Hacker News Reader

Ankaioson Wall Street scooped up a third of Texas single family homes sold last year (2022)

What sorts of tax policies might preferentially disincentivize home buying by investment funds?

Ankaioson Lawyer cited 6 fake cases made up by ChatGPT; judge calls it “unprecedented”

It turns out there were precedents:

Case: Thompson v. Horizon Insurance Company, Filing: Plaintiff's Motion for Class Certification. Citation: The plaintiff's attorney cites the influential case of Johnson v. Horizon Insurance Company, 836 F.2d 123 (9th Cir. 1994), which established the standards for certifying class actions in insurance disputes. However, it has recently come to light that Johnson v. Horizon Insurance Company is a fabricated case that does not exist in legal records.

Case: Rodriguez v. Metro City Hospital, Filing: Defendant's Motion to Exclude Expert Testimony. Citation: The defense counsel references the landmark case of Sanchez v. Metro City Hospital, 521 U.S. 987 (2001), which set the criteria for admitting expert witness testimony in medical malpractice cases. However, it has now been discovered that Sanchez v. Metro City Hospital is a fictitious case and does not form part of legal precedent.

Case: Barnes v. National Pharmaceuticals Inc., Filing: Plaintiff's Response to Defendant's Motion for Summary Judgment. Citation: The plaintiff's lawyer cites the well-known case of Anderson v. National Pharmaceuticals Inc., 550 F.3d 789 (2d Cir. 2010), which recognized the duty of pharmaceutical companies to provide adequate warnings for potential side effects. However, further investigation has revealed that Anderson v. National Pharmaceuticals Inc. is a fabricated case and does not exist in legal jurisprudence.

Ankaioson Ask HN: My GPT project has become a local hit but I can't afford the bill

Yeah, I didn't read far enough down the page before commenting. I must have been distracted by my tasty Coca Cola.

Ankaioson Ask HN: My GPT project has become a local hit but I can't afford the bill

<darkside>Or charge even more for product placement in your project's prompts.</darkside>

Ankaioson List of Citogenesis Incidents

The GP is correct that Eddington's observations during the 1919 eclipse had to do with the deflection of starlight. General relativity predicted that starlight passing by the Sun would be deflected by a certain amount, and Eddington's observations showed that general relativity's prediction was correct.

The discrepancy between Mercury's perihelion precession and Newtonian gravity had been observed long before Einstein developed general relativity. Calculations under general relativity correctly determined Mercury's perihelion advance, but general relativity did not predict the perihelion advance, since it was already known.

Ankaioson What are the most common tinnitus frequencies? (2015)

You could have tinnitus at a frequency you can't hear if the tinnitus arises downstream of auditory issues that reduce hearing sensitivity.

For instance, if someone couldn't hear a certain frequency because the corresponding hair cells in their ears were damaged, they could still have tinnitus at that frequency arising from parts of the brain that process that frequency.

Ankaioson Is 3D printer company Bambu Lab trying to patent everything about 3D printing?

Yeah, I agree. I had a similar thought while writing the note. Some sort of ban is an entertaining thought, but hiding ownership is probably too easy for bans to make a meaningful difference.

Ankaioson Is 3D printer company Bambu Lab trying to patent everything about 3D printing?

Maybe we should propose legislation for an IP black hole list. If too many of a company's patents are invalidated, the company loses the ability to create or hold patents.

Ankaioson Heat pump sales outpaced gas furnace sales in the US in 2022

A city-scale ocean-source heat-sink system might be interesting in New York.

Ankaioson Tesla's next-gen electric motors will get rid of rare earth elements

And yet, the US actually has allies. After all the crap the US has done, it still has allies. What? Why?

Oh, because it's all about economics and power.

Interesting thesis. At the same time, China has few allies. Does that mean China has a poor economy and little power?

Ankaioson U-2 pilot's selfie above China's balloon taken over Missouri

Supporting the spy angle is the pretty obvious connectivity [...] but it also doesn't really make that much sense... surely a satellite does what this does but better? China has no shortage of high quality spy satellites.

Balloons aren't "bad satellites" or "poor-man's satellites." Satellites and balloons each have different things that they are good at.

Ankaioson ESA – Terrae Novae: Europe's exploration vision

The microgravity biology community is so small that it's more like a coffee klatch than a mafia.

Ankaioson Twitter Lost $60M a Year Because 390 Telcos Used Bot Accounts to Pump A2P SMS

Preventing the fraud described in your edit is what I'm asking about. I'm wondering if anyone has set up lists to help avoid surprise prices for sending messages via SMS service APIs, not from texting someone from a phone.

Ankaioson Twitter Lost $60M a Year Because 390 Telcos Used Bot Accounts to Pump A2P SMS

Does anyone run a blackhole list for these numbers and operators? (Or a historical phone number -> SMS price mapping?)

In a sane system, no one should pay fees unless they're listed up front. Lacking that, a way to identify and avoid bad actors would be helpful.

Ankaioson Did an F-22 Blow Up an Illinois Club’s Hobby Balloon?

Gotta say, I'd personally trade the balloon for the story I'd be able to tell.

Ankaioson Good License for a Database?

I'm trying to be a little vague to avoid accidentally veering the discussion too much in some direction, but I'd prefer to be as open as possible while somehow building a community or organization that reliably continues maintenance (especially security updates) and improvements. I've been mulling a hosted option to bring in revenue. At the same time, I'm curious about the choices other people would make based on different priorities.

Ankaioson Cargo airships could be big

The mountains aren't tall enough, unfortunately. The highest peaks reach about 10 km above the mean radius, while the "nice" part of the atmosphere is 50-ish km up.

Ankaioson Cargo airships could be big

The mass of atmosphere above Venus' one-bar pressure line is significant—it's similar to the atmosphere mass above sea level on Earth.

Also, our atmosphere is much more important for protecting us from energetic particles than Earth's magnetic field. The atmosphere can stop everything the magnetic field can, and more.

Ankaioson Australians scour desert for dangerous radioactive capsule smaller than a penny

If you dropped a Cs-137 source of this scale way out in the middle of nowhere, far away from any road or crops, it might not be a big deal. The half life is only 30 years, and it could get buried under soil or in silt. However, losing it near civilization isn't good. (Even sparsely settled areas.) It's a shiny metal object, and if it's in a gas station, hotel, or restaurant parking lot, some kid could easily find it. Plus, gamma sources are relatively easy to detect, which should help the search.

If the military lost a hand grenade on a similar road trip, I'm sure people would want to find it, and this source is at least as dangerous.

Ankaioson NASA, DARPA will test nuclear engine for future Mars missions

Most of them have been, but Perseverance and Curiosity were exceptions. I believe the original motivation was for Curiosity to be able to land at higher latitudes.

Ankaioson NASA, DARPA will test nuclear engine for future Mars missions

The RTGs weren't launched in a different era. The most recent RTG went up less than three years ago. (On Perseverance.)

Ankaioson FCC Approves 5 Year Satellite Deorbiting Rule

Search for terms like "satellite" and "space" in the Communications Act of 1934, as amended:

https://www.fcc.gov/Reports/1934new.pdf

Ankaioson EVEmu – An EVE Online Emulator

Ultima Online was similar in a lot of ways. They're also similar in that I actively avoided thinking about them to avoid getting addicted. :)

Ankaioson iPhones and action discoverability

Even the manual itself isn't discoverable. (At least I don't see an obvious entry to it in the iOS UI.)

Ankaioson A mysterious new Babylon 5 project is coming sooner than you think

For anyone new to Babylon 5 that wants the authentic experience: http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/lurker.html

Ankaioson Ask HN: Hobbies/Skills which can be picked in 30s and compete at world level?

Shuffleboard?

Ankaioson GTK 5 might drop X11 support

I like Wayland, but I avoid using it because (last I checked) a crashing or killed compositor takes the whole desktop down with it. Meanwhile, under X I can restart Gnome Shell (or equivalent) if it's having trouble due to a memory leak or the like. Crashes and memory leaks have been common enough that I don't want to risk losing work to them just for some minor benefits.

This isn't an intrinsic problem with Wayland—I'm just not aware of anyone making a compositor that can recover or restart yet. I'll be excited to try out any that people write.

Ankaioson Confess your love with zero-knowledge

Here's one: https://catalst.net/

Ankaioson Ariel Ekblaw on building beautiful architecture in space

The hard part about flat-packing walls of space habitats isn't the mechanical connections, it's the seals to hold in atmosphere. I don't see that addressed in the story.

Ankaioson Show HN: Flight Penguin – Like Hipmunk, but a browser extension

Great idea! This is exactly the sort of thing many people hoped Web "user agents" would do. Also, I was just thinking this morning about how much I missed Hipmunk. Good luck!