Hacker News: ominous_prime

New comment by ominous_prime in "Hard-braking events as indicators of road segment crash risk"

ominous_prime — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 18:15:12 +0000

It certainly makes sense as a proxy for competence across a diverse population for insurance purposes. You have a baseline of hard braking events that a competent driver may encounter under normal circumstances. If a driver routinely exceeds that number, they are either unable to correctly estimate closing distance and reaction times, which makes them higher risk for causing accidents, or they are driving abnormally aggressively, which also makes them a higher risk for causing accidents. If you consistently put yourself in situations where hard braking is required, it doesn't matter what your skill is, you've reduced your safety margins and an accident is statistically more probable. You said it correctly with "would've been safer to start building a distance buffer", that is the proxy the insurance companies want to use for risk assessment.

35 years without an accident on my record isn't because I'm a magnificent driver, it's because I always try to leave a way out for when something unexpected happens, because the unexpected _does_ happen.

The fact that some people may have the skill to drive more aggressively means nothing in the aggregate as far as insurance companies are concerned. If you are skilled enough to drive in that manner, you are skilled enough to avoid it as well. It's simply statistics.

New comment by ominous_prime in "Mitsubishi Diatone D-160 (1985)"

ominous_prime — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 05:59:19 +0000

The claims sound somewhat exaggerated, 5kw of subwoofer is nothing in live music venues, though they purposely don’t go as low. Here’s some more modern “big” subs, which are larger and can radiate significantly more power

https://www.aia-cinema.com/products/the64-sub-pro-passive-se...

https://www.aia-cinema.com/products/the100-sub-pro-passive-s...

New comment by ominous_prime in "Go Optimization Guide"

ominous_prime — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 17:06:00 +0000

It didn't, do what? I would consider the first 256 integers to be "small integers" ;)

> Converting a small integer value into an interface value no longer causes allocation

I forgot that it can also be used for single byte strings, That's not an optimization I ever encountered being useful, but it's there!

New comment by ominous_prime in "Go Optimization Guide"

ominous_prime — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 13:59:53 +0000

go1.15 re-added small integer packing into interfaces: https://go.dev/doc/go1.15#runtime

New comment by ominous_prime in "The Wright brothers invented the airplane, right? Not if you're in Brazil"

ominous_prime — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 13:47:04 +0000

The only source that will respond Ford invented the car is a person who has no idea and is simply guessing the first name comes to mind. It can't really even be contested since Benz's and Ford's inventions are decades apart.

New comment by ominous_prime in "Plane crashes, overturns during landing at Toronto airport"

ominous_prime — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 15:20:02 +0000

yeah, "middle of winter" wasn't quite right, but the chances of a microburst during what is an otherwise already windy/gusty winter day are basically none

New comment by ominous_prime in "Plane crashes, overturns during landing at Toronto airport"

ominous_prime — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 14:50:47 +0000

I doubt there was a thunderstorm in the area in the middle of the winter

New comment by ominous_prime in "How high speed fiber optic internet cables are made"

ominous_prime — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 18:52:21 +0000

Composite fiberglass materials aren't flexible because of their composite structure, the layers and resin are there to increase strength and stiffness of an otherwise extremely pliable material. Think about fiberglass cloth or pink fiberglass insulation, glass strands get very flexible as the diameter decreases.

New comment by ominous_prime in "Decoding DME aircraft radio navigation system with the LimeSDR"

ominous_prime — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 02:10:37 +0000

Even if an approach uses DME, depending on the aircraft or company operating procedures they still may not be using DME, because GPS is a valid substitute for DME in an approach and more convenient if you’re already otherwise using GPS RNAV.

In fact it’s quite common to shoot approaches that have DME specified fixes in an aircraft that doesn’t even have a DME transceiver.

New comment by ominous_prime in "Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders ID'd in WA plane crash"

ominous_prime — Sat, 08 Jun 2024 12:44:52 +0000

The FAA only knows when you last took the BasicMed quiz and attested that you will follow the rules. Getting a physical, storing the form signed by the doctor, and maintaining a valid drivers license are up to the individual.

New comment by ominous_prime in "Cork is displacing plastics and creating a billion-dollar industry"

ominous_prime — Sat, 03 Feb 2024 20:33:32 +0000

Cork has always been used is lots of shoe footbeds, Birkenstock just makes it visible.

New comment by ominous_prime in "Tanzania unveils its first locally assembled aircraft, Skyleader 600"

ominous_prime — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 20:52:00 +0000

_maybe_ it makes a difference within the first few hours of training, but once one is able to land consistently the difference is negligible. The minor differences between different planes in general is far more noticeable than just high vs low (and "in general" most small planes land very similarly anyway)

The big reason for high wing bush planes is for ground clearance, and to avoid damage from debris kicked up by the wheels.

New comment by ominous_prime in "We’re all just temporarily abled"

ominous_prime — Mon, 21 Aug 2023 15:18:17 +0000

Direct damage from combat sports can catch up to you eventually. CTE is pretty serious, but unfortunately you probably don't realize the extent of that damage until it's far too late.

New comment by ominous_prime in "Delta flight lands in Charlotte without front landing gear"

ominous_prime — Thu, 29 Jun 2023 12:13:17 +0000

This is kind of patronizing to the pilots. There’s nothing particularly difficult about what they did, which has been practiced many times. They ran their checklists, and then landed the plane, and they did it well, just like any other qualified pilot should have. People need to stop conflating basic competence with heroics.

Age is always a factor in mechanical failure, but I’m sure this failure will be inspected in detail to try and avoid it again in the future

New comment by ominous_prime in "Maybe treating housing as an investment was a mistake"

ominous_prime — Mon, 06 Mar 2023 17:51:01 +0000

Maybe? Anecdotal I guess, but I've met more plumbers with chronic knee and back problems than software engineers. But being a plumber in the US isn't too physically demanding, and makes OK money, so it's probably the example of disparity the GP was trying to highlight.

New comment by ominous_prime in "Maybe treating housing as an investment was a mistake"

ominous_prime — Mon, 06 Mar 2023 17:29:35 +0000

You will be surprised how much good software engineers make in the USA -- still many multiples of most successful plumbers, and without the long-term physical consequences of that type of labor. Yes, there's still going to be better examples to highlight the disparity.

New comment by ominous_prime in "How white can white paint get?"

ominous_prime — Thu, 02 Mar 2023 15:50:49 +0000

You literally described diffuse reflection, which is "white paint"

New comment by ominous_prime in "The $20 an hour Cessna 172 experiment (2020)"

ominous_prime — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 15:39:16 +0000

This is what most people miss. Yes the FAA is slow, certification is costly, and liability messed things up in the 80s -- but you can't get the huge cost reductions we see in the automotive sector without mass-production. Aircraft are essentially hand-made in a labor intensive processes, using individually crafted components.

It's not hard to see what certification costs, take an EAB kit, use all non-certified avionics, and even take an automotive engine and convert it for aircraft use if you want. If you spec that out equivalently* to a certified aircraft, taking labor costs into account (you don't get to count the 1500 hours in your garage as free), it's less than comparable certified aircraft, but not orders of magnitude less.

(By equivalent, I mean safety and redundancy -- ifr capable. Not talking about making my own AP with cheap servos and a raspberrypi and navigating with a handheld gps)

New comment by ominous_prime in "The $20 an hour Cessna 172 experiment (2020)"

ominous_prime — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 11:50:29 +0000

Yes! I should check on that, see if they at least have a number for me yet.

New comment by ominous_prime in "The $20 an hour Cessna 172 experiment (2020)"

ominous_prime — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 02:31:07 +0000

LODA requirement is gone now btw