comm systems. And since we were always “alert” we took part in many, many global military exercises…

New comment by jabits in "US ICBM Launch Center Virtual Tour"

jabits — Tue, 07 May 2024 19:48:40 +0000

This is a remarkably real view of the Minuteman Launch Control Center in the early to mid-80s for sure. The accompanying audio is realistic as well except all six comm systems would be blaring at once and several printers would be clacking away… It was very intense, demanding job.

I was a Launch Control Officer for five years in the mid-80s out of FE Warren AFB in Cheyenne WY. My squadron was the 320th Strategic Missile Squadron with all 5 capsules and 50 missiles were physically in western NE, with the furthest over 100 miles away in Sidney NE. I spent 335 days underground over the 5 year period.

New comment by jabits in "US ICBM Launch Center Virtual Tour"

jabits — Tue, 07 May 2024 19:40:08 +0000

The launch center you see is a square box about the size of an RV suspended by four large “shock absorbers” inside a hardened capsule with walls about six feet thick. The shock absorbers are so the launch center can sway in the event of a NuDet (nuclear detonation) near by. Unlike the older Titans, the Minuteman missiles were nowhere near the capsules, being a minimum of three miles away. Each capsule had direct command and control of 10 Minuteman missiles distributed in a spoke like fashion around the hub (capsule). The Titans crew was right with their massively larger missiles.

New comment by jabits in "A town employee lowered the fluoride in water for years (2022)"

jabits — Sun, 07 Apr 2024 02:30:44 +0000

Conservatism is about conserving the status quo. Our freedoms are enshrined in the Constitution.