Hacker News Reader

interesticaon China reaches energy milestone by "breeding" uranium from thorium

> Talking about “thousands of tonnes” of nuclear waste is comically misleading when you realise how tiny the volume is.

You’re mixing mass and volume here. From what I can tell, their numbers were essentially right. Are you saying we don’t have thousands of tonnes of nuclear waste produced?

interesticaon Outdated Samsung handset linked to fatal emergency call failure in Australia

We have all lost functionality of a device we paid for after an update. You can’t fault a user for avoiding it. It’s the root that should be addressed.

interesticaon Tesla Is Recalling Cybertrucks Again

This was genuinely innovative and intriguing. Did the numbers just not work out for manufacturing or some other thing get in the way?

interesticaon Hemp ban hidden inside government shutdown bill

Having representation based on land/physical space will increasingly be seen as absurd.

Maybe we will have “youth reps” in the future. Or reps based on other organizing group (hunters? Musicians?). The problem is…taxonomical? People won’t have to belong to a single group but can belong to several “unions”.

interesticaon Scripts I wrote that I use all the time

Share yours!

I use this as a bookmarklet to grab the front page of the new york times (print edition). (You can also go back to any date up to like 2011)

I think they go out at like 4 am. So, day-of, note that it will fail if you're in that window before publishing.

    javascript:(()=>{let d=new Date(new Date().toLocaleString('en-US',{timeZone:'America/New_York'})),y=d.getFullYear(),m=('0'+(d.getMonth()+1)).slice(-2),g=('0'+d.getDate()).slice(-2);location.href=`https://static01.nyt.com/images/${y}/${m}/${g}/nytfrontpage/scan.pdf`})()

interesticaon Bertrand Russell to Oswald Mosley (1962)

I was incorrect here. The letters were all from december 61 to jan 62.

interesticaon Bertrand Russell to Oswald Mosley (1962)

You are absolutely right! The couple from 62 are correct.

interesticaon Bertrand Russell to Oswald Mosley (1962)

They had a long history of correspondence. The preceding letter is archived and you can probably get a copy. (https://bracers.mcmaster.ca/79128)

> Jan 6/1962 Re nuclear disarmament and world government. BR is not inclined to agree or disagree with Mosley's views, but he does think that Mosley is "rather optimistic" in his expectations. BR provides criticism of his main two objections. (A polite letter.)

> Jan 11/1962 Mosley wants to lunch privately with BR about their differences.

These are basically all the letters exchanged with Mosley:

https://bracers.mcmaster.ca/bracers-basic-search?search_api_...

interesticaon Bertrand Russell to Oswald Mosley (1962)

If you’re really interested in his works and correspondence, McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario holds the Bertrand Russell archives.

Some stuff is online. Here’s a curated collection of some really interesting letters sent to him:

https://dearbertie.mcmaster.ca/letters

interesticaon Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

This is like cable with extra steps ;)

I think we are already seeing some packaged stream services and we will probably see more. It’s a lot of overhead to maintain a separate service to do the exact same thing (with only a different library and branding).

I think the NHL uses the streaming backend developed by MLB Advanced Media (they adapted it in 2015, not sure if still the case).

https://www.sportsnet.ca/hockey/nhl/a-closer-look-at-nhls-pa...

interesticaon Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

I think we have it backwards by attaching it to the life/death of the creator (or the works’ creation). People should be alive to experience the works they consumed in new and open ways. Creation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It builds on the collective works. There’s no point in a work becoming public domain if no one is alive from the time when it first had an impact on culture. Seniors should be freely able to listen to access the culture of their youth and experience it in new modified ways without restriction.

15 years or less from the date of first public consumption.

interesticaon Streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy

In a weird quirk that must be a bug, you can watch the first season of the Good Place in French in the USA but not in Canada.

interesticaon GPT-5: It just does stuff

I mean this is already kind of the case with general search (eg google) as it is now.

interesticaon Try and

> "Truly", we understand each other better and communicate faster ~when we out speech draws from a a collection of words~, idioms, and grammatical constructions familiar to the listener. This linguistic inventory is not natural. It must be taught. Errors must he corrected, not validated. Not every utterance from someone's mouth has equal merit.

It’s okay. I still understood you.

interesticaon Try and

https://www.bbc.com/pidgin

interesticaon Tell HN: Anthropic expires paid credits after a year

This was the (corp) argument in Canada for allowing companies to expire gift cards. They no longer expire.

interesticaon AI Stands for Artificial Inanity

real inanity

interesticaon PHP: The Toyota Corolla of programming

I think that wordpress probably had a big impact on PHP's success. It's on 40%+ of sites. It was set up in a way for people to make modifications to actual code (or at least see). Hosting providers had to make sure PHP was preinstalled and useful.

interesticaon Severe turbulence forces Delta A330 to make emergency landing, 25 injured

Interesting! As a continued hypothetical, it's interesting that the "No Smoking" permanently-lit sign is next to the seatbelt one. It's a weird contradiction: by being an electronic illuminated sign in the most prominent area (like a passenger HUD - reserved for critical info) it is given an elevated importance that doesn't really align with user expectation (is it really on the same level as the 'alert' implementation of the seatbelt sign?). So, there may be some kind of "cries wolf" subtle psychological effect in play: the cigarette signage is so obviously unnecessary in place and prominence that maybe the seatbelt signage takes on some of that cognitive placement (and implied importance) in mind. I think it kind of plays into that "respect for authority" you noted -- not unlike the possibility that programs like DARE that tried to group drugs like marijuana with heroin may have caused an increase in harder drug use when people realized that they were misled by that initial 'noble lie'. (See also mask use during the pandemic)

interesticaon How Tesla is proving doubters right on why its robotaxi service cannot scale

> Elon is trying to reinvent public transportation

If done well, this should fix the most critical gap in public transit. You can move massive amounts of people via trains and buses -- but that doesn't get them from transit to home (unless you're lucky enough to live near an access point).

The robotaxis should be solely used for that 'last mile' -- reduce the need for transit parking (which is insane for commuter lots).

interesticaon AI therapy bots fuel delusions and give dangerous advice, Stanford study finds

ConfessionGPT?

interesticaon What's happening to reading?

I saw an example recently of a sort of “AI Codec” : A person has to send a message to a respected figure of authority. They organize their thoughts and requests into a clear and concise bulleted list with explanations. But, that seemed heavily informal and unprofessional. So they used AI to convert the bullets to paragraphs and sent it out.

The authority received the large body of text but, due to time commitments and attention, they didn’t have time to read it all. They used AI to convert the text to a concise bulleted list.

interesticaon Fine dining restaurants researching guests to make their dinner unforgettable

Sounds like a (fusion) menu item.

https://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab-how-to-make-the-bes...

interesticaon GLP-1s are breaking life insurance

Fluoridated water? Nah. GLP water.

interesticaon Preliminary report into Air India crash released

Are we not in agreement? MCAS overrode the inputs and the thumb switches could override MCAS?

interesticaon Preliminary report into Air India crash released

> at which point the aircraft will have "landed" one way or another.

Also we need more rocket thrust takeoff airplanes.

interesticaon Preliminary report into Air India crash released

https://ad.easa.europa.eu/blob/NM-18-33.pdf/SIB_NM-18-33_1

> Recommendations The FAA recommends that all owners and operators of the affected airplanes incorporate the following actions at the earliest opportunity: 1) Inspect the locking feature of the fuel control switch to ensure its engagement. While the airplane is on the ground, check whether the fuel control switch can be moved between the two positions without lifting up the switch. If the switch can be moved without lifting it up, the locking feature has been disengaged and the switch should be replaced at the earliest opportunity. 2) For Boeing Model 737-700, -700C, -800, and -900ER series airplanes and Boeing Model 737- 8 and -9 airplanes delivered with a fuel control switch having P/N 766AT613-3D: Replace the fuel control switch with a switch having P/N 766AT614-3D, which includes an improved locking feature.

interesticaon Preliminary report into Air India crash released

It was a series of events and failures rather than simply “pilot calculated incorrect”. And it was a bit more nuanced than metric/imperial conversion.

Via wiki (but accident section is more detailed):

“ The accident was caused by a series of issues, starting with a failed fuel-quantity indicator sensor (FQIS). These had high failure rates in the 767, and the only available replacement was also nonfunctional. The problem was logged, but later, the maintenance crew misunderstood the problem and turned off the backup FQIS. This required the volume of fuel to be manually measured using a dripstick. The navigational computer required the fuel to be entered in kilograms; however, an incorrect conversion from volume to mass was applied, which led the pilots and ground crew to agree that it was carrying enough fuel for the remaining trip. ”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

interesticaon Preliminary report into Air India crash released

That’s absolutely applicable here. It means that an engine cutoff shouldn’t be allowed at all during certain parts of flight. It’s not crazy to think that a design fix would be to prevent those engagements during certain parts of takeoff (a certain window). It’s fly by wire anyway so it could presumably be done programmatically.

MCAS was basically made to prevent user input that would send the plane into a dangerous angle. The computer overrode the inputs. So there’s precedent for something like it.

interesticaon Preliminary report into Air India crash released

The form of the action isn’t necessarily what’s stored. They may have memorized something as “fourth action” or some other mnemonic mechanism