Hacker News Reader

dcsommeron Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

It is not a useless observation. Of course there is an "agenda" (strange word choice for "thesis" or "point"). Like I said, the point in the article is that there needs to be alternatives to car ownership and car-centric development to achieve environmental goals, and subsidizing purchases of EVs is not going to do that.

Taxis might help a bit, but I would want to see data or modeling on impacts for that.

It's strange you start out with "this observation is pointless" and then follow up with an example of a company making big investments and strategic changes based on "this fact". Perhaps it's not pointless after all?

dcsommeron Fewer people are buying electric cars in the US

The point of the article is that rising EV sales, even at 87% in Norway (which yields only 20% EVs on the road), is not enough to fix the environmental problems of car driving. TFA talks about the need to end the car-size arms-race and the need for viable alternatives to car transportation as necessary for actually addressing the issues EV tax incentives are meant to tackle.

Agreed the title is useless, but I found the analysis insightful.

dcsommeron Cross-platform Rust rewrite of the GNU coreutils

Who claimed that?

dcsommeron Meta censors pro-Palestinian views on a global scale, report claims

Really? I've never heard this statistic before. Source?

dcsommeron A larger family worsens kids' cognitive development, suggests 30-year study

The bias for negativity in headlines and SEO is at play again here. Later on ITA:

> While cognitive development took a hit, kids’ behaviors were assessed as better on average in larger families.

Note that overall life success can depend on both of these factors. And in today's isolating times, the cognitive skills may be more replaceable/recoverable than the social/behavioral ones.

dcsommeron Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

"Transparency" in Congress has lead to grandstanding and posturing to cameras, at the expense of the necessary compromises and deals that could otherwise happen.

dcsommeron Firefox on the brink?

Google may pay less for search placement on Firefox if all their users block their ads.

dcsommeron Return to office is 'dead,' Stanford economist says

> remote workers are significantly more productive than on-site employees

That is what GP says, too. GP was saying the advantage of in-person is agility and course-correction, which require intense discussion.

> The missing piece is that leaders need to plan, execute, and communicate effectively.

Maybe with perfect leadership this is tenable, but when responding in a quickly evolving situation, I can see the advantage of in person. It just doesn't seem realistic to expect leadership to do all the planning. Engineers "at the bottom" often have better perspective and should be at the planning table.

My personal perspective: I'm currently 100% remote and enjoy the improved throughput. I also have had to get better at planning, as you point out. But when I have to do heavy coordination, video conference fatigue gets real. I'd prefer to be in person for those days with >3 hours on video.

dcsommeron Schoenberg: Why He Matters

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-history-of-poor-peoples-ac...

Sacred classical music was accessible to poor people in big cities. Secular classical music was less accessible though.

dcsommeron Schoenberg: Why He Matters

I don't doubt it. However my point is that the scene is so small that direct interactions with the community hardly moves the needle when it comes to the broader cultural perception.

dcsommeron Schoenberg: Why He Matters

Techno and heavy metal have completely traditional harmony and rhythm. Sure, the instruments have massive distortion and new sounds, but the "big blocks" are completely familiar to the brain, unlike avant-garde classical music which can completely abandon recognizable rhythm and 12TET.

dcsommeron Schoenberg: Why He Matters

The classism/elitism problem is much more an image problem foisted/reinforced by pop culture than it is a real, inherent issue. When all you hear of classical music is on TV shows where it represents "the rich, elitist villain" or on ads for luxury goods, people reverse the association arrow.

How many people who perceive classical music as elitist actually have a personal experience of someone on the "inside" acting elitist and shunning them as "outsiders"?

dcsommeron Fertility as Metascience

Can you be more specific? Is it recruiting or advancement in-role?

Obviously having kids is hard, but I haven't experienced discrimination that I know of. Sure, my career hasn't grown as quickly, but it has continued to grow. I work at Meta, which I think has great child benefits (I think thanks to Sheryl): 4 months paid leave per child, baby cash (a cash bonus per child), a child care FSA, and another annual cash pool benefit that can be used for more child care.

I'm 2 kids in, and I do not feel discriminated against at all. Culturally, there are tons of parents here. It wasn't like this 10 years ago though, when we were all so much younger... Maybe there is more discrimination outside the large companies?

dcsommeron Mapped: The Migration of the Millionaires in 2023

That is quite a bold claim. What are the sources or inferences you draw on for this belief?

dcsommeron New Microsoft Exchange zero-days allow RCE, data theft attacks

I don't know of one, and making this judgement based on CVE data alone will not answer your question. Factors ignored include codebase size, customer count, internal CVE filing standards/criteria, etc.

The only signal I would conclude from CVE data by itself, is that I bias towards a preference for companies that regularly publish CVEs. The ones that don't publish CVEs regularly are hiding, ignorant, or actually secure (and the first two are more likely).

You can't look at CVE in isolation.

dcsommeron Bevy 0.12

Amazing progress. Any updates on UI overhaul or planned timeline for it? I'm looking to make Bevy my go-to for GUI as well as for games (sometimes the line is blurred).

dcsommeron Eye comfort a priority for all-in-one desktop PC with color E Ink display

While it may not be reading specifically that is the problem, a lack of light exposure does promote myopia. https://iovs.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2466239

dcsommeron OnlyOffice: Free open source office suite with business productivity tools

Anyone have a good comparison between this and LibreOffice?

dcsommeron My Pure Rust Wishlist

Pure rust should mean "only uses rustc" not "only uses cargo" imo. Cargo is great, but it is not the language itself or the only build system for rust in the world.

dcsommeron Ask HN: I’m an FCC Commissioner proposing regulation of IoT security updates

A fair point. However, what are we optimizing for? An open/fair market, or consumer safety? Balance is key, but I'm interested in any counter proposals that do a better job.

dcsommeron Ad-hoc polymorphism erodes type-safety

I think this claim has some merit. Perhaps the only thing missing (or perhaps intended to be self-evident) is that ad-hoc polymorphism is also useful and pragmatically, this situation doesn't come up too often. In particular, encapsulation reduces the frequency that such errors can be introduced. In the article's example, the `Setting` struct should (idiomatically) have private elements and use a method in the struct's impl block to expose the (optional) length of the field. And, to support the author's point, you wouldn't use ad-hoc polymorphism for this either.

The author's concern should be considered when introducing ad-hoc polymorphism, especially when the type bounds are "loose" or commonly defined by many types.

dcsommeron Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats

FB has a friends-specific feed, but it is buried a bit. EDIT: just browsed it a bit and I was refreshed to see things that are at my scale and about the people I care for. I wish this was still the main thing with FB.

dcsommeron Rust Cryptography Should Be Written in Rust

What are the language/tooling gaps specifically that prevent this today, and have there been RFCs to close them? Are the gaps primarily "in-language" or missing tooling for formal verification?

dcsommeron The EU's war on behavioral advertising

I don't really understand singling out the specific combination of (advertising, behavioral targeting). The problems with behaviorally tailored content delivery products exist even if advertisers cannot directly monetize it. I think the focus on advertising is a real red-herring.

dcsommeron Modernity has made us allergic

It can take ~3 years for you to sensitive and become allergic to new locations' allegens. This is what my doctor others around me have said.

dcsommeron Screen Apnea

Yes, habitual clenching is pretty common from what I can tell. It leads to gum recession and other dental issues, as well as headaches.

I have made progress on it by habitually doing "self-scans" for where I'm holding tension in my body. Jaws and shoulders are common areas. I then focus on clearing my mind and relaxing the part in question. It's worked well for me.

dcsommeron Car Bloat: “Huge Cars Are Terrible for Society”

Minivans are far more efficient at storing stuff and people than SUVs. SUVs lose so much interior space by being higher off the ground.

The idea that SUVs have good storage space is a marketing myth.

dcsommeron Kenya suspends Sam Altman’s eyeball-scanning crypto project

Why are unalienable IDs an awful idea? Unalienable IDs seem to me to be the "default" of human societies. Before technology, everyone had "unalienable IDs" -- if you saw Bob, it was Bob.

dcsommeron Social engineering campaign targeting tech employees spreads through NPM malware

At least npm has namespaces (scopes) to group packages by trustable entity. I wish cargo had namespaces. It's a big miss for an otherwise security conscientious project imo.

dcsommeron Temporary ban on behavioural advertising on Facebook and Instagram

I'm just as concerned about behavioral targeting for non-advertising content. It seems weird to disallow targeting for one type of content and not another. Behavioral targeting of the majority of content (advertising is a minority) is increasingly the norm, and it is what is making society more stratified and balkanized.