Hacker News Reader

alistairSHon What if everything we know about recycling is wrong?

Not just that, but they go as far as claiming that single-use Solo cups are more environmentally than using a mug. Literally anything made cheap and quick and with little energy is better by their calculus. Doesn't pass the sniff test, IMO.

alistairSHon FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses

Not sure how you jump from "ID with chip" to "AI-based drone and camera network". We can do one without the other.

alistairSHon FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses

Which is insane. The federal government already knows who we are, via SSN, tax returns, and whatever else. The state already knows via tax returns, driver's license, and whatever else.

If we, collectively, don't want a true national ID, then federal regulations on state-issued IDs should be available (something roughly akin to ReadID, but with the ability to use the ID as a proof of age or other attribute as needed).

We'll get there eventually, but not before we try everything else first.

alistairSHon Apple caught off guard by AI demand for Mac Mini and Mac Studio

Huh, glad I grabbed my Neo two weeks ago. It's the "top" spec version, but still a good bit less than a MBA - seemed like a pretty reasonable replacement for the M1 iPadPro it replaced (wanted to go back to a normal laptop vs tablet).

alistairSHon Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat

Fair enough ;)

alistairSHon Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat

And I'll admit I watch his shows. The first two seasons of Clarkson's Farm were good TV. And with May and Hammond, he provided years of entertainment for car enthusiasts. None of which should excuse his boorish behavior off-screen.

alistairSHon Europe's summer drought is so extreme that desertification is a growing threat

He might be a treasure, but's he's also a prick. He has a long history of letting his on-screen persona leak into meatspace (or maybe it's the other way around) and that's not a good thing.

Edit - since people seem to not believe me, at minimum, he punched his producer [1]. Which wasn't the first time he turned violent - he punched Piers Morgan [2] for letting Clarkson's extramarital affairs go public. Oh, he also had poorly concealed extra-marital affairs.

1 - https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-35648682 2 - https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/piers-morgan-rev...

alistairSHon Nvidia agrees to acquire Hugging Face for $13B

Where do you draw the line between money and speech? IE, would you "simply" ban all political advertising completely - one can scream from a soapbox and that's it?

alistairSHon Nvidia agrees to acquire Hugging Face for $13B

Corporations are just groups of people. That's the logic.

The problem isn't "corporations can do the same thing as people."

The problem is anybody (solo or as a group) can legally run an unrestricted indirect campaign.

Elon can do the same, or more, as an individual than just about any corporation. That's just as problematic as Ford or Meta buying an election.

Dark money contributions are a closely related problem that we ought to fix at the same time.

alistairSHon Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children

creep

I think the word you're looking for is "sociopath."

alistairSHon Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

"Nobody" puts down 20%. That hasn't been a requirement for decades (in the US).

And there are plenty of places in the US where you can buy a house for $150-$200k. Maybe not places you want to live for one reason or another, but they're there.

alistairSHon Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

Detroit, Cleveland, etc. Basically huge swaths of the rust belt. Plus a smattering of small towns in the south.

alistairSHon Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra

Sounds broken, somehow. The M1 iPad Pro I just traded in worked fine. Traded it for a Neo and the Neo does some stuff faster, but for day-to-day casual use, it's not notably different.

alistairSHon Where did all the public bathrooms go?

That appeared to be the norm in Italy when we visited earlier this summer. Most of the main towns in Puglia seemed to have at least one pay-per-use toilet.

alistairSHon Where did all the public bathrooms go?

That's not the norm across the US (thought it might have been for urban areas).

I went to public high school in the same era in the northern VA suburbs and we had bathrooms available. With doors even. In our 3-building campus, there were at least 6 full sets of bathrooms that I remember (so there were probably more), plus two sets of locker rooms which had toilets.

alistairSHon How credit card rewards became a $9.2B wealth transfer

By US standards? No, probably not.

But, a quick search indicates you can get similar broadband in Glasgow, Scotland for ~15 GBP/month. And Rome, Italy looks like ~25EUR/month.

alistairSHon How Universities Should Prepare Founders

I had a similar thought... starting a business is risky. And health insurance (among other things) is expensive. Once the VC class starts pushing for health care reform (among other things), maybe I'll take what they want seriously.

alistairSHon Octopus intelligence may be related to never-before-seen mutation

Yes, there's even a new-ish word this... enshitification.

alistairSHon How credit card rewards became a $9.2B wealth transfer

That might explain internet pricing in North Dakota, but it doesn't explain it in NYC or DC or LA.

alistairSHon Grand jury declines to indict Ohio man charged with destroying Flock camera

Yeah, feels like two things contributing there... 1 - Trump fired many of the good prosecutors. Or made life miserable enough those prosecutors left the job for better paying private sector gigs.

2 - Trump has propensity to sue or charge anything that moves. "Boy who cried wolf" problem. See also: arresting people for taking peeling paint out of the reflecting pool, even when his own DoJ says it was a botched installation.

alistairSHon Grand jury declines to indict Ohio man charged with destroying Flock camera

Because that's how you get a felony criminal case started in Ohio (and most, if not all, states and any federal felony cases).

alistairSHon I like 'em thick: an apology to my English teachers

Several of our English and History classes were paired on purpose for just this reason. We'd be reading Dickens while study that era, or Catch-22 when studying WWII and the immediate post-War era, etc.

That said, I'm also frequently amazed at the stuff some people didn't learn that I clearly remember being covered in school...

alistairSHon Police officer used Flock cameras to track estranged wife 717 times

Cops can still be prosecuted for behavior that is a constitutional violation

IANAL, but that's not quite my understanding... The victim has to prove that the police violated a clearly established right via a previous case, which puts many cases in a sort of chicken-egg situation. "We've never found a cop guilty of peeping on Flock, thus we can't find this cop guilty." (guilty in the civil sense, QI doesn't apply to criminal charges)

alistairSHon Remote workers report the highest well-being in study of 7,700 employees

I'm right in the middle.

By the end of the COVID lockdowns, I was ready to RTO, at least as least hybrid. Just to get out of the house and see people other than my wife and dog during the work week.

But, half of my team (plus my direct boss) is remote and couldn't come in even if they wanted. So, all meetings are still on Zoom. But, at least for the half who are here, I can get some water-cooler gossip and face-to-face 1-on-1s.

alistairSHon Show HN: Nikon F100 Film Camera Repair Notes

Cameras are smaller, requiring more dexterity and often specialized small tools. And you usually have to disassemble a significant portion of the camera to repair things. And they don't (usually) require frequent periodic maintenance like a motorcycle or car (oil changes, chain lube/tension, tires, brakes, etc) - usually just repairs when they fail.

alistairSHon Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

Because the US almost always scores behind its peer nations when its citizens are quizzed on generic geography.

alistairSHon Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

Or maybe, more correct for this thread, "Esta página é de nível internacional."

alistairSHon Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

Esta página es de nivel internacional.

alistairSHon Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

I don't understand why a CS rep would get this invested to the point of wanting to cause you real harm.

Two possibilities come to mind... 1 - The CS rep has been instructed to do this. Scary, but corporate leaders can be assholes and wield lots of power within their orgs, so doesn't seem completely unlikely to me.

2 - The CS was just a dick.

Frankly, given the behavior of various SuperMegaCorps over the past few decades, I'm going with #1.

alistairSHon Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

I'm sitting here chuckling because you felt the need to post this.

Your points are valid. And there probably are plenty of Americans who needed the correction. But still.