Hacker News Reader

handmodelon Could housing be cheaper and better if we stop building so many staircases?

The Slate article doesn't directly state this but does mention that many of the safety rules have been in place for decades - some since the 1940s. Presumably - construction materials + fire fighting methods have improved dramatically in that time so buildings are much safer now.

I dont think its unreasonable to want very safe buildings but clear that by the rules staying the same means they are using a different risk calculation then when they were created.

handmodelon Alien hunters have spent 60 years finding new solutions for the Drake Equation

You would think if other advanced life existed in abundance that many of them were civilizations that started billions of years ago. If they still can't reach us - that probably means that civilizations self-destruct at a certain point or stuck in an area to be eaten by the stars there. That would likely be our fate too if it turns out moving from solar system to solar system is extremely hard.

handmodelon Weekly Top 10 lists of the most-watched TV and films

I'm only speculating but almost surely it doesnt need to crack top 10 to be a success. On regular TV Seinfeld reruns have been money makers for years though on any given week they of course have paltry ratings compared to new stuff.

handmodelon YouTube takes down independent court livestreams

I don't think you need the "do what their money masters want" part.

CNN has a liberal audience. If they ran multiple headlines on this (whether automated or just articles written by different editors) I'm sure the one that paints Rittenhouse as without any justification will get more clicks. And therefore its more likely those writers will be promoted internally based on performance + those who are covering the story will continue to cover the story instead of moving to something else.

Look at a site like Reddit. It takes user submitted headlines for news stories. And depending on the subreddit the headliens will always skew one way politically without the need for money dictating things.

handmodelon Will real estate ever be normal again?

I sadly don't think that is practical. Housing costs would go down if it was legal to build 20 story apartment buildings in areas currently zoned for single family homes. As a political YIMBY I would love to see this happen - but don't see how a court could be given discretion on its own to decide which zoning measures should be eliminated and which have legitimate reasons to exist.

handmodelon Bernie’s Millions

I'm not a fan of Bernie but honestly 2 million dollars is a remarkably average amount of money for someone who has been making 100k with great benefits for 30 years. And low for someone who has written books + speaks at colleges etc. His wife was also president of a small college for some time.

handmodelon Colorado 'solar garden' is a farm under solar panels

From what I understand even at 100 miles the loss of energy is about 5 percent. You may need to build more transmission lines at some point - but I would still wager there is no way that it is energy efficient to build a frame upwards + have people get on special tools to maintain things 10 feet above the ground.

In places like Colorado there is very cheap land that is not very good for farming about an hour away from Denver and it certainly seems like it would be cost + energy efficient to build out there instead of up.

handmodelon Would You Manage 70 Children and a 15-Ton Vehicle for $18 an Hour?

I can't imagine (outside of Texas) its very high at all. Most elementary schools dont have anything besides a basic field and gym and the cost per them is usually slightly higher than high school.

The biggest increases in expenditures are specialists for children with speech problems, reading problems, learning disabilities etc. as professions like speech language pathologists usually earn considerably more than teachers and the number of them within any school has increased considerable too. I'm not making a value judgement - that's just where the money is going.

handmodelon Know how the Beatles ended? Peter Jackson may change your mind

Prob a ton of footage technically but from the production side really nothing. I knew someone who did transcriptions for a reality show (essentially would write out dialogue and scene descriptions of something that was being filmed 24/7 so the producers could sift through it) and I imagine every episode had way more than 60 hours of raw footage.

handmodelon End Amazon’s Surveillance Partnership with Police

>In exchange, Amazon provides police departments with an easy way to request and store footage from thousands of residents at one time––allowing for massive warrantless surveillance.

I am confused by this, though I'm pretty sure it is the author who is intentionally combining verbage though?

The link this post connects to is about how people submit their own photos/videos of porch thieves + suspicious people to the police. You could argue this is bad on its own but certainly not what "massive warrantless surveillance" invokes. Everyone reading that line without scrutiny will assume it means police departments are somehow watching your own Ring without permission.

handmodelon Fed to ban policymakers from owning individual stocks

Would certainly be better but I would say ten years is not a crazy long time when it comes to borrowing decisions that often have 30 years timetables.

Also doesn't capture in the the unequalness of gains. Which is better - the fed doing something that has 90% chance of huge gains or a 10% chance of catastrophic economy shattering loss? Or an 80% chance of huge gains and a 20% chance of gains netting 0? The first is much more desirable if maximizing a bonus and could be tempting - but I dont think we want that risk.

handmodelon Why can't we build nice neighborhoods anymore?

Nothing is stopping you from building a castle on your property now. My guess is the difference in price is about 5-fold - and the castle will need tons of costly repairs to adapt to whatever the favored amenities are.

I've lived in really old buildings. Even if the bricks on the outside were over 100 years old it was extremely expensive to update the air conditioning and windows to be a good living experience. Why take such a superficial view of what is "built to last" just because the outside stays the same? Best case scenario for a long last building is a ship of theseus situation. And while it may be cost efficient for historic college campuses to renovate their old buildings continuously, chances are this not applicable to random middle class homeowners.

handmodelon Why can't we build nice neighborhoods anymore?

I just think this is insane to me. We know the cost to build more intricate builds - it isn't a 2% cost increase its a 30 or 50% cost increase. There are already tons of restrictions on building and zoning in America.

I like nice cars but I dont insist that everyone drive a European sports car just because it would be aesthetically more pleasing. Ultimately, a city/town will be better off if people can spend 20% of their income on housing instead of 50%. Not just because they are selfish or short-sighted but because they can actually use the additional resources on things for themselves, their family, and their community.

handmodelon Why can't we build nice neighborhoods anymore?

I agree a lot of the balance has shifted this way but I don't see this as bad.

When you are very wealthy you can have both but for those without that much money I don't blame anyone for choosing functionality over the aesthetics of a neighborhood. It seems rather insane to me to insist that your neighbor must increase their budget 20 or 40 percent (perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars) just so your house can be a couple percentage points more desirable.

handmodelon Gen X Saw Wealth Rise 50% During Pandemic

While I think its interesting to point out how assets have risen in value recently, and how this doesnt effect everyone equally, the way this is phrased is intentionally misleading.

Wealth increased 50% from March 13th, 2020 - but the stock market decreased 25% from February 2020 to March 2020. Since February 2020 to now the stock market has increased about 32%, which is a lot for 18 months but not a crazy amount especially given a bit higher than average inflation.

handmodelon Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

https://www.trulia.com/for_sale/San_Mateo,CA/

I think that's fair but the nonetheless the only houses on here in San Mateo for under 600k are about 600sq ft. Even 1200sqft homes are 1M+ Where do you think married mid-level engineers are going to live?

For 500k in Austin you can choose between brand new 1300 sqft homes or older 2500 sqft homes.

handmodelon Tesla’s headquarters will move to Austin

It may be as NIMBY in some ways but the effects haven't kicked in yet (and probably won't given size, competition, and property tax laws). Look at the options available for a family making 80k in these two cities. They aren't even the same magnitude.

https://www.trulia.com/TX/Austin/

https://www.trulia.com/CA/Palo_Alto/

Texas also doesnt have prop 13 so it is unlikely to ever reach the levels of a California city

handmodelon [dead]

I like specialized polls like this a lot. I think they are interesting.

That being said the scale is a bit weird. #4 is "serious damage to revenue" and #5 is "Resignations at the top like Uber". It seems like #5 could happen without 4 and visa versa. I know Uber's brand is not great but seems like Dara taking over was probably good for both short term and long term revenue.

The headline could also be written as "Over half of FB employees believe that only tech reporters interested/minor dip"

handmodelon Facebook Whistleblower Leaks Thousands of Pages of Incriminating Internal Docs

What would be the definition of this?

I listen to a podcast on football. Are they allowed to run ads that are about sports betting and NFL tickets? That is personalized to the group. Is Facebook allowed to run ads for sports betting to all people who are fans of a professional team on their site?

Is Facebook not allowed to run me ads for local restaurants any more?

handmodelon Facebook-owned sites were down

I agree completely. The target audience Facebook is concerned about is not techies wanting to know the technical issues. Its the huge advertising firms, governments, power users, etc. who have concerns about the platform or have millions of dollars tied up in it. A bland statement is probably the best here - and even if the one engineer gave accurate useful info I don't see how you'd want to encourage an org in which thousands of people feel the need to post about whats going on internally during every crisis.

handmodelon Facebook-owned sites were down

Seems reasonable that at a company of 60k, with hundreds who specialize in PR, you do not want a random engineer making the choice himself to be the first to talk to the press by giving a PR conference on a random forum.

handmodelon Finally, on CBS, the football matches the business cards

I personally like it as is. When the ball snaps you can see the yardline and they do usually put up a field goal line when its appropriate. I feel like for whatever value it adds being on the bottom it ultimately clutters things more.

handmodelon Imgur Acquired by Medialab

I one time posted an album on Imgur of my hobby project. I was hoping it would do well on the niche subreddit it involved.

It did ok on reddit (100 upvotes) but a few thousands upvotes on Imgur and made the front page with hundreds of thousands of views. I was shocked since I didn't even know that was a thing. But my guess is popular with people who are on their phone a lot, are not as tech saavy, or international.

handmodelon Bitfinex just spent $23.7M in fees to make a single Ethereum transaction

One important thing to note is that in traditional finance if the money gets sent to person B, because person B hacked my e-mail, there is an enforcement mechanism to get the money back.

However, this is not as true for crypto. If I steal 5M from your account and put it into mine then you can't get the money back if I don't give up the key. And, while the state will personally arrest you, they are going to be a lot less likely/able to recoup any crypto.

handmodelon Amazon Ring uses domestic violence to market doorbell cameras

I feel like the levels of abstraction people use to make common sense improvements sound bad is extraordinary.

It isn't Ring's fault that domestic violence is messy and sometimes even video isn't enough to settle disputes when looked at by a third-party. The same argument against Ring (aka often times they don't lead to arrests) could be used for getting rid of motion detectors, calls to the police, or witness testimony altogether. If the standard is perfection then nothing is helpful (including costly social services calls which seems to be the subtext) but its clear a patchwork can be helpful.

handmodelon Amazon says it’s permanently banned 600 Chinese brands for review fraud

I do a lot of DIY electronics stuff so if I need a part I've never worked with and not 100% sure what size will fit best/look best I just order several variations and keep the one that works best. Sometimes I may need something and not sure of the exact quantity so I just order many and then return the ones I didnt have to open.

handmodelon Amazon says it’s permanently banned 600 Chinese brands for review fraud

I truly dont understand the Amazon hate. I spent 8k from it last year (about 500 items) because I have a very intensive hobby and have virtually none of the issues people complain about. I got the wrong item once (not sure if it was fraud or a mishap in packaging) and Amazon refunded me and told me not to ship it back. Of the 500 items I bought I probably return 20% of them and have never had an issue with a refund.

Perhaps my needs are different than others but I personally find it truly amazing. The one time I tried ordering something off Wal-Mart it came three days late and returning it was a nightmare.

handmodelon Tired of dating apps, Vancouver man launches social experiment to find companion

I've joked to friends (but would follow through) that if they introduce me to my future wife I would give them 5k. That is such a small amount of money to help you find the most important person in your life.

I think its a bit worse to pay for dates/access which is the entire premise of dating apps, matchmakers, clubs etc. because those dont have a vested interest in helping you find anything long and successful. In fact, its the opposite.

handmodelon The Elizabeth Holmes Trial Is a Wake-Up Call for Sexism in Tech

I can't get into the article now because I've reached my limit but there was a line that said "Why do we only charge Elizabeth Holmes? When will we find those CEOs who let blatant vaccine misinformation guilty of causing harm?"

If your view is that a CEO of a social media company should be held liable that really need its own op-ed, not a single sentence. I find it impossible to believe that one could think the reason the CEO of a social media site is not being charged is due to their gender. No one has been held liable (no publisher, writer, etc.) for vaccine misinfo. Its a complete garbage argument that undermines other legitimate claims of sexism in SV

handmodelon Newsom signs legislation to boost California’s housing supply

Definitely!

Someone else could explain better but I'm also fairly sure many of the new rules here (such as exempting CEQA) also apply to SFH. They just leave the current rules untouched for commercial/large-scale residential.