Hacker News Reader

aodinon Tailscale is pretty useful

I have Quantum Fiber in Colorado and enabled IPv6 on the old CenturyLink C4000XG modem following these directions: https://www.centurylink.com/home/help/internet/modems-and-ro...

aodinon Torrent of Hate for Health Insurance Industry Follows CEO's Killing

I'm a Coloradan who voted for the 2016 universal healthcare (aka ColoradoCare) proposal, but I understand why the majority (79%) voted against it: there was sticker shock at the additional 10% income tax (with caveats, but people saw the 10%) and an inability of proponents to answer basic questions such as "Will I be able to keep my current doctor?", "Will I be able to get an abortion?", and "Will there be additional tax increases?".

aodinon Boeing's Starliner proves better at torching cash than reaching orbit

That might even be worse: Calypso stranded Odysseus on an island for 7 years

aodinon US Justice Department to seek breakup of Live Nation-Ticketmaster

In Live Nation's latest 10-Q filing they listed the operating margin of their ticketing segment at 32%, with a non-GAAP AOI margin of 39%.

[1] https://investors.livenationentertainment.com/sec-filings/al...

aodinon IBM to buy HashiCorp in $6.4B deal

Although there is significant overlap between the two, I prefer Terraform for resource provisioning and Ansible for resource configuration.

aodinon Logistic Regression for Image Classification Using OpenCV

Pytorch includes a simple neural network example for the MNIST data: https://github.com/pytorch/examples/blob/main/mnist/main.py

It only takes a few minutes to train with default parameters and will have >99% accuracy on the MNIST test set.

aodinon WeWork Goes Bankrupt

Yes, there are hot desk memberships on their coworking page [1], including single day purchases. They're underneath the giant "get a quote" call to action, however, which is indicative of their priorities.

[1] https://www.regus.com/en-us/coworking

aodinon Max is taking 4K away from its legacy ad-free subscribers

> "One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue"

Gabe Newell of Valve, Oct 2011

[1] https://www.gamesradar.com/gabe-newell-piracy-issue-service-...

aodinon Ken Burns chronicles the sad fate of the American buffalo

Denver, Colorado maintains two bison herds descended from the last wild North American bison. There were as few as 18 bison left in Colorado at the beginning of the 1900s. Thankfully, the conservation project has been a success and Denver has been transferring bison to Native American tribes to start additional herds. The herds are just about 30 minutes from downtown if you ever visit.

More info, pictures, and video here: https://www.denvergov.org/Government/Agencies-Departments-Of...

aodinon Home Insurance Is So High in This Florida Town, Residents Are Leaving

Redfin has a “Flood risk” layer option on their maps.

Interestingly, it show only small parts of Flamingo Park having substantial flood risk, especially compared to the rest of West Palm Beach.

https://www.redfin.com/neighborhood/55857/FL/West-Palm-Beach...

aodinon The Average New EV Costs $14,000 Less Than It Did a Year Ago: KBB

Cox Automotive (parent of KBB) estimates 35.2 million used [1] and 15.4 million new car sales in the US for 2023 [2]. So, about 30% buy new.

[1] https://www.coxautoinc.com/market-insights/estimated-monthly...

[2] https://www.coxautoinc.com/news/cox-automotive-forecast-augu...

aodinon The Average New EV Costs $14,000 Less Than It Did a Year Ago: KBB

If you're looking to remove outliers, Kelley Blue Book also tracks the average (likely mean) of new non-luxury vehicle sales, which was $44,626 in September. Non-luxury is about 80% of sales.

Also, concerning the lower end of sales:

"But the news isn’t all good. Only one car sold for an average price under $20,000 last month. The Mitsubishi Mirage’s average transaction price in July was $19,205.

Every other car with a list price under $20,000 sold for over $20,000 on average. It’s not a large group. Automakers increasingly focus on building more expensive cars, trimming affordable models from their lineups. In December 2017, automakers produced 36 models priced at $25,000 or less. Five years later, they built just 10." [1]

[1] https://www.kbb.com/car-news/average-new-car-price-sees-smal...

aodinon The Average New EV Costs $14,000 Less Than It Did a Year Ago: KBB

The Jeep 4xe models are actually selling below MSRP here in Colorado with "dealer discounts" (separate from any tax incentives) between 3 and 7%. Time for a roadtrip?

aodinon Cisco Acquires Splunk

They bought 1-day options, so they knew the timing of the announcement.

aodinon Upcoming .com and .xyz domain price increase

Porkbun has an excellent price comparison page for .com: https://porkbun.com/tld/com

They're still at $9.73 for both registration and renewal.

aodinon eSignature Beta for Google Docs and Google Drive

Like Salesforce

aodinon Death Valley Just Had the Hottest Midnight on Record

> A higher reading of 134F, or 56.6C a century earlier, also in Death Valley, is disputed. It is believed by some modern weather experts to have been erroneous, along with several other searing temperatures recorded that summer.

> According to a 2016 analysis from weather historian Christopher Burt, other temperatures in the region recorded in 1913 do not corroborate the Death Valley reading

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53788018

aodinon Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?

https://aaronoellis.com

I mostly write about Python, Django, and SQL, but occasionally do some basic statistical and GIS work.

aodinon Yellen says government will help SVB depositors but rules out bailout

Both Ackman and Cuban have called for measures beyond "protection of depositors".

Ackman: "What should the FDIC do? @FDICgov to guarantee all bank deposits by Sunday night before Asia open and call a time out. Run a process to recapitalize @SVB_Financial while managing liquidation of UST and MBS portfolios ... Equity holders pre-recap are wiped out, bond holders are protected." [1]

Cuban: "The Fed should IMMEDIATELY buy all the securities/debt the bank owns at near par, which should be enough to cover most deposits. Any losses paid for in equity and new debt from the new bank or whoever buys it. The Fed knew this was a risk. They should own it" [2]

In a following tweet, Cuban claimed "this isn't a bailout" [3]. Their tweets, like many of the comments here, seem to be arguing the semantics of a "bailout". However, both Ackman and Cuban are calling for financial assistance from the Fed, which is absolutely a bailout, if only "partial".

[1] https://twitter.com/BillAckman/status/1634694924707807236

[2] https://twitter.com/mcuban/status/1634416692301373442

[3] https://twitter.com/mcuban/status/1634418925331968007

aodinon BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads

Yes, Coinbase is an exchange

aodinon Police helicopter's 100mph chase with 'super sophisticated' drone near Tucson

Wait until it runs out of fuel and then retrieve it?

aodinon The Lightness of Windows

Globally, about 270 million personal computers (including laptops) [1] and 1.5 billion smartphones [2] are sold per year. Apple makes up about 17% of global smartphone market share [3] and 55% of US market share [4].

[1] https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2021-01-1...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/263437/global-smartphone...

[3] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-share...

[4] https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-sh...

aodinon The collapse of the IRON stable coin

Well, a price can go negative [1], so I wouldn't consider zero to be surprising.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/26/why-oil-prices-went-negative...

aodinon NASA Has Decided to Start Building the Lunar Gateway Using the Falcon Heavy

In Greek mythology, Artemis is a goddess of the moon and the twin sister of Apollo. It seems a rather obvious choice for a program determined to land the first woman on the moon.

aodinon Python's Type Checking Renaissance

For the actual type annotations themselves, the official docs are great: https://docs.python.org/3/library/typing.html

Know that the signatures vary with version, so select the correct one.

To check these annotations, you'll need a third-party type checker somewhere in your build process. I use pylance with VS Code, as it can detect errors as I type: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-pytho...

aodinon California’s Roadmap to Modify the Stay-at-Home Order [pdf]

San Miguel County is home to Telluride ski resort, an international destination with about half a million visits per year [1]

[1] https://www.telluridenews.com/news/article_1547199f-46bc-547...

aodinon Jeff Bezos's phone 'hacked by Saudi crown prince'

Are you referring to the data center breaches exposed by the Snowden leaks? Because Google claimed that they were unaware of the breach and quickly took action to correct it [1]. Are you suggesting that Google was complicit?

[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/meet-muscular-nsa-accused-of-t...

aodinon First Case of New Coronavirus Detected in U.S.

Having looked through more stats in the last hour, it appears I also dramatically underreported the lethality of the Spanish Flu. Some sources put it at 10-20%. It may have killed 3-6% of the world's population.

aodinon First Case of New Coronavirus Detected in U.S.

Yes, seasonal flu in the US alone kills around 30,000 each year, and may have killed as many as 60,000 during the 17-18 flu season alone [1]. MERS and SARS have each killed less than 1,000 worldwide.

A few things that may interest you:

* The rate of transmission for a disease is estimated by its R0 or basic reproduction number. R0 estimates the number of new cases from the unaffected population that one infection will cause. A disease with R0 <1 will die out by itself. SARS has an estimated R0 of 3-5, while seasonal flus are between 1 and 2 [2]. So by this measure alone SARS is more "infectious" than the flu. Note that R0 is not a rate and is estimated from mathematical models [3].

* Seasonal flu predominantly kills the young, the elderly, and the immunocompromised. Interestingly, some strains, such as the Spanish Flu, have very different mortality curves that kill healthy middle aged adults far more than average [4]. I would expect a dramatically different public health response compared to normal seasonal flu if a future pandemic had a similar mortality curve.

* In the US, the "tip of the spear" for disease response would be the CDC's Division of Global Migration and Quarantine [5].

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19545404 [3] https://web.stanford.edu/~jhj1/teachingdocs/Jones-on-R0.pdf [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#/media/File:W_curv... [5] https://www.cdc.gov/ncezid/dgmq/quarantine-fact-sheet.html

aodinon First Case of New Coronavirus Detected in U.S.

While SARS does have a longer incubation period, typically 2-7 days compared to the common flu's 1-4 days, the "slow transmission" that you've witnessed is more likely the successful work of national and international public health agencies preventing its spread. Especially by means of contact tracing and quarantine.

Seasonal flu variants have a lethality of around 0.1%. The Spanish flu of 1918 was around 2%. SARS has a fatality rate of around 10%. There is minimal difference in transmission between strains. The only thing preventing disaster is effective public health response.