Hacker News Reader

daviddavison Nest 1st gen and 2nd gen thermostats no longer supported from Oct 25

This is exactly why I’ve started only buying smart devices that work with Home Assistant and don’t rely on cloud services.

daviddavison Coffee reduces risk of Type 2 Diabetes; okay to add cream, but not sweetener

It’s a study with Walter Willett and Frank Hu, who are probably the most highly regarded nutritional researchers working in the field.

Here’s a great video about how these researchers are using big data to reveal insights into nutrition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8JQtwLNKXg

daviddavison Rust, C++, and Python trends in jobs on Hacker News (February 2025)

Have you tried uv? I switched to it from poetry a couple months ago. It’s not perfect but I’m enjoying it a lot more than poetry.

daviddavison US spent more on health care in 2022 than 6 countries combined with universal

> the US essentially subsidizes the entire drug research industry

This isn’t entirely true. The US does pay more for drugs but a lot of this money isn’t spent on research. In fact pharmaceutical companies spend far more on advertising than research:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-p...

daviddavison Impact of breakfast skipping compared with dinner skipping

Nutritional studies are notoriously difficult to conduct. You either have to isolate subjects and monitor everything they eat and when. Or you have to rely on self reported data and people do an atrocious job of tracking food, estimating portion size, etc.

This study did the former:

> The duration of the study is 7 days including 3 days with controlled diet and 4 days (including 5 nights) in a metabolic chamber at the Institute of Nutritional Medicine at the University of Hohenheim.

I imagine it was prohibitively expensive to have more participants.

daviddavison iCloud+ custom email domains should be better

I see. Thanks for the response! Great article too.

daviddavison iCloud+ custom email domains should be better

With the way that Apple prevents you from reusing Apple IDs, does it mean that if my Apple ID is blah@mydomainname.com and I migrate mydomainname.com (currently using G Suite free) over to iCloud that I can't set up blah@mydomainname.com?

daviddavison Python Best Practices for a New Project in 2021

There are a bunch of mypy configuration options to disallow certain things like --disallow-untyped-defs. There’s also --strict which forces typing on everything.

daviddavison The Python Package Index is now a GitHub secret scanning integrator

And don't pronounce PyPI as pie-pie. It's pie-P-I.

daviddavison Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

I was considering upgrading to an iPhone 12 mini. Does it have these issues too?

daviddavison Tesla’s new Solar Roof costs less than a new roof plus solar panels

Does your roof generate electricity though? A solar roof is a roof + solar panels.

daviddavison Sunsetting Hire

Just out of curiosity, what happens to the engineers that work on these projects that get shutdown by Google? Do they get laid off?

daviddavison Public Domain Movies

No ‘Night of the Living Dead’?

daviddavison 'One Ring' Phone Scam

How did you do that? Is it possible with an iPhone?

daviddavison Cisco Said to Be Cited for Bias Against U.S. Workers

Did you read the article? It’s literally the first sentence.

daviddavison Brian Aldiss has died

Never read Aldiss. Any recommendations on which book(s) to start with?

daviddavison How the Mid-Victorians Worked, Ate and Died (2009)

It's right there in the first paragraph:

> high intake of fruits, whole grains, oily fish and vegetables

daviddavison How the Mid-Victorians Worked, Ate and Died (2009)

Forget the paleo diet. Someone ought to start the Victorian diet.

daviddavison iPad 9.7‑inch

I'm seeing the 32GB wifi one as $329.

daviddavison Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?

Prostate cancer isn't as big of an issue fatality-wise.

Are you sure? It looks like they're both about 21 deaths per 100,000 people:

https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/prost.html

https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/breast.html

daviddavison H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms

Scroll down a bit further and they have a list of the top 10 non-medical professions. IT makes it on the list at #7 with "Computer and Information Systems Managers". Still not great I'd argue.

daviddavison A disaster is looming for American men

I think you miss the point of the article. It's not that technology destroys jobs but that in the next century, technology could potentially destroy jobs at a faster rate than it adds new ones. That would be an unprecedented event in American history.

daviddavison Why You Should Try tmux Instead of screen

The last time I used screen it didn't allow you to split windows vertically. This was 2-3 years ago. Is that still true?

daviddavison Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2014)

Raleigh, NC

---

Red Hat, Inc is looking to hire Ruby/AngularJS engineers. Must have some experience with Ruby or AngularJS. Benefits are solid and the pay is competitive. Also, the hours are flexible and you get to work remotely (at least part time). Send me an email if you're interested at my username at red hat dot com.

daviddavison Ruby Tips Part 2

You have to be careful with using Array() to transform a non-array into an array. Suppose for example you wanted an array of hashes:

  >> Array([{:a => "b"}])
  => [{:a=>"b"}]
  >> Array({:a => "b"})
  => [[:a, "b"]]

It doesn't work as you might expect with a Hash. I'd probably recommend sticking with something like either of these unless you know you aren't going to be getting a Hash:

  a = [a] unless a.is_a?(Array) # option 1
  a = [*a]                      # option 2

daviddavison I am writing an Elon Musk biography

One thing that sticks out to me is the price. Where did you choose $24.99 from? Recently I read Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (which is a more reputable book) for $13.60. I'm not saying that you're book isn't worth it but I don't see anything on this page to justify the cost.

daviddavison [dead]

Time to catch up on Hacker News.

daviddavison MacPorts 2.0 with Lion support now available

Homebrew is just a Ruby project in git so all the packages (or formulas) are just rb files inside the project:

https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/tree/master/Library/Formula

They usually only provide the most recent stable version of each project but you can find other formulas on the web and just run:

brew install [url]

daviddavison The benefits of working underground in Durham, NC

I worked in the adzerk office this past weekend during Triangle Startup Weekend. At first I was a little bothered by the lack of natural light but I quickly got used to it and actually enjoyed the environment/architecture there.

Since moving to the triangle though, I think the best decision I've made is moving to Durham. It's still affordable, has a lot of character, and offers the same amenities that Raleigh and Chapel Hill offer. I think this why the startup scene in Durham is taking off.

daviddavison Top Programming Fonts

Agreed. I use this font in vim at work because (believe or not) it seems to be the sharpest on my crappy LCD monitor at work. I was using Bitstream Vera Sans Mono before though which I love.