Hacker News Reader

BrandonMarcon How army rations helped change food

It's amazing how many of these things were only understood and put into widespread practice in the past one or two centuries. Wide-ranging aspects of modern life are impacted by the fact that we can depend on grocery stores with quality food, and it's all too easy to take for granted how this changes the way we live compared to our recent ancestors.

BrandonMarcon Cringely – how Amazon’s Echo Dot could make a good SIDS alarm

The author's son died in his lap 15 years ago, similar to around 4000 babies in the US each year. Through his grief he's put a lot of time and energy into how a SIDS alarm would and would not work. This idea:

> The goal of the alarm is to monitor the sleeping baby’s heart, detect a SIDS event, then set off a very loud alarm to rouse the baby because waking Mama often doesn’t work. So the Dot will be listening for the baby’s heart, monitoring its pattern, then blasting a loud noise if SIDS is detected. I know I just wrote pretty much the same thing twice but the sequence is that important.

(snip)

> ... you have to know what you are listening for. The American SIDS Institute (today in Naples, Florida, but in our day it was in Marietta, Georgia), has an audio library of SIDS deaths that actually happened while on a heart monitor. Remember what I said about parents being too tired to hear the alarm? Sadly the Institute has quite a selection of SIDS deaths to choose from and analysis of those deaths shows there is a characteristic slowing of the heart prior to a SIDS death. In every case the pattern (the rate of deceleration) is the same and the result is that death can almost always be predicted several minutes before it actually happens. That’s plenty of time to intervene, IF you know to do so.

Really the whole article gives great background into more related issues, and how the tech landscape today is much more capable of creating a useful alarm compared to 2002.

BrandonMarcon The Walmart Tax Every American Taxpayer Pays

So the author invents the term "walmart tax" and describes it's the reality of Walmart workers having to use welfare programs to supplement their income. So there is no "tax", it's a (claimed) consequence of paying employees so little.

... and I see the author is the president of a union.

BrandonMarcon The Patek Philippe Caliber 89 and Horology’s Easter Problem

Lamborghini has a similar policy ... there is a certain model of Lamborghini which is built entirely by hand, and they will only sell you one if you already own one of their other models.

Or so I've been told, anyway. For all I know it's an urban legend.

BrandonMarcon Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?

Is that true, though? Does Silicon Valley really pay 6 figures for entry-level? I guess with cost of living they probably have little choice.

BrandonMarcon Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?

Indeed. It's an apples-to-oranges comparison. I'd be curious to know about other factors that are related to life choices and opportunities, such as:

... what's the social safety network like? Is there welfare? Are there government programs that will help with housing / food / healthcare for a single mom (working or not)? This absolutely influences things.

... what's the legal marital environment like? Are the laws regarding divorce more or less favorable to women in one place vs the other (property, child support, alimony, allowance of 'no-fault' divorces, burden of proof, etc)? This will also influence choices.

In both of these tangents, actual risk and perceived risk in various life choices is different based on the answer to those questions.

BrandonMarcon Why is Russia so good at encouraging women into tech?

Indeed. Medicine and law require far more schooling / apprenticeship before the rewards start to overcome the difficulties (such as debt), often far more than even 5-6 years. All 3 can easily require being on-call at inconvenient times, and definitely require well above 40 hours a week.

BrandonMarcon The vision of nuclear holocaust in Threads (1984) remains visceral and urgent

> President Ronald Reagan watched the film several days before its screening, on November 5, 1983. He wrote in his diary that the film was "very effective and left me greatly depressed," and that it changed his mind on the prevailing policy on a "nuclear war". The film was also screened for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A government advisor who attended the screening, a friend of [the film's director Nicholas] Meyer's, told him "If you wanted to draw blood, you did it. Those guys sat there like they were turned to stone." Four years later, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was signed and in Reagan's memoirs he drew a direct line from the film to the signing. Reagan supposedly later sent Meyer a telegram after the summit, saying, "Don't think your movie didn't have any part of this, because it did." [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After#Effects_on_polic...

BrandonMarcon The vision of nuclear holocaust in Threads (1984) remains visceral and urgent

Several smaller conflicts ... yep, sounds like the last 70 years of history since WWII. In a sense, we're in the middle of finding out. I agree the jury's out, but it's probably preferable to WWIII, or even a limited nuclear exchange.

BrandonMarcon The vision of nuclear holocaust in Threads (1984) remains visceral and urgent

Ah, global zero idea, right? Which is cool, if you believe world leaders can be trusted ... and, even if they can, that they'll trust each other.

It doesn't help that the Saudis are just one large money-transfer away from having their own nukes (the check is probably already written, just waiting to be cashed, so to speak). The Iranians are closer, and Pakistan's been there for some time. So even if the "grown ups" (USA, Russia, China, India, UK, France, Israel) can be counted on to behave themselves, the upstarts less so.

It's also an open question how well the new members of the club would be able to keep their own arsenal under lock and key. If the Middle East gets into a nuclear arms race, to protect themselves from each other, that's all the more opportunities for some enterprising jihadis.

In one sense, the presence of nukes has made large-scale war more unlikely, and taking them off the table might have the opposite effect.

BrandonMarcon The vision of nuclear holocaust in Threads (1984) remains visceral and urgent

Russia decreased their budget ... leaving them fewer options to choose from if things get dicey ... making nukes a choice they would be +x% more likely to make.

Even for tiny values of "x" I still can't call this a decided improvement on the nuclear risk.

BrandonMarcon Autodraw – Fast Drawing for Everyone

Indeed ... Google docs has had this feature for some time. If you want to insert a special character or symbol, it gives the option to draw it and then shows similar characters.

BrandonMarcon Evidence That Robots Are Winning the Race for American Jobs

Have you seen CGP Grey's video "Humans Need Not Apply"? Nearly every profession is vulnerable, even software development.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

BrandonMarcon High school journalists investigated a new principal’s credentials

The articles I've found have all conveniently avoided answering the biggest question: why didn't the "adults" running the school figure this out sooner? ideally, before she was hired? That the students figured it out is proof it was certainly possible to figure out.

BrandonMarcon Evidence That Robots Are Winning the Race for American Jobs

Vast numbers? Will? What job category is increasing in demand today, and with no foreseeable threat from robots in the near future?

Tell me about today, and I'll believe your prediction for the future.

BrandonMarcon Introducing Netflix Stethoscope

How do you use Netflix for language learning? I'm curious.

BrandonMarcon Samsung warns customers that Smart TVs are always listening (2015)

The word "telescreen" comes to mind.

Then again, cell phones are more ubiquitous and close at hand, and are also always listening ...

BrandonMarcon Alabama immigration: crops rot as workers vanish to avoid crackdown (2011)

Sounds good to me.

* consumers would be paying a fair price with rational decision-making

* there would be "made in the usa" marketing for local / national produce

* voters would look much more carefully at minimum wage increases

BrandonMarcon Alabama immigration: crops rot as workers vanish to avoid crackdown (2011)

It's because I care about people that I want more fairness and honesty in the economic situation. The consequences you describe reflect how the market should have been, were it not for the destabilization of inconsistently applied labor laws.

BrandonMarcon Alabama immigration: crops rot as workers vanish to avoid crackdown (2011)

... rise to a level that reflects a fair and honest competitive market, as opposed to one where the labor pool has two populations following two sets of rules. Sounds like progress to me.

BrandonMarcon Privacy is Power: Why the fight for privacy matters

My understanding is that, against certain actors, Tor is compromised. Am I mistaken?

BrandonMarcon If you don’t finish then you’re just busy, not productive

No kidding. I once read an article where a lady at Google was giving resume advice for how to stand out and get hired by an awesome company, like Google. She gives her own resume as an example, and after one glance I'm frankly pissed off.

Why? Her resume shows she graduated college at age 12. Well Hells bells, señorita, if I was a genius like that getting hired at Google would be (more of a) cinch for me, too.

BrandonMarcon Meet 'Prosthesis', the terrifying 14ft-tall 'anti-robot'

Despite the ridiculous headline, it really is a fascinating demonstration.

BrandonMarcon Savers are slowly choking off the life of the world economy

Well that's brilliant ... take a wise behavior that far too few people do, and blame it for the world's problems.

Our rulers know that if we don't save any money, we'll be more vulnerable and dependent ... plus, it's too hard to tax saved money, whereas it's trivial to tax money that's moving.

BrandonMarcon W. Brian Arthur popularized an economic theory that changed Silicon Valley

Hear hear. It's one of the best computer science textbooks I've ever read. What's odd is that my college offered it to their Architecture students (due to its economic / philosophical ramifications), and none of the Computer Science classes had it on their list.

BrandonMarcon Testing Ancient Ships

Sounds like a virtuous cycle, as opposed to a vicious cycle. We could do worse.

BrandonMarcon Stoicism: Indifference is a power

Helluva name, there. Oddly fitting.

BrandonMarcon 15% of accounts discussing US election on Twitter are bots

“Looking at the content itself, but also the timing of the activity, the network structures, how information spreads from one account to another and so forth. Eventually we realized that about 15 percent of the accounts on the Twitter feed discussing elections in the U.S. are bots,” Research assistant professor Emilio Ferrara told KCBS.

More importantly, Ferrara says, these bots generated about 20-percent of the entire conversation.

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This is Emilio's own Twitter profile, which (one hopes) is not a bot:

https://twitter.com/jabawack

Here's where he publishes his findings:

http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/7090/56...

BrandonMarcon Truck driver shortage prompts calls for driverless big rigs

Economics fail. If they were honest, they would be saying,

Truck driver shortage AT THE WAGE WE FEEL LIKE PAYING prompts calls for driverless big rigs

That would be an honest headline ... but not the one that made it into print. Go figure.

Seriously, this is economics 101. If you increase the price of something, the supply will go up as more people decide they want to sell it. Basic supply and demand I learned in high school 20 years ago.

It's the H1-B fight all over again.

BrandonMarcon More People Are Using Drones to Catch Their Cheating Partners

It's probably more accurate to say people are hiring p.i.'s to use drones to catch their spouses cheating. Also, it would seem that being in a "no-fault" state versus a "fault" state in terms of allowing divorce is also a driver for collecting such evidence.

“One lady hired a private investigator to fly a drone over Central Park to spy on her cheating husband,” he says. “The use of drones for spying may be more prevalent in fault states—although the number of states that consider marital infidelity as a factor in divorce cases is limited. Divorcing spouses may be more inclined to procure evidence of illegal behavior in the backyard of their ex's house.”