Hacker News Reader

vwoolfon Dutch cities want to ban property investors in all neighborhoods

So the solution to government interference in the market (by preventing adequate building from occurring) is yet more interference, and that interference will by fiat somehow lower prices, but without dramatically increasing supply.

What could possibly go wrong??

vwoolfon OnlyFans to block sexually explicit videos starting in October

I assume this will lead to Onlyfans's effective death, much as Tumblr's porn ban seems to have led to, or hastened, its death.

Reddit seems to have resisted whatever calls it must be getting to eliminate porn. So far at least. It will ban or quarantine some heretical ideas, but porn is still there.

vwoolfon Ask HN: What Apple alternatives are you switching to?

On desktop, Dell's "developer edition" (DE) XPS 13" is great, Linux ships by default, and it should shortly come with an OLED option (https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/dell-xps-13-oled-review).

On the phone, the iPhone seems more secure and privacy conscious overall.

vwoolfon Law school applicants surge 13%, biggest increase since dot-com bubble

Insane: https://www.wsj.com/articles/law-school-student-debt-low-sal...

vwoolfon Yale Drama goes tuition-free with $150m gift from David Geffen

The rich get richer, it seems.

It's to be hoped that what's happening in the drama school is less dramatic than what's happening in the law school: https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-education/what-is-g...

vwoolfon Antiviral effect of high-dose ivermectin in adults with Covid-19

Money shot: "45 participants were recruited (30 to IVM and 15 controls)." These tiny trials say nothing apart from "more research needed."

vwoolfon The sexual counterrevolution is coming

Did I misread this, or is there no real data presented whatsoever? There are a few anecdotes and that's it.

Slate used to have a series called "bogus trend stories," and this feels like a bogus trend story: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2010/08/bogus-trend-stor...

vwoolfon EV Charging Infrastructure in America Still Sucks

In the Phoenix area, on their app, I count perhaps 6 - 7 charging stations, all far away from the city centers (such as they are, yes, I know) and another 5 - 6 coming soon. Closest one is 14 miles from me right now. I'm rooting for it but it's far from prime time. Yes I have a Tesla I charge at my apt.

vwoolfon Building an E-Ink Laptop

Probably not what you are looking for, but this: https://getfreewrite.com could be good for you.

vwoolfon NASA Has Decided to Start Building the Lunar Gateway Using the Falcon Heavy

It's not something that can get the general public excited about space

Space is like a sports team: the public gets excited when there are wins. The public is excited about SpaceX because of the company's many wins. All ULA needs to do is post some wins to generate excitement.

vwoolfon Ecstasy and psilocybin are shaking up psychiatry

Having had severe diagnosed depression and having also taken MDMA at parties and with friends, I see why it is, if not a miracle drug, then at least a powerful and potent tool. I credit it with much of my quality of life today.

vwoolfon Greg LeMond’s New 26 LB. Carbon Fiber Ebike

All of what you say is true, and it's stupid expensive but also aesthetically incredible and super light. I'd buy one if I had stupid money to throw away. I don't, so I won't, but the appeal is there.

vwoolfon Rising Car Prices Are Sending Even Strong-Credit Buyers to the Used Lot

I don't understand why people buy $35,000+ non-electric cars, instead of three-year-old used cars. For electric cars like Tesla, high initial costs make sense, given environmental impact and lifetime TCO.

vwoolfon Learning to Squat

Learned this the hard way. I'd encourage anyone tempted to try out his program to take a week or two and work on your mobility first

Interesting; do you have any links for advice or guidance on how to work on mobility?

vwoolfon The U.S. Will Surpass China as the No. 1 Country for Manufacturing by 2020

what happens when the Chinese government puts a high priority on getting into aerospace and tries to replicate their own 787s or A-350s

I am late to this discussion, but James Fallows wrote China Airborn, a book about precisely this topic! The answer is complicated—if it weren't, he'd not bother writing a whole book about it—but the short answer is that so far China's not succeeded.

China does lots of stuff well and deserves credit for it but is not the indomitable powerhouse sometimes suggested in the media (e.g. http://www.marketplace.org/2015/12/10/world/why-cant-china-m..., although I don't know if this piece or others like it are for real).

vwoolfon Apple Abandons Development of Wireless Routers

I think it is mostly because they don't understand how much better wired internet is than wireless. I've basically forced many people to connect their devices with Ethernet as a "temporary" measure to solve their problems. For the most part, every single person has decided to leave whatever it is connected.

Yes. Same here. Ethernet is an oddly underrated technology. And Monoprice is one of these things that nerds know about and no one else does. There may be other companies like that—someone above mentioned an enterprise router company that sells better stuff than most consumer companies. Yet I've already forgotten its name.

vwoolfon Ask HN: What project are you working on?

I'm kinda casting around for a project right now. For a while I was trying to get jailbroken iPhones to work as distributed nodes for Compressor.

vwoolfon Ask HN: Do you use a Chromebook for dev? What is your toolchain?

I've never owned one but have a friend who uses one (although I don't recall his model). He observed that it works reasonably well for stuff that's primarily going to happen server-side (shocking, I know) but that he prefers a conventional OS X / Linux / Windows system because he often finds himself wanting to do things locally that should be easy (i.e. scripting, little GUIs) but actually turn out to be hard. It's 90% there but that last 10% makes it not really worth it for him.

He also observed that modern MacBooks and good Linux machines, like that 13" Dell, can be bought for $1000 – $1500 and last for years. For those prices he'd rather buy, either new or refurbished, and have less hassle.

vwoolfon What professions are oversaturated?

I note that "programmer" and various related or adjacent fields are nominated by no one.

vwoolfon Used ThinkPad Buyer's Guide

Used Thinkpads have been very, very good to me over the years

I use a MacBook Pro but have recommended Thinkpads to Windows-using friends. A couple years ago I actually knew a site that re-sold decommissioned corporate models for okay prices and very low bullshit. Wish I could remember the name.

vwoolfon Does All Wine Taste the Same? (2012)

It was also a fun time.

Yeah. I've done something similar, but with either people and three reds, mostly to see if a) my friends could determine the wine type and b) which one they liked best. The answer to a was no and the answers to b were all over the place.

vwoolfon Stockholm’s Home Shortage Could Stifle Startups

Please someone explain something to me regarding the tech sector and housing

Edward Glaeser wrote a book that answers your question: Triumph of the City. Cities promote knowledge transfer and idea generation because of all the random interactions that happen among people. It's useful to be among people who are doing things like what you're doing. Cities offer great ways for cooperation and competition.

If you're doing routine tasks over and over again that can be done remotely maybe you don't need to live in a city. But the rest of us do, and the reasons make a lot of sense!

vwoolfon Vampire Porn: a cautionary tale of a single, monopolistic owner

To be fair, websites are distributors of physical goods because it's so, incredibly easy to type another URL or for that matter search for other sources.

Monopolies in physical goods or even operating systems (per the late 90s) are quite different; the analogy doesn't fit well.

vwoolfon Ask HN: Why is one downvoted for sarcasm

1. Sarcasm is often difficult to discern without tone of voice.

2. Humor for its own sake is less valuable than humor that makes a point. I wish I could find it, but I read an interview with the New Yorker's cartoon editor who said something similar.

3. It is easy to tear down with sarcasm but very hard to build with it. There is too much negativity in anonymous / pseudonymous forums in general.

vwoolfon Generative eBook Covers

This is a tangent but interesting given that you cite a Franklin library book: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/498519163988496384 :

@paulg

When I got rich I let myself buy nice editions of books. But I notice the books I read are mostly cheap paperbacks.

vwoolfon Ask HN: I feel like an 'expert beginner' and I don't know how to get better

1. Keep trying.

2. Books and papers are great, but you should also try to find a mentor / guide / teacher / expert to talk about the issues you're facing and what you're thinking about. Schools are organized the way they are for a reason, even if they often fail at their intended purpose.

vwoolfon The lie about Edward Snowden that just won't die

I'm far more concerned by the/my impression that the public seems to have accepted total surveillance as "the new normal".

A lot of this is also a political / legal question; has the public ever been deeply interested in privacy questions? My (naive?) guess is no, but the judicial branch has historically done an okay job of representing the public interest, and giant scandals (like Nixon) have moved legislators.

vwoolfon Ask HN: Has there ever been a bubble that didn't burst?

The Industrial Revolution and Enlightenment. Growth was negligible over human lifetimes for as long as their were humans, yet in the last 200 – 250 years most people in the Western world and Japan become orders of magnitude richer than our predecessors, and much of the rest of the world is catching up.

vwoolfon The Ivy League Was Another Planet

If you were a great student you applied to the university of Iowa.

Which is a very good school. The other problem a small but important segment of our society has is believing in the magic of very well marketed schools. Really, there are lots of good universities, and I don't think many people's lives are going to be made or broken by whether they're at U of Iowa or some other school, especially for undergrad.

vwoolfon Power surges in Britain caused by millions of people making tea [video]

Depends on the kind of tea. For black tea, near boiling is good, but for whites and oolongs it's not. Though I suppose the British are famous for black tea.

(I got a electric tea kettle with a built in thermometer not too long ago, so this is an interesting issue for me.)