Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | gibspaulding's commentslogin

Mules are hybrids of donkey and horse. This was an important technological advancement some 3000 years ago, providing benefits of both breeds in one animal. The donkey and horse themselves of course are products of one of the most important technologies in human history - domestication!

You say “up until a year ago”, what ended up replacing it?

I’m in the market for a tractor in roughly that size, and am very tempted to just find an old machine in decent shape. I’d be very curious about the decision/experience if you did upgrade to something more modern?


The old machines are rock solid. They really just keep going and going.

Really the only reason we got a new tractor was for the cabin with AC. That does make it a lot easier to spend an entire day working field. Otherwise you have to deal with whatever weather it is outdoors which can be unpleasant if it's very cold or very hot.

You also get a radio to listen to, which is nice.


Don’t forget you’uns or yinz!

I struggled with this when I was a school teacher. English lacks a good way to clarify you are addressing a group vs one person, which comes up a lot in a classroom. “Class, you…” is clunky, “You guys…” has obvious issues, and y’all or any other contraction is generally considered bad grammar. I generally went with y’all. Kids would laugh about it, but that seemed to help get their attention.


Surely, you knew all of your students' names and if you were addressing one person, you could've used their name. Addressing the class as merely "class" seems adequate as well. I'm having a hard time thinking of a situation where you are forced to use "you" ambiguously.


What if you're addressing part of the class, though? Like "y'all in the back, you need to get back to your work".


"You in the back" has the same level of specificity. Other options include (again) naming names or calling out a more specific location "You in the back row".


No, because "you in the back" could refer to just one person in the back, instead of several. So "y'all in the back" is more specific. (Of course names are an option in this context.)


(Of course names are an option in this context.)

Yes, this is a case where you aren't forced to use "you" ambiguously in that context.

No, because "you in the back" could refer to just one person in the back, instead of several.

If you meant to address one person, you'd have said that one person's name, instead of voluntarily introducing ambiguity to the situation. Context & body language also makes this obvious. If you meant one person, you'd be making eye contact with one person instead of a group of people, etc. Students also know if they're paying attention or not. "The back" is not a specific area.


“Now, chat, settle down.”


Your bike already has two crappy 80psi pressure vessels, why not three?


Those two pressure vessels are highly engineered and are wrapped with materials with pretty good tensile strength. Also, they’re made out of materials (fabric and rubber) that absorb a decent amount of energy when they tear and that don’t fragment. And the whole assembly usually depressurizes slowly.

Having personally blown up beverage bottles by overpressurizing them (be very very careful doing this!), when they go, they go violently.


I've blown up beverage bottles for fun. Hooking an air compressor to a 2L bottle and exploding it makes a satisfyingly loud boom.

*We had a valve on the air line so we could be at a safe distance when pressurizing. Be very careful. It's unpredictable exactly at which point they'll blow. Sometimes they hold full pressure for a couple seconds and then go.*


i like to use dry ice for pressure, make sure you have a gun to shoot it if it doesn't go off


When we did it, it always went off on its own. It's been a long time since I did it, but I think the longest it took would've been on the order of 30 seconds. Really makes a person jump when it finally goes.


Because the danger posed by a fairly low energy pressure vessel is highly related to it's failure mode. That's why OSHA has rules about what compressed air pipes can be made of--it's not about the pressure resistance, it's about what will happen if one fails.

It's likewise why most military boom is mostly not actually boom. With artillery you obviously need a very tough case, but standard aircraft-dropped iron bombs are mostly that: iron. They don't need that kind of strength except specialized bunker-busters, they're built that way because for a given weight of bomb you'll do more damage by throwing bits of bomb casing from a smaller charge than from a bigger charge without the fragments.


If this is a modern bike, 80psi is way too high. 50psi is sufficient and will give you a more comfortable ride as well as higher efficiency on real-world surfaces.

80+psi is for old-style road bikes with narrow 23mm tires. Modern bikes (even road bikes for racing) don't use these any more; 28mm is the minimum these days.


Not to be pendantic (but to be pendantic) 80psi is the correct pressure for 28mm tires ridden briskly on good roads. At least according to ye olde Silca tire pressure calculator. Back in the day when folks ran 23mm tires they would typically run above 100psi (though that may not have been optimal...).


That calculator is wrong. Cycling people have been overinflating their tires for ages (as well as using too-narrow tires), with the assumption that the ground is perfectly smooth. Lower pressures yield higher efficiency (and better comfort) on rougher surfaces.


Surface quality is an input in that calculator.


… I have a modern bike (a Specialized). The tires' rated range is 75psi to 100psi. I usually pump it to around 80–85psi. The tires are 33mm.


You're overinflating your tires. A lower pressure will increase your speed and efficiency unless you're riding in a velodrome. Here's a video about this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r8f3w89XeM

(watch out, there's a lot of extra stuff in this video about the machine they use to measure efficiency)


(Well, they should tell the manufacturers…)

The video's result for both tires they tested was peak efficiency at 5 bar. They had a really coarse sampling of a whole bar, so that works out to a pressure of 65–80 psi.


>(Well, they should tell the manufacturers…)

The manufacturer rating is likely a max allowable pressure rating.


This only really works easily on desktop and requires a click, but is very satisfying to use:

https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/


You’re overestimating how old a pc has to be not to support Windows 11. My parents have a Latitude 5470 (I think?) with a 7th gen i5, 16gb memory, 1tb ssd, and most definitely USB 3. It’s a perfectly adequate machine for running a browser + office suite, but according to Microsoft it’s e-waste because of Windows 11’s TPM-2 requirement.

Obviously for the HN crowd there are workarounds (my mom has actually been getting along with PopOS pretty well), but this could probably have met her needs just as well.


Yeah, I have a 2019 Core i9 machine with 40 GB of RAM and a (for the time) decent GPU. It refuses to install Windows 11 because of lacking the right kind of TPM it seems.

I wouldn't put Chrome OS on it though -- Debian runs quite nicely. :)


Win11 IoT ;-)


And one would hope that the purpose of the CFPB would be to dissuade lenders from wronging consumers in the first place, meaning the net benefit to consumers was likely much higher.



I know this isn’t necessarily “real world CAD” but Claude Code is not too shabby at OpenSCAD.


I’ll be curious to go through your tutorial later as book binding is something I’d like to learn. I was really excited recently when I was able to get Claude Code to write me a python script to generate a custom weekly planner since I haven’t found a commercially available one laid out like I’d like. Unfortunately I haven’t found anywhere that can print something pocket sized for me, so for it to be actually useful, I’m going to have to print and bind it myself.


I had a good experience using Lulu for print on demand books. You can order just quantity one if you want to go that route.


Consider applying for YC's Summer 2026 batch! Applications are open till May 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: