Hacker News Reader

CompleteWalkeron Bookshop.org survives and thrives in Amazon’s world

https://www.vialibri.net/

Search aggregator of a rare book websites. Useful for identifying reputable dealers and beginning a book search.

CompleteWalkeron What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

Similar shooting at a substation in a neighboring county happened a few days ago https://www.npr.org/2023/01/18/1149694402/another-north-caro...

CompleteWalkeron Someone stole my car and now I own hundreds of vinyl records

I used to buy/sell junk stuffs in nyc. I would doubt this is a stolen collection from the pics posted. Looks like a classic dump of the non-valuable lps from a larger collection. Maybe a dealer already bought the good stuff and the relatives of a deceased family put it on the curb, maybe a record store dumped it on the curb, maybe someone even drove by skid row and offered it for free because it was discarded.

Wash Your Hands! And clean the records and sleeves thoroughly. The ripped and torn sleeves look like they've been chewed by mice... (in the biz we called it "rodentia scarring" or something equally fanciful)

CompleteWalkeron Boris Yeltsin's visit to a suburban Houston supermarket in 1989 (2016)

This post is over half a decade old, I wonder what percent of American budgets are spent on groceries in 2023? More or less than 8%? There is more to this story. Freakonomics did an episode about the Cold War "Farms Race".

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-the-supermarket-helped-...

CompleteWalkeron How does GPT obtain its ability? Tracing emergent abilities of language models

https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.14958 This paper outlines a similar method, but with the addition of guiding the plot structure. See page 30 for the specific prompt sets they used.

CompleteWalkeron Privately-Owned Rail Cars

Pay attention to the timing of your ride! I rode this trip once and didn't get to the Rockies until it was too dark to see much of anything out the windows.

CompleteWalkeron Number of unemployed persons per job opening

I found a state unemployment map: https://www.bls.gov/charts/state-employment-and-unemployment... But, would love to see the equivalent of this chart broken down by state and job sector. I've noticed an uptick in holiday seasonal jobs in my area... wonder how this affects the data

CompleteWalkeron NYC to require salary ranges be included in job postings

NYC's Fact sheet about the new law notes that minimum and maximum stated salaries must be in "good faith". Not a lawyer, but maybe this is space for class action lawsuits or something...

Salary Transparency Fact Sheet: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/cchr/downloads/pdf/publications/...

CompleteWalkeron Show HN: I built a site that finds the cheapest place to buy a book

Check out https://bookshop.org/ Allows you to select a local bookshop to support. The book gets shipped directly from Ingram, with some of the proceeds going to the selected store. I asked at my local bookshop if this was preferable to ordering the book with them and going to pick it up. They assured me it was, it saves them upfront costs and guarantees the sale. I still go in when I can to browse new titles, but they don't carry much tech/computer related stuff.

CompleteWalkeron Hallelujah, I'm a Bum – Utah Phillips [video]

Bruce "Utah" Phillips covers Harry McClintok standard "Hallelujah, I'm A Bum." Marching song of the International Worker's of the World, "Halleujah, I'm A Bum" is an important historical satire of work as identity.

CompleteWalkeron Upgrade to Linux

Wonder if they were at LinuxCon 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUsDk8wjRPs

CompleteWalkeron Walgreens Turns to Prescription-Filling Robots to Free Up Pharmacists

This is interesting to me, as I try to change careers with no degree. I recently applied for the Walgreens Pharmacy Tech Apprenticeship.[^1] But, it seems like those jobs will be automated away soon too... I'm really looking for a tech support job, but options are limited in this small town.

[^1]https://jobs.walgreens.com/en/pharmacy#grid-content-1-2

CompleteWalkeron Apple Cash

Not sure about the age requirements or other account specifics, etc. But it seems like you should be able to use Apple Cash for allowances and such

From the FAQ: >How do I add money to my Apple Cash card? >If you’re under 18, money is added to your Apple Cash card only when someone sends you money.

CompleteWalkeron John Cage Organ Project in Halberstadt

I wish Cage had kept the acronym ASAP

CompleteWalkeron Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

Sure he could pay for it, but buying the company (and taking it private) is potentially a way to get paid for access. Web archives - like common crawl - are snap shots of the past, but twitter users react and discuss events in real time.

Reliably parsing and interpreting new, potentially unreliable data is part of that whole AI-complete thing.

CompleteWalkeron Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

In the recent Ted talk Musk talked about needing AI-complete solutions for projects like full self-driving and Optimus (tesla bot) to succeed. He also wryly mentioned that there was a plan b if his Twitter bid wasn't accepted.

He's heavily invested in AI and machine learning, could he be interested in twitter's data?

CompleteWalkeron Cosmopolitan Railway

It's interesting to me that the wikipedia article posted makes no mention of this connection to Gilpin's racism and colonial desire.

Additionally, the wikipedia article on William Gilpin doesn't mention the Cosmopolitan Railway, or any of Gilpin's racist notions.

CompleteWalkeron Colorado to become first state to accept cryptocurrency for tax payments

I don't know the specifics, but my assumption is that this has something to do with the taxing the cannabis industry.

The SAFE Banking act still hasn't passed. As far as I know, the cannabis industry is cash only.

If anyone has any further reading about this, I'm interested.

EDIT: Less wordy, easier to read.

CompleteWalkeron When good ideas make bad business

Best guess is Electronic Medical Record... I had to google it.

https://healthit.ahrq.gov/key-topics/electronic-medical-reco...

CompleteWalkeron Black Tide in Brazil

Do you have source for the chemical analysis? Curious to read...

CompleteWalkeron Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World

Major 'Anna Karenina' spoiler in this book review...

CompleteWalkeron For Sale: A Massive, Obsessive and Probably Obsolete VHS Boxing Archive

As I understand it, the cost of digitization is often regarded by archivists/special collections curators as a substantially more expensive than traditional methods of "store it in humidity controlled vault". In the frame of university archives/special collections considerations like, costs of specialized staff (or retraining staff to deal with digitized collections), software that allows for public access and upholds existing copyright restrictions, and future-proofing file formats can add up.