Hacker News: litoE

New comment by litoE in "Almost no skill required to cook a steak"

litoE — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 22:47:51 +0000

There's also the wifely we, meaning "you", as in "we need to take out the trash."

New comment by litoE in "Show HN: I spent 2 years designing a mechanical Magic Keyboard"

litoE — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 19:59:59 +0000

In the 1980s a company called Quotron developed a contactless keyboard. The main circuit board contained a bunch of LEDs and some sort of photo diodes or photo cells, all arranged in a grid. The keys were simply plungers that when pressed down interrupted the light beams shining into some of the receivers. The firmware then decided which key had been pressed and generated the appropriate code. The keyboard itself was huge. Us software people used to joke that, in a pinch, it could be used as a surfboard.

One of the advantages was that you could pour a cup of coffee into the keyboard and it would just keep working.

New comment by litoE in "Saber-toothed cats became inbred–and struggled to move–before they went extinct"

litoE — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 00:50:49 +0000

Wouldn't it make sense to assume that as the size of the population decreases, perhaps for external factors such as climate change, you are going to see more and more inbreeding?

New comment by litoE in "How Has Roman Concrete Lasted for Millennia? 1,900-Year-Old Latrine Offers Clues"

litoE — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 17:20:42 +0000

1.- My apologies for the terminology - I took one overview class on the subject in Spanish, and haven't looked at it in the last 60 years. 2.- Agreed - that's why rebar on horizontal beams (and slabs) sometimes goes on the top edge and shifts to the bottom edge. 3.- By beams I do mean horizontal beams. This also applies to horizontal slabs. However, vertical columns also need rebar, especially in earthquake-prone areas. If the ground moves horizontally in an earthquake, the (vertical) columns have to transmit the motion to the upper parts of the structure. This create huge tension stresses on one side of the columns so they need vertical rebar rods on their perimeter.

New comment by litoE in "How Has Roman Concrete Lasted for Millennia? 1,900-Year-Old Latrine Offers Clues"

litoE — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 05:34:08 +0000

As I understand it, concrete has excellent resistance to compression but fails easily on traction, while steel bars are exactly the opposite. That is why you put rebar in concrete: the steel handles the traction loads and the concrete handles the compression. This works well because both materials have similar coefficients of thermal expansion, so as the temperature changes they both expand and contract at the same rate. I suppose you can engineer fiberglass to have the same thermal expansion coefficient and use it to replace steel (assuming it is just as strong on traction). But how would you "build without rebar even"? Wouldn't your beams start cracking at the bottom, where they are subject to traction?

New comment by litoE in "White House delays US voting-machine vulnerability report"

litoE — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 05:47:43 +0000

> I'm not opposed to making voting mandatory, but making election day a national holiday should come first.

How about having elections on Sundays instead of on Tuesdays?

New comment by litoE in "Penguin travels every year to visit man who rescued him (2016)"

litoE — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:38 +0000

Something similar happened in 1975 in Uruguay. The brit that saved the penguin wrote a book, which was made into a movie, "The Penguin Lessons", currently on Netflix.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Penguin_Lessons_(book)

New comment by litoE in "Justice Dept. Is Said to Open Criminal Inquiry of E. Jean Carroll"

litoE — Thu, 28 May 2026 19:14:58 +0000

Just out of curiosity: what happens to you if you don't vote? Can you get a medical excuse? What if you are traveling?l

New comment by litoE in "Justice Dept. Is Said to Open Criminal Inquiry of E. Jean Carroll"

litoE — Thu, 28 May 2026 15:46:29 +0000

I can understand your not liking Harris, Biden, Clinton et. al. But I can't understand how you selected a person like Trump as your candidate for President. One time, maybe. But three times in a row?

New comment by litoE in "When (if ever) it's appropriate to make jokes before the US Supreme Court"

litoE — Sun, 24 May 2026 18:12:09 +0000

RBG passed away while Trump was president. Obama did pick a replacement for Antonin Scalia though: Merrick Garland. Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to even give Garland a hearing arguing it was "too close to the presidential election", even though Obama's term had about one year to go.

New comment by litoE in "Ten Signs of Fascism. America has all of them"

litoE — Mon, 18 May 2026 01:58:23 +0000

Frightening thought: Alito and Thomas resign now, giving Trump two seats to fill with younger Justices of their "textualist" persuation who will be there for a very long time.

New comment by litoE in "Zuckerberg 'Personally Authorized and Encouraged' Meta's Copyright Infringement"

litoE — Wed, 06 May 2026 15:21:01 +0000

It's very simple: if the terms are satisfactory and against an agreed upon collateral (e.g. shares) banks will give you a loan that does not require periodic payments. The interest on the loan does accumulate of course, and is just added to the principal that the borrower owes. The bank is happy as long as the value of the collateral is higher than the current outstanding loan. If the loan is in danger of going "under water" the bank can either liquidate the collateral to pay itself, or the borrower can renegotiate the loan and deposit additional shares.

It's similar to a reverse mortgage. Say Fred and Wilma own a house worth $4MM with no mortgage on it. With a reverse mortgage a bank will lend them $2MM. Fred and Wilma make no payments and continue to live in their house, spending the $2MM while the interest on that loan just increases the amount they owe the bank. After both Fred and Wilma have passed away the house is sold and the proceeds are used to pay back the outstanding loan. If there's still money left over, it goes to their heirs. If the sale comes up short, the bank loses money, which is why these reverse mortgages are typically less than 50% of the value of the house and they typically have higher interest rates than conventional mortgages. From Fred and Wilma's point of view, they can use the value of their house now, while continuing to live in it. They essentially spend their children's inheritance.

New comment by litoE in "Zuckerberg 'Personally Authorized and Encouraged' Meta's Copyright Infringement"

litoE — Tue, 05 May 2026 22:46:12 +0000

Plus, the money he borrows is not taxable. If he sold stock he would have to pay taxes before he could spend the income. Sure, he now owes money to someone, but he can refinance those loans again and again, and live tax-free the rest of his life while we, poor working stiffs, pay the taxes that built the airport where he parks the private jet he bought with the money he borrowed.

New comment by litoE in "Help Denmark Buy California – Because Why Not?"

litoE — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 04:01:09 +0000

This is absurd. Denmark can't afford to buy California. On the other hand, if they just invite us to join ....

New comment by litoE in "Trump fires Pam Bondi as attorney general"

litoE — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 02:00:36 +0000

I also think that the system of party primary elections by popular vote is a big part of the problem. To win the Republican primary you have to be more "Republican" than your opponents. Ditto for the Democratic primary. Then you end up with candidates at the far ends of the spectrum instead of more centrist ones.

In congress this means a complete inability to compromise, resulting in the current stalemate. In the presidency, you end up with someone who thinks of his opponents as criminals deserving prosecution.

New comment by litoE in "Polymarket gamblers threaten to kill me over Iran missile story"

litoE — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 17:46:14 +0000

Because it's in the Israeli government's interest to make the threat from Iran look bigger, rather than smaller?

New comment by litoE in "Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional"

litoE — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 19:51:44 +0000

Florida must be using cheap cameras. My daughter got a red light ticket in Beverly Hills a couple of years ago. They mailed the ticket to her as the registered owner of the car, including the photographs from the cameras which showed that a) she entered the intersection on a red light, b) her car front and back showing the license plates and c) the face of the driver, establishing it was her. From her expression on the photograph you could tell she was saying "oh, shit!" She just paid it.

New comment by litoE in "Ask HN: Is there anyone here who still uses slide rules?"

litoE — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 21:29:59 +0000

Back in 1969 I had a summer job in the engineering department of a factory. The Chief Engineer was an old guy who was a slide rule artist. He taught me how to solve second degree equations (ax^2 + bx + c = 0) with just a slide rule. The standard formula that I had learned in high school includes adding and subtracting, which a slide rule cannot do. His method involved pulling out the slider of the slide rule and inserting it backwards. Then, through some clever manipulation using the D and B scales (which now faced each other) and the A and C scales, he could actually solve the equation with just the slide rule. I wish I could remember exactly how it was done.

New comment by litoE in "Ask HN: Is there anyone here who still uses slide rules?"

litoE — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 21:13:13 +0000

You don't have to multiply the powers of ten in your head. In your examples, the slider of the slide rule must be moved to the left of the body of the rule. This means the number of digits left of the decimal point in the answer is the sum of the number of digits left of the decimal point in the two multiplicands.

If the slider had been to the right of the body, the number of digits left of the decimal point in the answer is the sum of the number of digits left of the decimal point in the two multiplicands MINUS 1. .

New comment by litoE in "Leaked chats expose the daily life of a scam compound's enslaved workforce"

litoE — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 23:57:37 +0000

I have been getting repeated emails saying something along the lines of "We have a family office who has a strong interest in making an investment into industry. Can we set up a time to discuss this opportunity?". They are signed with different names, always female, and coming from email addresses with a TLD of .help or .shop

It's obviously a scam and I am not replying, but I'm curious what the scam is here.