I've heard a lot of arguments against human space exploration, but "We could put that energy into working less" is probably one of the more out-there arguments that's hard to take seriously.
Work is a necessary evil. If it is not necessary, then it is just a regular evil. There are no credible arguments that going to the moon is necessary, or supports some other necessary goal.
Of course by work, I mean work directed by somebody else to serve their ends, in exchange for money to live your own life. If we could afford to have people work five hours a week and still maintain a functioning society, then surely it is a moral obligation for us to do that. If you decide you want or need to do some kind of voluntary work to keep your mental health intact, so much the better. And if those happy people want to voluntarily commit some of their energy to going to the moon for no reason, then good for them.
I really cannot imagine taking your position. Working less is the pretty much the only thing we should be putting energy into.
Good for you. And I hope you never get laid off, burned out, or anything else.
I however do not get my fulfillment via work. I work to live, and I do [mostly] enjoy my work. However I have a very long todo list that I'm not getting done in part because I don't have the time to work on it (and in part because I don't have the money for the tools/parts I need)
> If we could afford to have people work five hours a week and still maintain a functioning society, then surely it is a moral obligation for us to do that.
I wonder what this would look like. I feel like nearly all of mankinds greatest achievements are due to our current structure of employment or at being forced to do something at the behest of someone elses ends.
> I feel like nearly all of mankinds greatest achievements are due to our current structure of employment or at being forced to do something at the behest of someone elses ends.
like out-of-control global warming, depletion of freshwater reserves, destruction of soil, mass surveillance, extremely uneven distribution of resources. I mean all previous innovations which were supposed to allow working less somehow never materialized in working less, and the quality of life improvements are greatly questionable, basically keeping the production-consumption machinery takes up all the surplus it produces, while depleting the resources we have.
The great achievements we have are much like the Moai statues on the Easter Island.
> I mean all previous innovations which were supposed to allow working less somehow never materialized in working less, and the quality of life improvements are greatly questionable,
The bone evidence of pre-Columbian Indians in America is one of periodic starvation. For the colonists, the bone evidence is one of extremely hard labor and short lives.
America's poor have a higher standard of living than medieval kings.
You could enslave someone and yet give them a greater standard of living than a medieval king. That would not mean that it is acceptable, or even better.
I suspect most of them would find being my slave better. By modern standards it would not be acceptable or better, but all evidence I've seen suggest most people in medieval days would consider then loss of freedom not that big of a deal (partially this is about how little freedom many of them had)
> I feel like nearly all of mankinds greatest achievements are due to our current structure of employment
Woah, really? More than cheap fuel, scientific research, social welfare, political work towards peace?
The only good thing I can think of that is actually directly caused by the way we employ people is that some things (delivery, food) are very cheap, cheaper than they would be if people worked at a sustainable rate. But that comes at the immense cost of the health and wellbeing of a vast underclass of people.
Nobody is talking about slavery here. You need to do something to feed yourself, otherwise you are making somebody else a slave to feed you. As a society there are some very disabled people we can accept this for, but when someone isn't supporting themselves that is enslaving someone else.
Not sure this reply makes much sense. I said that if we (humans) become more productive, i.e. that we can produce sufficient food/water/shelter/whatever with less effort, then the first goal after that should be to reduce the amount of drudgery the average person has to put up with, rather than (say) keeping the amount of drudgery the same and spaffing a bunch of fuel into space. I'm not sure where in that you see someone being enslaved to feed me.
Incidentally, we tolerate this kind of "slavery" just fine when we charge people rent for basic shelter. The cost of maintaining the asset (the house) is far less than the cost we actually charge people, so in your sense when I pay rent I am being enslaved by the landlord to support their lifestyle.
Finally, you brought up slavery. The guy I'm replying to just said "work is good". I don't think it's good that we make people destroy their bodies in amazon fulfilment centers. People know what's good for them, if they want to do work let them do the work they want. But to say "no, you have to do the work I want you to do" under the hypothesis that we have plenty of stuff to go around (and we absolutely do) is just sick.
By contrast, I think that every post on HN doesn't need a bucket full of crabs complaining that they can't do the same thing. It's not intellectually stimulating.
You don't think questions of how we design our societies, who gets to benefit from it, how power is distributed, of systems design and how we relate to each other socially are intellectually stimulating?
May I suggest the problem is not with the questions then?
I don't see any of those discussions. I see people complaining that Kenton is "privileged", that him enjoying himself his somehow harmful, that his house is too big, and implying that all is a problem; with little to no specifics on how or why.
You're completely welcome to make a post that raises those questions, but I think its irrelevant here. I don't think its productive for every fun project posted to have an inquisition in the comments on whether or not the project deserves to exist.
> May I suggest the problem is not with the questions then?
It's against the guidelines to make swipes like this.
I find it frustrating that people cannot have a conversation about what enables a project to exist without people going shhh just look at the shinies.
To me, it is a very surface level uncritical attitude directly counter to the hacker ethos of looking at how systems work.
We tend to examine projects by their inputs and outputs. I don't think it's fair to exempt capital and resources, one of the key inputs, from examination.
That's not to say this isn't a cool house or the person building it did anything bad themselves, they're just an actor in the bigger incentive system.
Hi Kenton! Big fan of the build and the writeup. The "cat bathroom" and cat-walk has lived rent free in my head since I read this the first time, and I fully intend on replicating it if ever I'm lucky enough to build a home.
Rocket Scientist here. Quick (simplified) primer on engine nozzles and why aerospikes are advantageous:
A rocket engine bell is a supersonic nozzle. Subsonic nozzles, like on your garden hose, typically go from wider to narrower to increase pressure and velocity of the exiting flow. Supersonic nozzles generally narrow to a point; This point is calculated to be exactly where the exhaust stream reaches Mach 1 (Supersonic flow). Once a flow is supersonic, it behaves differently and somewhat counter-intuitively. The nozzle widens to increase velocity and decrease pressure. The bigger the engine bell, the less the pressure is at the exit, and the faster the flow.
Generally, rocket engine bells have one ambient pressure value that they produce optimal thrust at. This is equivalent to the exit pressure at the very end of the bell. Take a look at the engine bell for the Apollo service module- It's quite large in order to expand the flow as much as possible to perform well in a vacuum (Very low pressure)[1].
If the ambient pressure is higher than the exit pressure, your flow is underexpanded and you get shock diamonds, as seen here [2]. The SR-71's engines were optimized for a higher altitude/lower pressure, so on takeoff the ambient pressure is pushing "inward"; the flow is underexpanded.
If the ambient pressure is lower than the exit pressure, and you see a large plume expanding outward from the nozzle, as seen here [3]. The flow is pushing "outward" at a higher pressure than the ambient; the flow is overexpanded.
Most rocket engines are optimized for an altitude/pressure ~midway through the stage's lifetime, so they're underexpanded at launch and overexpanded at engine cut-off. You can see in both examples that the velocity vector of the escaping flow isn't parallel to the rocket- it's going inward (underexpanded) or outward (overexpanded). This is the source of inefficiency with respect to engine bells.
---
The main advantage of an aerospike is that the ambient pressure effectively provides the outer shell of the engine bell- the flow is always optimally expanded at every altitude. This means you don't need to pick an optimal "midpoint" to design your engine around- the flow is always optimal from launch to orbit.
This massive upside comes with a downside. Staging generally provides two advantages to a rocket: The ability to shed dead mass, and the ability to "upgrade" to a more optimal engine bell. With an aerospike, you have an expensive engine that you don't want to drop (because it's perfectly efficient at every altitude) but now you have to figure out how to shed the dead mass as you go.
Personally, I've always envisioned an aerospike working well on a Space Shuttle type vehicle- the engines are kept and the fuel tanks are discarded. I'm interested to see if aerospike development comes with a change in how we see launch vehicles in the post-shuttle era that's largely dominated by disposable or VTOL-recoverable first stages.
> With an aerospike, you have an expensive engine that you don't want to drop (because it's perfectly efficient at every altitude) but now you have to figure out how to shed the dead mass as you go.
> Personally, I've always envisioned an aerospike working well on a Space Shuttle type vehicle- the engines are kept and the fuel tanks are discarded. I'm interested to see if aerospike development comes with a change in how we see launch vehicles in the post-shuttle era that's largely dominated by disposable or VTOL-recoverable first stages.
My immediate thought on reading that first statement was also that the space shuttle had already solved that perfectly:) Is there any caveat to just strapping on disposable fuel tanks that are jettisoned as you go? Other than needing connectors and the tiny matter of completely redesigning the overall rocket, of course;)
A partially reusable system has the disadvantage of competing against SpaceX and Stoke who are aiming to have a fully & rapidly reusable rocket. That would be a massive advantage if one or both of them succeed.
I'm surprised they didn't mention the Pentagon metro, which always stood out to me since instead of having side-by-side platforms, they're stacked vertically within the same vault.
A friend of mine did posit the quandary that an "unpalatable" individual such as Luckey appears to be one of the few making consumer-friendly products: Removable, swappable battery packs, AA battery support, standard USB-C charging, easy interoperability, open sourced designs, exposed screws, teardown instructions, etc. Apparently ModRetro is even looking into making dumb TVs for gaming.
It's ironic, in another world HN commenters would be lauding Luckey and ModRetro for all these virtues.
Comparing a run-of-the-mill defense contractor to a serial rapist and murderer is certainly up there in the most unhinged justifications that I've seen on HN.
Run-of-the-mill. Ya know, a normal perpetuator of war profiteering. I mean he's your standard enabler of civilian bombing. Simply an average propagandist. Just a regular guy!
I don’t think the parent comment was trying to equate the two, but rather pushing the argument to its logical extreme to test show that the reasoning doesn’t hold consistently across cases. Whether they made a convincing argument is separate.
Taking it to a logical extreme is good practice for thinking from first principles, but always pair it up with going to the logical extreme in the other direction. That might look something like: "would you really eat at a restaurant owned by a habitual jaywalker?".
I suggest you look into the perception of self defense. Saving yourself and others via killing compared to killing to commit a crime are perceived very differently.
That’s not it. There are plenty of industrialists who have killed far more than any serial killer just for profit and they don’t get anything like the opprobrium given to serial killers.
if you were around long enough, you would know that:
A) thats not a rule
B) that was added to the guidelines because people were complaining about article choices.
> So you know, either go all in and live like you mean it or stop pointing fingers at only very select individuals.
Careful. You're one step away from playing out the "Yet you participate in society. Curious!" meme. Besides, many people who are not in the Anduril fan club already boycott Microsoft for their ethical transgressions.
You can't use that meme argument at the beginning and mention that it is perfectly possible to boycott the other company at the end. The whole point of the meme is that participating in society is unavoidable, right?
And I don't think you can use "one step away from" a meme arguments at all. Pattern matching to a cartoon is not a great tool for this in the first place, and once you've acknowledged that the pattern doesn't even match, what's the point?
> If we’re gonna go for a witch hunt then we better hack off Microsoft’s head as well, for instance, since even their Xbox controllers are used in military subs.
Militaries aren't unconditionally good or just. There are, to put it mildly, valid criticisms of how the products of western arms manufacturers are used by legal militaries.
Yeah I don't really like Luckey, or what I've heard from him anyways. But in the run up to launch the Chromatic, it became pretty clear that this guy, for whatever reason, is really passionate about gameboy. I have been less impressed with the other emulator/fpga machines. the chromatic is solid though.
> It's ironic, in another world HN commenters would be lauding Luckey and ModRetro for all these virtues.
Lot's of HN (and "social" media) commenters in this world evidently are; nothing ironic about it.
It's just many people have a radically different set of ethics which, once they become principles, can't be easily, or at all, compromised on. And just to be fair, it's not just the what, but the how (which extends not just to Luckey & Friends, but to Anduril & Friends).
I am nuanced enough to appreciate that these qualities are present in the products being produced and still not buy from this producer because of their industry ties. Hopefully someone without such ridiculously unpalatable PR is able to copycat their design and sell a competitor - and hopefully the lead they've laid sets the standard for easily replaceable parts for the market (though, I'd mention that retro gaming hardware is intentionally made to be as modular as possible in most circumstances anyways).
> I am nuanced enough to appreciate that these qualities are present in the products being produced and still not buy from this producer because of their industry ties.
ModRetro produces one thing I do have an interest in. A partly aluminium-cast version of the, to me, most ergonomic gamepad made so far: the classic trimaran-style N64 controller. But that marriage ain't gonna happen. And that goes for every other (future) product of theirs as well.
Certainly one of the most devisive controller designs, but the lack of two thumbsticks is precisely what I like about it. The pad centers one thumbstick and the trigger on opposite sides of the "main hull", with the rest of the inputs divided along two (remappable) zones, i. e. the outriggers. I have never held a controller in my hand with better ergonomics and holding adaptability. Even the size is just right for my hands.
It's the only pad that ever made FPS games on a console a joy to play for me; put in two analog sticks and you fuck with that formula. Its only serious weaknesses are the cheap plastic, especially for the thumbstick, and the weight (too light). Make a full metal version out of it, with some thumbstick material mods known from the PvP fighting game community, and it's the best. Well, at least for me.
> Lot's of HN (and "social" media) commenters in this world evidently are; nothing ironic about it.
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that it's ironic that the one guy providing these consumer-friendly features is considered anathema by many of the people clamoring for those features. You, yourself even mention downthread that you'd otherwise be interested in the M64 Pro controller, but won't consider it.
I was just trying to make a genuine comment remarking on the dichotomy, but I guess people are more interested in making quippy one-liners.
> I suppose what I'm trying to say is that it's ironic that the one guy providing these consumer-friendly features is considered anathema by many of the people clamoring for those features.
Yeah, I got that. I just don't think the fact that a to me detestable individual can have, or work for, an outfit that produces (some) good, interesting, or even highly impactful merchandise is at all remarkable. History is littered with such people, especially in the tech sector (e. g. Ford, von Braun, etc.).
This propaganda against Palmer Luckey completely lacks any critical thinking. Then again, I guess all propaganda is targeted at people who aren't critical thinkers to start with, so that's why it ends up working.
I've seen this astroturfing and spreading of lies increase since he delivered weapons to Taiwan so they can defend themselves. Probably the CCP amping up their influence campaign against him.
Are you looking to make homemade homebrew carts? If the M64 carts are anything like ModRetro's chromatic carts, the boards will be flashable. ModRetro has also stated they're planning on open-sourcing the design, so if we're lucky there could be a large variety of people making flashable blank carts in the near future.
I'm really looking forward to the Epilogue 64 Operator. I have the GB Operator, and it's been amazing to be able to flash romhacks onto carts and play on bona-fide hardware.
> Does Modretro's target market buy this type of stuff? Or are they the type to just download and emulator and ROM.
Speaking as someone who spent all weekend playing his new M64: Yes, the target market often does buy the cartridge. I've got a brand new copy of Xeno Crisis sitting on my shelf, although Xibalba was a close 2nd. (Tied with Buck Bumble ;) )
That said, there's definitely a crowd that would rather buy a summercart and pirate all their roms. Personally, I'm interested in more thoughtful and intentional electronics, so I'm attracted to the idea of old school "buy the game on a cartridge" mentality.
> The idea that a state court in one particular state can enforce such an absurd law against a company that likely has no business operations or servers in the state is ridiculous.
I agree. California has been doing this since 2022 [1][2] and it's equally indefensible.
States should not be allowed to wield their size and influence as a cudgel against other states and jurisdictions.
Interestingly if you browse American-hosted online internet firearms accessories websites (and FFLs who will sell you something online to ship to your local FFL), for the most part, it's just a basic HTML popup of "Are you over 18? Click Yes, okay, proceed". I haven't seen a single one that actually attempts to implement age verification. It seems that the Internet-based vendors, the same general cohort of companies that are exhibitors or attendees at the annual SHOT trade show, are not very scared of the Californian AG yet.
I'm unaware of the Californians attempting to seize anyone's domain name over this issue. But indeed this also seems like an overreach, California doesn't get to regulate what an Internet gun accessory store in Idaho advertises or publishes on the Internet. State to state transfers of serialized items go through a well defined federal government regulated process, such as if a person in Nebraska buys a Zastava M70 online from a dealer in Montana.
So if I happen to have guns for boobs, and I go around topless showing off my gun-boobs, am I a magnificent symbol of liberty or am I deplorably degenerate?
Items require payments which usually would be a credit card. Kids cannot get a credit card on their own as far as I know so the parents have to be involved in some way. (Obviously there are alternatives like paypal, prepaid debit cards, etc but it is quite a bit harder to actual get the item).
I am not saying it is hard to get a prepaid debit card. I explicitly mentioned it as a workaround. I am saying that it is harder to get buy a physical item over the internet then to just visit a site.
The ID (and therefore the age) is checked when one goes to pick up their firearm at the local FFL dealer, so an age check on the site doesn't add anything useful.
Correct, I was referring to the websites that have implemented only the most basic fig leaf of legal compliance (ca. 2001 era HTML popup of "are you over 18?") to be able to browse the product selection, even of items that aren't serialized/FFL 4473-requiring firearms receivers. Like, yes, I totally need to confirm that I'm over 18 to look at this Streamlight flashlight.
But you see, guns aren't harmful to small children. It's that damn pornography. Seeing a gun doesn't traumatize you for life, but man, seeing a private area? Life ruined.
Of course, once the number of years since you were born reaches exactly 18, your brain automatically shuts off the part of you that is impossibly traumatized by private areas, so it's suddenly completely okay and normal.
Oh, and when you reach exactly 16, somehow you're only impossibly traumatized by private areas on the screen, not in-person. Everyone knows this is true.
(I don't mean to be genuinely insensitive about the real harms that adult content can pose. I just think there's a difference between calling content harmful simply because it's adult and content causing harm because the viewer isn't ready for it)
It also makes complete and total sense that you can sell your body by joining the Marines as an 0311 MOS rifleman/grunt on your 18th birthday, but you're going straight to hell if you have an alcoholic drink before you're 21. I don't know if I've ever met a European who doesn't think the US's alcohol age laws are weird.
I have a cousin who lives in Illinois and joined the Marines. He's 20 now. He can shoot fully automatic weapons in the military and has won awards for handgun precision and skill.
But he can't buy a handgun in his home state or drink a beer.
Joining the military helps the government achieve its goals. Having a gun at home doesn't, and drinking doesn't. You scratch the government's back, and it'll scratch yours.
It’s my understanding, for the most part, that they do not have constant access to fire arms, that they are somewhat tightly controlled on base precisely because the army has learn widespread indiscriminate access is a safety problem despite all this training.
The army "learned" no such thing. There was never a safety problem with guns on military bases. Guns were banned by Bill Clinton as part of a broader gun control push by the Democrats.
The effect has been the opposite of increased safety. We've had a couple of unopposed mass murder incidents on US military bases since the ban went into effect, most notably by Nidal Hasan, who was able to kill 13 and wound 33 because nobody else had a weapon.
For a few years after states raised the drinking age to 21, you could still drink at 18 on a military base. Even today base commanders still have the ability to lower the age to 18 if there's a nearby international border over which personnel can drink at that age.
Yes, US alcohol laws are stupid. Modern temperance activists were able to greatly restrict legal access to booze using anti-drunk driving "for the children" rhetoric.
Honestly I think the legal age for drinking could be lower if only society treated it better. A lot of drinkers are not only reckless but brought up to be reckless by how society treats them, what society expects of them, peer pressure, etc.
Similarly to how I'm salty about having to obtain LSD from black markets instead of having a known safe supply from a pharmacy. I trust my vendor, but the skill to not only find the market but to find the vendor and actually execute the ordering process is not easy to come by.
A lot more things could be available if people were properly informed and not just fed propaganda about how they're waay too dangerous. It's completely possible to be responsible about substances, it's called harm reduction. Also prescriptions are a thing -- even if I had to get a prescription from my doctor, I would even be fine with that as long as I'd get to take it at home.
Do you mean well-known drugs or new drugs? Tests have been developed for well-known drugs, and at big parties there are often harm-reduction charities offering free or cheap drug testing.
I mean established ones. I'm aware of the narcotic safety tests, but have no idea how one might check the quality of a psychedelic like LSD before taking it.
Reagent tests are the standard for that. They're basically a bunch of acids that change colors depending on what they're mixed with. You test some samples with a bunch of them, and the way each one changes colors tells you what is or isn't in the samples. Ehrlich reagent is good for checking for the presence of LSD, others are good for ruling out adulterants. Fent strips for example are used to check for presence of fentanyl. You can get all of the above from places like DanceSafe.
> I'm unaware of the Californians attempting to seize anyone's domain name over this issue.
They may not be attacking the domain but they're attempting to leverage the US Legal system to shut down operations. Arguably that's even worse- they can't just move to another domain/tld.
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