Hacker News Reader

elektoron Apple’s US job footprint grows to 2.4M

A nice PR piece, but for context, Apple is still largely using its vast resources to enrich investors, not workers.

Source: https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/1/18525672/apple-stock-ear...

elektoron New York City Neighbors Build Cheaper Way to Connect to Web

There's a map of community-owned networks, more than 750 communities across the United States have embraced operating their own broadband network

Map here:

https://muninetworks.org/communitymap

elektoron Launch HN: Prolific (YC S19) – Quickly find high-quality survey participants

Very cool!

I signed up and will be looking out for surveys. Looking at the demographics, I noticed the survey panel is similar to that of Hacker News: white English speaking 20-30 year olds many who are in school. I'd love to hear about your efforts to have a more nationally/globally representative sample?

elektoron US Federal government to resume capital punishment after nearly 20 year hiatus

https://www.texastribune.org/2019/07/25/federal-death-penalt...

The new protocol replaces the controversial three-drug lethal injection combination with the method that Texas has had since 2012 — using only pentobarbital, a sedative. Texas purchases the drug from compounding pharmacies kept secret from the public, where drugs are mixed without federal regulation. The state has used pentobarbital in 79 executions.

It's difficult to get a hold of pentobarbital, which makes me think these federal executions are going to be delayed.

elektoron Amazon Warns Customers: Those Supplements Might Be Fake

Knowing how ill-equipped Amazon is for the supplement market, are there any legitimate lab-tested online vendors?

elektoron Plant trees while you search the web

https://blog.ecosia.org/content/images/2019/06/Financial-Rep...

From their infographic, you can see that Ecosia donates 51.6% of its income to planting trees, the rest going to employee incomes, reserves, and "spreading the word".

You can save yourself the extra step and simply donate to the foundations that Ecosia donates money to:

edenprojects.org hommesetterro.com greenbeltmovement.org itpa.org.br

elektoron A German Financier Wants to Turn Magic Mushrooms into Modern Medicine

I've heard of Compass Pathways before and it made me wary of supporting them.

https://qz.com/1454785/a-millionaire-couple-is-threatening-t...

elektoron Exploring alternative funding models for the web

Would Apple News fit your needs?

elektoron Poll: Will You Use Libra?

If it would allow me to send money overseas with cheaper fees, then yes, I would consider it. Otherwise I am happy using traditional credit cards and Venmo/Cash App.

elektoron Fears grow over 'food swamps' as drugstores outsell major grocers

San Francisco was the first city in the US to ban tobacco sales in pharmacies back in 2008.

elektoron I've stopped flying to conferences for climate change reasons

A laudable decision and one that I think needs to be encouraged on a university level.

However, I’ve found that human face-to-face interaction is more productive vs email/Skype and wonder if there’s potential missed opportunities if we were to completely forego in-person conferences.

elektoron Washington state lawmakers approve human corpse composting

Alkaline hydrolysis is another preferable option to ground burial. Much more environmentally friendly and allows large plots of land to be used for the living.

elektoron How Amazon's Mechanical Turkers Got Squeezed Inside the Machine

So many social science papers rely on MTurk which is concerning given the poor compensation. With such low payment structures, MTurk is incentivizing people to rush through responses and give responses that they anticipate the researchers want to see.

elektoron How Apple Card Works

This is a nice card for beginners to credit cards but I don't anticipate a lot of uptake by consumers familiar with the Uber Barclays or Chase 2% cards.

elektoron Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number

I can back this claim up. I was unable to verify my Citi credit card over the phone using my Google Voice number, they insisted on a non-VoIP number which ultimately delayed the verification process by a week.

elektoron Congestion Pricing in Manhattan Close to Approval

I'm glad to see NYC catch up to its European counterparts. This could do wonders for the air pollution inequities that exist in the city.

elektoron Self-forgiveness for procrastinating can reduce future procrastination (2010) [pdf]

There's a startup that lets you pair up with another user to keep each other accountable via video chat. I used it a few times and was pretty productive.

https://www.focusmate.com/

elektoron Apple's Reinvention as a Services Company Starts for Real Monday

Yes, both Netflix and Spotify are in a tough position where their rivals (Apple and Amazon) have a much larger war chest to chip away at the market leaders of both movies and music streaming.

elektoron San Francisco considers banning cashless Amazon stores

They came close. The public banking movement is growing pretty quickly and there is a statewide bill in CA to allow for cities to establish one.

elektoron San Francisco considers banning cashless Amazon stores

This is not an isolated political stunt. A lot of cities and states are now enacting similar measures.

elektoron Volk Fi: Distributed network smartphone

Here you go, plenty of invite codes on their subreddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/VolkFi/comments/b1dyqy/lets_just_ge...

elektoron Apple Watch detects irregular heart beat in large U.S. study

I use an Amazfit BiP which does steps+ heart rate + sleep and lasts a month on battery. Would highly recommend to you.

elektoron One-fourth of Americans drink water from systems that don’t meet standards

What consumer products are available for us to be able to filter our water?

elektoron How badly are we being ripped off on eyewear? Former industry execs tell all

Do you need a Costco membership to buy glasses from them?

elektoron He Was Part of a Twitter Mob That Attacked YA Novelists. Then It Turned on Him

I support that. As an avid Goodreads user, it’s annoying to see gif-laden posts about how much a user is excited about a book that is coming out in 2021. It’s confusing and adds nothing to the discussion.

elektoron Top Breakthroughs for 2019 Curated by Bill Gates

I have two hypotheses as to why that is.

Bill Gates is financially involved in a large number of startups mentioned in the article. Good PR = more sales = Gates' portfolio is better off.

The other reason is a little more conspiratorial. There is a growing trend of financial populism where politicians are clamoring for higher taxes on the rich (70% on $10+ mil). I think Gates is trying to mitigate this movement by showcasing how he uses his wealth for the greater good.

elektoron UC terminates subscriptions with Elsevier in push for open access

In addition to Sci-Hub, another good and legal alternative tool for academics is Unpaywall.

https://unpaywall.org/products/extension

Although nothing beats the speed of a Sci-Hub bookmarlet.

https://github.com/nfahlgren/scihub_bookmark

elektoron Mozilla releases the largest to-date public domain transcribed voice dataset

My voice is in this dataset!

For the past few months, I've been on the iOS CommonVoice app reading sentences out loud. It's great fun, I'd recommend it.

elektoron Thousands of Women Say LuLaRoe’s Legging Empire Is a Scam

Another great resource to learn about MLMs is Reddit's r/antiMLM. Judging from its activity, it looks like people are getting really fed up with these companies.

https://www.reddit.com/r/antiMLM/

elektoron [dead]

I don’t know the merits of veganism but I don’t understand this guys reasoning for drinking his own urine. Isn’t our body pretty good at eliminating waste?