Hacker News Reader

ljfon The problem with farmed seafood

Side note - it always amazes me (and people when I tell them) that when you lose fat from your body, they main way for that fat to leave your system, is to burn it then breathe the co2 out - that is one of the limits on how much fat you can burn a day. You do lose some of the results of the burning, and a little through sweat, but the vast majority is down to co2 leaving your system.

(Note you can temporarily also lose weight through water loss - but that isn't the loss of actual fat from your system.)

ljfon Studies increasingly find links between air pollutants and dementia

https://www.cieh.org/ehn/environmental-protection/2025/april...

Quote: Research shows cooking on domestic gas hobs can cause two of the most harmful air pollutants, NO2 and PM2.5, to exceed WHO guidelines

ljfon Amazon may lay off 30k corporate employees this week, Reuters reports

Posted a few times already today on other news sites https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

ljfon Amazon may lay off 30k corporate employees this week, Reuters reports

403 Forbidden, at least here in the UK.

ljfon Mosquitoes discovered in Iceland for the first time

Midges and mosquitos are different things. And biting midges have only been in Iceland for 10 years or so.

https://www.icelandreview.com/news/iceland-marks-ten-years-o...

ljfon Mosquitoes found in Iceland for first time as climate crisis warms country

Given the speed that biting midges spread across Iceland, this is potentially very concerning news ( https://www.icelandreview.com/news/iceland-marks-ten-years-o... ). I wonder if there will be any benefits for birds or other insect eating animals. Though the negative of having another disease vector will surely outweigh any benefits to Iceland.

ljfon After closing coal plants, Idaho Power is the rare utility cutting rates

Great news to have another proof point on the benefits of exiting coal from our electrical energy grid. The sooner we can over-provision renewables and close the gaps in production with batteries - the better.

ljfon Flies keep landing on North Sea oil rigs

Indeed - and let's not forget that these are the ones that successfully landed somewhere - many many others will have landed in the sea, or otherwise died before they could reach a suitable spot.

The ones that landed here hadn't aimed for or planned to find the rig, they were just in the same physical location and found a space to land.

ljfon First catastrophic climate tipping point: coral reefs facing widespread dieback

I feel very lucky to have seen coral reefs first hand in the sea, but unlucky also have seen huge coral graveyards collapsing into ocean rubble out in Greece.

I am very unsure if my children will be able to see natural coral reefs, that feels hugely unfair from the point of view of environmental loss and as part of the beauty of the ocean.

ljfon I'm turning 41, but I don't feel like celebrating

Same for his suggestion the 1000s of people are in prison for tweeting - there are people who are jailed for malicious communications but that includes terrorism and a few others things that are far more serious than simply presenting an opinion on a website.

ljfon I'm turning 41, but I don't feel like celebrating

Consider;

a. Not all people using Facebook are using their real name,

and

b. Not all Facebook accounts are real people

ljfon How can airports fight back against drones?

While I agree it isn't right or moral, I'd argue that this behaviour has been 'normal' for a long time now - but for most of the last 100 years the main funding and actors behind the undeclared wars were the global West.

We are now in a place where it is cheaper than ever and even easier to set up attacks from afar https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/04/23/russian-sp...

ljfon Ask HN: Is it hard for you to read a thick book?

This is very true for me. If I wanted to throw myself into a weird or surreal story - grabbing a book was often the only place I could get that hit as a teenager in the 90s - we didn't even have a vcr for ages, so the only other places were live TV or radio (or the theatre too I guess).

now there are so many places to scratch the exact itch of today's interest. Books are still great, but as an adult with less free time - I find myself falling for the quick hits more readily.

ljfon Dismissed as a joke, UK's first rice crop ripe for picking after hot summer

East Anglia and Cambridgeshire are both highly at risk from rising sea levels - we might see the effects in our lifetimes. https://cambridgeshirepeterborough-ca.gov.uk/news/new-climat...

ljfon Show HN: I spent 4 months building Duolingo but for your life

Equally, feels like there should be a duolingo marketplace - want to learn electronics, maths, history etc through the duolingo framework - could be 'short' courses type materials, or ongoing/never ending type learning.

I've bought a few courses from various places, but I want bite size and daily learning.

ljfon What CEO's get wrong about prototypes

Not AI specific but Joel On Software covered a lot of the same material and thinking, written a lot better, about 20 years ago - but that is because this is an evergreen problem - getting leaders to understand that a prototype is just a test or a demo, no a path to the solution.

A previous company had a rule that all prototypes were built with the express intention of throwing them away - no prototype code could ever make its way to live.

ljfon NYC Telecom Raid: What's Up with Those Weird SIM Banks?

Thank you for this - these are the kind of facts that really scratch a mental itch for me.

ljfon NYC Telecom Raid: What's Up with Those Weird SIM Banks?

I stand corrected, I didn't know that - but it is a while since I've paid attention to phone numbers like I used to.

ljfon NYC Telecom Raid: What's Up with Those Weird SIM Banks?

Things I learnt today: that mobile phone numbers in the USA are 'local'

Here in the UK, all landline residential numbers start with an area code that starts 02 for London and 01 for the rest of the coountry (eg 020 for London and 0114 for Sheffield).

Mobile numbers here all start 07 here, and the first 5 digits are carrier specific - but so many people port their numbers that it becomes meaningless pretty quickly. But years ago you could spot a number an know what provider the caller was on.

---

Are residential and mobile numbers similar in the States?

ljfon Nine things I learned in ninety years

And in addition they got to watch their friends/family/coworkers succeed and fail many times over.

While it can be very tempting to say 'we tried that before and it didn't work' - the key is people who can understand why it didn't work, or who can encourage you to make your own mistakes and be there to guide you back when needed.

ljfon What CEO's get wrong about prototypes

It has some good points but it reads like it was written by AI. Only the typos and grammatical errors lead me to assume a human may have written it.

ljfon Europe's EV sales surge 26% in 2025 while Tesla faces decline

Not sure which of the three, but afriend bought one new here in the UK for around £22k - which at the time the dealer assured him he could sell back to them at £15-18k a year later.

He needed the car to tide him over to a work based EV scheme.

A year later the dealer said he'd be lucky to get £8kfor private sale and that the dealership didn't want the car as had 5 on forecourt already.

He's kept the car and loved it, but 2nd hand EV prices here can be great (or bad if you are a seller) - I saw a 10year old Nissan Note EV for £1K the other day - if I already had a charger I would have snapped it up, even if the range was less than 50 miles now.

ljfon Meta exposé author faces $50k fine per breach of non-disparagement agreement

No, truth is a defence now.

ljfon Leatherman (vagabond)

A very different man, but the book 'The Autobiography of a Super Tramp' is a fascinating read from the hayday of the tramp - about one manes tramping across the UK and USA

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

ljfon Europe is locking itself in to US LNG

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/27/opinion/environment/energ...

Fracking is only profitable when oil is $120 a barrel or more.

ljfon Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

As below; Totally agree - their lives were no doubt hard and busy with back breaking work - my 'yes' was a 'yes it is a trope' - not a 'yes they barely worked

ljfon Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

Totally agree - their lives were no doubt hard and busy with back breaking work - my 'yes' was a 'yes it is a trope' - not a 'yes they barely worked'

ljfon Life, work, death and the peasant: Rent and extraction

Yes https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/medieval-peasant-only-work...

ljfon Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"

Just did some very light googling - building out, repairing and developing new road infrastructure seems to have around 2:1 or 2.5:1 ROI - Public transport, active transport seems to have around 4:1 to 5:1 ROI.