dredmorbius
Joined 15 years ago
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Recent submissions
Comment · 1 month ago
A hypothesis I'd seen (from the "aliens" guy, Abraham "Avi" Loeb, at Harvard) is that early in the evolution of the Universe everything was roughly in the Goldilocks zone (warm enough for liquid water, not so hot as to generate steam, not so cold as to result in ice), and ... more dense. If life more-or-less inevitably arises under such circumstances, then there's some credence to the argument that life might have arisen in many parts of the Universe, potentially hybernating in some sort of spore / inactive form, until rocky planets arose later. But we have no specific proof of this, and it seems strongly plausible that life could instead have arisen independently on individual planets and/or moons.
See this thread: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37850997>.
From which:
Kurzgesagt did a video on the concept: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOiGEI9pQBs>.
Avi Loeb, "The habitable epoch of the early Universe". International Journal of Astrobiology, vol. 13, 4."
<https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journa...>
Comment · 1 month ago
There are similar long coated-wire ties used for gardening.
Zip-ties, velcro, and twine (all suggested previously) also work well.
Comment · 1 month ago
All that's old is new again.
Steve Blanks' "Secret History of Silicon Valley" details the emergence of that tech hub beginning with WWII and the "radiation lab", which helped develop radar.
<https://steveblank.com/2009/03/23/if-i-told-you-i%E2%80%99d-...>
Quite a few HN submissions over the years: <https://hn.algolia.com/?q=secret%20history%20of%20silicon%20...>.
Those of us who can remember the 1980s / early 1990s, prior to the defence build-down following the end of the Cold War might recall quite a few defence-related establishments in and around Silicon Valley, in its original scope centred on Santa Clara County and the Santa Clara - Palo Alto region.
Comment · 1 month ago
Today that role (strongly discouraging grouped formations) has been occupied by drones.
The current UA/RU front is a 30km deep kill zone crossed by FPV craft (and discarded optic fibre cables) in which the largest effective group size might be four or so soldiers. Tanks are all but useless as sitting ducks.
Reuters made a surprisingly good infographic / interactive feature on this this past July:
<https://www.reuters.com/graphics/UKRAINE-CRISIS/KILL-ZONE/zn...>
Comment · 1 month ago
"Throw unlimited resources at a development target" has been an established F/OSS embrace/extend tactic for at least 20 years.
Red Hat, systemd, Chrome, Webkit, Android, and a few others come to mind. Others might include Kubernetes, OpenJDK, Clang, React, Docker, Git/Github.
Forks are possible but sustained forks are expensive, and <https://xkcd.com/927/> is always relevant.
It's helpful to note that the guy who literally wrote the textbook on lock-in went on to have a career as Google's chief economist: Hal Varian, Information Rules.
Comment · 1 month ago
What doesn't work is posting a link to a specific Nitter instance with the expectation that that link will persist.
Which is what HN has been doing for Twitter submissions for approximately two years:
<https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...>
Those links are all now dead.
Comment · 2 months ago
Yes, and yes.
Comment · 2 months ago
I don't know what your definition of "fine" is, but Nitter and XCancel received C&Ds three days ago:
<https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/issues/1442>
HN: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49437283>
From HN's PoV, the issue is that there aren't well-known workarounds which can be used for X.com / Twitter.com submissions. HN's principle concern is more that any discussion on such posts will largely revolve around the regwall / paywall, which doesn't advance HN's own prime directive: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27901918>
Comment · 2 months ago
ChrisArchitect is pretty good at distinguishing between when a discussion is a dupe and when it is related.
Their comment history makes this clear.
Comment · 2 months ago
I've emailed HN's mods requesting Twitter/X links be site-banned as hard-paywalled, given that Nitter and XCancel had also just received C&Ds (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49437283>).
Comment · 2 months ago
My understanding is that HN views these as equivalent.
Comment · 2 months ago
In particular, we now have unambiguous imagery of the site of the former Gyirong Port border crossing:
<https://news.cgtn.com/news/2026-08-28/3D-imagery-reveals-pat...>
There is no sign that structures (bridges, building, car parks, roads) ever existed there.
Comment · 2 months ago
I see what you did there.
Comment · 2 months ago
It's all fun and games until your ride gets towed.
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