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nhebb

7,035 karma · joined November 27, 2009

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nhebb··on GM sells out first year of electric Hummer production
> doesn’t need a bunch of number keys that no one is ever going to click on

Don't underestimate the number of people who like to lean back in their chair and do everything with a mouse.

nhebb··on Analyzing the Design of Unusual Japanese Butter Tableware
I don't want to get between a Frenchman and his butter, but I just use a potato peeler for cold butter. I find it works well enough. I've also used a cheese slicer, but I found it harder to control the thickness.
nhebb··on Excel warriors who save governments and companies from spreadsheet errors
I'm reluctant to pimp my own product on HN, but one of the features of Spreadspeed [1] (my Excel add-in) is a Quick Protect tool which protects the sheet but will unlock individual cells based on styling (e.g., Input style).

https://www.breezetree.com/excel-utilities

nhebb··on Americans are underestimating how long disruptions will last, health experts say
I don't understand why Sweden is being held up as a paragon. Their death rate is currently 9th worst worldwide and over 2x that of the United States':

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105914/coronavirus-deat...

Edit: Both are good replies. Thank you.

nhebb··on Demand for medical equipment is making air cargo fees ‘crazy’
In order for that argument to work, the US would also have to lower the minimum wage. Is that what you're proposing?
nhebb··on Don’t bail out the cruise industry
In case anyone is not aware, the planned relief for companies in the private sector is in the form of loans, not cash giveaways
nhebb··on Loss of sense of smell a marker for Covid-19 infection
From what I understand, the sense of taste is intertwined with the sense of smell.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-connection-between-taste-a...

nhebb··on Spotted water hemlock is the most toxic plant in North America
Not only that, but I find the taste different. I'm one of those people who thinks cilantro tastes like soap. For me, it overpowers all other flavors in a dish, but I find coriander seeds to be mild and pleasant tasting.
nhebb··on Chloroquine has shown apparent efficacy in treatment of Covid-19
Previous discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22565107

nhebb··on Trump administration backs Oracle in Google fight
Did anyone here bother to check the bio's of the officials listed on the amicus brief? If so, you'd discover that the many (maybe most, I didn't count) were holdovers from previous administrations. But, conspiracy theories are fun, I guess.

Given the bipartisan history of the lawyers for the Copyright Office and the DOJ, one possibility is that they are basing the amicus on their interpretation of the Copyright Act and related legal precedents. My preference would be that public interface part of API's would be public domain. But that's a preference, not a legal opinion.

nhebb··on Every Google result now looks like an ad
If you prefer video, watch the 1998 PBS piece Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet. I won't link to it because I'm not sure if the site is legit, but I just re-watched a few minutes of it and it's funny to look back at the hype in that era.
nhebb··on Hospitals mergers do not improve quality: study
It's complicated. The US spends more per capita (PPP) than any other country by good margin [1]. Of that, the US government pays roughly 50% of the total cost [2]. The net effect is that the US government already pays as much per capita as many European countries with socialized medicine.

In short, we have a cost problem that's not being tackled. Pharmaceuticals are often targeted, but they're about 8% of our total healthcare costs. We really need politicians that will tackle the other aspects of cost.

The countries that finance public healthcare have tax systems that are considered regressive by US standards. Some states have sales taxes, but we have no national VAT. As I understand it, some countries like Sweden have income taxes on lower income workers, whereas in the US, roughly 45% of households pay no federal income tax.

You can only squeeze so much money out of the wealthy, but the numbers don't add up to cover the projected costs of nationalized healthcare in the US. Taxes would need to be raised across the board. It's easy for campaigning politicians to propose pie-in-the-sky plans, but proposing a financially plausible one would be political suicide.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_health_ex...

nhebb··on The Space Force is officially the sixth U.S. military branch
I don't think 5 star general is a rank anymore. There is also one 6 star, George Washington, General of the Armies.

As far as branches, the Merchant Marines falls under the DoD as well. IIRC, it had the highest casualty rate of any of the branches in WWII.

nhebb··on America’s Air Quality Worsens, Ending Years of Gains, Study Says
I use airnow.com. The site's usability is fine, and more importantly, their AQI numbers look much more realistic than the data you're getting from PurpleAir. You might consider another data source.
nhebb··on Oakland shows how to expand housing supply: tell developers they can build homes
> (1) Americans consider housing to be an investment.

Apparently I'm the lone dissenter on this, but I think for many people this is a side benefit that they may hope for, but the primary objective is simply to own a home that they can live in and raise a family.

nhebb··on Hours Worked by Women Age 55 to 61 Confound Labor Market Analysis
> Maybe now we can get some wage inflation!

We have been. Real (inflation adjusted) median household income has been going up in recent years, from ~$57k / household in 2014 to ~$63k / household in 2018:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N/

nhebb··on Acknowledging public sex changed how walkers interacted with Paris
The whole thing is pretentiously written blather.

> This is not to say that all women who appeared in public were assumed to be sexually available, nor that middle-class women were forbidden from the streets. The streets enabled a wide variety of encounters, dependent on the particular circumstances in which they occurred.

Such insight!

nhebb··on Nebraska Furniture Mart
Another interesting one is Hickory (NC) Furniture Mart. It started as a drive-in restaurant and pivoted over time into a mall with over 100 furniture stores.
nhebb··on Facebook is trying to register BOOK as trademark in Europe
Good point. Someone on r/cfb made the same point, but the idea of marketing "The" caps and shirts was still widely mocked, even by OSU diehards.
nhebb··on Facebook is trying to register BOOK as trademark in Europe
Ohio State University recently tried to trademark the word "The". Thankfully they were denied.
nhebb··on Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer
I saw Scott Hanselman speak, and he said he has impostor syndrome. I thought to myself, great, if Hanselman has impostor syndrome, I'm not even qualified. I must be an impostor-syndrome impostor.
nhebb··on Firefox 69.0 Released
I was excited for a second, but ESPN's site still autoplays videos, e.g.:

https://www.espn.com/college-football/boxscore?gameId=401110...

nhebb··on We Have Ruined Childhood
> For youngsters these days, an hour of free play is like a drop of water in the desert.

I'm over my free NYT limit, but the lead caught my eye. Is this a by-product of raising kids in the city, or just a symptom of a tightly wound parent?

I have three kids and their free play was never restricted. I work out of a home office in a kid-packed neighborhood. I hear kids of all ages playing outside after school, on weekends, and all day long in the summer. Not seeing the desert.

nhebb··on Show HN: I'm building a robot that cuts hair, starting with beard trims [video]
I did this a few weeks ago. I just quit a long tobacco habit, so I might have been a bit impulsive. For the most part, it turned out fine. I needed a second person to help trim the back, though. If you like a clean neckline, that's hard to do yourself.

Anyway, I rather have a 1990's Flowbee (https://www.flowbee.com/) than a robot. I've played Fallout 3 and know what can happen.

nhebb··on Congress Should Pass the Protecting Data at the Border Act
The lead paragraph of the bill:

> To ensure the digital contents of electronic equipment and online accounts belonging to or in the possession of United States persons entering or exiting the United States are adequately protected at the border, and for other purposes.

50 US Code 1801 defines "United States person" as:

> a citizen of the United States, an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence (as defined in section 1101(a)(20) of title 8), an unincorporated association a substantial number of members of which are citizens of the United States or aliens lawfully admitted for permanent residence, or a corporation which is incorporated in the United States, but does not include a corporation or an association which is a foreign power, as defined in subsection (a)(1), (2), or (3).

In short, it looks like this bill only applies to US citizens or lawful alien residents, not travelers.

nhebb··on Oberlin College case shows how universities are losing their way
> 14. Oberlin sent a mass email to its alumni association essentially saying that the jury disregarded the clear evidence showing it had done nothing wrong ...

In a move of awesome stupidity, that email was sent out while the case was still in court - just prior to the jury deliberating on the punitive damages.

nhebb··on After a $14B Upgrade, New Orleans’ Levees Are Sinking
Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are considered mandatory spending because politicians tend to like being reelected.
nhebb··on After a $14B Upgrade, New Orleans’ Levees Are Sinking
Discretionary spending is about 1/3 of the budget, and, yeah, defense is half of that, but when the GP wrote that "military spending takes up more than half of the budget" it paints a misleading picture.
nhebb··on After a $14B Upgrade, New Orleans’ Levees Are Sinking
It's far lower than that. There's a fake pie chart floating around the internet showing Defense at 57% of the federal budget. For 2019, the real number was 12%. In previous years it was about 15%.
nhebb··on Firefox banning noisy video from autoplaying
> media.autoplay.allow-muted = false

Which doesn't seem to work on many sites I visit. ESPN's NBA scoreboard, for example, will now automatically play videos in the sidebar.

Firefox changed media.autoplay.default from a bool to an integer several versions ago, and ever since, I can't figure out how to get videos not to autoplay. I wish there were a simple, "Don't play videos until I click on them" setting so I didn't have to guess at what config settings to toggle.

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