Hacker News: stevenwoo

New comment by stevenwoo in "Discovery of a multicomponent alloy forged by the Hiroshima atomic blast"

stevenwoo — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 04:34:22 +0000

IIRC in “Surely You’re Joking Mr Feynman” he recalls being asked during Manhattan Project (?) for ideas to commercialize atomic energy and they patented whatever the scientists brainstormed up.

New comment by stevenwoo in "U.S. used 'virtually all' of its long-range precision missiles during Iran war"

stevenwoo — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 23:34:20 +0000

The argument echoes similar speculation about the USA's 20 years in Vietnam, the "military was held back" despite killing more than a million southeast Asians in the attempt.

New comment by stevenwoo in "The Silicon Valley Founder Meat Grinder"

stevenwoo — Sat, 01 Aug 2026 21:55:31 +0000

Re: sausage party - Based on the salary of these guys, if they wanted they could easily afford nightly visits at something like the now closed strip club, the Mitchell Brothers theater in San Francisco. I went for a bachelor party in early 2000s, and every dancer who got close enough to have a conversation with you propositioned you with sex acts for a price in a private room. I worked at a startup in Houston in the early 1990s and the founder went to strip clubs it seemed every time he was in town, he took the whole company one time (it was less than 20 of us) and that strip club seemed to work on a similar if less brazen vibe. The other startups I’ve worked for did not have strip club trips. :)

New comment by stevenwoo in "'Everywhere there were pitifully injured people':how a newly unearthed memoir '"

stevenwoo — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 20:07:04 +0000

One of the sources for John Hersey’s book Hiroshima is being published as a separate book. The daughter of the writer of the book survived in the ruins of the church seen in some of the photos of the aftermath.

'Everywhere there were pitifully injured people':how a newly unearthed memoir '

stevenwoo — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 20:03:55 +0000

Article URL: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/25/hiroshima-memoir-kiyoshi-tanimoto-day-atomic-bomb-fell-exclusive-extract

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49127947

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

New comment by stevenwoo in "A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return"

stevenwoo — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 04:14:27 +0000

That is what the one expert quoted said but others thought it might still come back over a longer time period - I interpreted it to mean that method as being more accurate than the one season refill rate.

New comment by stevenwoo in "A California aquifer may have crossed the point of no return"

stevenwoo — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 04:11:19 +0000

Toward the end it briefly discusses a possible solution - expensive injection of water into aquifers that might have the side effect of triggering earthquakes like fracking for petroleum or some types of geothermal - there’s no winning.

New comment by stevenwoo in "So you want to use plants to reduce CO₂"

stevenwoo — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 21:24:05 +0000

It can also cause adaptations to go haywire like temperature dependent sex determination where the ratio of male to females in eggs is set by ambient temperatures, skewing breeding population gender too much in one direction.

New comment by stevenwoo in "Physicists Solve a Muon Mystery. Now, Old Results Don't Add Up"

stevenwoo — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 19:42:08 +0000

For those unaware - the most famous experiment to measure this(both high school and university physics classes have drilled this into my brain): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_exper... a long history of experiments failing to find evidence of an ether https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_special_relativity

New comment by stevenwoo in "The Fabled Flatbreads of Uzbekistan (2015)"

stevenwoo — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 05:57:43 +0000

I have the same experience with eggplant. I wonder if this is one of those tiny taste differences that is some sort of genetic/epigenetic in origin (not quite supertaster but atypical) since there’s several different experiences expressed here about eggplant. For instance, cantaloupe always tastes a bit rotten to me - even when tasting the same fresh cut fruit with friends and family it is pleasant for them and not for me.

New comment by stevenwoo in "Why a Ukrainian cruise missile is flying with hobby drone hardware"

stevenwoo — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:50:50 +0000

Good points - it does point a way for other actors like Iran or Russia under sanctions though they could be doing it already since those two are pretty close lipped and Ukraine is relatively open about its methods by comparison.

New comment by stevenwoo in "Hunter-gatherers introduced fish to a mountain lake 7000 years ago"

stevenwoo — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:47:34 +0000

In this case they have carbon dated wooden equipment for fish farming and know due to geological factors when the lake could support fish, though of course the fish might have gotten there first somehow. I thought this was interesting because it predates agriculture in the same area.

New comment by stevenwoo in "Why a Ukrainian cruise missile is flying with hobby drone hardware"

stevenwoo — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 01:12:05 +0000

Just from the specs in second paragraph - did they just build a better and cheaper alternative to Tomahawk missiles?

Why a Ukrainian cruise missile is flying with hobby drone hardware

stevenwoo — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 01:10:57 +0000

Article URL: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2580002-why-a-ukrainian-cruise-missile-is-flying-with-hobby-drone-hardware/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49064061

Points: 8

# Comments: 3

Hunter-gatherers introduced fish to a mountain lake 7000 years ago

stevenwoo — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 00:58:45 +0000

Article URL: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2580119-hunter-gatherers-introduced-fish-to-a-mountain-lake-7000-years-ago/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49063983

Points: 160

# Comments: 119

New comment by stevenwoo in "Silicon Valley has a science fiction problem"

stevenwoo — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 00:41:03 +0000

I take a little solace in the certainty he didn’t comprehend those books very much at all considering how fluid human sexuality is in the series - although it’s possible he somehow sympathized with one of the AI factions instead of the human characters.

New comment by stevenwoo in "Country went 100% electric vehicles overnight with a drastic approach"

stevenwoo — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 20:24:18 +0000

The car market seems tiny in Laos and Ethiopia (the other nation noted in the comments with a similar ban). It doesn’t seem large enough for an in country industry (maybe one factory if that) if this data is accurate and sales trends continued. https://laotiantimes.com/2023/06/06/laos-imports-over-80000-...

New comment by stevenwoo in "So Reddit has decided that plain HTML is unsafe"

stevenwoo — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 20:03:06 +0000

What I meant was I was permanently banned so I can still login and get notifications of responses to my commments, just could not vote or change any of my subscriptions.

New comment by stevenwoo in "The White House Report on Revitalizing U.S. Scientific Leadership"

stevenwoo — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 19:56:02 +0000

It was really bothering me that this guy was upset about the American research funding model up to 2024 - what is he doing about Canadian research?!

New comment by stevenwoo in "The White House Report on Revitalizing U.S. Scientific Leadership"

stevenwoo — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 19:51:02 +0000

To take what is an official pronouncement from the White House as a semblance of truth is a political stance as indicated by all actions heretofore by said administration being exposed as rationalizations for desired outcome. Maybe next time if they have so many ideas, write out a coherent alternative plan that some future administration could implement instead of jumping on this bandwagon with “individualism good”. This guy may be much smarter than me but he didn’t read it, the testimony in front of Congress was more revealing yesterday, too. The report mainly wants to increase funding for AI and decrease biology and medical research, the pesky stuff that can point out basic truths that might contradict doctrine - he was intentionally vague when giving testimony. Research funding could have been reformed but this is not it, the report reads more like something Thiel would have approved.