Hacker News Reader

I used to transcribe his articles to a text file and post them to Usenet. Fond memories of that time.

There's a feeling of abandonment online, and the optimist in me is wondering if maybe people would rather be doing something else. This is pollyannaish, but I'd love to imagine that people are discovering the real world, sitting alone or otherwise, and leaving this version of themselves on the internet to an empty shell.

stonedgeon Show HN: What's my JND? – a colour guessing game

Is higher or lower "better"?

stonedgeon More men are addicted to the 'crack cocaine' of the stock market

> Today’s youth are more proactive with their identities these days than we were.

I wanted to echo this and say that I believe younger people create a "symphony" with their identity; picking and choosing from various sub-cultures to create a unique combination. Flexible, morphing.

stonedgeon Ideogram 2.1 Coming

Ideogram generated this image on their own site. Fun way to "leak" an update.

stonedgeon 1-800-ChatGPT

I have upgraded to the $200 Pro tier, and, with o1-pro, all of my tasks delegated to the "junior" have been so much better. It takes longer to complete, of course, but the overall duration is less because I'm not having to go back and correct it as much as I was with 4o. It's been able to figure out problems that 4o continually failed on.

stonedgeon Cooking with black plastic is particularly crucial to avoid

Sincere question - my mom always told me to never put wooden utensils in the dishwasher, but I never got a great answer as to why. I put my wooden spatulas in there. My question is, is it just because it's destructive to the wood? Or is there something else that I should be concerned about?

stonedgeon Show HN: Glossarie – a new, immersive way to learn a language

Thirded

stonedgeon 5-year study finds no brain abnormalities in 'Havana Syndrome' patients

There was an episode of the German Krimi series Tatort yesterday that had a plot that centered around Havana Syndrome.

stonedgeon Impostor Syndrome vs. the Dunning-Kruger Effect

I don’t want to suggest this person themselves is wrong, but it seems that this is just part of the back and forth among scientists and not in and of itself the correct answer.

Meta: what if this researcher themselves is exhibiting Dunning-Kruger and is overconfident.

stonedgeon I'm an Old Fart and AI Makes Me Sad

Anytime I see a photo taken on actual film, even though it's been digitized for posting online, there's a visceral reaction of beauty. To you point of DALL-E being the disposable camera, I feel those images are in fact "disposable". I feel nothing.

stonedgeon MIT Press makes 82 additional books open access

I wrote a paper for a class a few months ago. In a previous life, I was a tech-audience editor that required writing article titles with a hook to lure people into reading. On my first draft of the paper, I used one of these styled titles and the comments that came back said that it was too "flowery"; since it was an academic paper, it should be more like the pattern you indicated. And sure enough, I changed it and all my subsequent papers to that pattern and never got dinged again.

stonedgeon Illinois prohibits weapons, facial recognition on police drones

This is true, but that law (BIPA) applies to private entities. i.e., government orgs and contractors are exempt. Regardless, this new legislation is good. I would like to see the complete inclusion of government organizations into needing to acquire consent.

https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs3.asp?ActID=3004&C...

stonedgeon America has paid a steep price for parking

This is what the data is based on. I've read the book and it's totaling all square footage in the country devoted to parking lots vs. housing. Essentially after the math, each car has more than just one space allocated to it.

stonedgeon How Duolingo reignited user growth

https://apps.ankiweb.net/

There should be a link there to the official app.

stonedgeon Launch HN: RescueTime (YC W08) – Redesigned for wellness, balance, remote work

This is my #1 need. I was a paying customer, but eventually got uncomfortable with the remote data and cancelled my subscription.

stonedgeon Are we losing our ability to remember?

Not headaches, but I say that "my brain is tired".

stonedgeon Sega Master System Architecture: A Practical Analysis

I saved my paper route money and was trying to decide between an NES and an SMS. I think I chose the SMS because it was different. Everyone had an NES. But as time went on, I wished I had an NES. Way more games and cultural relevance.

stonedgeon Off-Facebook activity

I took the leap and tried to log in. It said there was no account, so I guess the delete worked?

stonedgeon Off-Facebook activity

Allegedly, I ditched my Facebook account years ago. Not just deactivated but delete, though I don’t really believe it. Is there anyway to see what’s in this (or to see if my account really is gone) without accidentally re-upping?

stonedgeon Boeing docs show staffers discussing ways to manipulate regulators on 737 Max

Agreed. In any large org, you’ll have thoughts and opinions all over the place and I’m sure you could find much more damaging stuff than these comments.

Folks just need to learn not to write this stuff down.

stonedgeon Show HN: Look Busy fills your work calendar with secretly fake events

Square’s appointment service has a similar feature where it can block off appointment slots so customers can’t book. Presumably a fake-it-til ya make it feature.

stonedgeon Ask HN: Are books worth it?

I am a fan of Goodreads and their yearly reading challenges. I’ve got about 250 books on my to read and, due to the social nature of the platform, can get new recommendations from my network.

One tip I’ve found is that, for non-fiction, if the average rating is 3.75 or higher, it’s going to be good. I’m prejudice against books lower than that and often cull before I read.

That tip doesn’t seem to apply to fiction.

stonedgeon GitLab Database Incident – Live Report

https://www.visualstudio.com/team-services/

stonedgeon Under Fire, Theranos CEO Stifled Bad News

I subscribe mostly for the physical paper. I rarely read it online, but it comes in handy for times like this. I think my most recent renewal was $100 for the year. Very small price to pay for top quality writing and news. I'd pay for the NYT as well if they actually delivered to my home.

stonedgeon Ask HN: Single Person startup/company?

I run https://www.vinyl-deals.com . It started out as just a thing that I wanted for myself, to keep track of vinyl price drops without having to know what was out there.

It's been running for a little over a year, growing every month, but still very small.

stonedgeon Why I have finally taken off the Apple Watch

I sold my Apple Watch a few months ago, but I thoroughly enjoyed this feature. It would subtly vibrate just before you needed to turn and with kids making noise in the car, the vibration was better than listening for "turn now!".

I now have a Microsoft Band 2 and with Google Maps I get the same functionality, so it turns out I didn't lose anything by selling my Apple Watch.

stonedgeon Introducing unlimited private repositories

This is only for the teaching/student aspect of academia. There's the whole business side of academia which is still a non-profit, still doesn't have any money, but for which the academic stuff doesn't apply.

stonedgeon Microsoft Flow

To me, this looks like their own implementation of the Azure Logic Apps product. (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/app...).

I don't believe this is intended to be a consumer level product at all. In that sense, it's not an IFTTT competitor. Given it's got implementation points to Sql Azure, Azure Blob storage, swagger, etc. this is likely meant as a product for devs to use to hook-up integrations.

stonedgeon After Zenefits, Will VCs Rein in Their Unicorns?

Some of the compliance training I've had to take didn't have an exam. But the software tracked how quickly you went through the training. If you went through too quickly, you didn't get credit.