Hacker News: nothacking_

New comment by nothacking_ in "Starlink is currently experiencing a service outage. Our team is investigating"

nothacking_ — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 20:18:23 +0000

I'd bet on a bad update or configuration change. (likely one that prevents the affected systems from reaching the internet and being automatically rolled back)

New comment by nothacking_ in "Why you can't color calibrate deep space photos"

nothacking_ — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 20:25:32 +0000

That's really just photography in general. Mapping an analog input (photocurrent) to a pixel brightness.

New comment by nothacking_ in "Why you can't color calibrate deep space photos"

nothacking_ — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 03:01:30 +0000

> Are the bands too wide for this to work?

For wideband filters used for stars and galaxies, yes. Sometimes the filters are wider then the entire visible spectrum.

For narrowband filters used to isolate emission from a particular element, no. If you have just the Oxygen-III signal isolated from everything else, you can composite it as a perfect turquoise color.

New comment by nothacking_ in "Why you can't color calibrate deep space photos"

nothacking_ — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 02:33:31 +0000

Fixed.

New comment by nothacking_ in "Why you can't color calibrate deep space photos"

nothacking_ — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 02:31:48 +0000

The problem with hyperspectral imaging is that it ends up throwing away 99.9% of all the light that hits your camera. It's been done for the sun and some very bright nebulae, but really isn't practical for most of the stuff in space.

New comment by nothacking_ in "Why you can't color calibrate deep space photos"

nothacking_ — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 02:26:17 +0000

That's common in high end astophotography, and almost exclusively used at professional observatories. However, scientists like filters that are "rectangular", with a flat passband and sharp falloff, very unlike human color vision.

Dirt to Airplanes: Making Aluminium

nothacking_ — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 03:36:15 +0000

Article URL: https://maurycyz.com/projects/al/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44631561

Points: 19

# Comments: 2

Building a Metal Detector

nothacking_ — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 05:47:42 +0000

Article URL: https://maurycyz.com/projects/metal_detector/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44363165

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by nothacking_ in "If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)"

nothacking_ — Fri, 13 Jun 2025 19:57:42 +0000

Importantly, the planets aren't actually lined up nicely like on the site. Right now, Mars is ~5 times further then shown.

That's why so many people were taking pictures of Mars back in January, when it was actually possible to take see detail. Right now it just looks like a red orb.

New comment by nothacking_ in "The scientific “unit” we call the decibel"

nothacking_ — Fri, 23 May 2025 01:19:10 +0000

Except finding '-45 dB' is frustratingly common. Have a look at this random microphone datasheet from DigiKey: https://www.sameskydevices.com/product/resource/cmm-3125at-4...

They do state the test conditions "at 94 dB SPL, 1 kHz", but don't specify the units attacked to the actually measurement. It's given as a ratio to an unspecified quantity.

New comment by nothacking_ in "More than 40% of postdocs leave academia, study reveals"

nothacking_ — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 16:40:32 +0000

As they should. More often then not, going into academia means horrible working conditions and horrible pay... and there's job satisfaction when your instead of doing things you like or ones enrich society, you spend most of your time in a never ending fight for grant money.

Leaving is completely logical for anyone that wants to actually do impactful research, or wants to make a living wage, and wants sane hours and sane management.

New comment by nothacking_ in "Investigating an “evil” RJ45 dongle"

nothacking_ — Sat, 18 Jan 2025 02:02:04 +0000

> 1) downloading Windows exe files from Chinese forums

VMs exist. I highly doubt the author daily drives windows XP.

> 2) the USB storage provided by network card can still contain malware

Well yes, but so can any other drivers. Downloading from the manufactures website isn't any more secure. Even signed drivers have been caught doing nasty stuff.

> 3) or can be accidentally booted from

True, but again this is quite a convoluted, noticeable, and unreliable way to compromize a system. Just injecting a handful of keystrokes will do it, and once the dead is done, the device can hide all evidence of malicious intent.

> 4) it has universal USB controller, so can become any HID device: keyboard, mouse...

This isn't wtf: a lot of devices nowadays are just microcontrollers hooked up to a USB connector. Quite a few normal USB drives can be reprogrammed to act as keyboards, and be used to get up to all sorts of shenanigans, including ones made outside of China.

New comment by nothacking_ in "What happened to the world's largest tube TV? [video]"

nothacking_ — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 21:43:02 +0000

Another day, another LLM generated blog post on the front page.

I'm not opposed to AI tools on principle, but why does this article exist?

It's not because the author had anything interesting to say. It's not because the AI had anything interesting to say. It's a summary of a Youtube video because... clicks or something.

New comment by nothacking_ in "The meme-ification of the "Demon Core""

nothacking_ — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 21:29:18 +0000

Just about all humor derives from some degree of suffering. Compared what the core could have done, the three deaths from the accident are nothing. Even things that are joked about often have much higher death tolls like wars and natural disasters.

New comment by nothacking_ in "The bucket brigade device: An analog shift register"

nothacking_ — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 01:55:15 +0000

This is just a 185 stage device, but later ones would have thousands of stages, and could be chained together for even longer delays. Sample rates could also be much lower then 40 kHz as low as 6 kHz was used for echo effects.

New comment by nothacking_ in "The rise of the U.S., the rise of China"

nothacking_ — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 20:48:21 +0000

Competition is generally good for consumers, forcing companies to make a better product then the other guy, rather then the crappiest thing people will buy.

Building a Fluxgate Magnetometer

nothacking_ — Sat, 19 Oct 2024 23:56:20 +0000

Article URL: https://10maurycy10.github.io/projects/fluxgate/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41891774

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by nothacking_ in "Making a rickroll laser: A parametric speaker"

nothacking_ — Sat, 14 Sep 2024 19:34:14 +0000

I'm not an expert on this, but there don't seem to be any reported cases of hearing loss from sounds above 30 kHz, but there are documented cases of unpleasant effects. In any case, I'd keep some distance, just to be safe.

New comment by nothacking_ in "The physics of airplane flight"

nothacking_ — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 17:37:27 +0000

Easy, the natural angle of attack is determined by the elevator position. Flying upside down is totally possible with the right inputs.

New comment by nothacking_ in "The physics of airplane flight"

nothacking_ — Mon, 01 Jul 2024 02:09:56 +0000

Almost none of this is intuitive without hundreds of years of hindsight. The more subtle aspects of stability, such as avoiding oscillation mostly had to be determined experimentally. Then there is also the matter of actually constructing a plane, if you want it to be useful, it's going to need to be a lot more then some folded paper.

Thrust was definitely also a problem, a glider is not particularly useful unless it has a huge lift-to-drag ratio, which is only possible with modern materials and a solid understanding of airfoil design, which is a whole other can of worms.

Even things that seem so basic that we don't even think about them, like high were not at all obvious: just look at Sir George Cayley's gliders.