Hacker News: nritchie

New comment by nritchie in "Ordinary Lab Gloves May Have Skewed Microplastic Data"

nritchie — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:43:44 +0000

This is why it is good lab procedure to always "run a blank." A blank is simply a sample that is constructed exactly like a real sample but without the thing you are studying. This way you quickly learn about contamination from tools/gloves/environment etc.

New comment by nritchie in "Artemis II is not safe to fly"

nritchie — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 14:48:34 +0000

Both things can be true. A better O-ring with the same joint might have prevented the disaster. A better designed joint with the same O-ring might also. Feynman knew that a little theater would go a long way. The O-ring explanation, albeit a partial explanation, made for good theater.

New comment by nritchie in "Artemis II is not safe to fly"

nritchie — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 14:44:37 +0000

Maybe not so much "oblivious to safety" as "oblivious to probable risk." We worry to much about low risk events (like airline flights) and don't worry enough about higher risk events (like trips-and-falls, driving a car, poor diet...)

New comment by nritchie in "Image manipulation with convolution using Julia"

nritchie — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 18:19:34 +0000

I really enjoy how Julia handles images. The abstractions really streamline developing image processing algorithm that are independent of pixel representation. Like so much of Julia, the first time I saw it, my mind was warped. Julia is worth learning if just for all the clever design choices.

New comment by nritchie in "Data has weight but only on SSDs"

nritchie — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:48:17 +0000

An encrypyted drive is likely to have (close to) equal numbers of 0's and 1's full or empty so any of these arguments are moot.

New comment by nritchie in "LFortran compiles fpm"

nritchie — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 00:11:11 +0000

A fast-to-compile but slow-to-run LLVM alternative would make Julia much more useable day-to-day too.

New comment by nritchie in "IRS lost 40% of IT staff, 80% of tech leaders in 'efficiency' shakeup"

nritchie — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 20:37:20 +0000

And yet all countries with socialized systems pay less per capita for healthcare than we do and pretty much all have better health outcomes. Further privatizing our system will only make it more dis-functional. Healthcare isn't a normal marketplace. * When you really need it, you can't shop around. * There is a knowledge asymmetry built in. * A civilized society can't just let poor children die of preventable causes.

New comment by nritchie in "IRS lost 40% of IT staff, 80% of tech leaders in 'efficiency' shakeup"

nritchie — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 20:29:54 +0000

This is just the lazy comment of someone who believes all the right-wing propaganda about government. In my experience, government employees take pride in doing a job worth doing and doing it well.

New comment by nritchie in "The New Collabora Office for Desktop"

nritchie — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 15:53:45 +0000

I don't care about dated looks. I do find MS Office's pressure to use OneDrive frustrating and annoying. Honestly, older UIs for office suite products just feel more direct and responsive than the clever ribbon bars. Excel used to be svelte (25 years ago or more...) Now it feels bloated and clumsy. LibreOffice Calc (same parentage as Collabora Office) feels more like Excel used to feel. Similar complaints about Word.

New comment by nritchie in "The guide to real-world EV battery health"

nritchie — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 14:12:36 +0000

Hopefully, in coming years, we will see more practically designed EVs that are more affordable. A practical car doesn't need neck-snapping acceleration, every bell-and-whistle and room for a family of six with a dog. I'd like to believe that as batteries cost drop, the incentive to justify the extra cost will drop. Then we can get back to "just basic transportation" rather than a luxury product for the rich. While $31k isn't exactly cheap, the base new Leaf is heading the right direction.

New comment by nritchie in "My first paper: A practical implementation of Rubiks cube based passkeys"

nritchie — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 01:25:15 +0000

This is a great example of the "I wonder if I could"-kind of research. It doesn't have to be practical. I doubt the authors intend it as a viable security product. It is the kind of "just playing around" thinking that can sometimes lead to brilliant insights. Keep up the good work.

New comment by nritchie in "Weighting an average to minimize variance"

nritchie — Sat, 15 Nov 2025 20:19:31 +0000

A handful of the comments are skeptical of the utility of this method. I can tell you as a physical scientist, it is common to make the same measurement with a number of measuring devices of differing precision. (e.g. developing a consensus standard using a round-robin.) The technique Cook suggests can be a reasonable way to combine the results to produce the optimal measured value.

New comment by nritchie in "Nobel Prize in Physics 2025"

nritchie — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 16:27:15 +0000

It is worth noting that the research that Martinis is being awarded the Nobel prize was largely performed while at NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), part of the Dept of Commerce.

New comment by nritchie in "Asked to do something illegal at work? Here's what these software engineers did"

nritchie — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 11:57:15 +0000

I was just double billed by the third-party that Enterprise Rentals uses to handle tolls. Fraud? Incompetence? Is there a difference?

New comment by nritchie in "Don't Become a Scientist (1999)"

nritchie — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 01:01:44 +0000

What he says is still correct for academics. There are too many candidates for too few positions. The pay is lousy. The hours are long. You don't really get to follow you best creative instincts. You spend an inordinate amount of time writing grants. Teaching, particularly pre-meds, can suck. Now with Trump, the problem has only been compounded. That isn't to say that there are no non-academic jobs for PhDs that can be satisfying. Just you may be a glorified engineer. No shame in that if that is what you want.

New comment by nritchie in "The great medieval water myth (2013)"

nritchie — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 12:45:25 +0000

This seems like an example of black and white thinking. Did they never drink water? beer? wine? Of course not. A better question - under what circumstances did they prefer beer? wine? cider? water? And later on tea? coffee? Etc?

New comment by nritchie in "600 Miles from the North Pole on a boat. My Starlink Mini is at 171 mbit/s"

nritchie — Fri, 06 Jun 2025 21:56:04 +0000

millibits per second? No actually megabits per second...

New comment by nritchie in "Too Many Open Files"

nritchie — Fri, 06 Jun 2025 21:51:49 +0000

Seems like a good idea but I do wonder what the cost is as the overhead of allocate the extra resource space (whatever it is) would be added to every Go application.

New comment by nritchie in "Ask HN: What do you spend your money on?"

nritchie — Mon, 02 Jun 2025 13:49:09 +0000

Beyond mundane living expenses, bicycling and brewing supplies.

New comment by nritchie in "Wikipedia's Most Translated Articles"

nritchie — Mon, 19 May 2025 18:23:15 +0000

This begs the question: How many languages can be accessed via AI translators?