Hacker News: rbanffy

The Polycorp Poly 1. New Zealand's school computer

rbanffy — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 20:56:51 +0000

Article URL: https://www.classic-computers.org.nz/collection/poly1.htm

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47733964

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

The Infinity Man – The Chip Letter

rbanffy — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 18:22:28 +0000

Article URL: https://thechipletter.substack.com/p/the-infinity-man

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47732810

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Leveraging an Asteroid's Early Data for Faster Mars Transits

rbanffy — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 17:27:27 +0000

Article URL: https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202510.0450/v1

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47732339

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

Macframe – IBM Mainframe Emulator for macOS

rbanffy — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 15:58:58 +0000

Article URL: https://github.com/vitorallo/macframe-releases

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47731667

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

The Structure of the Puma Computer System [pdf]

rbanffy — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 15:27:05 +0000

Article URL: https://softwarepreservation.computerhistory.org/SETL/setl/doc/Grishman-Structure_of_Puma-1978.pdf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47731416

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Bulldog: A compiler for VLIW architectures [pdf]

rbanffy — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 15:22:35 +0000

Article URL: https://www.cs.yale.edu/publications/techreports/tr364.pdf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47731378

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

Long Instruction Word architectures and the ELI-512

rbanffy — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 15:04:31 +0000

Article URL: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/800046.801649

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47731254

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

State Dept. Directive Signals Shift from Counter-Disinfo to Cognitive Warfare

rbanffy — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 14:55:22 +0000

Article URL: https://weaponizedspaces.substack.com/p/state-dept-directive-signals-shift

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47731177

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

New comment by rbanffy in "Filing the corners off my MacBooks"

rbanffy — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 14:37:23 +0000

As it is with any box, there is only so much material you can remove from the corners before it disintegrates into disconnected surfaces.

New comment by rbanffy in "Artemis II is competency porn"

rbanffy — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 14:35:07 +0000

I actually like the new one better, but that's not saying I like either.

I would just love if my workplace let me use the normal Apple apps, but there are regulatory constrains Apple tools don't meet (such as spying on me to prevent data exfil)

New comment by rbanffy in "Artemis II is competency porn"

rbanffy — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 14:33:08 +0000

> I don't understand how the coupling between Orion and Falcon Heavy would be done (can't just put it inside the fairing).

A mechanical coupling is not that difficult to design. There needs to be no communication between FH and Orion for this use case. It could be mounted with the shield on top to simplify the mechanism. Separation could be purely mechanical, with springs.

> I also don't understand how you plan to re-light the engines on the 3 falcon cores for a second burn (required for the delta-v you propose) and the fuel economics.

Reignite only the second stage. Instead of putting the payload in orbit, put it on a suborbital trajectory with a high apogee, then boost down to hit the atmosphere at the desired speed and angle.

> I also don't understand the trajectory you envision. Even if you could re-light the FH engines and couple Orion to it, I don't understand how you would get the re-entry angle correct.

You have the delta-v - just use it in the right orientation. An Orion is lighter than the payload to LEO of the FH, so there will be a lot of propellant for the boost up and the boost down.

> Regarding the mass simulator, it's not clear by your description how the shields would be tested in that scenario.

The shield doesn't care what's inside the Orion - it cares about mass. You might need some attitude control (you can use flywheels) and parachutes if you want to recover anything, but all the rest is optional.

New comment by rbanffy in "Artemis II is competency porn"

rbanffy — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 12:49:03 +0000

It can carry an Orion capsule to a suborbital trajectory and achieve the same reentry speeds the capsule experiences returning from the Moon. The trick is doing a second burn pointing down. If you don't use an actual Orion but just a mass simulator, you can even do some very off-nominal reentries to test limits.

There is ample delta-v for that.

New comment by rbanffy in "Filing the corners off my MacBooks"

rbanffy — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 12:43:27 +0000

Thank you. I'll check as soon as I can. I remember having asked that in the Ask Different Stack Exchange forum, but I couldn't even find my question.

New comment by rbanffy in "Artemis II is competency porn"

rbanffy — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 11:01:34 +0000

They might have found a way of having two versions of Outlook and at least one of them working.

A lot of it is relearning what was forgotten after the Apollo and shuttle programs. The technologies changed so much it’s a whole new spacecraft that looks like what existed only because that’s the best possible shape.

New comment by rbanffy in "Artemis II is competency porn"

rbanffy — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 11:00:28 +0000

That NASA’s budget is so influenced by politics is why they can’t take the rapid iteration process of SpaceX - NASA can never fail in public. Any failure (even launch delays, as happened with Challenger) gets blown out of proportion and fuels the risk of further budget cuts, which push them to a “safer”, incremental, but very costly process of refining what is already proven rather than researching the less proven technology.

New comment by rbanffy in "Artemis II is competency porn"

rbanffy — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 10:55:02 +0000

I will still wait for the heat shield analysis. Doing a crewed flight was not what I would have done - I’d use a Falcon Heavy to put one or more dummies through different trajectories to make sure we have enough experimental data to extensively model the shield behaviour, especially in non-nominal entries.

New comment by rbanffy in "Filing the corners off my MacBooks"

rbanffy — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 10:49:12 +0000

My only complaint is with the EN-international keyboard my company prefers - there is no way to reverse the tilde key position back to the same place next to 1 on the US keyboard. The OS knows what keyboard the laptop has and refuses to change it.

New comment by rbanffy in "Filing the corners off my MacBooks"

rbanffy — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 10:42:49 +0000

Reversing step 1 will be the real tricky part.

New comment by rbanffy in "Filing the corners off my MacBooks"

rbanffy — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 10:39:20 +0000

I strongly suspect 3 is correct - removing material from the corners might weaken the structure.

I would use a CNC machine to round them more precisely and uniformly though.

New comment by rbanffy in "Filing the corners off my MacBooks"

rbanffy — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 10:36:00 +0000

I would love to see a Unibody polished to a mirror finish. Would be a perfect match for Queen Amidala’s shuttle.