Hacker News Reader

sliverstormon After beating cable lobby, Colorado city moves ahead with muni broadband

That was discussed as one model. I suspect the city is not "against" such a model, but doesn't want to tie the success of the rollout to private providers. Fort Collins already got burned by Axia backing out of talks about a contracted model.

Once you assume the city is both building the fiber and providing services over the fiber, I'm not sure if also making it an OAN makes sense anymore?

sliverstormon High doses of vitamin D rapidly reduce arterial stiffness

The canonical advice with vitamins is always that it's best to get them in food, as part of a healthy diet.

The interesting thing here perhaps is that if you live above 37 degrees latitude, there are very few ways to get vitamin D, mainly fish and fortified foods.

Fortified foods are arguably not that different from supplements, and fish is pricey, unpopular, and somewhat of a specialty food.

So, perhaps there really is an argument for vitamin D supplementation. Although, at least for its cofactors, I'll be trying to get them from food.

sliverstormon As Cell Service Expands, National Parks Become Digital Battlegrounds

This already exists in many parks. Which is why it's slightly puzzling that first responders would be stumping for this.

sliverstormon The curious case of high blood pressure around the world

but I carry a fair amount of muscle along with my flab

Is this honest truth? Ever step on one of those body composition scales? I used to tell myself when I was super skinny that, hey, at least what I did have was muscle and I wasn't weak. But it was not true, there was very little muscle, and I was weak as hell. I was like 18% BF at a BMI of 17. It's one of those pernicious lies we tell ourselves that we want to believe because they make us feel better about ourselves.

sliverstormon The curious case of high blood pressure around the world

What is "essentially no salt"? Considering that the AHA's daily target is 1,500mg, or only 3/4 tsp, were you even far below that?

sliverstormon Nepal bans solo climbers from Mount Everest

Well, some do, but what they expect and what they actually have a right to, are different things.

sliverstormon First 100 miles on my E-Bike

The biggest attraction it me would be, not getting all sweaty. But at the same time, wouldn't it be better for me if I trained my body until I didn't get all sweaty on a regular bike?

sliverstormon A $47B Emergency-Response Network That’s Already Obsolete

Agreed. Half the value IMO is in the UI. A smartphone is an awful user experience with gloved hands, and demands your attention while a good radio mostly gets out of the way. Radios using a LTE-based dedicated network like they mentioned might be fine, but at that point we've really just changed the operating frequency.

sliverstormon The Growing Peril of Index Funds: Too Much Tech

This isn't about timing the market, it's about rebalancing and maintaining a good diversity of exposure to various sectors. Rebalancing is not antithetical to passive investing.

sliverstormon Power Prices Go Negative in Germany

Not being a power engineer, I'm still wondering if/when somebody is going to try to build a grid capacitor bank. Traditional advantages: long lifespan, high charge/discharge rate, low complexity. Traditional disadvantages: large, heavy.

Maybe the cost doesn't work out or something, but seriously, a fixed land power station seems like the ideal use for caps.

They're fundamentally DC, but so are batteries. I wonder if you could make yourself a massive LC tank, and bypass conversion losses...?

sliverstormon Power Prices Go Negative in Germany

Negative power prices are not in and of themselves a good thing for consumers. Obviously, that power still costs money to generate.

But, if the means of production (e.g. wind) is overall still a win and power only goes negative for short periods, if consumers can respond and sink that power more cheaply than the producer can dial back & protect the grid in the process, it might be the best solution for everyone.

sliverstormon California lawmakers have tried for 50 years to fix the state’s housing crisis

But many voters believe what we should preserve is the single-family home, built environment

Do you believe this is an honest characterization of their core goal? Is the opposition's number one goal simply to oppose multifamily property? Like, "God ordained that no two families should live in a single structure"? Or is it about property valuation changes, or building height, or street parking, or land use, or decreasing number of (semi-permanent) owners and increasing number of (temporary) renters, or...?

sliverstormon Tricks to make yourself effortlessly charming

Sorry, I don't closely follow this whole "don't talk to the police ever" thing- is this the case even when you're just refusing to talk to the police on the street without an attorney? Was always under the impression the right to publicly provided legal counsel mostly centered on an actual trial.

sliverstormon California lawmakers have tried for 50 years to fix the state’s housing crisis

Replacing low density with high density shouldn't have to touch outdoor/public spaces [...] Perfectly possible to keep (or even expand) recreation spaces if we allow more density.

Right, I'm pretty sure I specifically acknowledged this in my previous comment.

why some feel because they have it already that they should be able to exclude others from having it in the future

If some hypothetical resource has a determinate carrying capacity and any greater usage degrades the resource for everyone, it's not unreasonable to exclude people. See the fixed number of backcountry permits Yosemite issues. Some things simply cannot be had by everyone. Given this, how do you decide who gets, and who does not get?

We really only have three systems that I know of- 1) lottery, ala Yosemite permits 2) free market, ala Bay Area low density housing, also ski condos 3) precedent/i-was-there-first, ala people who already own a house there get to stay there as it becomes desirable, also prescriptive easements of public trails on private land

sliverstormon Why hasn't economic progress lowered work hours more? (2016) [video]

Many people now are spending almost 50% of their pre-tax income on housing, and most of that is the price of land and goes to landlords.

1) That's really not a countrywide thing

2) It's not specifically the landlords, it's whoever was already there. A landlord who bought in just recently is not rolling in dough. The people who capture the gains are the people who got in fifty years ago and sold & moved, or the landlords who got in fifty years ago and are still renting the property.

3) But, yes, from the worker's perspective his salary increases will tend to go towards housing/land. This is a natural state in a competitive housing market. He must compete in the market for the space to live so that he can live near his job. The power of the market will continually optimize for those who make the most money (i.e. hypothetically produce the most economic value) to live in the most desirable housing (e.g. the closest to work)

sliverstormon Tricks to make yourself effortlessly charming

I don't exactly have an attorney on retainer or a generous "legal expenses" cost center.

sliverstormon California lawmakers have tried for 50 years to fix the state’s housing crisis

I admittedly come to this from a different angle. Many people move to my town for nature & recreation. Every new house & every new infill is less nature, less trails, less recreation. So paradoxically, by moving here, are we killing what we moved here for? Not a Ship of Theseus.

In our case redevelopment for density actually helps preserve that character. But I still feel like I can understand the Bay Area home owners.

sliverstormon California lawmakers have tried for 50 years to fix the state’s housing crisis

Redeveloping a low density property for higher density is fine, except part of what makes that new property attractive is the neighborhood it was built in. Which in our hypothetical, is low density and maybe nice.

Then in the process of redeveloping, as more and more properties are redeveloped, the old character is lost to everybody- the people who lived there as well as the new people who moved there for that character!

It's not a new conundrum- what do you do about people moving to a community for it's desirable character, but killing that character in the process? It hurts everyone involved.

HN frequently likes to take the position that the parcel you bought is yours, but if your neighbor wants to bootstrap a red light district you just have to deal. But, all over the country we have HOA's and zoning and so forth. Turns out, people want to come together and live in a community. Nobody particularly likes living in a free-for-all, so mutual agreements were set up to ensure the neighborhood you bought into doesn't turn into something totally different overnight.

sliverstormon Academic success is either a crapshoot or a scam

They'd love to understand why X works, but a whole lot of people could be treated by X while they spend all that time and money figuring it out.

Besides, there's plenty of Y where they were sure it was going to work, it fit all the models and theories, it did the right thing in mice, and then in a trial Y fails catastrophically.

sliverstormon In Final Holiday Push, UPS Grabs Its Accountants to Deliver Packages

Surge models can afford to be inefficient, they are needed rarely and the other 364 days a year your don't want extra overhead.

sliverstormon Opinion: How Apple could have prevented the iPhone-slowdown controversy

If you design a chip with the whole lifecycle of the battery in mind, you can achieve better average performance for the life of the chip.

Pulling numbers out of the air, the argument is the chip was designed for maximum performance with a fresh battery, 100% performance. But later it's throttled to 80%. Or, Apple could have designed the chip for a steady 95% performance throughout the life of the phone.

sliverstormon Opinion: How Apple could have prevented the iPhone-slowdown controversy

Modern x86 chips have built in support for voltage drops, as part of margin recovery. As the chip changes activity profile increasing current draw (e.g. turning on all cores for multithreaded code) the voltage will drop until the regulators catch up. "Back in the day" you used margin to accommodate this. Today, circuitry detects these events on the fly and slows down the chip for a few microseconds waiting for the voltage to recover. This allows you to remove margin and operate closer to the limit.

sliverstormon Opinion: How Apple could have prevented the iPhone-slowdown controversy

Because it doesn't degrade, at least not in ways that are meaningful to the customer.

sliverstormon Sitting May Be Bad for Your Heart

Brushing my teeth every day isn't something my body evolved to handle.

According to some dentists I've talked to, this is a consequence of modern diet. Eat a lot of raw carrots and other basic foods, and you wouldn't really need to brush.

sliverstormon Sitting May Be Bad for Your Heart

It doesn't necessarily matter whether they were affluent or not. When trying to understand what conditions our bodies need to be healthy, lacking definitive wisdom on the subject it's rational to try to understand what conditions proto-man lived in. What foods he ate, how he spent his time, and so forth. Whether or not proto-man was affluent, he spent countless centuries in a certain kind of lifestyle, and in all likelihood his biology adapted to that lifestyle.

sliverstormon Sitting May Be Bad for Your Heart

Are there any commonly known physical labor jobs that do not have that result?

sliverstormon Sitting May Be Bad for Your Heart

Presumably that's what studies would be for. Compare the joints of an office worker to the joints of an uninjured lumberjack.

sliverstormon Sitting May Be Bad for Your Heart

Have you considered a career in healthcare, e.g. nursing or EMT?

sliverstormon Sitting May Be Bad for Your Heart

I always understood a lot of the industrial age jobs took a toll because of hazards & health issues. Occupational hazards like mine collapse & black lung, heavy machinery, fumes, and so forth. Are there many accounts of people simply being "all worn out" from hands on work? Are, e.g., lumberjacks who aren't injured, healthy or worn thin?

sliverstormon Berlin's Plan to Become a City for Cyclists

A more-conditioned cyclist can perform the same amount of work with a lower heart rate & respiration rate. I don't have a source handy, but personally observe that my perspiration rate is directly related to my heart rate, and as I train & improve I can keep my jacket on performing the same work, where I needed to strip layers before.