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dredmorbius

67,042 karma · joined July 13, 2011

Elsewhere:

https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius

https://diaspora.glasswings.com/u/dredmorbius

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Dred's HN CSS Madhackery: https://pastebin.com/gLXiqKyd

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email: username at Protonmail

submissionscomments
dredmorbius··on NY sues prediction market Kalshi alleging it's an illegal gambling operation
Dupe: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49121153>
dredmorbius··on New York Alleges Kalshi Is Running Illegal Gambling Operation
Dupe: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49121153>
dredmorbius··on New York Has Sued Kalshi for Running Illegal Gambling Operation
Dupe: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49121153>
dredmorbius··on America's biggest companies are burning cash on AI. It's risky for everyone
Archive: <https://archive.is/NzyYo>
dredmorbius··on How to Stop Procrastinating
Archive: <https://archive.is/Vck2Q>
dredmorbius··on How the Words We Teach English Language Learners Changed
Breaks scroll badly enough that the article likely won't be read correctly unless you take great pains.

Site designers: don't do this, please.

dredmorbius··on Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year
Probably.

(Prophetably? ;-)

dredmorbius··on Upper stage impacting the moon on 2026 August 5
With Firefox Reader Mode (also available on a few other browsers) it's perfect.

Though that rather invites the question of why browser defaults are so poor.

dredmorbius··on Why is everyone trying to build a solid-state battery?
Energy capacity vs. energy release rate, or energy vs. power, tends to follow an inverse relationship, at least within similar domains.

The fuels which afford the highest rates of storage tend to release it more slowly. Chemical explosives typically have about 1/10 the energy storage capacity (by mass) of fuels, as several people have pointed out.

Similar relationships exist for other forms of energy storage. For electricity, fuel cells, chemical cells ("batteries"), flywheel / reaction storage, and capacitors tend to offer a trade-off between total storage capacity and reaction time. Capacitors can react at intra-phase rates (that is, within a single 60Hz power cycle), whilst batteries and flywheels can take longer to come online.

See for example: "Battery Parameters" <https://www.monolithicpower.com/en/learning/mpscholar/batter...>.

dredmorbius··on Flock cameras are getting mobbed
Related: "Flock Safety and Texas Sheriff Claimed License Plate Search Was for a Missing Person. It Was an Abortion Investigation." (October 7, 2025)

<https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/10/flock-safety-and-texas...>

Lightly discussed at the time (10 comments): <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45879151>.

dredmorbius··on The Glass Famine
With a single comment, from 2023.

Generally, it's considered useful to post prior links with significant discussion. I usually consider that to be about 20 comments or so.

dredmorbius··on Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year
"you don’t want to prophets that across the entire system"?

Typo? But it's hard to tell what.

dredmorbius··on Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year
PEGI: Pan-European Game Information, a video game content rating system.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEGI>

dredmorbius··on List of most massive black holes
Virtually everything in astronomy is derived from best guesses and inference from absurdly limited available information.

There's very little which can be directly observed. We can't wiggle our heads to gain perspective (even waiting six months to utilise orbital parallax only works for some near stars). We're working with spectral lines, redshifts, "stellar candles" (Cepheid variables, Type 1a supernovae), orbital mechanics, gravitational lensing, and a grab-bag of other tricks to sort out what's happening tens, hundreds, thousands, millions, or billions of light years away. The rest is then extrapolated based on physical models: rates of stellar fusion, time to consume fuel, behaviour of accretion disks, etc.

TFA is pretty interesting in that it notes the specific estimation methodology used to assess SMBH masses.

The fact that any of this is possible is almost magic.

Except, of course, that it's actually science.

dredmorbius··on Choose DuckDB rather than SQLite
There are AI-detection tools which exist. Even if those won't run against all URLs, using them where possible should provide some utility. HN already penalises sites based on various criteria, and if it takes hand-pasting some examples from a site to find that it is/isn't using AI slop, that's another option.

As to what should be tested: front-page items, possibly even a subset of those (top 10--15 of 30). That's going to be a limited set of items per day, though more than just 30. (I don't know how many items cycle through the front page on a daily basis, though I believe daily submissions as of 2022 were about 1,000/day (<https://web.archive.org/web/20220116193045/https://whaly.io/...>)).

Working this into the HN story-processing lifecycle might be a good call.

I'd much prefer not seeing a bunch of AI slop in submissions, by way of generated output. AI as part of the resarch process I think I could live with.

AI-generated content seems, definitionally, not to be intellectual in nature, and would seem to go against HN's prime directive. It also seems to make HN lose its collective mind, which has long been another mod consideration.

dredmorbius··on Old.reddit.com is now requiring users to log in
Dupe: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49005747> (7 days ago, 647 comments)
dredmorbius··on eBay and former execs will pay $56M to settle harassment of Natick couple
The Verge: <https://www.theverge.com/tech/972209/ebay-cyberstalking-hara...>
dredmorbius··on eBay's cyberstalking saga ends with a $56M settlement
Dupe: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49079244>
dredmorbius··on eBay and former execs will pay $56M to settle harassment of Natick couple
Multiple submissions on this. Other sources:

- TechCrunch: <https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/28/ebay-reaches-56m-settlemen...>

- ECommerceBytes: <https://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2026/7/178...>

- Reuters: <https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/ebay-former-executi...>

- AP News: <https://apnews.com/article/ebay-settlement-d0886f1036e198f77...>

- NY Times: <https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/28/technology/ebay-settles-s...> (archive: <https://archive.ph/GD3IR>)

- Ars Technica: <https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/07/ebay-former-exec...>

- BBC: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj039p238r5o>

- The Guardian: <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jul/28/ebay-hara...>

dredmorbius··on eBay reaches $56M settlement with e-com newsletter writers it terrorized in 2019
Dupe: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49079244>
dredmorbius··on eBay and ex-executives to pay $55.7M to couple sent cockroaches
Dupe: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49079244>
dredmorbius··on eBay agrees $56M settlement with bloggers over harassment case
Dupe: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49079244>
dredmorbius··on eBay agreed to pay $50M to couple sent cockroaches, bloody pig mask
Dupe: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49079244>
dredmorbius··on eBay pays $46M to journalists it targeted in harassment campaign
Dupe: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49079244>
dredmorbius··on eBay reaches $56M settlement with e-commerce newsletter writers
Dupe: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49079244>
dredmorbius··on Couple Stalked by eBay Settle for $56M
Dupe: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49079244>
dredmorbius··on eBay, former executives to pay $56M to settle couple's harassment case
Dupe: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49079244>
dredmorbius··on EcommerceBytes Publishers Settle Lawsuit with eBay for $55.7M
Dupe: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49079244>
dredmorbius··on Over 150k Flights: Airlines Just Flew the Busiest Day in Recorded History
And, I suspect, low speeds, as braking distance increases with the square of speed.

The New York subway has a top speed of 55 mph (88 kmh), but an average speed of 17.8 mph (28 kmh). I'm not sure what downtown intra-station peaks are, but suspect they're low on shorter sections. The London Underground is similar, with an average of 33 kmh (20 mph), max ~100 kmh (60 mph). This varies considerably by lines, the Bakerloo stock peaks at 45 mph; the Circle line averages just 24 kmh (15 mph). Chicago's 'L' is similar to NYC: max 55 mph, average ~20--25 mph.[3]

Note that averages include acceleration, deceleration, and dwell times (standing still at stations). But central portions of subways probably achieve low headways with relatively low peak speeds for congested track segments.

Notes:

________________________________

1. <https://parkingday.org/how-fast-do-new-york-subway-trains-tr...>

2. <https://tubenotifications.co.uk/insights/how-fast-is-the-tub...>

3. <https://parkingday.org/how-fast-does-the-subway-go-in-chicag...>

dredmorbius··on Tyler Cowen on reading fast, reading well, and reading widely (2020)
Previously discussed:

Reading fast, reading well, and reading widely - <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32623766> - Aug 2022 (149 comments)

(Reposts after a year are fine.)

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