Hacker News: ridgeguy

New comment by ridgeguy in "How to earn a billion dollars"

ridgeguy — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 15:06:49 +0000

Maybe the taxpayers who pay for those expensive sports arenas + the tax breaks that frequently shelter their owners/operators?

New comment by ridgeguy in "Electric motors with no rare earths"

ridgeguy — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 08:12:42 +0000

"Rocket Manual for Amateurs" was my favorite book after I found it in 8th grade. In high school I had a chem teacher who would give me chemicals so I could experiment with what I'd read. A great book for budding Raketenkinder.

New comment by ridgeguy in "Electric motors with no rare earths"

ridgeguy — Sat, 13 Jun 2026 08:07:34 +0000

Teflon.

New comment by ridgeguy in "Shall we play a game? – LLMs use tactical nukes in 95% of simulations"

ridgeguy — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 21:28:01 +0000

I wonder if the results would have differed if LLM training data were biased to include a stronger correlation between use of nukes and subsequent collapse of technology that all LLMs require to run ("survive")?

New comment by ridgeguy in "How JPL keeps the 13-year-old Curiosity rover doing science"

ridgeguy — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 02:49:12 +0000

I suspect there are substantial numbers of us in our 70's+ who would volunteer. Why not go out having made an amazing contribution?

New comment by ridgeguy in "BambuStudio has been violating PrusaSlicer AGPL license since their fork"

ridgeguy — Sat, 23 May 2026 20:01:55 +0000

This is an issue for me and my company.

I'm building a prototype chemical vapor deposition system in a space with strong Chinese interest and activity. I picked Prusa 3D machines over Bambu because of the potential for losing critical proprietary IP with Bambu. Can't take the chance.

New comment by ridgeguy in "How diamonds are made"

ridgeguy — Mon, 18 May 2026 14:25:46 +0000

Unknown at present (nobody sells diamond sandpaper yet that I know of), but not likely. Diamond is as bioinert as gold, fluorocarbons, and similar materials in not provoking inflammatory responses when implanted in tissue. Your point about unexpected behavior of dust is a good one. AFAIK, the worst dust hazards (aside from outright chemical or radiological toxicity) are from spiky, acicular particles like asbestos. Diamond dust is either well-formed small crystals or blocky fragments, depending on how it's made. It doesn't exist in needle-like forms that trigger pathological responses from otherwise nontoxic materials.

New comment by ridgeguy in "Two EA-18 fighter jets collide at Mountain Home airshow, pilots ejected safely"

ridgeguy — Mon, 18 May 2026 00:55:08 +0000

One has to be trained to do it, the untrained tendency is to wait too long. There's a USAF film on Youtube titled "Ejection Decision" that discusses this and shows how little time there is to make that choice.

New comment by ridgeguy in "How diamonds are made"

ridgeguy — Sun, 17 May 2026 17:49:07 +0000

De Beers built and has abandoned a very large CVD gem diamond synthesis in Oregon. This was their LightBox operation. They've transferred it to Element Six to rid the parent (De Beers) of the money sink, probably as a touch-up before a sale.

There was a fire sale of LightBox diamonds a few months back. I picked up 3 diamonds, all brilliant cut: 3ct. white, 2ct. pink, 2ct. blue. Total for the three was $600.

New comment by ridgeguy in "How diamonds are made"

ridgeguy — Sun, 17 May 2026 17:39:23 +0000

De Beers sells devices that can distinguish between naturals and CVD synthetics. They're not cheap, but less than ~$80K, IIRC. They do a pretty good job, I've heard >90% success in identifying CVD stones.

New comment by ridgeguy in "How diamonds are made"

ridgeguy — Sun, 17 May 2026 17:31:57 +0000

Diamond grit for polishing and grinding is now a cheap commodity. In 10,000 ct. lots, I pay from 5¢/ct. to 30¢/ct. depending on specific grit properties. I haven't searched for it, but diamond sandpaper should be a thing at these prices.

New comment by ridgeguy in "Accelerando (2005)"

ridgeguy — Sat, 16 May 2026 14:04:14 +0000

Perhaps this is an early indicator.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/13/utah-approve...

New comment by ridgeguy in "Details of the Daring Airdrop at Tristan Da Cunha"

ridgeguy — Fri, 15 May 2026 16:43:51 +0000

The helmet cam video gave me a sense of just how difficult such operations are. I'm grateful we have people who will accept such assignments.

New comment by ridgeguy in "A.I. note takers are making lawyers nervous"

ridgeguy — Mon, 11 May 2026 20:31:51 +0000

We turn off the AI note taker for the legal liabilities discussed in the NYT article. But we've also found its accuracy bad enough to warrant kicking it out, independent of legal issues. We have simultaneous participants from USA, India, France, Israel, and Estonia. Some have heavy accents (English is the meeting language). No problem for the humans, but the AI just can't cope (yet).

New comment by ridgeguy in "SpaceX wants to launch a million satellites"

ridgeguy — Sun, 10 May 2026 21:34:09 +0000

Arthur C. Clarke beat them to it - the thought, at least.

Watch This Space - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_to_the_Moon

New comment by ridgeguy in "iOS 27 is adding a 'Create a Pass' button to Apple Wallet"

ridgeguy — Tue, 05 May 2026 16:51:54 +0000

Also, fine motor coordination often declines with age. Can make it hard to do a swipe or hit a key reliably in the first try.

New comment by ridgeguy in "LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash"

ridgeguy — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 20:59:25 +0000

Analyze staffing, not budget. That gets more directly at workload.

New comment by ridgeguy in "LaGuardia pilots raised safety alarms months before deadly runway crash"

ridgeguy — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 20:54:54 +0000

No expert here, low-time GA decades ago. I regard these incidents as aspects of the universal race to the economic bottom.

The workloads are too high. Nobody running life-critical operations should be working 60+ hour weeks and overnight shifts. We've known for decades how these practices increase errors. One effective answer is to dilute the workload by hiring more people. But this slows the race to lower costs, so it isn't done. We need to spend more on people.

New comment by ridgeguy in "The Sling: Humanity's Forgotten Power"

ridgeguy — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 19:58:45 +0000

Perhaps to some degree, kids recapitulate in their childhoods the weapons evolution of their homo sapiens forebears.

Around age 4, I learned how to flake spear points from a local flint deposit. That, string and Elmer's glue from mom & dad's repair goodies got me into the spear biz. Band-Aids were in demand.

A couple years later, I'd made arrows and single curve bows from pine branches and bowstring from braided water rushes. Flint knapping scaled down well to arrowheads and string+glue still worked.

Then I read about atlatls, and found new interest in my spears. Finally, I discovered slings, and there was no going back. I got good enough that in later life, I had no trouble crediting scientific studies that proposed early humans brought down a great range of game species with slings.

Alaska was a great place to be a kid.

New comment by ridgeguy in "America has a tungsten problem"

ridgeguy — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:56:26 +0000

Caught my eye due to family events. One of my uncles was killed in the Pine Creek mine in California. He was repairing an ore crusher when somebody switched it on. Pre-OSHA and tagout days.

I doubt we'll be pinched by tungsten shortages. The fusion application isn't going to come on for at least two decades. Smaller apps will be met by known reserves.

That said, it is a cool material. Looking for aluminum bars at Alan Steel (CA) years back, I was stunned when I tried (and failed) to pick up a 12" long by 6"diameter piece of what turned out to be tungsten misfiled in the aluminum section. Density, thy name is tungsten.