Hacker News Reader

sympleeon Young and middle-aged people, barely sick with Covid-19, are dying from strokes

Not a doctor, just a thought, could this in part be caused by some sort of Deep Vein Thrombosis or other clots due to people not physically moving as much during quarantine?

sympleeon Nicomachean Ethics

You might be able to use https://hn.algolia.com/ which searches every comment/submission from HN. Just paste in a wikipedia link to see if it has already been submitted, then click to the comment section.

sympleeon Books I recommend to my software engineering students

I bought my boss two copies of The Mythical Man-Month so he could read it twice as fast.

sympleeon Instacart announces new Covid-19 policies and plans to hire 250k more shoppers

Right, like a guaranteed incentive bonus. With an indisputable deliverable, like GPS at the person's house. But, as with everything, it could probably end up being gamed.

sympleeon Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

Isn't this just increasing the branching factor? How hard will it be to find new melodies a million years from now? Easier than today, the same, or harder?

sympleeon Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?

The pigeonhole principle [0] is also becoming more of a factor due to the sheer volume of production.

Especially in domains with a limited branching factor. For example, in music, if you only have 12 tones in an octave to play with, along with variable length and spacing, you start to run out of "good" melodies under 20 notes after 400 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeonhole_principle

sympleeon Coronavirus may mean automation is coming sooner than we thought

Come on, you know the routine. No matter what your cause is: Never let a crisis go to waste.

sympleeon You’ve Got 0-Click Mail: Unassisted iOS Attacks RCE via Mobilemail/Maild

In a more general sense, what level or standard should advertised privacy claims be held to? How are "privacy" and "security" quantified? Are there any real-world tests they have to pass? Or is it simply: "Yup, our product is secure" (TM) And if it does get breached, should they release a statement correcting previous claims? Or need to hold off on running any privacy ads until it's fixed?

Actually, now that I re-watch an ad [0], they're not even making any claims about the iPhone's privacy. It's just showing a bunch of people doing private things, then posing a hypothetical question:

  "If privacy matters in your life"
  "It should matter to the phone your life is on"
  "Privacy. That's iPhone."

Notice "It should ..." How many rounds of legal do you think that text went through.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_6uV9A12ok

sympleeon Google drops charges on shopping service to counter Amazon's surging ad sales

Just for comparison, what percentage of their overall yearly revenue do those three products represent?

sympleeon For sale: Oil Tanker asking $17M

This bad boy holds about negative $-43,492,267 dollars worth oil.

  160,000 metric ton capacity
  times 2204 pounds per ton
  352,640,000 pound capacity
  300 pounds of oil per barrel
  1,175,467 barrels
  at -$37.00
  = profit

sympleeon Oil plunges below zero for first time with May contract ending

Follow up question: If it had ended at zero dollars, then the next day jumps to $5, what's the percentage change?

sympleeon Oil plunges below zero for first time with May contract ending

Certainly messed up the Yahoo finance graph:

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/CL=F?p=CL=F

Look at the red block below the graph, where it should have gone negative.

sympleeon Oil plunges below zero for first time with May contract ending

Now trading at -$37.00.

That's right. Negative thirty seven dollars. Today: -54.67, -299.23%.

https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/future/crude%20oil%20-...

sympleeon Oil plunges below zero for first time with May contract ending

Really not sure why both of my comments are getting down-voted into oblivion, but case and point, oil is now trading at -$37.00 (negative thirty seven dollars)

https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/future/crude%20oil%20-...

Can someone explain the down-votes?

sympleeon Oil plunges below zero for first time with May contract ending

The comment was to lightheartedly point out the incorrect doom and gloom predictions over the last 100 years, where people have been predicting that we're going to run out of oil "soon." Now we have so much we can't get rid of it.

For example:

https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/weve-been-incorrectly-predic...

sympleeon Oil plunges below zero for first time with May contract ending

Anyone still talking about peak oil? :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predicting_the_timing_of_peak_...

sympleeon Seoul's full cafes, Apple store lines show mass testing success

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_testing#Virus_testing...

Shows the following stats:

  Country--------Date-----Tests-------Positive----%-------Tests/mil ppl----Positive/mil ppl
  -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  United States--18 Apr---3,700,388---720,747-----19.5----11,273-----------2,196
  Russia---------19 Apr---1,949,813---42,853------2.2-----13,287-----------292
  Germany--------15 Apr---1,728,357---132,766-----7.7-----20,786-----------1,597
  Italy----------19 Apr---1,356,541---178,972-----13.2----22,474-----------2,965
  Spain----------13 Apr---930,230-----169,496-----18.2----19,905-----------3,627

sympleeon Roger Penrose – Is Mathematics Invented or Discovered? [video]

Can you give some examples of axioms in pure math that run completely counter to our physical world? For example:

  It is NOT possible to draw a straight line from any point to any other point.
  It is NOT  possible to extend a line segment continuously in both directions.
  etc...

  Things which are equal to the same thing are NOT equal to one another.
  If equals are added to equals, the wholes are NOT equal.
  The whole is LESS than the part.

Note that the original forms of the above axioms "make sense" to us because everything in our physical experience agrees with them. So when you said that the "physical counterpart ... is immaterial", I was curious to see an example of a "physically impossible" axiom.

sympleeon Climate-Driven Megadrought Is Emerging in Western U.S., Says Study

There have been some encouraging results recently. For example:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22269115

In any case, the time frame we're talking about is 10-20 years from now. Lots of time for even more breakthroughs.

sympleeon Roger Penrose – Is Mathematics Invented or Discovered? [video]

Isn't it the other way around? Axioms are chosen because there are no observable counter examples in the real world.

sympleeon Climate-Driven Megadrought Is Emerging in Western U.S., Says Study

Are these repurposed oil pipelines? Or dedicated fresh water pipelines built specifically to replenish water supplies?

I'd imagine as oil declines, the pipelines from the gulf might be able to send desalinated water back inland.

Not sure how feasible this would be, thoughts?

sympleeon Climate-Driven Megadrought Is Emerging in Western U.S., Says Study

Exactly. I wonder how feasible it would be to repurpose oil pipelines and send desalinated water back inland.

sympleeon Show HN: Video conference and synchronized YouTube video to do fitness in groups

Feature idea: use the webcam to project the watcher's image/body onto the instructor's. Then with some computer vision magic, gamify how close your workout matched the instructor's workout.

sympleeon Show HN: Video conference and synchronized YouTube video to do fitness in groups

Not crazy at all. This is where the industry is going anyway.

For example "Tonal" is a work out machine that attaches to the wall, with a large video screen (probably larger in the next generation version).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdV2U6NxVUY

Regarding your wall projector, it would be cool to have a camera project your image onto the instructors. Then some computer vision magic to grade how close you matched their exercise.

sympleeon Former CEO of RadioShack now an ER doctor on frontlines of Covid-19 fight

You've got infections, he's got answers.

sympleeon Why We Sleep: A Tale of Institutional Failure

Exactly. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

The example there is:

Tom: All cats are animals. Ginger is an animal. Therefore, Ginger is a cat.

Bill: You have just fallaciously affirmed the consequent. You are incorrect. Therefore, Ginger is not a cat.

sympleeon The Global Dollar Short Squeeze

Exactly. And then at the way end, there's a graph with the two scenarios predicting what will happen based on all of the article's analysis:

Scenario 1: Dollar goes up, then down.

Scenario 2: Dollar goes down.

In each Microsoft Paint drawn scenario, there's only a vague implied scale. Scenario 1 going up to ~$130 around 2025, then falling to ~$92 around 2035. Scenario 2 falling to ~$75 by 2035.

So if the dollar goes up, the author is right. If it goes down, the author is right. If it stays the same? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

sympleeon If you imagine a business making surgical facemasks is working 24/7, guess again

Quick four and a half minute video going into a little more depth about the above concept:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2STbdWkgyg

sympleeon Tailscale has reached general availability

Should the list of who upvotes an article be public?

When I make a comment, my username is displayed. If upvotes and their timestamps were public, it would make it a lot easier for the community to get to the bottom of any funny business like OP is describing.

sympleeon Oil is selling for less than $10 across key North American hubs

This is the time to fill every strategic petroleum reserve in the world [0] to the top. And then double capacity and fill again. I'm sure there are some unintended consequences to doing this, anyone care to weigh in on pros and cons?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_strategic_petroleum_res...