Hacker News: jackmott42

New comment by jackmott42 in "Artemis II safely splashes down"

jackmott42 — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 12:33:36 +0000

>It's physically not possible at our current level of technology to make this "safer"

Absolutely it is, if NASA was not constrained by congress to use shuttle components to build the spacecraft, they could have had double the payload mass capability at least (the Saturn V was almost twice as capable, we should be able to do a little better now). This would provide tons of extra margin for safety, and allow a shorter and thus safer route to the moon as well.

New comment by jackmott42 in "Peter Thiel's Antichrist Lectures"

jackmott42 — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 13:11:46 +0000

We are not in a democratic setting in America any more, the people in power are willing to start wars to protect pedophiles, they are willing to hire Nazi thugs to shoot your wives in the face. They are willing to bribe supreme court justices and dismantle democracy, and they will if not stopped by force.

Thiel has been obviously and evil sack of shit for decades but more than half of HN viewers revere him. I fear we have no hope, and the good people asking how we can democratically solve this problem makes me feel even more hopeless. Yall don't get it.

New comment by jackmott42 in "“It turns out” (2010)"

jackmott42 — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 02:33:04 +0000

oh, paul grahams eassays!

Speaking of, how are his efforts to help this administration cut down no woke youth?

Does he still think racism isn't as bad a "the left" thinks, after Elon's Nazi salute and the thousands of ICE agents brutalized immigrants, murdered citizens, while cheered on by half the country, then invaded Iran because the Christian right thinks its a holy war against Muslims?

New comment by jackmott42 in "OpenAI agrees with Dept. of War to deploy models in their classified network"

jackmott42 — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 15:09:23 +0000

You are naive, and assisting a fascist regime.

New comment by jackmott42 in "Ventum, Dimond, Cervelo – Why do these triathlon bikes look so weird?"

jackmott42 — Mon, 12 Feb 2024 18:16:05 +0000

The racing frames here don't break as a rule as OP suggests, if one does there was a manufacturing flaw or a crash/impact of some kind.

A few grams of weight does not have enough impact TT bike performance enough to make it worth shaving 100 grams if it risks reliability.

New comment by jackmott42 in "Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan's online rant spurs threats to supes, police reports"

jackmott42 — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 17:19:18 +0000

What a terrible human being, why would anyone want to be involved with Y Combinator or any of their companies that would put up with this sort of behavior?

New comment by jackmott42 in "There's No Good Reason to Buy a Carbon Bike"

jackmott42 — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 23:44:39 +0000

There used to be a video on youtube of a carbon mountain bike fork, and they were SMASHING it with a ball peen hammer, repeatedly. It did do a little damage but remained rideable, and was in much better shape than the metal forks they smashed.

New comment by jackmott42 in "There's No Good Reason to Buy a Carbon Bike"

jackmott42 — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 23:43:25 +0000

This has no practical impact on actual bicycles though, in practice they all fail, at similar rates.

New comment by jackmott42 in "There's No Good Reason to Buy a Carbon Bike"

jackmott42 — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 20:48:27 +0000

"There is no speed benefit for a non professional on a carbon frame"

Yes there is, I and many people have directly measured it.

New comment by jackmott42 in "There's No Good Reason to Buy a Carbon Bike"

jackmott42 — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 20:44:43 +0000

Carbon fiber bikes have two main properties that can affect performance:

1. they are a little lighter. This doesn't matter nearly as much as most cyclists think, but it does matter a bit. If you race competitively in the mountains, you might care.

2. There is more design freedom for shaping them aerodynamically. This makes a bit more difference than weight, and if you are competing you definitely want it.

New comment by jackmott42 in "There's No Good Reason to Buy a Carbon Bike"

jackmott42 — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 20:43:08 +0000

That is a myth. Material alone doesn't determine this, and modern road bikes are on 28mm tires at ~70psi so this isn't nearly as much of an issue as it was 20 years ago (and it wasn't a real issue then either)

New comment by jackmott42 in "There's No Good Reason to Buy a Carbon Bike"

jackmott42 — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 20:41:41 +0000

This is a misconception. Carbon fiber mountain bikes are not more delicate. Designed properly they are more durable. The idea that carbon fiber is innately delicate comes from road bikes designed to be as light and stiff as possible, and they can end up brittle, and weak in areas that don't normally see stresses. Not all road bikes are designed like this, even high end ones, but some early ultra light bikes were.

Bikes that need to be durable use different types of fibers that can bend more before cracking, and may include layers of kevlar or other composites with more 'toughness' in key areas. My wife has a carbon fiber mountain bike and has been racing every weekend, winning, jumping, crashing, riding every day, for 3 years now, bike is fine.

New comment by jackmott42 in "Solid-state EV batteries now face "production hell""

jackmott42 — Sun, 28 Jan 2024 14:14:12 +0000

Don't forget that you can only extract about 30-35% of that energy via combustion, though. Whereas a battery with an electric motor you get more like 90%

Another knock against gasoline is that you spend about 1 EV battery pack of energy to refine a cars tank of gasoline from crude oil in the first place.

New comment by jackmott42 in "Tesla's in Serious Trouble"

jackmott42 — Fri, 26 Jan 2024 15:14:13 +0000

Why is that? He has been behaving terribly, I would be concerned about the ethics of anyone who doesn't hate him at this point.

New comment by jackmott42 in "Hertz to sell 20k EVs in shift back to gas-powered cars"

jackmott42 — Thu, 11 Jan 2024 23:42:33 +0000

Definitely Teslas became less attractive to a lot of people with Musks behavior in the last year. But also interest rates are up, and EV enthusiast market may be saturated, so now you have to win over just regular people.

New comment by jackmott42 in "Who makes the most reliable new cars?"

jackmott42 — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 22:42:12 +0000

Because they want to completely disconnected the big battery when not in use to prevent phantom drain, and you need a little power to run passive systems that need to be on still (like remote keys etc).

Some EVs like Tesla now use a separate lithium ion 12v battery that should last forever, instead of a lead acid 12v battery with a limited life span.

New comment by jackmott42 in "I think C++ is still a desirable coding platform compared to Rust"

jackmott42 — Wed, 22 Nov 2023 13:59:05 +0000

Even brilliant developers on the Linux kernel teams and Postgres teams make memory mistakes that lead to security problems.

Maybe you are at a higher level than them though.

New comment by jackmott42 in "Ubuntu squeezes more performance than Windows 11 on new AMD Zen 4 Threadripper"

jackmott42 — Wed, 22 Nov 2023 13:23:37 +0000

Pretty sure Microsoft is very cooperative on working with AMD and others on this stuff, it may just take a little longer in this case.

New comment by jackmott42 in "Charging a lithium battery to 80% only?"

jackmott42 — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 15:09:40 +0000

The battery ages faster the more it is charged. It is approximately linear. Nothing special about 80%, you could draw the line anywhere.

New comment by jackmott42 in "I trapped scammers in an impossible maze [video]"

jackmott42 — Fri, 03 Nov 2023 20:34:22 +0000

Web Dev sometimes isn't. Sometimes it is CSS and HTML and art/design specialty. I don't say that to be a gatekeeper, I think CSS expertise is harder! heh