Hacker News: zackbloom

New comment by zackbloom in "I designed a cube that balances itself on a corner"

zackbloom — Mon, 12 Feb 2024 07:04:47 +0000

What you're forgetting is it absolutely would not work when you first put it together. You would then begin a journey of debugging which would teach you a lot more than any YouTube video ever could.

New comment by zackbloom in "Why and how we retired Elm"

zackbloom — Sat, 08 Apr 2023 19:56:04 +0000

I wonder how you got that TLDR. He literally said they hired a bunch of people only because they did Elm.

New comment by zackbloom in "How the Chick-fil-A Cauliflower Sandwich was created"

zackbloom — Fri, 10 Feb 2023 12:21:01 +0000

There's a very weird asterisk about it not being considered vegetarian. I would understand it not being vegan with the bun and all, but how did they manage to incorporate meat products into a cauliflower sandwhich?

New comment by zackbloom in "‘Confirming we are cleared to land?’ Who said what at Austin"

zackbloom — Wed, 08 Feb 2023 07:57:08 +0000

Just to give a little context as a pilot: It is the job of the tower controller to decide who uses the runway when. There are often multiple planes waiting to take off, and multiple planes nearing the airport to land. It's not uncommon for a tower controller to allow a plane to takeoff while another is approaching the runway. The theory is, of course, that the flight will depart in plenty of time.

In this case, the controller failed to tell the departing flight to hurry (the references to 'no delay' or 'immediate' in the blog post), AND frankly timed things pretty close given the weather. Without the ability to actually see the approaching plane, or perhaps even the plane on the ground, it will probably be found that timing a departure that close at all was reckless. That said, I feel for these tower controllers, it's not common for many planes to get stacked up waiting to depart, and it is their job to get them out. What may have worked just fine on a clear-weather day simply became too dangerous on that day.

The official manual for air traffic controllers in the US is the FAA Order JO 7110.65W [1], if anyone cares to review it.

1 - https://www.faa.gov/documentlibrary/media/order/atc.pdf

New comment by zackbloom in "Why does it feel like Amazon is making itself worse?"

zackbloom — Mon, 30 Jan 2023 18:27:43 +0000

Has anyone actually tried the experiment posed in the article? If I go to Amazon and search 'spatula', I get pretty reasonable results:

- A Kitchenaid spatula for $7.99

- A similar set of two knockoff brand ones for $13.99

- Some editorial recommendations including one from OXO, a wooden option, a fish spatula, etc.

I wonder what weird state the person writing this has on Amazon.com, or maybe it's all hyperbole?

New comment by zackbloom in "Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage"

zackbloom — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 14:31:13 +0000

Unlike the NOTAM outage, a METAR outage will and should actually affect flights. Without weather at your destination it becomes impossible to know if it’s safe to land there. The forecasts (TAF) are actually used more in flight planning, but actual weather is very valuable while enroute, when not close enough to hear weather over the radio from the destination airport.

New comment by zackbloom in "The world of pipe fittings"

zackbloom — Sun, 27 Nov 2022 17:45:00 +0000

I would personally recommend trying TFE paste, rather than Teflon tape. Easier to get a seal, less annoying to tighten.

New comment by zackbloom in "Vast Majority of People Who Invest in Bitcoin Inevitably Lose Money, Study Shows"

zackbloom — Tue, 15 Nov 2022 16:45:56 +0000

I think the title is using the word 'inevitably' where they mean 'eventually' or 'ultimately'. It's not inevitable that people who invest in Bitcoin lose money, for example, they could have changed their mind and sold then next day, making it avoidable. What they mean to say is that most people who invest _end up_ losing money, not that it was unavoidable (the meaning of inevitable).

New comment by zackbloom in "The ethics of reclining airplane seats"

zackbloom — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 15:13:02 +0000

It’s called premium economy and it exists on most major airlines.

New comment by zackbloom in "The ethics of reclining airplane seats"

zackbloom — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 15:11:41 +0000

It’s worth pointing out that the last row on a plane often doesn’t recline, so the idea of everyone reclining is a bit of a red herring. That said, you do know that when you book your flight (if you’re wealthy enough to pay for a specific seat), so it could be considered one of flyings many taxes on the less than wealthy.

New comment by zackbloom in "The Apple II Yellowstone Floppy Interface"

zackbloom — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 17:22:21 +0000

> I went out of my way to feed the Apple ][ video into the luminance pin of an S-Video port for this segment to make the text more readable at the expense of color.

I found this to be the most interesting part of the whole post, I'd love to see a schematic of how that works.

New comment by zackbloom in "A method to promote sleep in crying infants using the transport response [pdf]"

zackbloom — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 05:21:15 +0000

I personally disagree with this. I think that instinct is very meaningful and valid, and most people would be better off co-sleeping with their children rather than teaching them how to be alone more effectively when they’re too young to have done so in the wild.

New comment by zackbloom in "Create an Inexpensive Flying Wing / Drone (2019)"

zackbloom — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 07:22:49 +0000

Even a flat piece of foam will generate lift [1]. The only requirement per se is that the trailing edge of the wing is somewhat sharp. A more optimized shape would allow the plane to fly at a lower angle of attack and would reduce drag, but drag isn’t exactly your problem if your thrust to weight ratio is 2:1.

1- https://www.av8n.com/how/htm/airfoils.html#fig-barn20

New comment by zackbloom in "Iceland’s forest and bush cover has increased sixfold since 1990"

zackbloom — Mon, 18 Jul 2022 20:14:43 +0000

It sounds like you have never actually visited Iceland as a tourist or resident intentionally. It’s a beautiful place, perhaps not best judged on emergency layovers.

New comment by zackbloom in "NPM package event-source-polyfill compromised by political activists"

zackbloom — Sat, 09 Apr 2022 02:49:02 +0000

Sabotage, to me, explicitly means that the act was committed with the intent of derailing the project’s original purpose. This act seems orthogonal to the original intent of the project, so it’s underhanded but it’s not really sabotage.

New comment by zackbloom in "Show HN: It is pants or shorts weather?"

zackbloom — Sun, 27 Mar 2022 20:50:44 +0000

For the record, the 'Feels Like' temp usually takes wind speed into account. It's probably not necessary for the dev to include that factor manually.

For me it showed 79F and sunny as 'pants weather' (my Feels Like temp is 87F), I'm not sure I fully endorse this algorithm.

New comment by zackbloom in "Ask HN: What happened to Clubhouse?"

zackbloom — Sun, 27 Mar 2022 20:47:43 +0000

The most wild thing, to me, is how effectively it has been taken over by scam artists. The other day I tuned into a 'startup pitch' show where the premise is you pitch your company idea to an 'investor'. Unfortunately in practice the investor applauds your idea, and then claims he will 'invest' engineering time worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, but he needs you to 'prove you are serious' by investing tens of thousands of dollars of your own money.

I'm sure after putting up the cash you are handed some janky app worth nothing close to what you paid, much less his supposed investment. While maybe not being illegal, it was incredibly predatory. The 'entrepreneurs' weren't being asked the most basic questions about their business, and were clearly not financially in a place to invest the money he was demanding. Rather than helping them achieve an entrepreneurial dream, he is sucking up the limited money they have (perhaps even inviting them to take on debt) without any real hope of success.

It seems like every channel on Clubhouse is some version of exploitation, whether it's about crypto, your love life, or your money. I don't know how I would moderate that away if I was them, but it seems like the time to do it was several months ago, and now might be too late.

Announcing the Cloudflare API Gateway

zackbloom — Wed, 16 Mar 2022 14:24:56 +0000

Article URL: https://blog.cloudflare.com/api-gateway/?hn

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30699212

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

New comment by zackbloom in "Snowboarding for Geeks: An Ultimate Guide (2018)"

zackbloom — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 16:34:49 +0000

When they say to tuck your head, tuck your head to the side so you roll over your shoulder. Don't just tuck forward so you roll over your neck. Think of it as putting one of your ears on the same shoulder.

New comment by zackbloom in "DYMO's new label printer uses RFID tags to prevent the use of non-OEM paper"

zackbloom — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 02:48:11 +0000

If you’re thinking of buying a Dymo, just get a refurbished Zebra printer. They’re actually meant for commercial use and don’t have any of these issues.