Hacker News: mauvehaus

New comment by mauvehaus in "Elevator of the Year: Modernization of the Metropolis Trust Building"

mauvehaus — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 19:38:40 +0000

We can't all be wizards at everything, as evidenced by the electrical "surprises" I keep uncovering in this house I own that was built by a plumber.

New comment by mauvehaus in "New type of dice guarantees no tie when deciding who goes first"

mauvehaus — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 11:50:37 +0000

The solution is left as an exercise for the reader. Giving away more would spoil the fun for the curious!

New comment by mauvehaus in "Elevator of the Year: Modernization of the Metropolis Trust Building"

mauvehaus — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 11:44:06 +0000

I love that seemingly random trades that we largely take for granted have these case studies that result in awards for things us muggles never think about.

A garage I went to subscribed to a trade magazine for towing and recovery companies and left the issues in the waiting room. Sure enough, they had a recovery of the year type of award.

The sextant as backup navigation tool for astronauts

mauvehaus — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 11:32:48 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260903-the-300-year-old-instrument-that-could-save-stranded-astronauts

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49563172

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

New comment by mauvehaus in "9000 RPM is faster than your screen refreshes"

mauvehaus — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 16:38:34 +0000

A Prius isn't taking off from a stop under strictly ICE power. The electric motor in the transmission lowers the load on the ICE, certainly enough to let the engine oil pump generate operating pressure before it's really under load.

Why robotic pizza makers are failing

mauvehaus — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 00:22:57 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czxq0wgkkdjo

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49472935

Points: 7

# Comments: 0

New comment by mauvehaus in "Taylor Farms: How One Company's Reach Became a National Risk"

mauvehaus — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 17:28:18 +0000

Ground products are also what lets us make more efficient use of the animal. I took my first deer a couple years ago, and had it cut by a local guy. I got back 60 pounds of meat, of which about 30 was ground[0].

Supposing cows yield a better ratio of cut to ground meat (we've been breeding them for meat production and process them on an industrial scale), you'd still have to raise and kill a whole lot more cows to satisfy the world's current beef demand. I think good food safety practices and accepting a low, controlled risk of food-borne illness are justified by not having to kill as many animals.

[0] Not looking to start a discussion about the ethics of hunting. Not being in meat processing, this is an example I have first-hand knowledge of.

Rocky Horror star Tim Curry dies at 80

mauvehaus — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 16:56:23 +0000

Article URL: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yd92gkk7vo

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49452302

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by mauvehaus in "Was modern art a CIA psy-op? (2020)"

mauvehaus — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 03:00:35 +0000

Oh man, I just listened to an episode of Decoder Ring about why making classical realist sculptures in the US is a challenge. It gives some interesting context about the rejection of realism in the post-war West:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/we-are-monumentally-ba...

New comment by mauvehaus in "A faster way to calculate the day of the week"

mauvehaus — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 15:36:18 +0000

Before the beginning of June is mud season, and the Green Mountain Club asks people to stay off the trails to protect them.

Before mud season, it's winter, which is an altogether different adventure entirely.

https://greenmountainclub.org/hike/plan-and-prepare/get-star...

New comment by mauvehaus in "A faster way to calculate the day of the week"

mauvehaus — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 12:47:54 +0000

My partner's place of employment has a fiscal year ending June 30th and a use-it-or-lose-it vacation policy. We are hikers who live in the northeastern United States, which means we're inevitably planning a backpacking trip to use up her remaining vacation at the height of black fly[0] season.

We did a three week thru-hike of the Long Trail in 2022. We had shelters almost entirely to ourselves north of the AT/LT split at the Inn[1] because nobody hikes the LT in June/July if they can avoid it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_fly

[1] https://innatlongtrail.com/

New comment by mauvehaus in "Climbing Guide as a Shared Infrastructure"

mauvehaus — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:16:42 +0000

There's a crag in MA where the access is specifically conditioned on the crag not having a guidebook or the routes being recorded in an online database.

I don't know of any violence occurring over any of this, but I know there have been access issues and closures in the past.

Why one name will appear 4 times on Vermont's Republican primary ballot

mauvehaus — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:32:21 +0000

Article URL: https://www.vermontpublic.org/local-news/2026-06-23/why-h-brooke-paige-appear-4-times-republican-primary-ballot

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49266372

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by mauvehaus in "A physicist rigged his pet hamster’s wheel to upload to Strava"

mauvehaus — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 12:35:08 +0000

Not by much. A mile is 1000 paces, or 2000 steps [0]. 10000 steps is 5 miles, 10km is 6.2 miles.

Walking on flat, paved surfaces, I do about 1850 steps per mile of distance[1]. I have a pretty long inseam, so I'm not surprised that I'd be under 1000 paces. Given that roads weren't paved with concrete or asphalt until relatively recently, I'm not surprised that the Roman mile is a little shorter than our current one[2].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile#Name

[1] Garmin watch

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile#Roman

New comment by mauvehaus in "My phone detects going on a run as “someone snatching my phone and running off”"

mauvehaus — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 13:37:42 +0000

That's in Connecticut and it's older than London, Ontario:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_London,_Connecticut

New comment by mauvehaus in "Discovery of a multicomponent alloy forged by the Hiroshima atomic blast"

mauvehaus — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 01:25:40 +0000

They what?! Can we please get a link to this to read more?!

And yes, I have the same Google as you, but I'd love a link to your preferred telling of the tale of how the Soviets nuked a gas well fire just a couple years before I was born.

New comment by mauvehaus in "Are AI labs pelicanmaxxing?"

mauvehaus — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 19:20:41 +0000

> All 21 pelican-bicycle images, across all seven labs, face right. No other animal/vehicle combination does that.

> However, facing right is common: 60% of all 1,008 images do it. How common depends on the animal and the vehicle, and bicycles are one of the two vehicles where it’s strongest

Of course the pelican on the bicycle is facing right. The drivetrain on a bicycle is on the right side. If you want any representation of a bicycle that shows the drivetrain you're going to show the right side of it if you want to do so without the frame occluding it. It's an excellent bet that their training data reflects this.

Citation: https://www.rei.com/c/bikes

Edited to add:

As near as I can tell, all of the bicycles are shown facing right, regardless of the direction the animal is facing (GPT 5.6-Terra, Sample 1/3). Also, in every case where the rider has legs (i.e. not the whale) both of the rider's legs are on the right side of the bicycle. This suggests a pretty serious lack of actual understanding of how a bicycle works.

New comment by mauvehaus in "It's a shame what's happened to radio"

mauvehaus — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 14:11:16 +0000

Counterpoint: I always found WERS to be a slightly broader interpretation of adult contemporary programming than the commercial stations.

My goto was WUMB, which is out of UMass Boston, and played a consistent format (folk and Americana, I guess?) throughout the day. Blues Hangover on WHRB (Harvard) was always worthwhile when I caught it.

New comment by mauvehaus in "New US homeownership measure puts people first"

mauvehaus — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:19:03 +0000

Because multi-family buildings (required for higher density) come with more complicated ownership models. Owner occupied triple deckers in Boston, for example, often come with their own condo associations because there needs to be some way to handle the shared maintenance and expenses.

That's for a three unit building. Now scale that to a twenty or one hundred unit building. At some point, it makes sense for a single entity to handle the common maintenance through outright ownership and rent. Individual families have the flexibility to leave if things suck without being financially tied to the building long-term and subject to changes in housing prices. Yes, moving as a renter is expensive. It's still lower cost and friction than moving as an owner.

Source: rented for years in cities. Now happily a homeowner in the hinterlands of Vermont.

New comment by mauvehaus in "I also filed the corners off my MacBook"

mauvehaus — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 13:24:34 +0000

Approximately no one on the US home front had to fear harm coming to them from a Mitsubishi product. This stands in rather stark contrast to the experience on the British home front:

https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/second-world-war/blitz/blitz-...