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kpmcc

474 karma · joined November 17, 2015

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kpmcc··on Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says
Buddy with all 24/7 gas powered data centers in the works we’ll be lucky to keep below 3 C.
kpmcc··on Dolly Parton has died
If anyone wants to listen to an underrated Dolly track, my rec is Silver Dagger.
kpmcc··on Is America becoming a gerontocracy?
A little late no?
kpmcc··on The Rich and Powerful Want to Live Forever. What If They Could?
Gonna go out on a limb here and say that old age and dying are actually good, and that many of the problems in Western society are due to people living too long and holding onto power longer than they should / not passing on power and resources to younger generations.
kpmcc··on Smoking ban for people born after 2008 in the UK agreed
This is good and all, but they should probably also restrict the advertising of nicotine products in this country. Coming here from the states, I was astounded that you can advertise Zyn like nicotine pouches in tube stations and around in public.
kpmcc··on The Seasons Are Wrong
Moving from the US to the UK, one of the first things I noticed was that the colloquial understanding of the seasons mapped much more cleanly onto what actually happens with the weather here. Growing up in the midwest of the US the seasons all felt off in the same way the author describes.
kpmcc··on Bugs Apple loves
Audio balance issues: for some reason on macOS the left right balance for audio will just change from being centered???

At least 6 years old.

https://superuser.com/questions/1516621/macbook-sound-balanc...

Still around as of 2025: https://www.techradar.com/computing/mac-os/its-2025-and-appl...

There’s a dedicated applet to fix this…

kpmcc··on GoFundMe CEO: economy is so bad his customers crowdfund to pay for groceries
There is a method for dealing with widespread inequality coinciding with generational wealth transfer, it’s called taxation. Tax transfers of wealth. It’s not complicated and doesn’t rely on the goodwill of ‘values-driven, digitally native, and community oriented’ young people.

We have a system designed to incentivize greed. Gross inequality is the result. Taxation is one viable method to deal with such a failure mode.

kpmcc··on Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left
Is this a joke?
kpmcc··on Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left
Which airlines? I feel like if this is an issue we should be naming names.
kpmcc··on EU court rules nuclear energy is clean energy
What is climate friendly about natural gas?
kpmcc··on Aging-related inflammation is not universal across human populations
If anyone wants an interesting read on inflammation / stress for lay audiences, I'd recommend 'Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers' by Sapolsky.
kpmcc··on Dasung Paperlike 13K is a 13.3 inch E Ink color monitor
The video is very clearly a render and not a video of the real screen...
kpmcc··on Where does air pollution come from?
Does anyone recognize the plotting library they're using? Those interactive charts are really nice.
kpmcc··on Germany tightens travel advice to US after three citizens detained
It certainly would be cheaper, but then how would the people running the arbitrary detention centers get paid?
kpmcc··on 'The tyranny of apps': those without smartphones are unfairly penalised
Somewhat unrelated to the piece, but this is the second website I’ve seen in two days that appears to not have properly merged an edit?

“ The RAC’s head of policy, Simon Williams, says many people are overwhelmed by the multitude of apps they have to use, “when in reality you want one that you like and you’re happy using and that you can use everywhere”.

Six years ago the Department for Transport started developing a “national parking platform” (NPP) designed to enable drivers to use one app of their choice to pay for all their parking. It has been trialled by a number of councils, but a big question mark hangs over its future as public funding for the project looks likely to be withdrawn.

The RAC’s head of policy Simon Williams says many people are overwhelmed by the multitude of apps they have to use, “when in reality you want one that you like and you’re happy using and that you can use everywhere”.

Six years ago the Department for Transport started developing a “national parking platform” (NPP) designed to enable drivers to use one app of their choice to pay for all their parking, and it has been trialled by a number of councils. However, a big question mark now hangs over its future as public funding for the project looks likely to be withdrawn imminently.”

I think the other one was an npr piece posted on HN yesterday? Is there a bug with wordpress or are people just getting sloppy?

kpmcc··on Order Declassifying JFK and MLK Assassination Records [pdf]
Flooding the zone. Don't lose focus.
kpmcc··on No evidence social media time is correlated with teen mental health problems
I think a useful framing might be to compare social media to drugs. Many people do various sorts of drugs. Some people can do some drugs and not have their lives destroyed by said drugs. Other people have their lives upended by some drugs, sometimes the same ones that other people do without such serious consequences. We recognize that not all drugs are equivalent and recognize that they need to be taken seriously, limited, or prohibited outright.

Many people, and clearly many teenagers are able to use social media and not be all that harmed. For some, that's clearly not the case.

kpmcc··on Is this the civilization we want? (2017)
How many of your complex projects have gone according to plan?
kpmcc··on Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them
As impractical as it may be, I think the only answer is to limit the size of vehicles, either through taxation or an outright ban. Larger vehicles are worse for pretty much everything and many of the costs are externalized.
kpmcc··on Launch HN: Synnax (YC S24) – Unified hardware control and sensor data streaming
One thing that might keep me from using this is how well it integrates with other tools I might want to use for data analysis or historical lookback. For example, I currently use grafana as a simple, easy way to review sensor data from our r&d tests. Grafana has solid support for postgres, timescale, influxdb and a number of other data sources. With a custom database, I'd imagine the availability of tools outside of the synnax ecosystem would be rather limited.
kpmcc··on Launch HN: Synnax (YC S24) – Unified hardware control and sensor data streaming
Thanks for the reply! That all makes sense, and I can totally relate to the "cobbling together several tools that weren't fully compatible" experience. There's enough complexity with having to support or integrate sensors/actuators with a variety of industrial networking protocols. Anything to simplify the software portion of the system would go a long way. Excited to dig into this a bit more, best of luck with ongoing development!
kpmcc··on Launch HN: Synnax (YC S24) – Unified hardware control and sensor data streaming
Hey! I work at a startup that does industrial automation related work and this looks super helpful. Going to take a deeper look later, but off the bat I wanted to ask why you felt a custom time series database was warranted when there are options like timescale or regular old postgres out there?
kpmcc··on Polestar eliminates the rear window in latest electric car
So much complexity to do the same thing as a mirror and a window…
kpmcc··on Apple has not fixed the macOS audio left/right balance bug for nearly 10 years
The fact that this has existed for so long and is common enough to warrant a third party program devoted to resolving the issue is an embarrassment for Apple.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/balance-lock/id1019371109?mt=1...

kpmcc··on A practical guide to quitting your smartphone
I've been using the Cat S22 as my main device for the past month or so and have found it to be pretty much exactly what I was looking for.

It's a flip phone that runs android, so can still use whatsapp, signal, email, maps, use rideshare apps, scan qr codes, and play music, but is limited enough that I'm not scrolling on it during free interstitial moments. The screen is too small to really be useful for reading the internet or using something like instagram, but I'm not totally cut off from friends and family.

I've used other dumbphones in the past, notably the Punkt MP01 and the Light Phone II and the Cat feels like one I could use indefinitely and not have to have another device handy. The only exception I would note is that I recently got back from traveling to a foreign country and a city I'd never been and I think I would have rather had a smart phone there.

kpmcc··on Tallest wooden wind turbine starts turning
Possibly a dumb question, but what if this gets struck by lightning?
kpmcc··on Ask HN: Where have you found community outside of work?
Also came here to say climbing (specifically bouldering). I moved to a smaller city in the south last fall and within a month had a handful of new friends through the gym. Pretty soon got in with the crew of folks who worked there, started climbing outside with some of them and eventually ended up working part time at the gym as a side thing.

That being said, I think there's something about the community at this particular gym that is special. I climbed for years at gyms in Chicago and never had anything close to the level of community I found in a couple months down here. I'm sure my attitude / situation had something to do with it, as I went in this time with the intention to make friends and had a lot of free time to be able to spend at the gym; but the gym / community makes a huge difference. Look for smaller / community focused gyms if you can or try out a few different gyms to see if you click with any particular group of people. Try to go to events the gyms put on and be a familiar face.

kpmcc··on The bitter campus privacy battle over smart building sensors
The fact that this got IRB approval is astonishing.
kpmcc··on The AI Mirror Test, which smart people keep failing
Glad to see someone cogently write what I've been thinking after reading some of the writeups and comments on BingGPT.

The Turing test is ours to fail.

Reading the transcript of Roose's interaction felt like reading a convo with a souped up version of ELIZA with a wider text bank from which to draw.

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