Hacker News: jeffwass

New comment by jeffwass in "Cherry Kearton – groundbreaking 19th-century nature photographer"

jeffwass — Sat, 09 May 2026 06:18:13 +0000

FYI - The actual BBC title is “Cherry Kearton: The eccentric influence on a young Sir David Attenborough” but I felt this wasn’t descriptive enough.

The article subtitle is “As a child, Sir David Attenborough was transfixed by the work of Cherry Kearton, a photographer and filmmaker who almost single-handedly changed the way we view the natural world.” which I tried to use but was way too long, so I abridged it.

Cherry Kearton – groundbreaking 19th-century nature photographer

jeffwass — Sat, 09 May 2026 06:15:47 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260507-cherry-kearton-the-eccentric-influence-on-a-young-sir-david-attenborough

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48072323

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

New comment by jeffwass in "Copy Fail"

jeffwass — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 06:35:30 +0000

This submission is currently the main HN submission.

As of now the submission title is simply “Copy Fail”.

Given the severity of the exploit, can we edit the Title to add some context that it’s a major Linux vulnerability?

Eg the other submissions say this : “Copy Fail: 732 Bytes to Root on Every Major Linux Distribution.”

New comment by jeffwass in "Why Not Venus?"

jeffwass — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 10:18:44 +0000

This is a terrible take, and I say this having a PhD in Physics.

Many physicists have written popular articles and books for the general population. Eg Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Brian Cox. Improving accessibility of advanced concepts is nothing to scoff at.

Google is Hollowing out Waze, and that's a Problem for Apple

jeffwass — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 08:11:52 +0000

Article URL: https://builtformars.com/case-studies/waze

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47873332

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by jeffwass in "Identify a London Underground Line just by listening to it"

jeffwass — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 12:52:41 +0000

Somehow I got a 7 out of 9, even though I felt like I was mostly guessing. Surface vs deep lines have more rumble but that’s about it that I consciously knew of.

The ancient reason there are 60 minutes in an hour

jeffwass — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 09:50:11 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260320-the-ancient-reason-there-are-60-minutes-in-an-hour-and-60-seconds-in-a-minute

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47500434

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

Horror Novel 'Shy Girl' Canceled over Suspected A.I. Use

jeffwass — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 21:54:02 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/books/shy-girl-book-ai.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47446827

Points: 10

# Comments: 0

Surfers in Munich (Yes, Munich) Just Want Their Wave Back

jeffwass — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 14:16:06 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/world/europe/munich-surfing-wave.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47287846

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by jeffwass in "Triplet Superconductor"

jeffwass — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 00:56:25 +0000

I did a bunch of research on similar Tc superconductors back during my PhD.

7K is considered “warm” from a cryogenics point-of-view because you can just dunk your sample into a dewar of liquid helium at 4.2K. You can even get it cooler, down to about 1K, using evaporative cooling techniques. [1]

It’s getting to lower temperatures than this when things start getting complicated. Eg a closed-cycle evaporative He3 system can get you down to 200 mK, or you can bite the bullet and use a dilution fridge down to around 10mK.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-K_pot

New comment by jeffwass in "Mullvad VPN: Banned TV Ad in the Streets of London [video]"

jeffwass — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 15:39:36 +0000

FYI link is below, for the off-chance someone is curious.

(not sure what are the unwritten rules of self-promotion here, but hopefully providing a link in a sub-comment instead of the comment itself makes it okay-ish?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI3xj9cM0jk

New comment by jeffwass in "Mullvad VPN: Banned TV Ad in the Streets of London [video]"

jeffwass — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 15:34:41 +0000

Lol, my band (London-based) has a song and YouTube music video called "Streets Of London".

I had a minor panic/WTF moment when I saw the submission saying : "Streets of London [video] (youtube.com)".

SpaceX rocket fireball linked to plume of polluting lithium

jeffwass — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 20:45:16 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpd8z4eqlxno

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47079021

Points: 8

# Comments: 0

New comment by jeffwass in "Skip the Tips: A game to select "No Tip" but dark patterns try to stop you"

jeffwass — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 12:36:45 +0000

Does annybody worry about sabotage if you don’t tip? Eg the cashier does something to your food? “Nice muffin you got there, I’d hate for it to get accidentally sneezed on.”

I recently bought my mom flowers for her birthday. Despite the price showing no delivery fee, the final price included $15 delivery charge, $8 service charge, taxes, and then asked me for a tip.

I chose no tip, expecting the delivery and service charge should cover everything.

The flowers were left on her front porch in below-freezing weather, they didn’t even knock or ring the doorbell. Luckily my mom happened to open the door and saw them before they completely froze.

So was the delivery person incompetent, or acting out because I didn’t add additional tip?

New comment by jeffwass in "Byte magazine artist Robert Tinney, who illustrated the birth of PCs, dies at 78"

jeffwass — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 16:38:25 +0000

Some of Robert Tinney's artwork is still available for sale at his website, limited edition runs of several of the Byte covers and other art.

https://tinney.net/

New comment by jeffwass in "Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle"

jeffwass — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 09:11:04 +0000

I was wondering this actually, why not just skip past the check entirely instead of going through the effort to pass the check without the dongle?

New comment by jeffwass in "Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle"

jeffwass — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 09:09:16 +0000

Really interesting read, wonder how many other installs are using (and trapped into continuing to use) such obscure legacy software.

New comment by jeffwass in "Doin' It with a 555: One Chip to Rule Them All"

jeffwass — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 08:06:31 +0000

Two thoughts on situations where the 555 may be preferable, if anyone has experience how these compare :

1. Low-noise applications. I’d naively expect the 555 to be less noisy than a clocked digital microcontroller, though it’s been awhile since I’ve worked in this space.

2. Low power applications. How does latent power draw compare between a 555 and a typical low power microcontroller?

New comment by jeffwass in "I stopped following the news"

jeffwass — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 09:31:44 +0000

At my cousin’s company there are TV’s in the lobby.

They used to show news channels.

He said clients would come in all stressed out. So they changed to a home improvement channel.

New comment by jeffwass in "Heathrow scraps liquid container limit"

jeffwass — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 08:52:27 +0000

Even in your own car dropping off your friends or family at a UK airport (at least the London ones) requires paying a £6 fee now. Just to get to the dropoff area, even for 30 seconds as you say.

But hey, at least the luggage carts are free…