Hacker News Reader

I'm a big fan of Excel but this works vastly better.

GitHub: https://github.com/gambolputty/wikitable2csv

beefmanon U.S. Senate passes bill to support advanced nuclear energy deployment

"On May 7, a few weeks after the accident at Three-Mile Island, I was in Washington. I was there to refute some of that propaganda that Ralph Nader, Jane Fonda and their kind are spewing to the news media in their attempt to frighten people away from nuclear power. I am 71 years old, and I was working 20 hours a day. The strain was too much. The next day, I suffered a heart attack. You might say that I was the only one whose health was affected by that reactor near Harrisburg. No, that would be wrong. It was not the reactor. It was Jane Fonda. Reactors are not dangerous."

beefmanon U.S. Senate passes bill to support advanced nuclear energy deployment

"A version of the bill had already passed in the House of Representatives and it will now go to President Joe Biden for a signature to become law. It passed the Senate 88-2 votes."

beefmanon Mistral raises a $640M Series B led by General Catalyst at a $6B valuation

Alternative source: https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/12/mistral_ai_funding/

beefmanon Diffusion for World Modeling: Visual Details Matter in Atari

twitter: https://x.com/EloiAlonso1/status/1793916382779982120

beefmanon $7.5B investment in EV charging has only produced 7 stations in two years

Not sure what your point is. The type of stations being subsidized are broadly similar to, and if anything predate, Tesla's stations. There is nothing new to spin up. The reasons for the failure lie elsewhere.

beefmanon $7.5B investment in EV charging has only produced 7 stations in two years

https://archive.is/vJcoy

beefmanon $7.5B investment in EV charging has only produced 7 stations in two years

Tesla opened ~ 2,500 supercharger stations over the same period

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Supercharger#Deployment

beefmanon The Original Hacker's Dictionary

This "original" hacker's dictionary was discussed there, but is distinct from the version headlined there, which is due to Eric S. Raymond.

beefmanon Xona Space Systems Closes $19M Series A to Build Ultra-Accurate GPS Alternative

Space News coverage: https://spacenews.com/xona-raises-19-million-series-a-funds-...

home page: https://www.xonaspace.com/

beefmanon Cold brew coffee in 3 minutes using acoustic cavitation

A few years ago there was a crowdfunded instant cold brew machine based on acoustic cavitation called Osma.[1] I don't think it's still in production. I met the founder during testing at Chromatic Coffee in San Jose, and took delivery of one of the first units. Cool concept, but it didn't work very well

[1] https://www.engadget.com/osma-pro-cold-brew-coffee-machine-r...

beefmanon Show HN: Hacker Search – A semantic search engine for Hacker News

Thanks; don't know how I missed that.

Trying the examples now, semantic search usually works better. But if I trim extra phrasing (e.g. how do diffusion models work -> diffusion models) they're about the same (but Algolia is much faster).

beefmanon Show HN: Hacker Search – A semantic search engine for Hacker News

Can anyone exhibit a search that works better here than on Algolia?

beefmanon The European Union's remarkable growth performance relative to the United States

> The right metric for international comparisons is purchasing power parity (PPP)-adjusted output

MER is the right metric for most uses. But for comparing growth no currency conversion is needed, obviously.

In every period to 2023 from 1995 (1995-2023, 1996-2023, 1997-2023 etc) US GDP growth has exceeded EU GDP growth.

US output is 59% higher than in the year 2000. EU output is 36% higher. (Constant local currency data from the respective governments.)

beefmanon Sodium Vapor Compositing [video]

Original title: This Invention Made Disney MILLIONS, but Then They LOST It!

Tweet by one of the creators: https://twitter.com/debfx/status/1777075250364362895

beefmanon What's the fastest language in the world?

Pellegrino's research on this has been discussed here before

2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20880789

2011: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2976044

beefmanon Memories are made by breaking DNA – and fixing it

Prior research by the same lab in 2015:

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/610899

beefmanon Intel to Receive $8.5B in Grants to Build Chip Plants

If Intel got $8.5B how come the stock didn't go up?

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/INTC/

beefmanon United Arab Emirates is using cloud seeding tech to make it rain

https://www.makerain.com/

beefmanon Tick-killing pill shows promising results in human trial

We should think bigger: gene drive to eradicate ticks.

beefmanon A simple dice game shines a bit of light on the psychology of regret

That part's sampled from the Butthole Surfers track Sweat Loaf (from their Locust Abortion Technician album).

beefmanon A quantitative test of Diamond’s axis of orientation hypothesis

This is such a weird idea. It's not the whole of Asia that developed earlier, but Europe. Which has predominately a North-South axis. But that is not even correct. Civilization forms on coastlines. Europe's coast is also predominately North-South. So is the Nile's. So is China's, where the vast majority of Chinese live. But the Mediterranean's isn't. So it doesn't matter, because it obviously doesn't.

Diamond's book is full of nonsense like this.

beefmanon Observable 2.0, a static site generator for data apps

No mention of math formatting but from the docs it looks like there is TeX support!

https://observablehq.com/framework/lib/tex

beefmanon 28-ton, 1.2-megawatt tidal kite is now exporting power to the grid

Perhaps surprisingly, it is a realistic cost and could be much lower if the electricity market were efficient (as opposed to being an amalgam of regional monopolies with essentially no price incentives).

beefmanon 28-ton, 1.2-megawatt tidal kite is now exporting power to the grid

Subsidies would be useful in getting it from $108/MWh to $54/MWh faster, but they don't change the underlying physics of the technology.

beefmanon 28-ton, 1.2-megawatt tidal kite is now exporting power to the grid

For comparison, electricity was sold to the U.S. grid at about $48/MWh in 2023. This is less than any of the cost projections mentioned in the article.

Howabout materials? It says this weighs 28 tons and makes 1.2 MW. That's 21g/W assuming a 100% capacity factor, no balance of plant, and assuming those are short tons. Compare to an iPhone 15, which consumes about 1W per 150g in use. That's a materials intensity multiple (EROI estimate) of ~ 7. An average automobile on an average commute dissipates about 67kW, or 27g/W for a multiple of ~ 1.

beefmanon Show HN: Lookup the school district associated with a street address in the US

Correct. School assignment at all levels of public school in the U.S. is determined by residence address, with the exception of the magnet and charter school systems,[1][2] which are application-based. There are also private schools.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_school

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_schools_in_the_United_...