Hacker News Reader

3000000001on Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

Yes, but there is always the second half of “adapt or die” to consider

3000000001on Ibogaine banishes PTSD, small study finds

The researcher was interviewed in a recent Tim Ferris Show, including discussion of why the results are being taken seriously despite the lack of control group.

https://pca.st/episode/349b6543-1b80-4076-9d0e-94e7f2061c0b

3000000001on Hyundai’s Ioniq 6 EV makes its US debut

This sounds crazy to me! Where do you live? In my area (central Italy) most houses have a 7kW (230V 32A) connection

3000000001on Students break acceleration world record for electric vehicles

Great Scott! That’s surprisingly small. In all seriousness though, that’s probably not at useable voltage, you might end up with a 5 ton transformer on the car if you delivered 33kV in such a small cable.

3000000001on Getty Images bans AI-generated content over fears of copyright claims

This is exactly my thinking. If the court finds somebody guilty of infringing on a human-made piece of digital art the response is to punish the human, not to ban or impose limits on photoshop.

At risk of stretching the analogy, you don’t charge the gun with murder…

3000000001on Apple Regrets Confusion over 'iPhone Scanning'

The price being what exactly? That you’ll get caught for storing CSAM in the device makers cloud?

I think the pros list stays longer than the cons list.

3000000001on Show HN: iPod.js – An online iPod that connects to Spotify and Apple Music

Anything from KZ. I’m personally using their ZSTs at the moment but the ZSN is probably the go-to

3000000001on YouTube suspends Donald Trump's channel

If you take conspiracy theories and remove the thin thread of logic, you’re just left with propaganda... so it seems like we’re already starting to see what you’re predicting.

3000000001on Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler

At the risk of massively overgeneralising, your conclusion is generally how free speech is generally aligned with how non-US western nations approach free speech.

IMO, nobody gets it 100% right 100% of the time, but the USA model isn’t the perfect or only solution.

Legislation has a place in limiting the power and reach of social media, which would naturally diffuse the kind of problems people have with big tech.

3000000001on YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud

The president might be one person, but he’s the most powerful person on earth, with the ability to control markets, launch nukes, call millions of followers to arms or order a coup (unlikely to succeed on that one).

I find likening fact-checking Trump to censoring a private citizen a disingenuous comparison that plays down the power of the office he holds. If he goes off the deep end doing any of those things, there won’t be much the media or the house can do to stop it, so I think some preemptive action is warranted. Whether YouTube have got it right here is another question.

3000000001on 16-inch MBP 2x slower than M1 MacBook Air in a real-world Rust compile

Past performance does not indicate future performance, but there are plenty of reasons to think Intel might be around for some time to come.

3000000001on Fatal brain-eating microbe found in Lake Jackson, Texas water supply

One of the only things that stuck with me from my statistics course at university was when the professor explained newsworthiness is (or at least should be) essentially a statistical function - the less expected an outcome is the more newsworthy it is. I think it’s fair to say citizens dying of a brain eating microbe is fairly unexpected and therefore newsworthy.

3000000001on California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001

In a word, yes. There are plenty of smart people thinking about distribution management systems to control loads, manage local generation (household PV) and even use electric vehicles as an energy store to power the during periods of peak demand.

Supply authorities in my corner of the world (Australia) are planning this shift, but I can’t speak to the situation in other regions.

https://arena.gov.au/assets/2020/06/future-grid-for-distribu...

3000000001on Is Dark Mode Such a Good Idea?

This makes intuitive sense to me. I assume it’s to do with more overall light being emitted from a white background/black text combo being easier for our eye to process.

3000000001on [dead]

"...removing 67% of the total deaths in Sweden still leaves more than 1,400 people dead who were not in elderly care facilities. Compared to the 236 deaths in Norway, that’s still six orders of magnitude more death in Sweden than in Norway.
...

Sweden’s lead epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, seems to have a bit of a problem with math."

I couldn't help but chuckle at an author misunderstanding orders of magnitude in one paragraph and accusing others of misunderstanding maths in the next.

This article appears to be an attempt to paint the Sweden model in a negative light rather than honestly compare it to alternatives.