whyenot

It was still an awful lot to ask of a reader, and IMO, not worth the "reward." I agree with the person you are responding to. His early works are really amazing, but beginning with Cryptonomicon he became increasingly verbose and I found his later books a lot less fun to read.

Does it support dates from before January 1, 1900? (No)

Sigh.

aren't you making a bold claim about HN ethos?

As Alex noted, apple seeds contain cyanide, or to be more accurate, cyanogenic glycosides. When the tissue of most apple seeds is damaged, an enzyme cleaves the sugar-cyanide bond, releasing hydrogen cyanide gas. You can test this yourself, by crushing some apple seeds and smelling the mashed seeds. It will smell of almonds, which is the smell of hydrogen cyanide gas.

I created a lab for intro biology around testing for HCN in various plant tissues. The interesting thing is not all apple seeds actually seem to produce HCN. Granny Smith seeds seem to always produce it (and relatively speaking a lot), while some little lunch box sized Fuji apples I bought at a farmers market don't produce any at all.

It seems like the idea is that we get more fuel efficient tires but at the price of having tires that wear out more quickly? That seems like a pretty lousy proposition, especially when you factor in externalities like all the micro-particle pollution that tires produce and the chronic health effects they can cause.

Its serial nature also means that an evaluator's standards can drift from students with early exams to those with later exams. Oral exams can introduce issues of sex and ethnic biasing.

Maybe they are painting the fish and find the experience unenjoyable? :)

The worst thing that ever happened to Common Lisp was its ANSI standardization, which for many years killed almost all language innovation and improvement.

Bring. Back. Aperture!!! Yes there are alternative to Lightroom out there (Capture One, for example), but Aperture was so Mac native and was such a joy to use on OS X.

Wandering spiders do not feed on banana sap. They hunt small invertebrates on the forest floor at night and hide among bananas, or other dark and protected locations during the day. The defensive posture you described is one way to help identify them.

It turns out that Phoneutria defensive bites are most often "dry" with little if any venom. It's thought that the spiders conserve venom for use on actual prey items.

BTW, the four frontal eyes in a box is not considered a good taxonomic character for IDing them, as spiders in other related genera also have this. They do have a warning posture, but not a "dance" that I am aware of. Also, they are terrestrial and hunt on the forest floor. The stories of them "jumping" are largely exaggerated.

The people training the model are almost certainly not the same ones writing tweets. I don't know why that is mind boggling. We all make typos, at least the humans among us do.

The website is all hype with very little substance, as well as the taint of AI slop. If they aren't willing to share details, I'm not interested.

As a benchmark, I would use Slate, who have so far done an excellent job providing information and updates on their truck.

Pebble never said that anyone "needs" to buy the ring sizing kit. They did suggest that you buy the sizing kit from them for $10, OR 3D print it at home, OR visit a jeweler.

The ring has a button on it that you are going to press often, and you will likely wear it on a different finger than you would normally wear a ring on. That is/was the advantage of the sizing kit IMO: you can try the different sizes and wear the "dummy" ring for a couple of hours or a day and get a better idea of what size and finger will work best for you.

I think calling the ring sizing a "debacle" is being a little over-dramatic. It is a shame the ring kit is off on sizing, but how big of a problem it is, is kind of an unknown right now. It's a limited production product, there will be problems at the start, just like there have been with the Pebble Time 2.

The car that has sold out in almost every market outside the US?

Because the article is about more than just the buttons.

For Boepple, buttons were the family business. At his shop in Germany, he had learned to craft them out of wood, shell, horn and bone. But pearl buttons brought in the biggest profits. When a German tariff put him out of business, Boepple became one of the nearly 1.5 million Germans who immigrated to America in the 1880s. “They each brought their own skills,” Joy says. “Mr. Boepple was a button maker.”

But what if the difference is either talking to an AI now, and the chances are fair that it can resolve my problem vs. staying on the line for a real person, who may be better able to help me, but there is a 2 hours wait (not an exaggeration, Hawaiian Airlines made me wait this long). Suddenly the former doesn't look that bad?

The way the voting system works at Reddit encourages group think and bubbles. All it takes is five more down votes than up votes and a comment or post essentially disappears from view. It's a design that actively avoids debate.

Instead of attacking the author, please respond to the content of the article. That is the HN way, and it leads to more substantive and interesting discussions.

I'm not entirely sure what "100% human-made" even means. Also, what is the difference between 90% and 100%? Is any website (of the modern era) 100% human made?

That’s a pretty extraordinary claim. Do you have anything quantitative to back it up? HN has bots, I think that is a fair assumption, but half? How do you know that for sure?

I work as staff at a state university in what as been ranked as the highest cost of living city in California. In my field, I have the highest classification I can get. I am on step 20 out of 20. My salary is $88,000 a year. That is considered “low income” where I live. There is nowhere I can go higher in my chosen profession. The union is more interested in bringing up the lowest paid members than helping people in my situation, which is probably the right thing to do. The university is still attempting to hire people at $55,000 a year (ridiculous), and wondering why they have so much trouble filling positions. About half of the search committees I have been on ended with a recruitment failure.

Career progression is of course nice, but the larger issue is just being paid a living wage. In my case, I have money, I can walk away from my job any time that I want to, but I love what I do. Most people aren’t so lucky. The politics are hard, because there is this characterization (and I have seen it here at HN) that state employees are lazy, incompetent, inefficient, have huge pensions, collect large amounts of overtime, and more. In my experience, while there are exceptions, this really isn’t true.

Maybe this was something country or region specific. I don’t remember ever seeing ads for TV, Red, or other products with my US premium subscription. Now, some channels will promote specific products in their videos (like the mini ads some do for square space, nordvpn, etc), but YouTube, now has a button you can click to jump over that garbage.

As someone already mentioned. Steam for movies already exists (iTunes, also Amazon’s offering). The problem seems to be that hardly anyone wants to actually own a movie anymore. There are places where the ownership model seems to still be thriving (books), but for video and audio, ownership (vs. streaming or renting) is largely dead.

Hopefully it will allow you to filter out AI slop. TikTok currently does not do this, and it’s infuriating.

I agree, and any time there is a security breach, bug or other employee-caused calamity at a tech company that results in a lawsuit or settlement, the money should come out of employee 401k accounts, stock options, etc. These people need to police themselves. By aligning incentives it will encourage the good developers and force out the bad ones.

Because it is not obviously theft. If you are getting a discount for making a year-long commitment, and then cancel, breaking that commitment, isn't a cancelation fee appropriate?

It's probably a little of both: dangerous and expensive. This article makes a good case that the cost is at least part of the reason.

I wish the article could have been a lot tighter and shorter. This is not earth shattering information that requires a New Yorker length piece of investigative journalism.

You give exams in person, in class, on blue books, no phones. This part isn't hard. Instructors have been doing it for generations. It's only in the post COVID era that some have moved to having exams take home and on Canvas or similar platforms. This is great for instructors -- less work! but I am not convinced it actually helps students.

The part that is more difficult is take-home work, and I think the solution is that instead of being something that you turn in for credit, it needs to move to being more of a chance to practice for in-person exams.

What about essays? I've taught classes where students had to write essays in class, in person. On paper, with a pen (this may no longer be allowed on many campuses because of access and perceived fairness reasons, which IMO is a shame, but it is what it is). I think the traditional assignment of "write a 15 page paper on XYZ" is probably done. Instead students will have to prepare to write an essay in class by reading the source material (books, papers, etc) and converse with AIs that are hopefully not hallucinating, to get an understanding of the material and then come to class and be prepared to write about it.

It's a new world, but one we can adapt to.

> Despite HN trendiness, SV and business world advocacy of 'animal instincts', and current cultural trends, humans are generally honest and honorable

I personally believe this (that people are generally honest and good). BUT, the numbers don't lie: 30% of Princeton students admit to having cheated on an exam. This is a "your house is on fire" moment. An honor code has has to be enforced, and that is apparently not happening at Princeton. Frankly, as someone working at a school that also has an honor code (most do, in my experience), that is where the problem lies: if you turn a blind eye to violators, it sends the message to everyone that the honor code is just words, it doesn't mean anything.