keenerd

32 ms·

271.
by keenerd 12y ago
Just wanted to say that everything in this article about the MCU, capacitors and diodes is spot on. (I don't do work with coin cell batteries, but I do have experience with using very small rechargeables and very small solar panels.)
272.
by keenerd 12y ago
Sure, here is one that has been going for 175 years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Electric_Bell
273.
by keenerd 12y ago
Huh, the last thing I would have expected to see on HN. My apologies for the generally muddled writing, this was one of my oldest posts.
274.
by keenerd 12y ago
I'm talking about the side effects of eating 2000 kcals of it a day. The quantities you were doing (150 kcals?) probably don't have those issues.
275.
by keenerd 12y ago
The wikipedia page on the topic appears reasonably good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirulina_(dietary_supplement) However it can't be the only thing you eat. There were some studies about using spirulina on a
276.
by keenerd 12y ago
> all the bad guys in LOTR are basically dark and ugly An alternate view of why this is the case (rehashed from http://www.salon.com/2002/12/17/tolkien_brin/ ) is that LotR was a propagandist history w
277.
31c3 videos are up(cdn.media.ccc.de)
73 points by keenerd 12y ago|14 comments
278.
by keenerd 12y ago
So? It would take hours to print each one. Five minutes snapping in the gears and shafts is no big deal. The children these toys are meant for have loads of free time. They could do that step themselves. The problem is the price tag. N
279.
by keenerd 12y ago
On the plus side, it is nice to see that HN is not a rah-rah PG echo chamber.
280.
by keenerd 12y ago
The kit was never sold to consumers, schools only. So there were limited numbers and not much information. This was the best I could find: http://www.applefritter.com/content/lego-tc-logo My memories of it are a litt
281.
Study of Educational Impact of Lego LOGO Dacta (1999) [pdf](cache.lego.com)
1 points by keenerd 12y ago|0 comments
282.
by keenerd 12y ago
> In this vide you can see even a remote control that I never had. I read also in wikipedia that there was a model with an interface to Commodore 64, a Lego Mindstorms predecessor! Lego Logo predated Capsela and was mostly inspired from
283.
by keenerd 12y ago
As someone who's writings have been on the front page a few times, I've wondered how I can protest the heavy handed title mods. The best idea so far is to wait for one of my pages to "make it" here and then stealthily c
284.
by keenerd 12y ago
> The Simulation Argument is really a tool, and a challenge. No it isn't. It is Pascal's Wager updated for the 21st century. The only way it can be "proved" is if we are living in a really bad, poorly maintained, fu
285.
by keenerd 12y ago
No, most think that if you reduce something to 8 bits that it will sound like NES-powered voice mail being played back through a piezo buzzer. If you converted something to 8 bits and used proper dithering, no one who heard it would exclaim
286.
by keenerd 12y ago
Shoot, most people won't be able to tell 8 bit audio from 16 bit audio. Try the following: sox highres.flac --bits 8 lowres.wav dither Wave is required because flac doesn't do 8 bit and we want to be 100% certain nothing
287.
by keenerd 12y ago
Aliasing on a triangle wave can sound quite beautiful: http://kmkeen.com/awk-music/
288.
by keenerd 12y ago
It looks like one of the factors was "cumulative days use of any pesticide". However this did not take plot size into account - a farmer with a large plot and an appropriate use of pesticides is in the same category as a farmer w
289.
by keenerd 12y ago
GQRX, Linrad, etc.
290.
by keenerd 12y ago
Did they control for crop loss and farmer knowledge? There is a chance that the causal links go like this: * lack of knowledge -> spray at wrong time * spray at wrong time -> no pests killed * no pests killed -> crop loss * c
291.
by keenerd 12y ago
For future archaeologists wondering why everyone is talking about Philae, the title of this thread used to be to the effect of "The rad-hard CPU used in Philae".
292.
by keenerd 12y ago
Looks pretty heavily inspired by the Odroid-W.
293.
by keenerd 12y ago
From the credits: IBM 360/67 Computer Stromberg Datagraphix 4060 Graphic Recorder And then from http://datagraphix.us/DX-history.html "The heart of the Charactron shaped beam tube is the character matrix. A highly
294.
by keenerd 12y ago
> Do you know about anything a past people have done better than we know how today? This is a cheap shot, but preparing laserwort or dodo. More practically, anything that is done by hand and needs a lifetime of training. But you need to
295.
Metapuzzles: Reducing SAT to your favorite puzzle (2007) [pdf](people.cs.umass.edu)
4 points by keenerd 12y ago|0 comments
296.
by keenerd 12y ago
As a counterpoint, all of my good ideas come while preoccupied with mundane tedium. The mind will try really hard to come up with something more important or exciting it would rather be doing. (The trick is to not go on a bottomless wikip
297.
by keenerd 12y ago
If the power is turned off the Launch Loop will not immediately fall out of the sky. As the loop slows it will gradually fall. This is also why most pictures show it operating over the ocean. We have a lot of ocean at the equator. A spac
298.
by keenerd 12y ago
If it is anything like the last time this happened (google 1-900 santa) the commercial will be pulled in under 10 minutes.
299.
by keenerd 12y ago
I would certainly dismiss elevators because there is a much more practical alternative that doesn't require materials that don't exist in sufficient quantities to reach a quarter of the way to the moon. The Lofstrom Loop ( http:&#
300.
by keenerd 12y ago
These are the memoirs of Max Gergel, a chemical engineer who graduated in 1940. If you enjoy the "Things I Will Not Work With" series you will probably like this. All in all it was light and enlightening reading. Some of the to

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