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ghostfish | 10 years ago | on: California makes electric skateboards street legal

It's certainly a possible solution to the last mile problem, and one I've considered using myself, but the issue is what do you do with your transport once you arrive at your destination?

If your destination is a home or office, you can just take it inside, but what about a bar or restaurant? Leaving a bicycle outside is an invitation for theft and it's certainly too large to bring inside. Even a longboard isn't exactly simple to tuck under the bar or lean on your table.

ghostfish | 11 years ago | on: Day One with the Oculus Rift DK2

I doubt they're taking a loss, and I'd be surprised if they're not making a decent profit. What are the components? A 1080p cell phone screen, some cabling, custom plastic enclosure and straps, an IR webcam, and the PCB+components. That's not much, cost wise.

ghostfish | 13 years ago | on: Why 84% of Kickstarter's top projects shipped late

I also backed the Hexbright. You're remembering that you'd have it by last Christmas because that was the original shipping date. I think the FAQ was changed once the delays were announced. I agree, it looks like we'll be getting a great light, but it took entirely too long, imo. The creator had a video with a functional light during the backing phase, so I assumed it was nearly complete, but sadly it wasn't the actual light we were backing in the video and development took a year longer than expected. The creator has been perfectly upstanding and handled things quite reasonably, it just took far longer than expected to design and manufacture the thing, sadly.

ghostfish | 13 years ago | on: Moj.io: Connect your car to the world around you

This, a million times this. My understanding also is that the ODB port on many/most vehicles goes straight into the CAN bus controlling everything in the car. It's entirely possible you could gain control over any microcontroller in the car, send false messages, drown the bus, etc. through a device like this. It's a TERRIBLE idea from a security perspective.

ghostfish | 13 years ago | on: Hacking ls -l

My thoughts exactly. This is just complexity for complexity's sake. Useful as an exercise, but the -h flag already does this is an even more readable manner.

ghostfish | 13 years ago | on: How to Design the Perfect Twitter Profile Page

First of all, this is something that's always bugged me when using twitter, and I like seeing someone address it, but I have a comment. I agree with the 13" laptop screen examples, but how many people browse the web full screen on monitors over, say, 21"? On my 24" monitors (1920x1200) I usually have browser windows dragged to 2/3rds of the screen at most. Most websites look patently ridiculous at full 1920 width, let alone 27" or 30" monitor resolutions like 2560x1600.

ghostfish | 13 years ago | on: Conway's Game of Life, using floating point values instead of integers

As far as I'm aware OpenCL performance, while portable, is still somewhat inferior to that of straight CUDA on NVIDIA GPUs, hence my CUDA suggestion. I didn't actually look at the algorithms used in either so I can't comment, perhaps I'll do that tomorrow. What do you mean by using an FFT "for" a convolution? The algorithm is convolving the (presumably 2D) FFT of the game board with a disk filter?

ghostfish | 13 years ago | on: Conway's Game of Life, using floating point values instead of integers

But you missed the most important part of that quote. >"(in Ready, Stephan's software at the sourceforge link above runs much faster)" So using Ready it took a long time, but the actual code is much faster. I'd imagine you could write something in CUDA that would run this (and only this, not something generalized like Ready) plenty fast to do real time rendering on a new system, especially considering a GTX 680 has almost 5x the horsepower of a GTX 460.

Admittedly not in a web browser though.

ghostfish | 13 years ago | on: SpaceX update: The engine did not explode

Two thoughts here. 1) You're working from an awfully small sample, especially for a component that is supposed to be of such a high reliability. Then again, look at the probabilistic assessment of Shuttle success vs. actual. 2) The Merlin 1C engine is only going to make a few more flights afaik. Starting some time in 2013 they'll be switching to Merlin 1D.

ghostfish | 13 years ago | on: SpaceX update: The engine did not explode

>"Panels designed to relieve pressure within the engine bay were ejected to protect the stage and other engines."

Can anyone that knows something about the Falcon 9 design or rockets in general shed some light on this? That sentence makes it sound like the panels were purposefully jettisoned, which doesn't make sense to me. What do those panels do, what do they look like, and where are they?

ghostfish | 13 years ago | on: Increasing Productivity is a Load of Bullshit

The studies referenced in the article you linked refer to the construction industry, not knowledge workers. I would expect anyone producing widgets or physically fabricating things would continue to produce more simply by spending more hours on the job. The question relevant in the original article, and to most of the HN readership, is whether knowledge workers (programmers, engineers, etc.) can get more done by spending more hours at work. I tend to think not, past a certain point, but I'm not entirely where that point is. It certainly depends on what you're doing, culture, work/life balance, hard focus capability and many other factors.

ghostfish | 13 years ago | on: The best interface is no interface

This is so true. My car is the last generation of 3 series that has the classic BMW amber gauges (doesn't kill night vision) and no iDrive (terrible series of spins, pushes, and clicks to do something simple like change the radio station to a CD track). I've been in family member's newer BMWs with white gauge lighting and screens all over the place (dash and cluster) and a distinct lack of dedicated buttons that I can use without looking at a screen while driving. I hate it.

ghostfish | 13 years ago | on: The best interface is no interface

I agree. When I go to my car, I walk up to it and touch the door handle, which unlocks it. I sit down and press the start button to start the engine. The key never leaves my pocket, and I don't really care what it's doing as a user. (I personally care since I'm an engineer, but that's beside the point) To the user the unlock and start procedure has precisely 0 steps that aren't physically opening the door and stating the engine via a single dash button press.

ghostfish | 13 years ago | on: Pulse jet tea kettle

A pulse jet is an incredibly simple kind of jet engine, usually with no moving parts. They were used on the V1 flying bomb in WWII. Wikipedia probably explains it better than I can http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_jet_engine . The version in this video is a valveless pulsejet.

Basically, he put the combustion chamber of the pulse jet in a tea kettle, so instead of just glowing red hot when it's running, it heats water. Also, it's awesome.

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