Hacker News Reader

I really enjoyed this, and will come back to it. Hadn't heard of that variant before. The backstory is great.

seanfon The largest acidic geyser has been putting on quite a show

Cool. Found my way to this updates page that has a summary of volcano and seismic activity from different observatories if you click the tabs: https://www.usgs.gov/programs/VHP/volcano-updates#yvo

seanfon Officials Claim Drone Incursion Led to Shutdown of El Paso Airport

No exemptions for medical life flights, local law enforcement, or even the military. You can read a more normal NOTAM posted for New Orleans likely for Mardi Gras (https://tfr.faa.gov/tfr3/?page=detail_6_2231)

As a Minnesotan I wonder what this does to the deportation flights going to and from Camp East Montana.

seanfon FBI raids Washington Post reporter's home

The FBI working to recover stolen property on behalf of a private citizen who was the victim of a crime is something different. Harder to defend a reporter holding stolen property just because the victim is related to a public official. Would actually feel better about defending O'Keefe if the diary did have launch codes.

seanfon Ilya Sutskever's SSI Inc raises $1B

Google Deepmind is based in London.

seanfon Halo 2 in HD: Pushing the Original Xbox to the Limit

Link to the video from the bottom of the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_nk21389u8

The video includes side-by-side comparison between the original upscaled 480p and 720p. Around 7:00 you hear about what it takes to get 720p and maintain around 30fps gameplay. Not only a great article, but also a great video to summarize the changes needed get the higher resolution.

seanfon AI and satellite imagery reveals expanding footprint of human activity at sea

Found this in the acknowledgement section of the article: https://github.com/GlobalFishingWatch/pyseas

Edit: cool examples here https://github.com/GlobalFishingWatch/pyseas/blob/master/pys...

seanfon Borges and AI

Collected Fictions[0] is a wonderful group of Borges stories that includes the ones mentioned in this article.

There are some amazing short story collections out there if you are the kind of reader that has a hard time staying with an entire novel. Ted Chiang has a couple[1][2] collections of stories that feel very Borges-like.

[0] https://www.librarything.com/work/25106 [1] https://www.librarything.com/work/28008 [2] https://www.librarything.com/work/23195758

seanfon Google discontinues Google Glass for enterprise

Taking this opporuntity to link to Charles Proteus Steinmetz[1]. Among the many, many things Steinmetz did, he invented the Metal Halide Lamp which was later refined for mass production decades later. This took the innovation of others less well-known to history[2]. So great example, bringing up the light bulb!

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

[2] https://americanhistory.si.edu/lighting/20thcent/invent20.ht...

seanfon Why does the US allow a controversial weedkiller banned across the world?

Can you provide a better source? I know about the waste in large nonprofits, but am also personally benefiting from grant-supported research that if it otherwise didn't happen would leave me and a lot of others dead.

seanfon Ask HN: Where would I find out about leasing land to telcos for 5G?

American Tower might have info for you. "If we don’t yet work together, but you have land, towers, or a rooftop you want to sell or lease to us, we want to talk to you about a competitive package." https://www.americantower.com/us/property-owners/

seanfon Show HN: With a 9-5 job and 2 kids I have finally finished my first MVP

This negative comment got me thinking about why I liked the original post so much.

The URL of the product itself very clearly tells us what the product is (at least, if you are in the target audience)

So many web apps have inscrutable names. This is just refreshingly clear, it's a free option screener .com!

seanfon Joe Rogan, confined to Spotify, is losing influence

I don't understand at all why an enormous company like Spotify is so neglectful of the entire apple ecosystem.

Part of this might be the legal friction between Spotify and Apple in the past. Here's an article that describes a coalition that Epic Games, Spotify, and others formed just last year to counter Apple's platform cut. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/09/epic-spotify-and-oth...

seanfon Afghan women forced from banking jobs as Taliban take control

The author has said many times that the Iranian Revolution was part of the origin story of the book. The book is set in America, so what do you expect?

seanfon Nuclear Power at McMurdo Station, Antarctica

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover Fascinating read, sounds like Robert Moses of the Navy

seanfon YInMn, the First New Blue Pigment in Two Centuries

The article links to a paint company that is using the pigment, cool video of them adding it to paint. (sorry for FB video)

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=405127556741940

seanfon Google Finance Finally Updated

Still missing transaction tracking. Hopefully it will come back some day. I migrated to https://wallmine.com/ when Google Finance announced it was neutering itself. However, I've noticed Wallmine's listings are not always complete. As a couple examples: the insurance company Root isn't listed, the label for JAMF isn't correct.

Haven't looked at what is out there in a while, any other alternatives people are using?

seanfon Facial recognition: It’s time for action

The photo on the card is already stored in a system somewhere, and already vulnerable to attack. The brain is just for authentication at the door.

seanfon Facial recognition: It’s time for action

You mean like a photo?

seanfon Facial recognition: It’s time for action

My gym also uses facial recognition, but does it via a person sitting behind a desk checking that my member ID matches my face. I don't think many people are uncomfortable with this process, and this biometric method has been used for a long time.

seanfon New Zealand travellers refusing digital search now face $5k Customs fine

The ruling group includes some members of Congress and the executive branch. Current and former presidents and vice-presidents are not screened, nor are cabinet secretaries or members of Congress with security details at US airports. Not sure how the US president is treated when passing through other nations' borders but I'm guessing it is not the same border experience that everyone else goes through.

According to the "Port Courtesy Handbook" it sounds like many foreign dignitaries go through a modified and expedited border check at the US border that the rest of us do not use. "A Port Courtesy or “Courtesy of the Port” provides Foreign Government Officials and their traveling parties expedited processing and clearance upon arrival into the United States. Requests for Port Courtesies are managed by the Office of the Chief of Protocol in coordination with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)." https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/170352.pdf

seanfon Tech workers say poor leadership is number one cause for burnout

Amazon is getting close to a $1T market cap which makes this look more like an argument for hiring non-technical managers. You didn't provide any examples of poor management by the prison guard or DMV manager, other than some jealously about salary. Other than the bad feelings, did they get results?

When Bezos went ballistic the day before Thanksgiving, did you still fix the bug in time? If not, did it really negatively affect the bottom line? Did whatever you instead had to work on in October help the bottom line more than the Thanksgiving bug?

seanfon Spotify Removes R. Kelly from playlists - part of Hate Content & Conduct Policy

In the R. Kelly case, that is true. I clicked into the linked policy and read that before reading the rest of the article. Spotify says, "That’s why we do not permit hate content on Spotify, and remove it whenever we find it."

The policy is aimed just as much at content as it is at artists.

Edit: This is the policy https://artists.spotify.com/faq/policies#hate-content-and-ha...

seanfon Spotify Removes R. Kelly from playlists - part of Hate Content & Conduct Policy

Taking on a hate content policy will be a big task. So much music, while being dramatic and theatrical, is open to a lot of interpretation as to whether it is truly hateful or just expressing a point of view in an over-the-top way. A song might honestly express strong emotion, in a questionably hateful way.

For example, will "Hit 'Em Up" by Tupac be removed?(https://open.spotify.com/track/0Z2J91b2iTGLVTZC4fKgxf) The song calls for violence and murder of other people and their kids.

Tupac, Biggie, and others around them were literally murdered because of their music, or associations related to their music careers. How can you argue a lot of their music isn't hateful? Should no one be listening to this music, is it wrong to listen to it?

It is Spotify's choice to host the kind of music they want, but this will be a difficult policy to enforce equally if that is at all a goal.

seanfon Basic income trial falls flat in Finland

I wish this article had more on why basic income is being discontinued. Is it being ended simply for political reasons? Or did research show that basic income did not produce good results?

Y Combinator's basic income research is highlighted near the end of the article. It will be interesting to find out how it works out. https://basicincome.ycr.org/our-plan/

seanfon Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

Why do you consider choosing MySQL over Postgres a grave error? There are some cool features in Postgres. I am going to learn more about partial indexes, that looks useful! But there is plenty of precedent for large, successful MySQL projects. Uber, for example, switched from PostgreSQL to MySQL in 2016. https://eng.uber.com/mysql-migration/

seanfon A Tour of Board Game Production in China

I backed this computer science education board game, Turing Tumble, on Kickstarter months ago. It had some exposure here when it was still fundraising, but the updates from the creator have been fascinating. They should be required reading for anyone looking to take a product from prototype to mass production.