Hacker News: urban_winter

New comment by urban_winter in "Amazon holds engineering meeting following AI-related outages"

urban_winter — Tue, 10 Mar 2026 07:11:53 +0000

https://archive.ph/wXvF3

New comment by urban_winter in "Human brain cells on a chip learned to play Doom in a week"

urban_winter — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 06:50:55 +0000

https://archive.ph/GzT9E

Human brain cells on a chip learned to play Doom in a week

urban_winter — Sat, 28 Feb 2026 07:42:38 +0000

Article URL: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2517389-human-brain-cells-on-a-chip-learned-to-play-doom-in-a-week/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47191818

Points: 11

# Comments: 3

New comment by urban_winter in "Eat Real Food"

urban_winter — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 07:09:25 +0000

> and people strongly prefer the taste and texture.

...and _people in the USA_ strongly prefer...

Although, I don't know how solid the evidence for even that statement is.

New comment by urban_winter in "The JetBlue A320 Mid-Air Flight Control Issue: What We Know So Far"

urban_winter — Sat, 29 Nov 2025 09:50:06 +0000

I am puzzled that the media is widely reporting that the issue was caused by solar radiation, and that the immediate fix is to revert to the previous version of software for the ELAC (Elevator Aileron Computer). The only explanation that seems to fit with the narrative is that the newer version of software has weaker memory integrity checks than the older version - which seems unlikely.

e.g. "For the majority of affected jets, Airbus prescribed a software rollback to a previous, stable version" - from https://www.wionews.com/photos/-pitched-downward-on-its-own-...

The JetBlue A320 Mid-Air Flight Control Issue: What We Know So Far

urban_winter — Sat, 29 Nov 2025 09:41:28 +0000

Article URL: https://theaviationbrief.com/jetblue-a320-mid-air-flight-control-issue/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46086305

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

New comment by urban_winter in "Four strange places to see London's Roman Wall"

urban_winter — Wed, 12 Nov 2025 07:21:38 +0000

If you're in the vicinity of the road called London Wall (where the car park referenced in the article is) then it's only a short walk to London's Roman amphitheatre [1]. It doesn't seem to be very well known but is quite impressive. It's one of very many bits of Roman history entombed in basements of London buildings.

The Merrill Lynch Financial Centre also has a big chunk of Roman stuff in the basement - but there's no public access and no access to the walkway around the ruins even if you're an employee.

[1] https://www.thecityofldn.com/directory/londons-roman-amphith...

New comment by urban_winter in "[dead]"

urban_winter — Fri, 19 Sep 2025 06:15:37 +0000

You don't need a removable wheel to sharpen a pizza cutter on a stone. That's actually pretty clear from the video showing the sharpening of the removed wheel - the fact they the wheel is not in the handle isn't material to the sharpening action.

Pizza cutters wear out by deformation of the hole in the middle of the wheel (in my experience). I have thought of hacking one to fit bearings, just for the joy of having something that is properly engineered.

New comment by urban_winter in "WiFi signals can measure heart rate"

urban_winter — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 13:00:25 +0000

The dominant themes in the thread relate to using existing WiFi infrastructure in real world environments. I thought it would be obvious that I was critiquing this line of thinking. Obviously not.

New comment by urban_winter in "WiFi signals can measure heart rate"

urban_winter — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 06:20:13 +0000

This is just a dedicated RF emitter combined with a dedicated receiver. The fact that is it uses WiFi hardware is probably just because that's the cheapest and most available hardware for the researcher to work with. There is no indication in the article that the WiFi can actually be used for transmitting real data at the same time; that a non-dedicated WiFi source can be used; that it works when there are many people between transmitter and receiver.

Therefore the ideas that this might apply to real-world situations and use existing WiFi infrastructure, are a stretch given the information that's been shared.

It basically doesn't seem like a big deal to demonstrate what has been demonstrated.

New comment by urban_winter in "French firm Gouach is pitching an Infinite Battery with replaceable cells"

urban_winter — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 06:26:59 +0000

> You'd be surprised by how many amateur cyclists ride more than that each year.

You wouldn't.

As an 8k km/yr cyclist with a lot of cycling friends, I can tell you that 12.5k/yr is extremely high for an amateur. Sure, there are some, but a truly tiny proportion.

8k/year eats bikes, BTW. I used to wear out rims regularly before I switched to disks and chains/sprockets didn't even last a year (on a fixed gear bike).

New comment by urban_winter in "Project Hyperion: Interstellar ship design competition"

urban_winter — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 06:17:04 +0000

Yes.

Are you confusing "adventurer" and "explorer"? There are plenty of contemporary adventurers (motivated by ego, fame, personal achievement) but explorers? Not so much.

New comment by urban_winter in "The benefits of trunk-based development"

urban_winter — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 06:15:50 +0000

The idea that you can apply lower-quality engineering practices in some systems is totally wrong, I think. Good engineering practices will help you retain good developers, will allow you to maintain a sustainable development pace and will prevent you annoying your users so much that they stop using your system. I can't imagine any commercial project where this doesn't matter.

Isn't this just another representation of the fallacy that it's possible to deliver faster by cutting quality? That's the kind of thing I expect to hear from ignorant stakeholders who know nothing about developing software, not on HN.

New comment by urban_winter in "The benefits of trunk-based development"

urban_winter — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 06:08:14 +0000

Our team has thorough, high quality, automated tests. In the past 5 years we have never released such a badly broken system that emergency remedial work was required. We still don't release on Fridays. It's just common sense, risk management and (most importantly) respect for the developers home and family time.

New comment by urban_winter in "Show HN: Ten years of running every day, visualized"

urban_winter — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 06:06:58 +0000

I am a runner. I had proper flu this year for the first time. I have never been that ill ever before. I could not even get upstairs to bed one night when I was at my worst.

New comment by urban_winter in "Merlin Bird ID"

urban_winter — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 06:07:16 +0000

Fantastic app. My wife and I are gradually becoming able to recognise more and more birds by their call. This is great because the human ear is better than the app at rejecting environmental noise - so we can spot birds by their call even close to a noisy road when the app cannot.

The app, at least on my Pixel 6, struggles with very high frequency calls - e.g. long-tailed tits.

My best spot yet? A nightingale in Wimbledon.

New comment by urban_winter in "Bayesian yacht sinking preliminary report [pdf]"

urban_winter — Thu, 15 May 2025 08:01:57 +0000

The preliminary report seems to suggest that the yacht's construction was at fault.

I don't understand the following: "The study indicated that if the wind was blowing directly onto Bayesian’s beam and the yacht was in the ‘motoring’ condition, a gusting wind speed in excess of 63.4kts would likely result in the vessel capsizing"

...but it didn't capsize - it sank (due to water coming down the main stairs, reading between the lines of the report).

The angle of vanishing stability, in the configuration in which it sank, was estimated as 70 degrees - and the videos I saw seemed to show it blown further over than that.

Anyway, the report makes an interesting read (as do all the MAIB incident reports - they are addictive reading if you're interested in boats).

Bayesian yacht sinking preliminary report [pdf]

urban_winter — Thu, 15 May 2025 06:18:12 +0000

Article URL: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6821ea1aced319d02c9060f2/2025-Bayesian-InterimReport.pdf

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43992312

Points: 5

# Comments: 1

New comment by urban_winter in "Virginia passes law to enforce maximum vehicle speeds for repeat speeders"

urban_winter — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 06:43:32 +0000

My 5-year-old Volvo reports 73-74 mph when GPS tells me that I'm exactly at 70mph. Similarly 21 mph when GPS says 20.

New comment by urban_winter in "Train and Weather Tracker with Raspberry Pi and E-Ink"

urban_winter — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 06:18:37 +0000

I built something like this. I am amused that mine too was built for my wife and also was one of the few techie things I've ever done that received unqualified spousal approval.

Mine shows weather and tide times at my wife's rowing club. It has the form-factor of a large fridge magnet. This led to the need to be battery powered and therefore very frugal with power - so a RPi wasn't feasible. It uses an ESP32. The data itself is collated by an AWS lambda.