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> The former wished to be let alone, and to be permitted to manage their domestic affairs in their own way

Which affairs?


Amy Eskridge made publications about concrete deterioration. A scholar, no doubt. Also, outside of her field, a nutcase with conspiracy theories about energy weapons and a troubled individual. No doubt a tragedy, but clearly an outlier (of possibly many).

This is super weird, and I can't buy the narrative when clear outliers like this are in the mix.

This is, as far as I can tell, sensationalist work that disgustingly aggregates troubled individuals deaths to put forward a patriot narrative that might not hold water.


I've been a Sublime Text user for years, then a VSCode for years. Been trying Zed for the past couple weeks and it has been a good experience.

Olá!

This gist is the prototype for josh, a comprehensive (but not complete) JavaScript interpreter that works as a JS-to-sh transpiler.

Here is an example JS program that it is able to run:

https://gist.github.com/alganet/9bdb3be7212e3c2f96cff17984fe...

Some features are intentionally missing, such as try/catch and spreading.

The code is a 2.2KLOC standalone portable shell script (bash, dash, zsh, ksh, busybox, mksh and possibly others) with zero external dependencies (no sed, awk, cat, anything).

It was bundled from modules from the same shell script language toolkit that I previously used to develop c89cc.sh (the pure portable shell c89 compiler). This time, the parser is hand-written, which makes it much smaller and readable.

This is a research endeavour, with potential applications in JS setup and automation tools (replacing the need for a full nodejs in setup scripts and so on).


https://hai.stanford.edu/assets/files/ai_index_report_2026.p...

> The United States reported the lowest trust in its own government to regulate AI responsibly of any country surveyed, at 31%.

It seems US citizens are really against the current administration, just using the fact that AI investment is intrinsecally connected to it to voice their opposition.

> Country-level expectations follow similar patterns to the earlier sentiment trends. Nigeria, Japan, Mexico, the United Arab Emirates, South Korea, and India all expected AI to create more jobs than it eliminates, with shares above 60%. The United States and Canada sat at the opposite end, where 67% and 68% of respondents expected AI to eliminate jobs and disrupt industries.

Globally, the disconnect is not growing. It's really just an U.S. problem (spilling to neighbouring Canada too).

So, no luddites in sight, again. It's just a public perception over a polemic topic being leveraged for ideological reasons sinking AI on US only.


I think that identifies an issue that is going to cause a real problem for the US in the future. The society is deeply politicised and polarised to the extent that essentially inanimate objects are regarded as having deep political and social significance. When there is political change, it is going to sweep back in the other direction.

It also seems like people on all sides within the AI debate have been fanning those flames thinking is will work in the short-term...and it won't. Big tech played that game in many countries in the early 2010s and it didn't end well.


It must be noted that the U.S. does allow inanimate object makers to fund politicians and such practices are widespread.

If all is well, then it's all good: no need to blame anyone, campaings get funded, etc. If one major crisis occours though, the country self-immolates by design.


Corporate contributions to Federal politicians and candidates are illegal in the US.

The New York Times is allowed to spend money like anyone else praising or slagging politicians, but that’s the First Amendment, not funding candidates.


> Corporate contributions to Federal politicians and candidates are illegal in the US.

And that's why the whole system is divided into two parties that both, each, funnel all their support to the presidential campaign (and then to taking over seats to guarantee more lobbying).

This whole thing would fall apart without lobbying.


Brazil has the most advanced biofuels program in the world, by far.

Ethanol alone accounts for roughly 1/5 of all energy in Brazil, with almost 50% of light-vehicle fuels being renewable.

For heavy vehicles, biodiesel is gaining in. Ethanol started in the 70s, the biodiesel program is much more recent (10-15% mixture in regular diesel).

It's not just electricity here, we're doing serious work on the fuel front.


One weirdo is enough to predict widespread violence?

I'm not convinced.

The idea that people will revolt, replaying the luddites history, has been floated a lot. It's used to diminish all kinds of AI skepticism by framing it as backwards, violent people who don't understand progress. This is the preferred bucket of AI fanboys: frame any disagreement as unreasonable rage.

I think AI companies want a general dumb violent popular movement to sprout against AI. In paper, it would be great for them. So far, they have failed to encourage it.


Falcon Heavy cannot carry Orion.


It can carry an Orion capsule to a suborbital trajectory and achieve the same reentry speeds the capsule experiences returning from the Moon. The trick is doing a second burn pointing down. If you don't use an actual Orion but just a mass simulator, you can even do some very off-nominal reentries to test limits.

There is ample delta-v for that.


Can you elaborate more on that?

I don't understand how the coupling between Orion and Falcon Heavy would be done (can't just put it inside the fairing).

I also don't understand how you plan to re-light the engines on the 3 falcon cores for a second burn (required for the delta-v you propose) and the fuel economics.

I also don't understand the trajectory you envision. Even if you could re-light the FH engines and couple Orion to it, I don't understand how you would get the re-entry angle correct.

Regarding the mass simulator, it's not clear by your description how the shields would be tested in that scenario.

Let's not leave it to the reader's imagination. If you're seeing something that I'm not, please, lay out the plan in more detail.


> I don't understand how the coupling between Orion and Falcon Heavy would be done (can't just put it inside the fairing).

A mechanical coupling is not that difficult to design. There needs to be no communication between FH and Orion for this use case. It could be mounted with the shield on top to simplify the mechanism. Separation could be purely mechanical, with springs.

> I also don't understand how you plan to re-light the engines on the 3 falcon cores for a second burn (required for the delta-v you propose) and the fuel economics.

Reignite only the second stage. Instead of putting the payload in orbit, put it on a suborbital trajectory with a high apogee, then boost down to hit the atmosphere at the desired speed and angle.

> I also don't understand the trajectory you envision. Even if you could re-light the FH engines and couple Orion to it, I don't understand how you would get the re-entry angle correct.

You have the delta-v - just use it in the right orientation. An Orion is lighter than the payload to LEO of the FH, so there will be a lot of propellant for the boost up and the boost down.

> Regarding the mass simulator, it's not clear by your description how the shields would be tested in that scenario.

The shield doesn't care what's inside the Orion - it cares about mass. You might need some attitude control (you can use flywheels) and parachutes if you want to recover anything, but all the rest is optional.


> A mechanical coupling is not that difficult to design

[citation needed]

> Reignite only the second stage.

Baby delta-v. Weaker than my Uno Mille with a staircase on top.

> right orientation

Trying to re-orient a low earth orbit into a reentry-from-moon-insertion is like trying to bend the path of a bullet.

Get your shit together, play some Kerbal Space Program at least.

> The shield doesn't care what's inside the Orion - it cares about mass.

[citation needed]

---

Buddy, I don't have time for Elon fantasies.


> Get your shit together, play some Kerbal Space Program at least.

I assumed you had actual knowledge of how orbital mechanics work. Please, continue playing your kideogames.

A Falcon Heavy can deliver more than 20 tons to GEO and an Orion capsule weigths about 10 tons. GTO is usually about 10 km/s at perigee of 200 km, meaning even with a full payload, a FH can place an Orion at an orbit that coasts above most of the atmosphere at about 90% of the speed of a returning Orion - and that on a stable-ish orbit - a suborbital trajectory would allow a higher apogee and a higher return speed. Now assume my mechanical design skills allow me to mount the capsule with less than 10 tons of material - this would mean we still have enough propellant on the second stage to give the ship a sizable boost if we so wanted. As for the maximum thrust, a high apogee suborbital trajectory would allow plenty of time for that - a good couple hours at least. That's way more than the longest burn the Merlin engine is rated for. I could dig up the exact numbers for these parts, but the margins seem more than ample enough.

> Buddy, I don't have time for Elon fantasies.

I'm not impressed by your insults. Bring in the math.


> I'm not impressed by your insults.

It's not an insult. You're overestimating SpaceX capabilities and I'm correcting you. There's no shame in that. I do find strange that you're insisting on it though.

> Bring in the math.

Falcon Heavy never carried anything similar to Orion. It never performed a second-stage "second burn trick" [sic]. There has never been a shield test like you described. Those things were never even hypothesized formally.

You made the claim that it can do those things with insufficient evidence. You need to back that up. I'm not going to fall for a reversal of an onus that you, and you alone, should prove.


All the evidence required is the mass of the object and the total kinetic energy the second stage can add to the object - rockets are like that: they don't care what they are pushing or in which direction - it's possible to get the required speed with a 20 ton payload. The idea was never proposed because of numerous reasons (one of them not thinking it would yield a better understanding of how the Orion heat shield works - they thought it was perfectly fine to test their theory with a crew on board, and I applaud their confidence).

There never was a shield test like this. The only other crewed capsule in operation today has had a few uncrewed flights without incident before taking astronauts on board, under much more forgiving reentry profiles. I sincerely hope the Artemis II shield shows no chipping and is well within the expected behaviors according to their current understanding, but, then, again, Artemis III will carry a new design, with changes informed by the first Artemis flight (and near failure - it was uncomfortably close to burning through the hull). And it will have astronauts on board on its first flight.

Doing a shield study on the lines I proposed would be politically complicated for NASA and would undoubtedly serve as an argument to further cut funding to Orion, as it would show they don't trust their designs, or don't completely understand them. I would also delay the next launch, which is, again, a politically charged thing.

I trust their math, but there are incentives for cutting corners here. Both Challenger and Columbia were lost because people forgot they were experimental vehicles operating under conditions we don't fully understand. They were treated like 737s.


> rockets are like that: they don't care what they are pushing or in which direction

That is just incorrect. Fuel tank design and arrangement, for example, is full of internal mass dynamics.

> would be politically complicated for NASA

Let me repeat this again: Falcon Heavy cannot carry Orion. There is no complication here.

NASA and SpaceX collaborate heavily. NASA doesn't build rockets, they're administrators. If SpaceX could be used, they would have used it (as they did with Dragon and so many other projects).

Stop trying come up with makeshift excuses for the lack of technical background you failed to provide.

> Both Challenger and Columbia were lost because people forgot they were experimental vehicles operating under conditions we don't fully understand.

Irrelevant attempt at misdirection. This has nothing to do with whether Falcon Heavy can or cannot test Artemis shields.

---

You're desperately trying to pivot the discussion from a technical one (in which you demonstrated lack of basic knowledge about several important topics) to a political one (which is murky and easier to navigate into a tarpit).


> Falcon Heavy cannot carry Orion.

Why? Explain your reasoning.


I already did.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47730179

Initially, I presented it as "please elaborate" questions. A courtesy, to give you the benefit of the doubt.

So far, you were not able to answer them with the same kind of courtesy that I initially offered.

Instead, you doubled-down on answering vaguely, hoping that I would slip at some point to a defensive position in which I would offer math and numbers, which are totally YOUR responsibility to provide, since YOU MADE THE CLAIM.

I don't need to prove that something that never happened is impossible. You need to prove that what never happened is possible (because you said it is). Capisce? It's basic science communication.

I don't need to do anything here. I'm right until you're able to prove otherwise.


It’s painfully obvious you never worked in any position remotely close to the aerospace industry.


Never said I did.

At an enthusiast-level of knowledge (which is the level we're discussing here), I am way far ahead of you on this.


It sent humans around the moon and back though. Can't say that about those other "advancing" programs yet. Little humility here goes a long way.


> the so-called “Dumb Zone” once a conversation starts approaching the limits of the context window.

My zipper would totally break at some point very close to the edge of the mechanism. However, there is a little tiny stopper that prevents a bad experience.

If there is indeed a problem with context window tolerances, it should have a stopper. And the models should be sold based on their actual tolerances, not the full window considering the useless part.

So, if a model with 1M context window starts to break down consistently at 400K or so, it should be sold as a 400K model instead, with a 400K price.

The fact that it isn't is just dishonest.


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