Hacker News: tape_measure

New comment by tape_measure in "Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license"

tape_measure — Thu, 07 May 2026 03:50:26 +0000

Cool! Other examples of this are Apple and Ford. https://developer.apple.com/accessories/Accessory-Design-Gui... https://www.ford.com/support/how-tos/owner-resources/vehicle...

New comment by tape_measure in "Boris Cherny's favorite hidden and under-utilized features in Claude Code"

tape_measure — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 05:08:16 +0000

Original source: https://x.com/bcherny/status/2038454336355999749

His use of the /loop tool reminds me of Gastown.

New comment by tape_measure in "Voyager 1 runs on 69 KB of memory and an 8-track tape recorder"

tape_measure — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 21:11:18 +0000

Seems that both of these articles are written by LLMs.

New comment by tape_measure in "Waymo robotaxi hits a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica"

tape_measure — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 04:43:14 +0000

"Waymo Driver" is their term for their self driving software.

New comment by tape_measure in "When Kitty Litter Caused a Nuclear Catastrophe"

tape_measure — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 22:47:53 +0000

I'm submitting this based on the current top item "North Dakota law lists fake critical minerals based on coal lawyers' names" [0].

This accident was traced to a manager transcribing "inorganic absorbent" as "an organic absorbent". A more serious example of the need to have competent people with domain knowledge in the room and empowered when documents are written.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46492161

When Kitty Litter Caused a Nuclear Catastrophe

tape_measure — Sun, 04 Jan 2026 22:47:53 +0000

Article URL: https://practical.engineering/blog/2025/4/15/when-kitty-litter-caused-a-nuclear-catastrophe

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46493199

Points: 134

# Comments: 88

New comment by tape_measure in "Cadmium Zinc Telluride: The wonder material powering a medical 'revolution'"

tape_measure — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 07:35:31 +0000

In fact, your comment is a factoid (in your meaning or the other replies' interpretation)

New comment by tape_measure in "GPT-5 leaked system prompt?"

tape_measure — Fri, 08 Aug 2025 04:43:27 +0000

WORDS IN CAPS are different tokens than lowercase, so maybe the lowercase tokens tie into more trained parts of the manifold.

New comment by tape_measure in "Starlink Gets FAA Contract"

tape_measure — Wed, 26 Feb 2025 06:20:00 +0000

Interesting how the article only quotes part of the statement, leaving out "the FAA has been considering the use of Starlink since the prior administration to increase reliability at remote sites, including in Alaska".

New comment by tape_measure in "History of CAD – David Weisberg"

tape_measure — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 04:56:55 +0000

I'll have to work through the 650 pages.

I use CATIA v5 every day, first released in 1998. It's sharp and crusty and huge, but does everything (with the right license).

New comment by tape_measure in "Show HN: Periodic Table and Wordle = Elemendle"

tape_measure — Sat, 18 Jan 2025 05:46:07 +0000

3 guesses! It would be fun to have other properties like melting point as hints.

New comment by tape_measure in "Google URL Shortener Shutdowns This Year"

tape_measure — Sat, 04 Jan 2025 08:19:32 +0000

Now this is viral marketing...

New comment by tape_measure in "The trailing dot in domain names matter"

tape_measure — Sat, 02 Nov 2024 07:43:58 +0000

Adding this dot used to be a way to bypass the paywall on nytimes.com. It's been fixed in the last 2 years or so.

New comment by tape_measure in "An idea to make EV charging like refueling"

tape_measure — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 05:08:48 +0000

You might lookup redox flow batteries.

New comment by tape_measure in "US Trademark Office Cancels Marvel, DC's 'Super Hero' Marks"

tape_measure — Sat, 28 Sep 2024 05:49:14 +0000

Interesting points from https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/myvmamnnavr/...

5. In 1980—decades after the birth of super heroes—DC and Marvel jointly registered SUPER HEROES as a trademark.

6. DC and Marvel claim that no one can use the term SUPER HERO (or superhero, super-hero, or any other version of the term) without their permission. DC and Marvel are wrong. Trademark law does not permit companies to claim ownership over an entire genre. SUPER HERO is a generic term that should not be protected as a trademark.

7. Trademark law also does not allow competitors to claim joint ownership over a single mark. The purpose of a trademark is to identify a single source of goods and services.

20. DC has accused Superbabies of infringing DC’s “SUPER”-related trademarks, has filed an opposition to Superbabies’ trademark applications (TTAB Trademark Opposition No. 91290757), and has threatened further legal action. DC has asserted the exclusive right to use “the prefix SUPER followed by a generic term for a human being."

There's also some examples of SUPER HERO used as a generic term by DC and Marvel. I know of some companies being famously strict about trademark use (example https://www.velcro.com/original-thinking/the-velcro-brand-tr...), and yet these uses seem benign. For example, a splash at the top of a comic book "DCs BOLDEST new super-hero" (without TM, with dash). Now I have to be careful about using any of my company's trademarks. I'm not sure I fully understand how this example is generic and harmful.

New comment by tape_measure in "Digital Twin Services for Battery Tech"

tape_measure — Sat, 28 Sep 2024 05:34:20 +0000

This is AI generated slop. Please remove.

New comment by tape_measure in "Ask HN: Any hardware startups here?"

tape_measure — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 06:26:57 +0000

I'm very interested in anything else you can share about the corrosion problem you solved. Wet, hot ammonia must be awful.

New comment by tape_measure in "Atlassian to shed 5 per cent of workers"

tape_measure — Tue, 07 Mar 2023 05:33:07 +0000

I like Jira. I'm not a SWE, different kind of engineer.

New comment by tape_measure in "Burning Kelp for War"

tape_measure — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 08:35:19 +0000

Metal carbonates are generally not considered organic.

New comment by tape_measure in "Burning Kelp for War"

tape_measure — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 07:38:06 +0000

"... potash, an organic compound..." - immediate Gell-Mann amnesia effect. Potash is the soluble, inorganic leftovers of burnt plant matter.

What's interesting is how many different names derive from this production method. - potassium from "potash" (pot ash, collected burnt stuff) - K from "kalium", related to calcine (burn to ashes) - Alkali for basic compounds, which nearly all soluble metal oxides are - Calcium and Ca also derive from this root

(now let me check all of this so I don't Gell-Mann myself)