James Darpinian

Yes. It does take a lot of time! But it's worth the time to do a good job, because the returns are nonlinear with the quality IMO. You want something good enough to make it on social news sites, not just for the traffic spike but because it will make search engines notice you. I have some posts that are just "here's how I solved this error message" or similar and I'm not posting those on HN but I want people searching that message to find my blog so I can help them. When I get a post on HN then over time those other posts get more search traffic. I got my most interesting and fun job through my blog, when the CTO of a startup read a post on HN and reached out to hire me. And at that time my blog only had two posts, so it wasn't like I was a prolific regular blogger. I just had one thing interesting enough to make it on HN. I just moved to self hosting my blog at https://james.darpinian.com and trying to post a little more often. Honestly self hosting is probably not worth the trouble. A hosted platform with a custom domain is probably the sweet spot.

There are at least 18 humanoid robots far enough along to have YouTube videos.[1] That's from February 2024. As far as I can tell, none have an order page where you jut enter a credit card number and get the product. It's all "pre-order", "contact sales", or just plain vagueness. There are a lot of "really great, real soon now" humanoid robot startups.[2][3] As far as I can tell, nobody has yet deployed one in a production environment. On the mechanical engineering side, it's likely that a drone company will have the first big low-cost product. Drone companies have people who understand sensors, balance, navigation, reliability, and weight/cost/strength tradeoffs. [1] https://james.darpinian.com/blog/you-havent-seen-these-real-humanoid-r… [2] https://personainc.ai/ [3] https://gotokepler.com/

https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/ Put in your location and it will tell you when and where to look at the sky to see one. Works great for me and hopefully it will work for you.

I love watching these overhead in real time. For anyone not already familiar: https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/

This is my favorite Starlink tracker - also has a nice integration with Google Street View and shows you exactly where to look. https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink EDIT: Removed "past times" parameter as suggested in comments. Also note you can remove also see loads of other satellites with an unadorned URL : https://james.darpinian.com/satellites

I got a chance to see one of the satellite trains shortly after launch, when they had barely had a chance to spread out. It looked like a continuous line of light slowly moving across a section of the sky; really an amazing sight. Unfortunately I live in an area with a decent amount of light pollution, and haven't been able to catch a glimpse of any of the more recent trains. (Might have something to do with the dark coating they're putting on the newer satellites to reduce reflectivity.) For those who want to give it a try, this site gives a list of optimal viewing times, complete with an animation of where and when the satellites will appear in the sky at your location: https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink

modeless linked to this article earlier today: https://james.darpinian.com/blog/apple-imessage-encryption/ My current understanding of the facts: 1. Google defaults to encrypted backups of messages, as well as e2e encryption of messages. 2. Apple defaults only to e2ee of messages, leaving a massive backdoor. 3. Closing that backdoor is possible for the consumer, by enabling ADP (advanced data protection) on your device. However, this makes no difference, since 99.9% of the people you communicate will not close the backdoor. Thus, the only way to live is to assume that all the messages you send via iMessage will always be accessible to Apple, no matter what you do. It's not like overall I think Google is better for privacy than Apple, but this choice by Apple is really at odds with their supposed emphasis on privacy.

Another interesting site already featured on Hacker News. https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/

Interesting article covering humanoid robots in development now: https://james.darpinian.com/blog/you-havent-seen-these-real-humanoid-r…

I live 10 miles from Boston and I've seen them a whole bunch. I've used https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink

Not my project but here’s a blog post from the author. https://james.darpinian.com/blog/how-see-a-satellite-tonight-works

post https://james.darpinian.com/blog/how-see-a-satellite-tonight-works

Cool. I went to https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/ which I found by visiting the link provided in the Play Store page and installed it as a true PWA. I got no prompt that it was available as a PWA though, I had to open Chrome's menu and tap "Install app" manually.

I’d like to be able to conveniently access my most popular comments. There are quite a few things in there that I might like to write longer-form articles about. (https://james.darpinian.com/blog/scraping-my-own-hacker-news-comments gives one way of doing it, by crawling your /threads?id=‹username› page, which does contain the point counts for each comment by you.)

https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/# Shows you satellites that will be visible from your position in the coming hours / days. Incredibly cool tech stack too.

Not Google Glass level AR, but this is posted upthread: https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink

> https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/ Wow, super nice website, gonna use it to try to see some satellites from now on! Thanks for creating and sharing it.

It's pretty wild to see trains of these Starlink satellites pass overhead. I've been using this tool to see them travel over our area every few days: https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/

For those curious when and where to look to see the ISS by eye only: https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/ The site is incredibly awesome and helped me see the ISS (and other satellites) quite a few times already!

See A Satellite Tonight (https://james.darpinian.com/satellites) is a nice tool for finding these. I have a young kid and it's been fun heading out at night and spotting these.

You're probably aware but I will just report it anyway. On that link (https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/), there doesn't seem to be a lower bound limit on the 'polar angle' rotation. So I am able to rotate below the 'horizon' and look up to the earth's 'inner surface' (the concave side of the mesh). The trajectories dashed lines are still rendered and drawn on top of the earth's 'bottom' but are all glitchy and intermitent. This maybe an issue with this specific implementation and not cesium itself but just thought you should know.

Anyone know of any other tool like this that might give an idea of where in the sky to look based on your location? https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink-latest

Anyone interested in knowing when to look for Starlink can check here: https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink

There are a couple of websites out there that give you future and past locations of "Starlink trains", which is what you probably saw. This site https://findstarlink.com/ does arbitrary locations but not times in the past. As does this one https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink ... presumably if you looked around a bit more than I just did you could find one that does historical viewings.

Trying to match up that claim with the claim of https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/?special=starlink that satellites should be visible at 12:10am this Saturday over Boston. 12:10am is nowhere close to dusk in Boston this time of year.

Another helpful site (be sure to try the green button) https://james.darpinian.com/satellites/