Hacker News: raflemakt

New comment by raflemakt in "The “Wow!” signal was likely from extraterrestrial source, and more powerful"

raflemakt — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 05:23:43 +0000

In Carl Sagan’s novel Contact, the aliens chose to transmit their signal at «hydrogen times pi» — which is around 4462 MHz.

New comment by raflemakt in "Theses on Sleep"

raflemakt — Fri, 11 Feb 2022 01:38:57 +0000

I lived in a lavvo from august 2015 to April 2016, and it was the most awesome year ever (including in terms of sleep). I had a nice setup with a platform covered with sheep skins, and two sleeping bags (it reached -15C that winter in southern Norway).

Back when I was younger (10-14) I slept outside more than half of the days of the summer. In the barn, under trees, in trees, far into the forest, often accompanied by my horse, dog and cat. The feeling of waking up outside is so nice. In the forest, the first birds in the morning waking you up, finding new places and exploring. I had capes, some of wool, one of reindeer skin, and that's all you need to be comfortable during the night. I used to ride my horse far into the forest and we would just stay there until the next day. Playing flute, doing woodworking or reading while the horse was grazing.

New comment by raflemakt in "Adblocking people and non-adblocking people experience a different web"

raflemakt — Mon, 31 Jan 2022 19:42:19 +0000

I never used an ad blocker. I think ads are a symptom of our time, and although I understand that not everyone would (or should) follow this idea, I will neither ignore or treat a symptom but rather watch it closely as one should with enemies. Most people on this planet is not using ad blockers so there's an inequality issue, and hiding the effects (ads) of a problem will further stop us from taking systematic action.

New comment by raflemakt in "Why Quantum Mechanics?"

raflemakt — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 09:35:21 +0000

But even though the arguments supporting free will at the ontological level is unconvincing, free will in the phenomenological sense is not the same.

I am of the hard determinist camp but I'm pessimistic about if we're ever going to be able to predict chaotic systems. Even if someone could predict what I'm about to do, this information would be fundamentally out of reach for me since getting this information would influence the outcome (also, maybe the predicting machine itself would causally perturb me enough to not be able to make meaningful predictions).

New comment by raflemakt in "Student photographs people with hidden spy cam in the 1890s (2018)"

raflemakt — Tue, 11 Jan 2022 00:43:16 +0000

NRK (Norwegian state broadcaster) published an article this summer with some more images [0], including of some public figures in Oslo at the time like Henrik Ibsen.

[0] https://www.nrk.no/kultur/xl/carl-stormer_-studenten-som-sni...

New comment by raflemakt in "Heroes of Might and Magic"

raflemakt — Mon, 27 Dec 2021 15:58:50 +0000

When I was about 7 years old I played HoMM 1 and later HoMM 2 with my dad. I didn't have a computer at my mother's house (parents are separated) so I started drawing the different game screens on large A3 and A2 sheets of paper to show it to my schoolmates.

We made character sheets, spell books, skill sheets and an ever expanding world map consisting of over a hundred A4 sheets. We basically invented a DnD-like role play where I was the game master, and it all started with me trying to emulate HoMM.

This epic campaign went on for over six years and had over 30 players, and several other kids made campaigns of their own that became popular as well (there was a "car-world" inspired by Need for Speed, a "Harry Potter-world" that was a strange mix between fantasy and high-tech, and several others).

New comment by raflemakt in "Winamp"

raflemakt — Tue, 23 Nov 2021 18:44:28 +0000

Musicbee is such a great music player/library program. A pity it's not open source and available on Linux.

New comment by raflemakt in "Fundamentals of Piano Practice"

raflemakt — Sun, 31 Oct 2021 08:59:40 +0000

I just had a look at their example (BWV 775) and the first thing I noted was this: Second finger on the Bb in bar 8 makes no sense (there's no reason to not use the thumb there, especially as the following interval is a seventh).

I hope the internet won't become flooded with sheet music that has bad auto-generated fingering, because it's something that you really trust. If I encounter some strange fingering I trust that the composer knew something that I don't that I maybe should work hard to apply to my own technique, obviously this will damage your technique if it's nonsensical.

New comment by raflemakt in "Algorithmic symphonies from one line of code (2011)"

raflemakt — Fri, 17 Sep 2021 10:00:49 +0000

Here's an example to get you started. Compile and run with ./progname | tee /dev/tty | aplay

you can also pipe it into other programs like xxd: ./progname | xxd | tee /dev/tty | aplay

#include

int main()

{

  int t;

  for ( t=0; ; t++ ) putchar( t*((t>>7|t>>13)&73&t>>6) );  
}

New comment by raflemakt in "A search engine that favors text-heavy sites and punishes modern web design"

raflemakt — Fri, 17 Sep 2021 07:08:35 +0000

I tried two searches in Norwegian ("norsk ordbok" [norwegian dictionary] and "stortinget" [the parliament]), and they both returned many extreme or "alternative" websites. It was especially striking that the neo-nazi group Vigrid's website was the top hit for both searches. Maybe these sites just have less modern web design?

New comment by raflemakt in "Biodiversity decline will require millions of years to recover"

raflemakt — Tue, 25 May 2021 19:22:02 +0000

I'm not convinced that the Sun's expansion will be the demise of intelligent life on this planet. If there is a civilization of intelligent beings here ten million years in the future, let alone 100 or 1000, I'm tempted to think it would be trivial for them to A) Move the Earth farther out, or maybe better B) Change the composition of the sun to prolong its life (i.e. remove helium and other heavier elements with... the Sun's own energy).

New comment by raflemakt in "A century ago Ludwig Wittgenstein changed philosophy"

raflemakt — Sun, 23 May 2021 08:01:29 +0000

Christopher Nupen has made an outstanding documentary about Viennese Radicalism portrayed in particular through Wittgenstein and Shoenberg. I can't recommend it enough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRI_ZSh6iF4

New comment by raflemakt in "Floppinux – An Embedded Linux on a Single Floppy"

raflemakt — Sat, 22 May 2021 17:09:59 +0000

That's awesome. I recently ran [ELKS](https://github.com/jbruchon/elks) (Embedded Linux Kernel Subset) on a Toshiba T1200 laptop from 1987 with an 8086 processor. Booting into a unix-like system from a floppy with recently developed software is just surreal.