Hacker News Reader

wklausson Tesla releases Q1 2024 deliveries: disastrous results

How? The board won't remove Elon. Tanking the stock price won't hurt him much (but it will hurt shareholders)

wklausson Apple Is in Talks to Let Google's Gemini Power iPhone Generative AI Features

Better integration? nicer or more powerful device? som exclusive apps or servcies? Same as today... Android phones do most of the same things an iPhone does but people who choose iPhone have their reasons to do so.

wklausson Apple Is in Talks to Let Google's Gemini Power iPhone Generative AI Features

Apple is doing it, but doubt they'll use something in-house that's still very much a work in progress when they can actually get paid by Google to use Gemini this year.

wklausson Autonomous restructuring of asteroids into rotating space stations

The novel 2312, by Kim Stanley Robinson, explores this idea and has a fun chapter describing the process of hollowing out and terraforming an asteroid, using the ejecta to give it artificial gravity and a stable orbit in the solar system. Highly recommended.

wklausson Zero Trust SIM

All of these things you mention are real trends, but they are not tied to eSIM.

1. eSIM standard supports transferring of eSIM profile from one phone to another. physical SIMs can be tied to specific IMEIs (and it use to be VERY common) 2. You can use eSIMS on unlocked phones. 3. Burner phones can still exist! Nothing prevents a phone company or MVNO from offering eSIMs the same way they did SIMs before (obviously local law might force you to provide ID, but this has been the case with SIMs as well in various countries)

wklausson After millennia of expansion, the world has passed ‘peak agricultural land’

> Yes, let's blame the consumer.

Yes, let's. I don't think an argument can be held against this. As a meat eater, I understand I'm the driving force of this issue. It's an inconvenient truth, but it is the truth nonetheless. I'm rooting for alternatives like lab-grown meat to thrive, but no amount of wishful thinking allows me to skirt the fact that eating less meat would probably be not only good for the planet, but specifically for my own health.

> the consumer has no idea how their specific spending habits contribute to an issue

Let me point it out: in the developed world it's almost 100% guaranteed that it contributes significantly. You have to go to pretty far edge cases to find really sustainably produced meat. A case can be made that not all industrial farms contribute to deforestation per se, but they are all part of a system that has a high cost for our environment. Deforestation is bad, but it's not –and should not be– the only issue.

wklausson Low-cost gel film can pluck drinking water from desert air

> Obviously this would have an impact on the ecosystem

Anticipating the impact is probably a fool's errand, since climate is extremely complex and changes on one part of the world affect others. It's not just about displacing people in the area, you risk altering the patterns that bring rain to places as far as Germany or help grow crops in Brazil. Sahara sand plumes play a role in replenishing phosphates in the Amazon, for example. Even blanketing some parts with solar panels will probably alter global weather patterns significantly.

wklausson Using the “Z” symbol could lead to prosecution in two German states

How do you explain Putin's speech at the beginning of the conflict, claiming a return to previous imperial Russia borders? Or the fact that a quick celebratory article explaining Russians, Belarusians and Ukranians where united again was published by mistake and then quickly deleted by Russia's main news agency? Is Putin a US agent in this scenario?

wklausson Using the “Z” symbol could lead to prosecution in two German states

Russian TV channels have not been banned. Two propaganda channels have. Might look like semantics, but it's not. The fact that Russia 1 or NTV have not been banned is important.

In Germany they have very strict laws against the use of extremist symbolism, for pretty obvious reasons. Not only the swastika. The black standard of the islamic state or the hammer and sickle are also covered, for example. There are contexts in which they are allowed, obviously (art, education, research...) but this seems to fall in line with the usual cases.

wklausson Sony to buy video game maker Bungie in $3.6B deal

> Sony paid 20x less for Bungie. What they lack in variety of products, they make up for in, in my view, Potential.

Not really. Destiny has a smaller audience than CoD, and Activision Blizzard is a huge purchase with lots a of valuable IPs that go beyond CoD and can still grow (Bungie, OTOH, currently only has Destiny in it's catalog).

Bungie revenue was estimated around $300 million for 2019 vs. $6,5b for Activision Blizzard, so price seems to be in line for both purchases, around 8x annual rev.

Keep in mind Microsoft has bought ton of small studios as well! (Rare, Playground).

Returnal is a good title, but far from being a success by AAA standards (last time they reported sales of the game, in June 2021. it was 560.000 copies). I think part of the aura of success comes from being one of the very few exclusive titles created specifically for the PS5.

wklausson Nobel Peace laureates blast tech giants and warn against rising authoritarianism

Yes, and to think otherwise is extremely naive. I see this as another manifestation of the paradox of tolerance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

That doesn't mean that companies should be free from scrutiny or consequences if they overstep.

wklausson Microsoft has turned the Surface Duo into a handheld Xbox

I got caught by surprise trying to play Ori on Xbox Cloud after having no problem at all with Cyberpunk on Stadia.

wklausson Microsoft has turned the Surface Duo into a handheld Xbox

Xbox Cloud Gaming, unfortunately, it's far from ideal. For several games, lag kills the experience. And I'm not talking fast paced FPS. Even platformers can feel weird or unplayable when you add latency.

wklausson I mailed an AirTag and tracked its progress

yes but if you just want to find where someone leves or goes, you don't need a device following them for a year. Ar day or two is enough, and GPS trackers give you that and a much greater accuracy.

wklausson I mailed an AirTag and tracked its progress

Well, the problem here is that there's no easy way to prevent false positives otherwise. Imagine if you leave your phone at home but take your keys with an AirTag to go shopping using public transportation. Everyone on the bus or the train will be getting notifications about an AirTag that is following them. Same if you lost an item with an AirTag in that bus or train even if you had your phone with you when you boarded it in the first place.

That's why the alert only pops up when you get to a known location (home/office).

As for Android, I wonder if an app could be made for phones equipped with UWB radios that alerts you if a tag is always in close proximity, just based on the tags radio activity.

wklausson I mailed an AirTag and tracked its progress

Most tech reviewers publish the reviews right after the Apple embargo ends or just a couple of days after getting the product. For something like AirTags, where you want to try more complex usage scenarios, this is not optimal.

Keep in mind the idea of "other iPhones will help you find your tags" was not even a thing you could test for when the first reviews came in, since iOS 14.5 was not out yet. Testing Airtags, therefore, was extremely complex for some edge cases and the experience was not as serendipitous as it would be now.

It didn't help that Apple was not very open on how the anti-stalking features work exactly, for obvious reasons (you don't want people to figure out how to bypass them).

wklausson Tokyo Olympics “looking at a cancellation” if coronavirus not contained

That 2%-5% is based on the current detected cases and deaths attributed to the virus. You can sense where the problem is. Much like the flu, most of the deaths are older people with weak inmune systems that go haywire. Right now, out of an abundance of caution, anyone with symptoms is being hospitalized, that includes people that normally wouldn't be if this was a normal flu season and they showed up at the doctor with same symptoms.

wklausson Tokyo Olympics “looking at a cancellation” if coronavirus not contained

> the economic consequences will be disastrous.

I seriously doubt it will. Once the panic subdues, things will go back to pretty much normal. Flu kills a lot of people every year without serious effects on the worldwide economy. You'll need a mortality rate significantly higher to make a dent in global supply and demand. Of course panic is the key word here. If governments impose severe movement restrictions it could disrupt the supply chain, but nothing about this virus seems to justify it. All the measures taken so far have been extreme because the goal was to stop worldwide expansion at early stages but that has already pretty much failed. Media will get bored of it eventually, vaccine will come a little later. World will keep spinning around.

wklausson Wind turbine blades can’t be recycled, so they’re piling up in landfills

The fact that we are discussing a published article seems to suggest somebody wants to talk about it. Also, non renewable sources of energy produce a ton of waste as well! Petroleum refining, for example, is notoriously wasteful.

More info: https://archive.epa.gov/epawaste/hazard/web/html/index-63.ht...

In this case, it seems more like a logistics problem than an environmental one since the blades are made from inert materials and therefore good candidates for landfill. I'm assuming the cost does not justify crushing it for other uses but it could be done at some point if needed.

wklausson iOS First Impressions (2018)

> Project Fi isn't supposed to work with Apple phones. Turns out that it does work, somewhat. I hear there's limitations (it only uses the T-Mobile network, none of the international data works)

I have been using Google Fi on iPhone since they allowed it. Supposedly still in beta but works great. It's true that it's limited to T-Mobile (sadly) but it does include international data, same as in Android. Still one of the main reasons to stick with Fi, honestly.

wklausson Why Child Care Is So Expensive

They are, even at a more local level. New York City, for example, has a free pre-k (4yo) program. But in order to be effective, some of these policies need to be applied nationwide. In other cases, state budgets are simply too constrained for them. Like someone said in the comments, this is a program that could paid itself with the income tax from both parents working, but in the US the majority of income tax goes to the federal government, I think.

wklausson Mass cellphone surveillance experiment in Spain

>"Altogether, parties supporting Catalan independence received 48 percent of the vote." > 48>40

Support for independence and voting share of parties supporting Catalan independence are two different things. Heavily correlated, sure, but not equivalent.

wklausson Mass cellphone surveillance experiment in Spain

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/10/1...

The last wave from the Centre d'Studis d'Opinió from the Generalitat (Local Government), measures support for independence at 44% vs 48% who wish to remain part of Spain.

http://www.rtve.es/contenidos/documentos/barometro_ceo_julio...

wklausson Mass cellphone surveillance experiment in Spain

It is extremely misleading. Support for secession in Catalonia hovers around 40%.

wklausson Google, in Rare Stumble, Posts 23% Decline in Profit

> Image search has been crippled with removal of the size options

One quick tip: you can still access the old image size options on the Advanced Search

wklausson The most successful people are just the luckiest, a new computer model confirms

> how many randomly selected people would you need to produce a score aver 200 on an IQ test, produce a proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem or build something like the SpaceX Falcon.

It's been proven time and again that IQ numbers are more or less meaningless. Setting that aside, I think the point of the article is exactly that you might not need a huge sample to find someone with the potential to do these things, key word here being "potential", nor these things require a different order of magnitude in talent or intelligence, just the right combination of drive, luck, inspiration, opportunity, etc...

wklausson Some corals regrow after 'fatal' warming

When something goes against scientific stablished consensus, onus of the proof falls into the party that argues against it, not the one that states what is currently well known and accepted.

wklausson Tethered Jailbreaks Are Back

> if there's a real security risk

There is, but it's not that great. You need physical access to the device and it won't be persistent (a reboot will clean it).

wklausson Are We Living in a Post-Happiness World?

Large cities can have very vibrant local communities. I lived in NYC for several years and had very rewarding connections with other people in my same neighborhood, not different from the one you'd expect in a small village.

wklausson MacBook Pro Keyboard Drives Me Crazy

> Maybe developing on macOS has become a hassle (I don't see that, but sure), but doing everything on Windows is a hassle.

I have Windows installed on a Bootcamp partition on my Macbook Pro. Aside from the hassle and quirks of a different operating systems (coming from MacOS I find Windows extremely lacking in UX), I find perplexing the way Windows handles color profiles. Same computer, same screen, but everything is super saturated in Windows. In some websites with a lot of color in the background it can be jarring.