Hacker News Reader

takingflacon Aging Parents with Lots of Stuff, and Children Who Don’t Want It

Always check to see if a place near you will accept furniture items as a donation. (Goodwill, Salvation Army, etc.) If nothing else you get a tax credit for the donation.

takingflacon Living on Mars: The Stuff You Never Thought About

The bandwidth is improving. If they could fix that 240000ms ping it would at least be bearable.

takingflacon 3D metal printing is about to go mainstream

Can we get a citation for the toxicity of ABS? My Google-fu is failing me as I can only find articles that say the fumes can cause minor irritation when inhaled or in contact with the eyes.

takingflacon An easter egg for one user: Luke Skywalker

You forgot to add in all those tie fighters chasing them that also tried to make it through an asteroid field.

takingflacon USPS loses millions each year on local delivery of mail from abroad (2014)

Could also be a holdover from using cents. I have always seen the cents symbol used after the number so 70¢ is a shorter way to write $0.70

takingflacon The Hotel Industry’s Plan to Combat Airbnb

In the US you must provide a valid photo ID when checking in to validate your age.

takingflacon Why Land on the Moon? (1963)

https://what-if.xkcd.com/imgs/a/124/kennedy.png

I think going to the moon was a good choice.

takingflacon Fixing Monopoly

Just add the hostile take over expansion called Risk.

http://www.gilwood.org/riskopoly.htm

takingflacon Cardiovascular Deaths Linked to Poor Dietary Choices

Just to clarify there are toxins that will bioaccumulate such as heavy metals, however simply including meat/dairy/eggs in your diet will not cause this.

takingflacon Electronic meters’ false readings up to six times higher than actual consumption

This is called phase shifting(1) adding a large enough inductor to all of your resistive loads will cause your power factor(2) to drop. Unfortunately for you the power company bills you for your apparent power useage which takes into account both the real and imaginary parts of your power consumption, it measures your shifted loads.

1. http://www.learnabout-electronics.org/ac_theory/ac_ccts_51.p... 2.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor

takingflacon Inside NASA’s Space Farming Labs

It has to do with the mucus in the nasal cavity not draining properly do to the lack of gravity. Most of your sense of taste is actually due to smell which is reduced when you have a stuffy nose. There are probably other contributing factors, but this is one I remember hearing.

takingflacon Ask HN: What're the best-designed things you've ever used?

This should be the standard, but the exception is always going to be multi switch circuits with multiple switches controlling the same light.

takingflacon Copper is key in burning fat

This is true, that is why I only eat the "skins" of modern pennies if I don't have any old ones. The inside is where all that nasty zinc comes from.

takingflacon A 24-year-old made $345K in 2 months by beating Kickstarters to market

Considering that the magic 8-ball has a patient, why not? (Granted it is actually an interesting patent since it solved the problem of air bubbles obscuring the answers on the answer die) https://www.google.com/patents/US3119621

takingflacon A machine will serve you a free Big Mac

Just goes to show there is no such thing as a free lunch, you have to pay for it with information.

takingflacon An exhibition to commemorate 75 years since the first human trials of penicillin

Mold has been using penicillin to kill bacteria for a very long time. Resistance to it has been developing right alongside it, but it is only in the past 75 years that we have increased the pressure on bacteria to favor resistance.

takingflacon The Number of Older Student Loan Borrowers Is Rising

How does paying bills and credit card debt mute the effect of the tax break?

takingflacon Show HN: Explore ideas whose patent protection expires today

At least the ideas are put on record and able to be accessed by someone who could see it through once the patent has expired, which fortunately is a reasonable amount of time.

takingflacon Million-Year-Old 'Hero Bug' Emerges From Cave

I would think that having a resistance an antibiotic meant that a bacteria was losing out on a different advantage. This is why resistant bacteria only exist in places where having the resistance, hospitals etc., is more beneficial than what it lost to get the resistance.

For example if a cheetah developed a larger body at the cost of speed. It wouldn't survive as well unless there was a benefit to being larger but slower.

takingflacon Sears reports $748M net loss [pdf]

That explains why the search/filtering for products on Target's site was so terrible when I recently had to buy an item from there.

takingflacon There’s Something Funny in the Air on Mars

But by now the rate of creation should equal the rate of decay so even though "new" carbon is being made the amount of carbon doesn't really change.

takingflacon Four New Names Officially Added to the Periodic Table of Elements

Edit: Other replies are better. Just going to add that if we create a new element that is stable it will be big news by itself.

takingflacon German Leaders at Odds with Industry Over Electric Cars

Doing some quick math the used car would have to be valued at 70% of the new car's value to make the monthly payments equal. Edit: Also going to point out that you will lose about 10% of the new cars value just by driving it home and it will have a higher depreciation rate then the used car.

takingflacon [dead]

As scary as that sounds, I feel it is better than the mindless landmines laying around from past wars. In theory, when the war is done you could hit the disarm or recall button unlike conventional mines.

takingflacon How Cheese Curls Were Invented

Just going to leave the reference to the book here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle

Edit: Didn't see gumby's post since I was reading over the article before posting.

takingflacon Diamonds Suck (2006)

While I love the idea of a crystal ring of any kind, metal beats it in two cases:

1. Crystals can shatter if stuck at the wrong angle (unlikely but possible).

2. Unlike a gold band the crystal ring can't be resized later in life.

takingflacon Scouts and guides provide ‘mental health boost for life’

Just curious, what was the size of the city/town that this scout troop was in?

takingflacon We’re Scientists, Moms, And We Avoid Non-GMO Products

Yes, caffeine found in coffee and tea is a pesticide

Edit: missed an e

takingflacon Supercapacitors are now carbon-free and more powerful

I agree the current phrasing is at best easy to misunderstand at worst misleading. Another phrase like mchannon is suggesting or perhaps "No longer uses just carbon" would be more acceptable.