HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

cromulent

6,261 karma · joined May 3, 2009

meet.hn/city/fi-Helsinki
submissionscomments
cromulent··on Burning Man death rates – A short lesson in statistics
Depends on the definition of "whatever" but car parks come to mind.

In Finland there are specific signposted pedestrian zones, where cars may enter but must not exceed 20kmh and must give priority to pedestrians (as must cyclists). They are typically the areas surrounding apartment building entranceways.

cromulent··on macOS 27: Workaround to avoid downloading AI models and save storage
Curious. I have Siri turned off (just checked again) and I use Apple CarPlay daily. Maybe an EU thing.
cromulent··on Woman pulled over twice after Flock-linked software connected her to homicide
Things have drifted since Robert Peel defined successful policing as "Whether the police are effective is not measured on the number of arrests, but on the lack of crime". Civil forfeiture is a good example that would horrify him.

His insistence that "The police are the public and the public are the police" doesn't really hold up in many countries anymore.

cromulent··on Tesla Balance Bike
A dandy-horse, or a velocipede.
cromulent··on Blood Pumping Mechanism of the Hoof (2020)
The calf muscle pump performs the same task in humans.
cromulent··on An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry
Fascinating. I had to read up on this. Apparently it was Ritonavir and polymorphism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritonavir

cromulent··on Cursing the government does not fix potholes. Spray-painting them does
A friend of mine planted a small tree in one, after many months of notifying the local council. It was fixed very quickly.
cromulent··on Kickstarter is forced to ban adult content by payment processors
The FT podcast series “Hot Money” season one explained a lot about this. Basically the payment card industry shapes what adult content is produced by governing the money flow.

https://www.ft.com/hot-money

cromulent··on Mercedes-Benz commits to bringing back physical buttons
They have more usability problems than that. Driving Mercedes Benz hire cars a couple of times recently in UK and Ireland was a shock - they have the automatic gearbox PRND selector on the right-hand stalk, and indicators on the left hand one. I could maybe excuse that on a LHD car, but on an RHD car, it is infuriating. Using the windscreen wipers instead of indicating is a trivial low-consequence mistake, bumping into neutral is not.
cromulent··on Improving ICU handovers by learning from Scuderia Ferrari F1 team
(2012). Another article on the same doctor was discussed recently:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43957231

cromulent··on Copilot edited an ad into my PR
Regarding Claude: As I have unticked the "Help improve Claude" checkbox, I was under the impression that Claude did not do this.

https://privacy.claude.com/en/articles/10023555-how-do-you-u...

cromulent··on Passengers who refuse to use headphones can now be kicked off United flights
Thanks mate. If he can assault my ears, I can assault his nose, right. Or threaten to ;)
cromulent··on Passengers who refuse to use headphones can now be kicked off United flights
I had it happen to me, on a long-haul flight, in business class. I was shocked. I stood up to look at the guy after no-one did anything.

I told him that phone speakers "make me gassy" and then he turned it off.

cromulent··on BYD is seeing a flood of new EV buyers
BYD are about to launch an EV that charges from 10 to 70% in 5 minutes. As much as I recoil at a brand called "Build Your Dreams", that is quite compelling.

https://www.byd.com/us/news-list/DENZA-Z9GT-to-start-Europes...

cromulent··on Remove your ring camera with a claw hammer
Still trying to catch them. They keep drinking my cider and eating my chickens.
cromulent··on Remove your ring camera with a claw hammer
I have a Unifi doorbell and it takes great photos of the local badgers, foxes, and other wildlife. They are stored locally. Love it.
cromulent··on The MacBook Neo
I understand the need to join the conversations about the same topic. Thanks for keeping the URLs separate. Reading Gruber's long form considered article is very different to reading some second hand Asus executive "shock" comments.
cromulent··on Emails to Outlook.com rejected due to a fault or overzealous blocking rules
The article has hyperlinks in it, e.g. to this:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/5786144/...

which comes from an ESP serving millions of users.

cromulent··on Croatia declared free of landmines after 31 years
Placing anti-personnel mines is also not very effective in a pitched conflict.

The enemy will lose a few soldiers, but will then clear a marked path. The long term effects far outweigh any short-term advantage.

cromulent··on OpenAI – How to delete your account
My understanding is that the DOD signed the terms of service, and are now trying to renegotiate them. Anthropic has declined to change the terms. This makes the government angry.
cromulent··on Mobile carriers can get your GPS location
The telco would be the one collecting it first, I assume. It would be interesting for someone in the EU to request their data from their telco, and if it contains these precise locations, question the usage.
cromulent··on Scientists find a way to regrow cartilage in mice and human tissue samples
A Concept 2 rowing machine can also do this (in my experience). No impact, similar to swimming.
cromulent··on High-speed train collision in Spain kills at least 39
At least BEA airliners used to have quite a few backward facing seats, up to half the plane.

However, there were a number of problems - people didn't like sitting in them, people didn't like hearing that their seat wasn't as safe as the others, you can't get as many rows in unless you turn them all backwards, and the structure needs to be designed differently so then you need more spares.

cromulent··on The longest Greek word
> is the longest word ever to appear in literature

Thank goodness Joyce doesn't have the record with his invented words in Finnegans Wake.

cromulent··on Launch HN: Indy (YC S21) – A support app designed for ADHD brains
Good stuff, I appreciate your work.

I suspect that the ADHD audience on HN would skew towards people who have already developed coping mechanisms and systems (and some people seem to have very high intellectual horsepower), so you might not find the best market fit or feedback here. I think I am past the point where this may have been a fit for me, but earlier in my life it may have been very useful.

Edit: Can you explain what "clear boundaries around non-medical use" means?

cromulent··on Dude, where's my supersonic jet?
> “Supersonic 2.0,” where anyone can catch a quick, affordable supersonic flight almost anywhere on earth.

There is a proven middle ground, where you can pay the current price or x the price for 2x the speed.

cromulent··on I wanted a camera that doesn't exist, so I built it
A triumph. I love this.
cromulent··on FracturedJson
JSON doesn't have parentheses, but it does have braces and brackets. The JSON spec specifically allows spaces.

> Insignificant whitespace is allowed before or after any token.

cromulent··on Apple releases open-source model that instantly turns 2D photos into 3D views
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46284658
cromulent··on Go ahead, self-host Postgres
Without disagreeing:

Sometimes it is nice to simplify the conversation with non-tech management. Oh, you want HA / DR / etc? We click a button and you get it (multi-AZ). Clicking the button doubles your DB costs from x to y. Please choose.

Then you have one less repeating conversation and someone to blame.

Page 1 of 34Next →