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skymer

56 karma · joined August 22, 2018

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skymer··on Show HN: I made an AI-powered recipe generator based on fridge ingredients
If you're not going to give a few free test runs, I need some examples.
skymer··on Launch HN: Diversion (YC S22) – Cloud-Native Git Alternative
Is my company's private information e.g. source code kept end-to-end encrypted?
skymer··on Tremor – The React library to build dashboards fast
There are plenty of React dashboard libraries. They seem to be useful in building a top-level overview of a database with many tables. Can someone list a few real-world examples (web sites) where the dashboard is more than 10% of the work in building the site? The cases I know, e.g. wise.com or quickbooks.intuit.com would be much less than 10%.
skymer··on Ask HN: How to learn options trading as a beginner
Options are a leveraged way of buying or shorting stocks. To win, you need to be right in both direction and timing. There's nothing passive about it.
skymer··on Apple Says It Will Exit the UK Market If Government Passes Online Safety Bill
If the law makes apple ban 3d party e2e encrypted apps along with its own, UK sales of iphones will be a good test of society's current values.
skymer··on Ask HN: What options do you have when customer won't pay a past due invoice?
Legal action costs you money. If you win, you get a "judgement". To attempt to collect on that judgement costs you money. There are many ways to avoid paying a judgement. You need to decide if you can collect from the customer before you start down this path.
skymer··on The Mystery of Richard Posner
A British judge named Alfred Denning was Posner's spiritual predecessor in the last century. Unlike Posner, Denning made it to Britain's supreme court.

In law school, student's were warned early that while Denning's opinions were regularly published in casebooks because they clearly illuminated the law, he was often on the wrong side of the result.

skymer··on Scientists build 'baby' wormhole as sci-fi moves closer to fact
Seems like this was a simulation on a quantum computer, and that such a simulation is considered equivalent to/interchangeable with doing it in real life???
skymer··on Ask HN: Predictions on the Crypto/Blockchain Ecosystem?
I don't think bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme. But if it becomes the "last man standing" in crypto, the scammers will just use it as the backbone for their scams, instead of promoting their own standalone coins. Smart contracts, NFTs etc. all grafted onto bitcoin just like the lightning network has been (I am not saying the lightning network is a scam, just an example of something complex grafted onto bitcoin).
skymer··on Moving in Together Doesn’t Match the Financial Benefits of Marriage, but Why?
It could be that married couples get large financial gifts/boosts from their parents more often than unmarried couples. If this is the case, then the involvement of the parents in the marriage ceremony may be a major factor in this outcome.
skymer··on NIH blocks access to genetics database if research enters “forbidden” territory
I don't think the NIH is the only source for this type of data. Don't 23andMe and other DNA data companies have millions of genomes of individuals along with their names and addresses? These can easily be (or already have been) linked to much more personal, financial, and other information than is in the NIH data.

We know these companies have used their data for law enforcement purposes. Do they also allow academic researchers to use it (anonymized, of course)?

skymer··on Alex Jones told to pay $965M damages to Sandy Hook victims' families
Unfortunately, Jones lost both his cases by default -- there were no trials. The jury trials were only on the amount of damages. So if the unvaccinated start suing everyone who defamed them and worse, this case sets no precedent. But it might indicate a ballpark figure for their damages. If 30% of Americans are unvaccinated, their Jones-damages could be 100 Million x $50 Million. That could cause a few bankruptcies.
skymer··on ‘I’m Dropping My Covid Hubris,’ Vows a Top Immunologist
This guy has learned that the vaccines don't stop infection, don't stop transmission, and in his own experience don't stop serious symptoms. Yet he still promotes the vaccines. His problem isn't hubris.
skymer··on Milestone: My archaeology newsletter just hit 1K subs - next stop, monetization
What's your barrier to entry that supports charging money? An equivalent list of articles seems like it could be generated in a few hours a week from the content on r/Archaeology. Maybe that could even be automated.
skymer··on CTO Quitting Immediately Before Bridge Financing Round – Bad or Anything to Do?
In my experience, you should take care of yourself and stop worrying about the company. You've given them enough service. The company has to take care of itself now.
skymer··on Ask HN: How do you and your spouse handle big income differences?
We pay all the monthly family bills (including joint purchases like cars, vacations or home improvements) in proportion to our earnings/wealth. We do not have a joint bank account. Any personal items like clothes, golf clubs, or suborbital space flights are decided on and paid for individually. If both people want a suborbital space flight but only one can afford it, the richer one would probably pay for both [if they intended to return home after the flight]. As long as both people have a reasonable amount of savings, this works fine.
skymer··on Why I left Pine64
At best, the Pinephone is buggy software on low priced but mediocre hardware. It has always been like this, and it is not going to change. There is nobody willing to spend the millions of dollars it would take to make it otherwise.

Meanwhile, AOSP is fully working, open source Linux-based phone software that runs on lots of modern hardware from a variety of manufacturers. Distributions like GrapheneOS have put huge effort into de-googling, privacy and security. Cameras work. SMS works. Phone calls work. There are lots of apps. I hear there are even a few phones that can do wireless charging!

Why waste any more mindshare on the Pinephone?

skymer··on Constructive and obsessive criticism in science
I think the authors feel the government response (lockdowns, vax mandates, etc) was too strong. But the article makes it hard to determine whose criticism of which scientists is considered "obsessive".
skymer··on Constructive and obsessive criticism in science
It seems as though the authors of this paper were vocal critics of the government response to Covid-19, and faced the full "obsessive" wrath of criticism (although, unlike many others, they don't seem to have lost their jobs). The same thing happens to non-conformist scientists in other highly politicized areas like man-made global warming. I think it is similar to what happened to Galileo 400 years ago.
skymer··on Artificial photosynthesis can produce food without sunshine
Pure clickbait. Solar panels turn sunlight into electricity. Electrolysis creates acetate. Mushrooms, yeast, algae grow in acetate.
skymer··on Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status
The paper says "The highest food sources of magnesium are leafy greens (78 mg/serving), nuts (80 mg/serving), and whole grains (46 mg/serving)..."

So five servings every day of nuts and/or leafy greens would do it, but that doesn't sound like anybody's typical diet.

skymer··on Challenges in the diagnosis of magnesium status
The paper shows that it is essentially impossible for an adult male to get the recommended DI of magnesium (420 mg/day) by eating vegetables alone. As far as I can see, the paper does not resolve whether that target is too high, or whether it can be reached by eating meat or taking supplements.
skymer··on City roads – This website renders every single road within a city
It rendered my dead-end, private driveway. Does this mean that the data doesn't distinguish "roads" from other paths, that the data has some errors, or that the program is rendering more than just labeled "roads"?
skymer··on We can 3D print wood now
Wooden crafts (turned bowls, cutting boards, small sculptures, etc.) typically rely for their uniqueness on features of natural woods that this 3D printing method can't replicate. That includes unusual grains and burls, live edge, and gluing up multiple species.

From the few examples in their store, it looks like their main esthetic tool is lots of piercing. I wonder if their minimum hole size is small enough to improve on hand-held sandalwood fans?

skymer··on Show HN: Fossnode – Free Matrix server for free and open source projects
As far as I can understand it, what you are showing us is two Matrix-based chat rooms called #fossnode:fossnode.net and #linux:fossnode.net. Is that right? Or are you also trying to create a new centralized chat hosting site using a decentralized protocol?
skymer··on Siberian heatwave of 2020 almost impossible without climate change
The title understates the authors' actual claim: "We found ... that this event would have effectively been impossible without human-induced climate change."

If someone wants to take the time to read the whole 35-page study, it would be interesting to know whether "human-induced climate change" is now just a synonym for "climate change", or is part of their research.

skymer··on CutiePi – All-in-one Raspberry Pi tablet
This uses the CM3 Lite. According to a blog post in January, 2019 on the release of the CM3+, the “legacy” CM1, CM3 and CM3 Lite products are considered “not recommended for new designs”. [1] https://www.raspberrypi-spy.co.uk/2019/01/introducing-the-ra...
skymer··on A day in the life of Lloyd Squires, Vermont's 'best' bagel maker
He arrived at work at 2:11am, and he left at 10:31am. So that's a typical 8 hour work day. He then set off on a long road trip to deliver bagels, but he could easily get somebody else to do that -- he just likes the drive.
skymer··on A day in the life of Lloyd Squires, Vermont's 'best' bagel maker
He makes/sells on average 250 to 300 dozen bagels per day. The bagels sell for $10 a dozen, so that's over $2500 revenue on the bagels alone. He's open 6 days a week, so that's $15,000 per week, or $780,000 per year.

His bakery is also a diner/deli, and I'm going to make the assumption that the revenue from that covers all his non-bagel costs. The ingredients in a bagel cost less than 10 cents each, or about 10% of the selling price. So he could net about $700,000 per year.

Not a bad gig, if he could cut back the hours a bit.

skymer··on AI winter – update
Up for 17 hours and I'm the first commenter. Is the AI Winter so obvious it's not worth remarking?
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