Hacker News Reader

confdon Show HN: Little Riddle – A minimalist word game powered by ChatGPT

This game is lots of fun.

    "A favorite chilled beverage encounters jet propulsion"

    DESIGNED REMIND

Please help me understand this one.

confdon Nerdy internals of an Apple text editor

https://github.com/MarkEdit-app/MarkEdit/wiki/Why-MarkEdit

The MarkEdit team uses WebView and have strong opinions about why.

confdon My 30-Year Quitting Addiction

This is a timely rebuttal to the article that was posted earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38895342

confdon US unemployment has been under 4% for the longest streak since the Vietnam War

I didn’t look for anything more current because I was more interested in the GP’s claim that said explosion occurred in 2010.

> We find that the number of workers in the gig economy grew between 8.8 and 14.4 percent from 2002 to 2014. For comparison, overall employment increased by 7.2 percent over the same period. Independent contractors constitute a significant portion of gig workers, and grew by 2.1 million workers from 2010 to 2014, accounting for 28.8 percent of all jobs added during the recovery. The online gig economy has experienced significant growth as well. Faster growth in taxis and boarding rooms since the arrival of companies like Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb indicates that online gig jobs are transforming the labor force. In particular, the data suggest that the ride sharing industry has helped bring in an additional $519 million in economic activity from 2009 to 2013, and created 22,000 jobs in the sector.

(2015): https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/independent-con...

This study also appears to use 1099 filings to gauge growth (2015 also): https://www.mercatus.org/research/policy-briefs/evaluating-g...

Here’s a more recent study that gives a balanced take and uses BLS data (2018)

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/independent-workers-and-t...

I’m unqualified to endorse any of these studies, I just figured that I’d share them. Trying to parse the formal distinctions between “gig workers”, independent contractors, and other “nonstandard workers” is a lot of work.

confdon US unemployment has been under 4% for the longest streak since the Vietnam War

I see. Allow me to clarify my statement. This NPR article has zero links. I think my use of “outbound” was improper to a degree. I was referring to links that lead off of the page. A few articles that I clicked through on CNN have links, but they may not be regarded as “outbound” links because they are all appear to just be links to other CNN stories. The few MSNBC articles I checked out at least have what I’m assuming are proper outbound links in that some lead to entirely different websites.

I’m not trying to refute you. I understand why a publication would prefer not to link to other sites (and I commend MSNBC or choosing to do so according to my observations).

I’m more so intrigued by NPR not linking to anything, anywhere. Especially not a source. The numbers come directly from “the Labor Department” and the rest of the article is sentiment.

I wanted to facetiously parrot Elon Musk’s “NPR is state-run media” claims, but if the attempt at humor were to fall flat I’d hate for the more serious observation to not be considered.

confdon US unemployment has been under 4% for the longest streak since the Vietnam War

I cannot remember the last time I read a news article online that had zero outbound links, if ever.

confdon Universities Are Not on the Level

This was my favorite part of the article. I felt like it reflected its social underpinnings well.

confdon Bill Ackman's academic wife Neri Oxman's dissertation is marred by plagiarism

That is a mouthful of a headline.

confdon Making the web fun again (2013)

I want the banal web.

confdon African Ports Overwhelmed by Red Sea Reroutings

> Would you call all Barak Obama supporters "Obamas"?

Not really, but if they were referred to as “Obamites” it wouldn’t be that jarring.

Are they referred to by something different in Arabic-language media?

confdon Windows and macOS targeted by new Go-based malware

Does this news in any way affirm the recent decision in OpenBSD development to pin all system calls? I don’t totally comprehend the decision, but I gathered that it affects how Go operates on that OS.

confdon Beeper – Moving Forward

> the damage Apple is doing to society by creating a divisive wedge between people for the sake of luxury signalling.

Would you be able to elaborate on this and provide some examples, please. With respect to iMessage, that is.

confdon Couch surfing predator: how a group of drugged and assaulted women fought back

There must be cultural factors that influence one person’s ability to conceptualize the likelihood of becoming victimized in a given situation and another’s inability.

confdon Own the problem, not the solution

“Find a solution that works for your particular situation.”

confdon Six Degrees of Wikipedia

As an Unread Information Scientist I find tremendous value in this. It's something worth running locally for research purposes. Great work.

confdon Hacker News Activity Analysis with GPT-4 Agent

I once made the mistake of subscribing to both tptacek and jacquesm's comments via RSS. I found that they post at a tremendous cumulative volume. This makes it very hard to keep up with in a feed reader. But they have rather good noses for interesting discussions. A way to filter HN posts by stories that have comments by certain users would be interesting to experience.

confdon Look, Ma No JavaScript A case against the overuse of JavaScript

Great blog post. Handsome layout.

> The Guardian website is far from the worst example of this sprawl of Javascript, the frontend for the Guarian is even developed in the open.

There's a typo.

confdon Chevrolet Blazer EV Left Me Stranded in Rural Virginia

This sounds like a rough experience. Tangentially, I’m curious about what the future of cities will look like as EVs become more common and charging infrastructure expands. In what ways will cities change the areas surrounding these charging stations to make the duration of the vehicle’s charge more pleasant?

confdon Where Johnny Cash came from

> It makes this the worst and most dangerous job possible

I’m sure the Wichita Lineman would disagree.

confdon The Apollo Syndrome

This web page is well done. It is informative and concise. Good submission.

confdon Evaluating new software forges

And what do you think of that?

confdon Evaluating new software forges

It’s a wonder how much freedom can be gained by eschewing the desire to be discovered.

confdon Google Promises Unlimited Storage; Cancels; Tells Journalist Life's Work Deleted

This is a poorly written article and for what it’s worth, I expected better data discipline from a man as aggressively online as Tim Burke.

confdon BlackRock Geopolitical Events Calendar

This is my type of content.

confdon Pentagon Scientists Discuss Cybernetic Super Soldiers in Dystopian Presentation

Never read “The Men Who Stare at Goats”.

confdon Generative AI is killing our sense of awe

I welcome the deprecation of the ornaments that the people of the world hold sacred.

confdon Star neuroscientist may have manipulated data to support a major stroke trial

This way of thinking falls apart as soon as the people who are capable of effectively communicating the truth (or at least, gesturing toward evidence that the dominant narrative is being falsified) reach those who are believed to be incapable of comprehending the truth (or at least, the evidence that suggests that the dominant narrative is being falsified).

confdon RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD

IS there Something that I’m not getting about the Shortcut “SHIFT-S” that’S Shown on the page?

confdon My techno-optimism

This is a solid take.

The motifs that he evokes in this essay are far too complex for me to digest in confidence from a "Techno-optimist" "tech leader" who is still so relatively young. I'd be more interested in reading this perspective (and its counterperspectives) from someone else.

confdon Emacs and the mouse: A modest defense of the rodent

A Tour of Acme: http://research.swtch.com/acme

If you need to do anything aside from what this video suggests acme is capable of, do it with something else.