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ungruntled

170 karma · joined September 4, 2018

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ungruntled··on Z.ai doubles it's coding plan prices
Unjustified from the perspective of a consumer. Coding api is incredibly slow, frequently times out, and model quality is nowhere near Claude Opus in actual usage. Usage quotas also fill much sooner than expected given the claimed ratios to Claude plans. No value compared to Codex or Claude. Quite a surprising change.
ungruntled··on Show HN: Hacker News archive (47M+ items, 11.6GB) as Parquet, updated every 5m
That’s a good point. I’m only referring to the terms they used in the privacy policy.
ungruntled··on Show HN: Hacker News archive (47M+ items, 11.6GB) as Parquet, updated every 5m
None that I could see:

Your submissions to, and comments you make on, the Hacker News site are not Personal Information and are not "HN Information" as defined in this Privacy Policy.

Other Users: certain actions you take may be visible to other users of the Services.

ungruntled··on WSDA, USDA announce eradication of northern giant hornet from the United States
It seems that the adoption of the southern/northern names was in part related to what GP is referring to.

https://entsoc.org/news/press-releases/northern-giant-hornet...

ungruntled··on Plastic bag bans work
I wonder what level of additional waste is now caused by these reusable bags that we will continue to see forever. FreshDirect will provide 2 heavy reusable bags each delivery I receive each week. They claimed to offer to pick these up but that has been suspended for years. They now suggest to “donate” the bags. Obviously these end up in the trash.

The strange part of whatever law led them to this idea is that because these bags aren't rigid enough, products tend to be damaged and arrive organized like a trash pile where at least one thing spills all over everything else. Oh, and they still put frozen goods in thin plastic bags.

I recall the best quality delivery for my use-case being products in standard takeout delivery paper bags wrapped in plastic to avoid leakage. I’m certain far less plastic was used in those cases, and the bags themselves could be easily used to store trash for the compactor avoiding the need for the thicker trash bags.

ungruntled··on NYC-bound flight canceled when passenger notices missing bolts on plane wing
I’ve noticed missing bolts a few times when sitting in wing view seats. Didn’t realize that isn't supposed to be ok. This problem might be quite common.
ungruntled··on Bottled water has 'up to 100 times' more bits of plastic than previously feared
I’m sure people can hallucinate differences in taste, but there are very much differences in taste between water sources and water stored in different containers. For instance, many restaurants in nyc serve tap water in glass containers cleaned with bleach and improperly rinsed so you smell the chlorine. The water supply itself can contain chlorine, for instance in many countries chlorine is added to the water supply for various reasons including known mixing of fresh and sewage water. Plastics used in water bottles affect taste and smell. Aquafina and Dasani bottles for instance have a commonly known strong taste of plastic. Plastic bottles left in sunlight for prolonged periods will have an even stronger taste and smell. Cities will change water sources periodically. For instance nyc recently in the last few years adjusted their sources and building managers sent notices saying the new source will taste more “nutritious and earthy”. My building also has had a hot water boiler and cold water mixture issue as well as a contaminant issue that they solved by introducing additional chlorine. However the cold water also is frequently rusty and brown from boiler water mixing in, which probably has its own flavor.

Taste can differ from building to building, city to city, container to container.

ungruntled··on A fourth of U.S. health visits now delivered by non-physicians
Possibly similar situation…but probably due to something else other than miscommunications.

I had insurance partnered with my university. I went to the uni clinic due to a headache and fever so I could get some ibuprofen. They had no capacity to perform any tests and told me I needed to goto the hospital. They ordered an ambulance and said I needed to sign a waiver if I refused them. I had no idea what the impact would be to my insurance so I went along with it. At the hospital ER they hooked me up to IV immediately and then said I needed a spinal tap to check for meningitis because they couldn't explain the fever. I asked to leave, but nobody came to unhook me from the IV or bring my belongings back. They then guided me to another room after an hour or so with 5 people in it. I asked to leave immediately, and they said I could have a life threatening case and I needed to sign a waiver if I left. Apparently they were bringing another doctor from another hospital as emergency to do the test. This time I called my family for advice and signed the form but they were very pushy. The headache and fever were gone the next day. This experience has scarred me from going to U.S. healthcare to this day.

ungruntled··on PoW gets his life back after 55 years (2000)
These wikipedia articles have some related information:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_labor_of_Germans_afte...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1944–50_flight_and_expulsion...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_plans_for_German_indu...

Edit: Added an additional link for forced deindustrialization of Germany

ungruntled··on America’s Afghanistan war devastated the environment, may never be cleaned up
Maybe someone knows the answer.

But is there something unique about munitions used in Afghanistan or Ukraine vs those used in WW1/2 or Vietnam or Korean wars that are particularly more toxic or have increased duration of toxicity that would make crops unusable? I would have suspected the munitions to be similar enough to see the same effects.

ungruntled··on PoW gets his life back after 55 years (2000)
Truly tragic.

After the war, German soldiers were passed around to be used as slave labor by the Allies (obviously Germans acted similarly with Allied PoWs during the war). Germans were expelled by the millions from culturally German areas. Not every Axis power received the same degree of treatment, which I assume is due to the higher level of vilification of Germans caused by wartime and continuing post wartime propaganda (obviously the Nazis created quite a bit of ammunition for this).

I bring this up because we can observe this type of vilification in real-time by western media against Russians as well as the same propaganda against Ukrainians by Russian media. I'm hoping that once the conflict is over that Europe's experience makes this type of post-war pillaging distasteful.

ungruntled··on Target to close 9 stores across four states because of theft and organized crime
Within the last 6 months, a local Target I use has refitted most of the store with locked sliding doors for shelves and anti-theft tags for larger items. I noticed that high priced groceries like steaks also tend to be permanently ‘sold out’. There is an open street market nearby that sells products that match closely with what the target sells. Homeless tend to just hang out in front or inside. Wasn’t like this several years ago, so times are clearly changing.
ungruntled··on Sweden brings more books and handwriting practice back to its tech-heavy schools
The effects were measurable. For instance, paragraphs within essays were crossed out as illegible and removed from the final marks. So for instance if you had to write a 5 paragraph essay, and 1 paragraph was missing due to this, then maximum grade would be a C+ due to missing a conclusion section or introduction or other required section.
ungruntled··on Sweden brings more books and handwriting practice back to its tech-heavy schools
I can attribute a great deal of poor school results due to books and timed or take-home handwritten assignments.

I had a 40lb backpack for school filled with books and notebooks and implements required for class. Forgot a book? Lose a mark. Random checks on note-taking during class. Forgot your notebook? Lose a mark. Protractor split due to the compression between two books? Lose a mark.

I walked to school on many days. My back hurt permanently.

I write with my left hand. Nobody knows how to teach this. Letters smear into the next. Ball point pens get jammed. Can’t read your handwriting? Lose a mark. Know exactly what you want to write but cant produce it in time? Lose a mark. Hand is cramped from P.E. from doing 30 pull-ups? Lose a mark. Its a pain to think faster than you can write as you watch the clock run out.

When it started being possible to turn in typed assignments or timed tests, life became easier.

Don’t do this to kids.

ungruntled··on Blood pressure should be measured lying down: study
Thanks. This is very helpful to me. I have weekly migraines. I never thought to attribute it to high blood pressure.

For the record, my blood pressure is not nearly as high, but its typically 140/85 as infrequently measured. I’ve never measured during a migraine, but I will now.

ungruntled··on Blood pressure should be measured lying down: study
Myself being someone who suspects that they have high blood pressure (based on infrequent measurement), would you mind sharing if you had any recurring symptoms (outside of hearing heartbeat) when your blood pressure was at its peak?
ungruntled··on Big effort needed on UK diet to fight ultra-processed food, say health experts
Having lived in a few countries globally, I’ve had the chance to observe the decline in food in multiple regions. Some local industries decline at different rates likely due to locals not tolerating it. Bread and milk are good indicators in my opinion. Whole milk fat content is lower in US vs Europe, and in the middle east, milk fat is replaced with coconut fat or others non bovine sources.
ungruntled··on Govt of Canada proposes a 4% Link Tax
Regardless of the merits of this tax, a scary thing is that the availability of news in an entire nation can be thwarted by Facebook and Google.
ungruntled··on Burger King faces legal claim over size of Whopper
I remember eating at Burger King in a German airport about 20 years ago. I ordered some sort of crispy chicken sandwich with coarse breading. I think it was some sort of local special. The whole thing looked very similar in quality to these advertisements. The lettuce and onions and tomatoes were good and the chicken seemed almost real. The bread was like from a bakery. Haven't had a sandwich like that ever since and I think about it randomly. It seems possible to achieve the standard in their advertisements. People seem to be gradually tolerating lower quality food such that they can get away with what they actually serve today. But I’ve noticed this trend outside of fast food.
ungruntled··on New York Is Full. And it’s the housing market’s fault
I’m sure there is a lot more available space than the city lets on. You can see residential luxury high-rises where most of lights on every floor are off at night. Nobody is living in them. 10s of empty rent controlled units in each of many buildings where those units stay empty for years.

The city may be struggling to house these migrants, but I’m sure there is a strong incentive to keep normal housing units unavailable so friends of politicians can fill their low demand hotel rooms and supply catering at very favorable rates.

ungruntled··on Facing failure after failure, Microsoft’s driver-signing program fails yet again
It wouldn't surprise me if there was a significant criminal organization embedded within Microsoft's org chart supporting these things. In the past I used Microsoft's customer support chat through their website which then gave me a number to call back. That number appeared to be a legitimate number for Microsoft. They then requested I install a remote assistant tool from a non-Microsoft domain which they said may cause my screen to go black for several minutes. Stupidly, I went along with this before realizing what was going on.
ungruntled··on Code Llama, a state-of-the-art large language model for coding
I think the key problem here is that is is a bad programming question. If you know anything about prime numbers then coming up with an answer is trivial. If you expect a more optimized solution, then you are really only gauging the interviewee’s understanding of prime numbers. So effectively the interview is more about mathematics than it is about programming or problem solving.
ungruntled··on Japanese game publisher Digital Will has filed a lawsuit against Apple
I agree. Imagine a legal system where the laws are hidden from citizens and they are only informed of their guilt without meaningful appeal. I feel that any severed contract should require a clear reason with evidence along with an real opportunity for a rebuttal. If that fails then the court system can handle the rest. I used to believe that companies should be allowed to halt business with whomever they please, but this is really just being abused by large companies to avoid the costs of scaling their business.
ungruntled··on MRI scanning could lead to major cut in prostate cancer deaths, UK study
The article mentions over-treatment, and I haven't looked into statistics for over-diagnosis of prostate cancer, but for two members in my family, their doctors preferred the wait-and-see method which lead to untreatable cancer in one case and a near-miss delayed treatment in another. I’d rather be alive, but these doctors appeared more focused on the side effects of prostate removal on sex and incontinence. Any improved method of detecting when dangerous cancer in the prostate needs to be removed would help to clear up priorities for both doctor’s and patients.
ungruntled··on A brief glimpse at recent events in Egypt
I haven’t had any upper middle class or rich Egyptians ever noting being concerned about the draft. I assume corruption permitted it to be completely avoidable. What value is this new system offering given the existing ‘infrastructure’ to avoid it?
ungruntled··on Paperlike Color: Color E-Ink Monitor
I have their 13in grayscale e-ink device. I assume the underlying tech is similar. What they carefully filter out is the significant ghosting of the device that builds up immediately and needs to be cleared with a button on the monitor. The contrast is also poor and blends with ghosted content so you need more time to tell what’s real or junk pixels. The front light on the device is still required in most lighting situations unless you are in sunlight. Glare from non overhead lighting is very bad and worsened by the lack of a backlight. Content on significant portions of the page will flicker as you move your mouse and corrupt content already displayed unless you press the clear button. Content will flicker on many settings even without any movement. Even on the lowest refresh rate the device is still not really usable. I originally bought this to help with eye strain, but the poor visibility of content, flickering, and clearing action make it substantially worse than a regular monitor.

Edit: I’d also add that the device emits a coil whine when the display is updating like when moving mouse. Its audible enough to hear over my wall AC unit.

ungruntled··on Cool Retro Terminal
I like this terminal and have used it frequently, but it should be noted that it is a fantasy representation of how these old displays actually looked. You may be able to tone down a lot of the settings but you still wont be able to achieve that similar of a look to original displays. The monochrome displays of the time had quite clear quality. I have an Apple ii monitor from the early 80s on my desk, and the similarities are more akin to an exaggerated caricature of a celebrity. But maybe my experience doesn't go far back enough
ungruntled··on Windows Update Restored: Fix Windows update on Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, and XP
Compared to Windows, I find that most linux desktop distros have what I would call ‘stability vulnerabilities’ where the user has to tread carefully when doing something basic like updating graphics drivers or applying other updates, or changing resolution. Otherwise they end up with an OS that wont start or will just show a blank screen. I wouldn’t recommend linux for general business or personal use unless this kind of tinkering is enjoyable or you have sufficient IT staff.
ungruntled··on Windows XP Activation: Game Over
It says it's activated. I think this is because I was using one of those Windows XP compatibility isos that Microsoft made available for download a long time ago (as far as I remember).
ungruntled··on Windows XP Activation: Game Over
I've been using Windows XP VMs without activation, or even a prompt to activate. I didn't know they even needed activation. Does anyone know what activation is needed for?
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