Hacker News Reader

tim-tdayon Taylor Farms Called White House to Try to Delay Cyclospora Recall

Making prey less scared of the predator makes them significantly more likely to be eaten by that predator.

The reality is even worse than “seeking out cats” because it means if it does this in humans, (which it appears to do) those among us who get infected will engage in all manner of risky, dangerous and destructive behaviors.

tim-tdayon Harddrive Is Probably Full

The problem with filling up a ssd is that it writes and rewrites the same blocks over and over defeating the built in wear leveling.

Filling an ssd creates the one situation where nand wear out is a problem.

tim-tdayon What if we made advertising illegal?

Can’t. Some asshole convinced us to allow them to frame advertising as speech to get it protected by the first amendment. Clever. Tragic, but clever.

If you ask me advertising is manipulation, specifically designed to convince you to buy things you don’t want or need (if you want it or need it advertising is literally not necessary). But I’m not the boss and we have things like the constitution guiding what we can and cannot do.

tim-tdayon Border Agents Can Search Your Phone by Hand, No Suspicion Needed

They like to say that but it’s not true. The constitution still applies.

Here’s the thing. We live in a democracy. We get to decide how far our government goes. This one is a bridge too far. So stand up and say so.

tim-tdayon US accuses American of allegedly wiping his phone during border search

Pretty sure this qualifies as destruction of data (at least it is a supported mechanism according to NIST data destruction guidelines.) I don’t have the link handy but I quick google should confirm

tim-tdayon US accuses American of allegedly wiping his phone during border search

Technically it was the agent putting in the duress password that erased the phone.

The phone wouldn’t have been erased if it hadn’t been illegally searched.

tim-tdayon Feral cats fail at urban rodent control (2018)

This study might be missing some long-term thinking and testing of common knowledge.

It is known among farmers that cats reduce rat PRESENCE. the study concludes that cats don’t kill enough rats to reduce rat POPULATIONS (which is entirely different). Rodent control is not about killing rodents it’s about keeping rodents away.

The hypothesis to test would be that rats avoid areas with cats because it makes their young less safe. (A cat discovering an unattended nest containing rat kits will certainly go badly for the rats). I’d like to see the total rat counts in the area of study before arrival of cats and after. I’d guess from what I’ve seen that the population counts would be wildly different than can be accounted for by cat kills.

tim-tdayon ChatGPT invoked God, told pastor not to worry about his symptoms

Why is that a problem? It’s entirely consistent with religious ideology to trust in god.

You don’t get to have it both ways, telling people not to worry and trust in made up crap for one thing and then getting all facts and science just because your own life is on the line.

The real problem here is the hypocrisy.

tim-tdayon Grandmother says staged arrest for reality TV show left her injured

“3-year-old warrant she says she didn’t know existed and stemmed from a dismissed misdemeanor charge”

I’m guessing this stunt will cost the city something like $2M, too bad the assholes responsible will face no repercussions whatsoever.

You, the citizens are on the hook for what your police do. Perhaps you’d like to push for more of a say in HOW they do what they do. For one thing wouldn’t it be nice if a citizen review board could fire those fuckers? Behavior changes real quick when there are consequences. Which I think is the whole argument for policing in the first place.

tim-tdayon FDA panel supports broadening access to peptides popular on the gray market

Shouldn’t we just call them unlicensed and untested injectable drugs? “Peptides” is both excessively broad and insufficiently informative. The purpose of these injections is to cause the body to behave differently. That’s what a drug does. These concoctions haven’t been tested and approved. Giving them a new name gives the public the impression they’re a new thing. They are not. They are an old thing: an untested drug.

tim-tdayon Waymo's driverless cars involved in 68% fewer crashes, U.S. study finds

As with many things it depends on HOW you do it. Uber’s driverless car was unsafe. The Cruze fiasco was about transparency not safety. And in the case of RoboTaxi that shit is absolutely not safe.

tim-tdayon Fusion Is Ready. Is Trump's Washington?

Bullshit.

Or I suppose more accurately, ready for what? Another thirty years of “promising”development?

tim-tdayon Can AI Run a Food Truck Business?

Ai can’t cook so no.

tim-tdayon The White House Report on Revitalizing U.S. Scientific Leadership

lol

tim-tdayon Ask HN: How do I find startups that are looking for a dev? How to approach them?

Meetups Conferences

tim-tdayon Ancient Romans Recorded Metallic Objects in the Sky. Could They Have Been UFOs?

They were by definition unidentified flying objects.

tim-tdayon Recreate BART Lines from Memory

There is only one Bart line in San Francisco. Done

tim-tdayon Country went 100% electric vehicles overnight with a drastic approach

Laos

tim-tdayon AI Overviews could push Reddit to end its $60M-a-year deal with Google

It’s a bold move Cotton. Let’s see how it works out for them.

tim-tdayon Launching Health in ChatGPT to US Users

Oh god no.

tim-tdayon Ask HN: What Linux distro do you daily drive?

I was running Ubuntu everywhere until they started locking security updates behind a login.

Now I’m Debian for servers and whatever comfortable Debian based user experience is popular for a laptop. I played with zorin recently. It was fun.

tim-tdayon Ask HN: What Linux distro do you daily drive?

I really like being able to map the Mac key bindings.

I run Zorin on an old Mac and I am pleased with it.

tim-tdayon Stop pretending billionaires built the future

I’ve recently been thinking about this a lot. We usually focus on what they have (billions) not where it came from (you)

When you frame it like that, the story becomes stark. We should stop giving asshole billionaires our money.

Mad at bezos? Stop giving him your money. Irritated at Elon? The government gives him crap tons of money. Tell your congressman to stop giving money to Tesla and space x. (I know, your voice is one in 300m, but 95% of people never bother to express their opinion to their representatives so your voice is actually 100x louder than you think)

Now your consumer choices are a lot more important. It’s not just how you personally feel about the product or brand. It’s how the billionaire who profits from it behaves.

tim-tdayon I Own My Books

I own my books too. I’m not sure I buy the argument about ebooks being superior. Remember when airplanes made you put your ebook away for takeoff and landing?

My books are always charged. They’re 100% cross compatible. I can just mail one to my brother and he can open it and read it.

tim-tdayon Soaring Egg Prices Are Hitting China Hard

At least the price fixers there will get sentenced to death.

tim-tdayon Nobody knows what a used GPU cluster is worth

I’ll take “people who sell used hardware” for 500 Alex.

tim-tdayon Polio should have been eradicated by now. What's plan B?

Can’t we just pretend things aren’t happening and hope they go away?

That seems to be the most popular modus operandi.

tim-tdayon Amazon SES introduces pricing plans

You can’t use SES. Amazon gates usage and denies it even for super boring internal company email.

tim-tdayon Bump, Set, Boom: Why Girls Volleyball Is Suddenly Everywhere

Let me guess the article doesn’t actually answer the question in the headline.