Hacker News Reader

rusanuon Forced rhubarb, a vegetable deprived of sunlight, is having a renaissance (2019)

Remember that rhubarb leaves are actually poisonous due to oxalic acid (I've seen quotes of 2-5 kg od leaves being a lethal dose).

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/does-rhub...

rusanuon South Africa is running out of Marmite

Here is an alternative read for some of us: https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20220417-ajvar-the-vegan-...

rusanuon I have no capslock and I must scream

This article describes perfectly the Netflix catalog...

rusanuon There’s no such thing as a tree (phylogenetically)

> Why don’t more plants evolve towards the “grass” strategy?

Grasses have a trick: Grass blades grow at the base of the blade and not from elongated stem tips. This low growth point evolved in response to grazing animals and allows grasses to be grazed or mown regularly without severe damage to the plant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poaceae#Description

rusanuon Bosch gives go-ahead for volume production of silicon carbide chips

A quick intro into EVSE and why there is no power 'charger' in them, and the space they take is just empty air https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMxB7zA-e4Y

rusanuon The 'impossible' crane shot from Soy Cuba (1964) [video]

This scene from Cranes are Flying? https://www.reddit.com/r/BeAmazed/comments/oqqgcl/this_amazi...

rusanuon Why do bats have such long lifespans?

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21922504/ Mitonuclear match: optimizing fitness and fertility over generations drives ageing within generations

also https://nick-lane.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Lane-Bioess...

rusanuon Why do bats have such long lifespans?

In The vital Question https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vital_Question Nick Lane is arguing that the eukaryote symbiotic cell (archea host, bacterial mitochondria symbiot) leads, via sex and the requirement for gene compatibility between the small mitochondrial genome and the host nuclear genome, to a "best fit" pressure on organism with extreme metabolism. Simplified, "Heartbeat hypothesis" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rate-of-living_theory) doe snot apply to, say, birds, that have extreme metabolic requirements (= flight). The fact that, among mammals, is bats that fit the same longevity may indicate that the mitochondrial-nucleus gene match idea could be right.

rusanuon Kepler telescope glimpses population of free-floating planets

also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon%27s_Egg

rusanuon The compiler will optimize that away

There are several versions available of Scott Meyers' CPU Caches and Why You care talk:

- https://vimeo.com/97337258 - https://www.aristeia.com/TalkNotes/PDXCodeCamp2010.pdf

rusanuon USS Johnston: Sub dives to deepest-known shipwreck

This youtube series telling the Battle of Midway from Japanese perspective (ie. only using the information available to them)is interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd8_vO5zrjo&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXjydKPcX60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHO6xrSF7Sw

rusanuon Myanmar's satellite held by Japan on space station due to spying concern

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENS_Gamal_Abdel_Nasser

Mistral class helicopter carrier, payed by Russia, built in France, delivered to Egypt instead due to the War in Donbass. France had to compensate Russia.

rusanuon Octopuses Like to Punch Fish

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40376072-children-of-rui...

rusanuon Brittle starfish are second known example of vision in an organism without eyes

Very much so. Besides adaptation like Human Echolocation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation), there is also active research for devices to help. Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_substitution#Tactile%E... for example, and there are videos of the various devices in use by blind people, eg. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s1VAVcM8s8

rusanuon The Riemann Hypothesis

3Blue1Brow has a nice video on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD0NjbwqlYw

rusanuon Football laws: What are the new rules for the 2019-20 season?

I could not read this. Why is an article presented as a chatbot? I give it a try, but the experience is horrible. Click to trigger some slow animation that flashes the content layout and rendering, only to be teased with a bit of info and an opportunity to click again for more...

rusanuon Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a nearby star

Evolution, because no other phenomenon can drive the required complexity to reach 'life'. Natural selection works by inheritance and mutation. Things that can create copies of themselves with mutations that allow selection to act on, this list is short.

rusanuon Dear Client, Here’s Why That Change Took So Long

How many Microsoft employees does it take to change a lightbulb?

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ericlippert/2003/10/28/how-...

rusanuon Tennessee doctors earn big money denying disability claims

Perhaps his practice has employees. Junior staff do all the work, he (reviews and) signs the papers.

rusanuon Microsoft Word for Windows 1.0 Postmortem (1989) [pdf]

Was the post-mortem itself typed in Word?

rusanuon Debt Worldwide Hits Record $86k per Person

In unrelated news: average mortgage worldwide close to $86k per Person.

How much of the Worldwide debt is secured by collateral?

rusanuon Niels Bohr’s Argument for the Irreducibility of Biology to Physics (1994)

Isn't this 'the argument of personal incredulity'? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_fallacy

> I cannot imagine how P could be true; therefore P must be false.

rusanuon How I targeted the Reddit CEO with Facebook ads to get an interview at Reddit

The cost should also account for the work put in and the years of experience and know how to pull it off. It cost you $10, but it would cost me several hundreds or even thousands to pay experts to do it for me.

rusanuon A massive, 'semi-infinite' trove of rare-earth metals has been found in Japan

Mining from the sea floor... Did any submarine sunk nearby?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian

rusanuon How generics were added to .NET

Not to mention that an empty list still has a type...

rusanuon Chicken chaos as KFC closes 750 outlets

KFC has closed 750 of its 900 UK outlets after delivery problems meant they ran out of chicken.

Last week, the fried chicken chain switched its delivery contract to DHL, which blamed "operational issues" for the supply disruption.

rusanuon Microsoft’s PowerShell Core Offers Cross-Platform Automation

You don't need to 'shell' out to call PoSh. You can host it yourself, see https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn569260(v=vs.85).a... Passing data is quite easy, both ways, is just C# objects. This can be convenient when faced with one of those 'Powershell only API' features.

rusanuon Arabic characters found woven into burial costumes from Viking boat graves

Swedish Vikings extended mostly toward what is now Russia and Ukraine, using Volga, Don and Dniepr as major communication/transport channels [0]. This brought them into contact with the Khazar Khanagate at the mouth of Volga [1] and the Volga Bulgars [2] (both muslim at the time). When Vladimir (half viking) had to choose a religion for his Kievan Rus, Islam was one of the choices [3] (rejected because it would forbid the joy of drinking, see link).

So there was ample cultural contact with Islam, a religion actively proselytizing. It lasted about 150-200 years. That some influence made it back to Sweden should not be surprising.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_trade_route [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazars [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volga_Bulgaria [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_the_Great

rusanuon It’s time to kill the web app

The author is not even mentioning the reason Web apps become prevalent, even in B2B and Enterprise: deployment. Not having to deal with upgrading hundreds of workstations to the latest release.

rusanuon Why is memory reclamation so important for lock-free algorithms?

Once I've read an excellent book, The Art of Multiprocessor Programming [0]. All examples in the book are in Java. After reading it, when thinking about some of the solutions and algorithms presented, I quickly concluded that deploying them in C/C++ would be an order of magnitude more complex, because of 'memory reclamation'. So yes, I think the OP makes a good point.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Art-Multiprocessor-Programming-Revise...