Hacker News: nategri

New comment by nategri in "Ask HN: Do you ever go back and admire a piece of code you wrote?"

nategri — Fri, 08 May 2020 16:45:44 +0000

I've got a big text file of 6502 machine code I wrote a few years back that I pull out and marvel at from time to time. One of those things that you have to be fully in the "zone" to pull off, so it seems like magic to present-day me.

New comment by nategri in "Compaq and Coronavirus"

nategri — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 16:14:17 +0000

When all you have is a hammer everything looks like an IBM clone, I guess.

New comment by nategri in "Ken Allen"

nategri — Fri, 28 Feb 2020 18:42:18 +0000

Ugh that namesake story is maximum Wall Street culture cringe.

LeoLabs Monitoring Upcoming Close Approach Between Two Defunct Leo Satellites

nategri — Mon, 27 Jan 2020 23:01:48 +0000

Article URL: https://twitter.com/LeoLabs_Space/status/1221908248305061889

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22164769

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by nategri in "Nuclear waste recycled into diamond batteries"

nategri — Fri, 24 Jan 2020 18:52:51 +0000

Sounds like it might be a good pick as the energy source for an extremely long haul interstellar probe?

New comment by nategri in "Show HN: Terminal Phase – Terminal-based space shooter"

nategri — Wed, 22 Jan 2020 19:34:21 +0000

Defender is probably one of the hardest games ever made, if only because of the wacky controls (a 1D joystick that only moves your ship up and down, and a button for reversing your direction).

New comment by nategri in "28-Key Mechanical Keyboard"

nategri — Tue, 21 Jan 2020 23:29:42 +0000

Would expect this to clock in somewhere in the neighborhood of $80 using my preferred fab of OSHPark, but their min. order is 3 boards. So if you find two other people who want one, you get one from there for under $30 or so.

New comment by nategri in "Boltzmann Brain"

nategri — Fri, 17 Jan 2020 22:11:17 +0000

Would posit that HN is well into its "endless september" at this point.

New comment by nategri in "Show HN: 1.5kb Microkernel for Ben Eater's 6502 Computer"

nategri — Fri, 17 Jan 2020 18:48:20 +0000

Learning about multiple wonderful things at once here. This is pretty much catnip for 6502 fans.

New comment by nategri in "Shutdown of US coal power facilities saved over 26k lives, study finds"

nategri — Tue, 07 Jan 2020 00:36:47 +0000

While we're still perfecting the renewable situation we need to shut down all this coal bullshit ASAP and patch in nuclear. I guess people would rather be definitely killed by particulates and climate change rather than almost never killed by radiation---just because it sounds scarier. Madness.

Happy Hacking Keyboard Updated with USB-C and Bluetooth

nategri — Mon, 06 Jan 2020 19:07:23 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2020/1/6/21048109/fujitsu-happy-hacking-keyboard-professional-3-classic-hybrid-type-s-mechanical-ces-2020

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21972037

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by nategri in "Chernobyl Dice: A quantum random number generator with a Nixie tube display"

nategri — Thu, 26 Dec 2019 00:09:41 +0000

Author here.

They’re not actually that radioactive so they’re very easy to get ahold of. Amazon and eBay might work (I got mine from one of those sources, I think), but I also put a more specialized supplier in the parts list.

New comment by nategri in "Chernobyl Dice: A quantum random number generator with a Nixie tube display"

nategri — Thu, 26 Dec 2019 00:07:47 +0000

Author here.

Not a dumb question! I tried this approach using 4-microsecond ticks and was surprised to catch a (subtle) bias. So I in the end I basically used two different RNG algos (both with slight biases) and XOR’d them together.

Would love to isolate why these on their own appear to have a bias but testing is a super laborious process (takes roughly 3 days to generate a 1 megabit file).

Of course, I could always speed up the testing cycle by using a more radioactive sample ;)

New comment by nategri in "Chernobyl Dice: A quantum random number generator with a Nixie tube display"

nategri — Wed, 25 Dec 2019 21:52:31 +0000

Author here. Even though its proximity puts it pretty far above background, the marbles are still a fairly weak source, so from the "electronics logic longevity" side it's not something I've really thought about. But the Geiger-Muller tube does have a finite (though very large) number of events it can record, so I cut the voltage to it when the device is in "clock mode" and not functioning as an RNG.

New comment by nategri in "Chernobyl Dice: A quantum random number generator with a Nixie tube display"

nategri — Wed, 25 Dec 2019 20:19:17 +0000

Ha! Good catch

New comment by nategri in "Chernobyl Dice: A quantum random number generator with a Nixie tube display"

nategri — Wed, 25 Dec 2019 19:57:21 +0000

Author here.

Sorry about that! I’ll push a plaintext CSV version of the part list later today.

New comment by nategri in "Boeing Starliner updates: Spacecraft flies into wrong orbit, jeopardizing test"

nategri — Fri, 20 Dec 2019 18:47:33 +0000

They use models. No model is perfect, they all have uncertainties.

New comment by nategri in "Photos show evidence of life on Mars, Ohio entomologist claims"

nategri — Tue, 19 Nov 2019 18:48:51 +0000

Today I learned entomologists have pareidolia for bugs.

New comment by nategri in "The Global Fertility Crash"

nategri — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 22:45:45 +0000

Excellent points. For many reasons, economists are going to have to give up their fixation on 2nd-derivative metrics sometime this century.

New comment by nategri in "Build Your Own Thrust Vectored Rockets for Vertical Landings Like SpaceX"

nategri — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 17:25:08 +0000

After all the dire news in May I'm very happy so see good content on a Make domain :)