Hacker News Reader

sacnoradhqon The Ultra-Rich Are Flourishing and Sticking Around in California

K-shaped recovery in action. The very rich are swimming in profits extracted from the pandemic and profit-price spiral (driving 60% of inflation) while there are massive layoffs at most megacorps and loan rates are too high for people to afford to purchase a home.

Even making $250k/year isn't enough to afford to live where I grew up in San Jose, CA. It became a tiered society of mostly low-paid and middle-income renters contrasted with some retired (maintaining Prop 13) but mostly ultra-rich (mostly people from abroad who bring huge piles of cash) who are the only ones who can afford to live there. It slides into becoming a miserable banana-republic (unless you're very rich).

sacnoradhqon Pressure-driven distillation for fast and selective water purification

RO membranes typically include a waste path so they're self-cleaning for their lifecycle, but some manufacturers may have flushing procedures to extend service life.

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Libya are almost completely dependent on RO for water.

The Carlsbad plant in San Diego was $1B and costs $80M/y (@ 40 MW) to operate while producing 56k acre-ft/y (7% of demand), enough for about 400k people or 20k acres of farmland with average crops.

What would cut water use greatly would be the elimination of meat agriculture which depends on crops such as hay, alfalfa, and cow corn. 2/3 of Utah's water goes to irrigating crops to feed cows.

sacnoradhqon Pressure-driven distillation for fast and selective water purification

Unlikely. At scale, will likely be setup like an RO membrane with 3 lines.

sacnoradhqon Pressure-driven distillation for fast and selective water purification

Wow. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this looks like a hybrid of RO and distillation.

sacnoradhqon Regular use of Vitamin D supplement is associated with fewer melanoma cases

It's not a surprise that fundamental health improves outcomes against novel infections. Public health should be encouraging significant evidence-based habits routinely.

sacnoradhqon Regular use of Vitamin D supplement is associated with fewer melanoma cases

I wouldn't doubt it. I'm in both cohorts. (Family history of malignant melanoma, fair skin, and moles and freckles.)

Most men never use sunscreen, including those who spend a great deal of time outdoors. I seriously doubt that cohort takes vitamin D.

sacnoradhqon Why Is Everyone Watching TV with the Subtitles On?

Who is "everyone"? I don't know anyone who does this unless they're not a native speaker.

EDIT: Might it be because TV speakers are worse than ever? I have a pair of Elac Debut 2.0 F6.2 and an SVS SB16-Ultra so I might be a bit biased. ;>

sacnoradhqon IBM Blue Lightning: World’s Fastest 386? (2014)

The fastest 386 was the 486SX. ;)

Interestingly, the 487SX was a complete 486DX that disabled the original 486SX.

https://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/optics/olympusmicd/galleries/ch...

EDIT: IBM's LC chips were targeted at laptops initially but then found their way into embedded systems. Cyrex (used in the BL line) was often slightly ahead in performance and performance/price, but compatibility wasn't always there.

sacnoradhqon Erlang, the Unix Way

Sample output of it running would've been nice too. "Show me, don't tell."

Also, a mirror of each example in Elixir would've been helpful and likely cleaner to read.

sacnoradhqon Microbially produced protein that is much sweeter than sugar

Suicide and omnicide are for the death cult fatalists and the terrorists.

Everyone else I know wants to change things and live.

sacnoradhqon Microbially produced protein that is much sweeter than sugar

Look again. OJ has more calories per unit volume. 13.75 kcal / oz vs. 11.66.

sacnoradhqon Alcohol without the hangover – scientists are finding ways

Just about the time I left university, the supplement "cure" RU-21 was touted as eliminating the hangover. The gotcha was dosing prior to drinking and dosing with each drink.

sacnoradhqon Critical theory is radicalizing high school debate

There is a fundamental weakness in the fascist-adjacent proscription of orthodoxy while forbidding anything that may challenge or question it. That is not liberalism, it is an echo chamber lacking contact and ability to deal with the whole world.

I also disapprove of the tendency to muzzle people with prior restraint because they raise controversial points because somehow "harmony" is more important than insightful and authentic discourse on topics of greater import because someone "might be offended" or "will encourage negative interactions". If only certain topics can be discussed while others cannot, that is a lack of freedom.

sacnoradhqon How fast should you accelerate your kid in math?

Personal anecdote: I started in private school for K-3, and then public school for 4-12. Public school was remedial until AP Calculus BC in high school. I was skipped in 6th grade to advanced 7th grade math but was harassed by the teacher who also encouraged the class to harass me as well.

I say nudge and try to introduce concepts with Kahn Academy videos and then do problems in between. See how far they can go because kids tend to learn faster than we give them credit for. Keep it fun because keeping curiosity alive is precious.

sacnoradhqon The Problem of Excess Genius (1997)

The issue is creating and maintaining critical mass for the superorganism of people, opportunity, money, and ideas. One such example is Stanford University and Palo Alto, arguably a mini "Venice" of our times by the deliberate sowing of the seeds by the Stanford family post 1884. Interestingly, A. Leland Stanford became something of a socialist in his later years. Jane Stanford either crossed paths with a sociopath or was detested enough to be murdered by one of her employees in Hawaii after a failed attempt in California.

sacnoradhqon The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News (2019)

I dare you: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Gackle

Spoiler alert: It assume you're looking for a loud, pushy corvid that hops up on your table and insists it has a right to one of your tacos.

sacnoradhqon I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

(CS/EE here who I guess won the womb lottery by being born in the States.) Holy crap, that's absurd and ill-informed on their part. There should be standards on the which accreditation of degrees to accept, not an exhaustive, under-maintained/-reviewed list of specific majors from specific institutions.

The US can only stay competitive by making it easy enough for global talent to want to come here and want to stay. In the past ~15 years, the US has really lost its edge on being the melting pot and welcoming immigrants in a nation built and populated by immigrants (except for native peoples).

PS: Not all CS/engineering degrees are created equal. There are some US institutions where their Computer Science (CS) Bachelor's degree is not accredited by a professional society while the Electrical Engineering (EE), Computer Engineering, etc. are. I switched majors to earn one that was ABET accredited. For new international students, it's vital to check the International Mutual Recognition Agreement (IMRA) for their degree to be sure it's widely recognized by the rest of the world. The cliche is a Russian physicist who ends up teaching US high school biology because of trouble with degree portability.

https://amspub.abet.org/aps/name-search?searchType=program&k...

sacnoradhqon I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

(Late to the party, but I'm dropping this note in a bottle.)

You should meet Rajat Kuver. He taught and has a private practice now for complex family and work-related immigration cases in the SF Bay Area. Also a cool, decent guy.

https://www.kuver.com

sacnoradhqon Rain Panels: Harvesting the energy of falling raindrops

I was just thinking the same thing. xD This is a totally useless idea (outside of Florida). If you wanted to harvest some energy reliably, there's plenty in wind and tides and ocean currents.

.35 W/m^2 vs 250 W/m^2 (after conversion losses) for solar, 2 solid orders of magnitude more energy. Even in cloudy conditions, solar is still going to deliver 15 W/m^2.

You'd be better off harnessing the power of wildlife to turn hamster wheels than spend money for the occasions to harvest a few joules when it rains. I imagine the operational costs and idle losses swamp any gains this system could ever hope to realize.

"Solar Roadways: When failure is worth 30 MILLION Dollars!"

https://youtu.be/ff-3MhQ7ri8

"EEVblog 1534 - Solar Freakin' RAILways!"

https://youtu.be/7vItnxhWRqw

sacnoradhqon The U.K. government is close to eroding encryption worldwide

WhatsApp requires a phone number, implicitly deanonymizing you. It also lacked e2ee for a long time.

Signal requires a phone number. Use the fork Session that generates anonymous identifiers. https://getsession.org

Apple participated in PRISM and also requires an identifier such as an email address or phone number.

sacnoradhqon The U.K. government is close to eroding encryption worldwide

Tories == fascists. And big money even sits in the PM's chair.

sacnoradhqon Officials bust illegal lab containing 20 infectious agents, hundreds of lab mice

There are people with excess real estate who want to see makers of all sorts making stuff. The issue is separating out the people who are liabilities, e.g., truly nefarious and/or negligent from the innocent.

sacnoradhqon Officials bust illegal lab containing 20 infectious agents, hundreds of lab mice

Terrible, FUD-heavy, thin reporting begs the question:

Are we talking independent biohackers, low budget quasi-startups, and/or terrorism?

The presumptive demonization and loaded language doesn't do justice to whether there was truly harmful negligence or just low-budget sloppiness. Although I thoroughly dislike animal testing, I doubt it can be completely eliminated.

sacnoradhqon Fancy quartz countertops are killing people who make them, doctors say

There might be a widespread lack of PPE use by tradespeople.

Example: I was in Texas and watched this guy carve headstones without a respirator or hearing protection while covered head-to-toe in stone and cement dust. He was only wearing some dust goggles. He wasn't wearing gloves or steel toed boots either. I thought he was crazy and not long for this world.

sacnoradhqon Man spoofs threatening texts from ex-gf, gets her jailed multiple times (2020)

Seeing how people deal with unwarranted criticism, constructive feedback, setbacks, and an apparent position of power with impunity are telling to their character. Narcissists tend to fly off the handle whenever things don't go their way and need constant attention/approval.

sacnoradhqon Man spoofs threatening texts from ex-gf, gets her jailed multiple times (2020)

Never said it was easy, methodical, or risk-free. With cautious reflection by moving slowly, getting to know their circle of friends and detractors.

Listening skills and having drinks/weed with people tend to loosen lips.

Some you can spot immediately while others take time. Charismatic people tend to be able to conceal themselves longer because they tend to be experts a crafting a public image.

sacnoradhqon Chuck Norris settles $30M suit against CBS, Sony: ‘Walker, Texas Ranger’ profits

Bruce who?

- David Kahn

Do YoU kNoW wHo I aM?

- John Draper

sacnoradhqon Alpine Linux does not make the news

In general:

1. There should be an easy-to-use API, CLI, library, and data (sqlite db or whatever) to query package metadata efficiently.

2. The mythological purity of rolling releases building against edge versions without dependency constraints or maintaining stable versioning causes problems in the real world(tm). There are many cases where past versions are needed. Example: ffmpeg is buggy as hell and has to be managed very carefully. Another example: binutils, gcc, mpfr, mpc, and toolchain friends have to be built together with compatible versions. Further example: don't compile anything with Clang/LLVM 14+ unless you want all of your code to break because some genius decided to break the world out of ideological perfectionism. macports, Homebrew, nix, and Arch are just some who are guilty of this sin.

sacnoradhqon Alpine Linux does not make the news

Redhat (pre-RHEL) solved package signing around 1999 with RPM 2.0/3.0 by using PGP and later replacing it with GPG. Debian solved it around 2003 by also using GPG.

https://dan.drydog.com/rpm-signing-howto.html

https://www.cryptnet.net/fdp/crypto/strong_distro.html

With truly reproducible builds, it's possible to introduce distributed caching of artifacts and selective probabilistic rebuilds from source to attest/verify integrity in a distributed manner.

sacnoradhqon Alpine Linux does not make the news

There are FOSS projects that sound nice and desirable but are too impractical to use in the real world. I call them "libmagicponies".

On a related topic, I don't use Ubuntu, Debian, Alpine, Arch, Gentoo, Rocky, Alma, Fedora, or {Free,Open,Net}BSD. I use CentOS 9 stream for most things: it's basically RHEL's kernel and it powers 100M's-1 B machines.