Hacker News Reader

MaysonLon Facebook to Exempt Opinion and Satire from Fact-Checking

As opposed to the Onion articles which are confusingly close to actual news. [or are merely prescient]

Let's see: Cory Doctorow's Unauthorized Bread and Walkaway, Arthur C. Clarke's The Nine Billion Names of God and The City and the Stars.

MaysonLon Yogababble

> Yoga teachers in the West, however, mix pseudo-scientific or New Age BS into their practice ("unite the chakras", "harness your inner goddess", "elevate your spirit") to make themselves be seen as being more than fitness instructors.

This is true for many, but not all, nor is it limited to the West.

MaysonLon Yogababble

He also does a great podcast with Kara Swisher: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pivot/id1073226719

MaysonLon Apple iOS 13.1 Personal automation via Shortcuts

Make the allow and always allow options require Face ID, Touch ID, or passcode…

MaysonLon WeWork and Counterfeit Capitalism

Go look at the history of Diapers.com, now owned by Amazon.

MaysonLon A Blue Collar Slob’s Introduction to the Rare Oakland Manzanita [video]

There was an astronomy prof at my college who collected Chaplin (and other silent) movies and would show them throughout the year, with his wonderful ragtime piano accompaniment.

https://www.swarthmore.edu/a-brief-history/1963-astronomer-p...

https://aas.org/obituaries/peter-van-de-kamp-1901-1995

MaysonLon The End of the Golden Era of American Chess

And in the current round of the World Cup (16 games featuring 32 of the strongest players in the world) at least 6, probably 7 games are decisive: 9 draws. classical chess is not quite dead.

MaysonLon The U.S. Forgot What Antitrust Is For

Balanced by TGV and the fact that infant mortality rates don't depend upon which zip code (or arrondissement) you live in.

MaysonLon Tin Plasma Extreme Ultraviolet Radiation Makes 5nm Integrated Circuits Possible

"Every now and again there is a moment that brings home how strange life in the twenty-first century can be. There I was in Brighton, England, holding a thin slice of glass and metal which was made in South Korea and ran American software, and which could show me the President of America threatening the Supreme Leader of North Korea."

John Higgs: Stranger Than We Can Imagine an alternative history of the 20th century, p. 5

MaysonLon Open letter from an Android developer to the Google Play team

My $140 SE from Walmart has 32GB.

MaysonLon A Mexican Hospital, an American Surgeon, and a $5k Check

> For anything ~ 200k+ that isn't literally holding your baby hostage from imminent death, it's probably cheaper to get a degree in chemistry and some lab equipment.

Or find a chemist who was tempted by Breaking Bad but found the ethical problems and risk profile unsatisfactory, who would jump at the chance for a little profitable humanitarian patent infringement.

Which leads to an interesting HN startup idea (or at least a Cory Doctorow novel): SciHub, but for drugs…

MaysonLon The Erlang Rationale

Should be of interest to anybody interested in this, Joe Armstrongs Ph.D. thesis: http://erlang.org/download/armstrong_thesis_2003.pdf

MaysonLon Inflated Bond Ratings Helped Spur the Financial Crisis. They’re Back

See also the 10-year Treasury minus 3-month Treasury, which seems to do even better at recession indication:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T10Y3M

MaysonLon Facebook Hit by Apple’s Crackdown on Messaging Feature

This reminds me of the way Amazon will try to get you to go to smile.amazon.com when you follow an afilliate link to amazon.com.

MaysonLon The Making of an Expert (2007)

See also Bloom's two-sigma problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem

MaysonLon I'm a College Professor Who Faked Dissertation Data on the Side

My mother worked for years as secretary for an EdD who was unable to draft a coherent paragraph: she wrote all of his business letters for him. He did, I believe, enjoy being referred to as "Doctor".

MaysonLon Apple Reports Declining Profits and Slowing Growth Again

And the stock increased over 4% in after-hours trading, as increases in non-iPhone hardware sales and services overcame the decrease in iPhone sales. Earnings per share slightly beat the consensus forecast.

An interesting quote from Cook in the press release: "The balance of calendar 2019 will be an exciting period, with major launches on all of our platforms, new services and several new products"

MaysonLon MathFiction: Alex Recommends

I wonder if Nathaniel Bowditch was an inspiration for Heinlein's 1953 novel Starman Jones. It seems quite possible, given his Navy career.

MaysonLon The U.S. Labor Market Isn’t All That Healthy

Of course, if you look at median income, almost all of that increase came 1980-2000: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

MaysonLon Do you have a yawning Perception Gap, or are you in sync with American public?

Why is it less interesting that about 20% of Republicans do agree with that statement (according to the article), than that Democrats think 50% do?

MaysonLon Demon Core

This is why power paper cutters have two widely separated on buttons.

MaysonLon The U.S. Is Purging Chinese Cancer Researchers from Top Institutions

If one found it impossible to get an appropriate-level job in this country, and were offered one in China, one might take it, mightn't one?

MaysonLon An Infinitely Large Napkin

From the current Preface:

"I initially wrote this book with talented high-school students in mind, particularly those with math-olympiad type backgrounds. Some remnants of that cultural bias can still be felt throughout the book, particularly in assorted challenge problems which are taken from mathematical competitions. However, in general I think this would be a good reference for anyone with some amount of mathematical maturity and curiosity. Examples include but certainly not limited to: math undergraduate majors, physics/CS majors, math PhD students who want to hear a little bit about fields other than their own, high school students who like math but not math contests, and unusually intelligent kittens fluent in English."

MaysonLon Should the police be able to investigate your genetic family tree for any crime?

Serious crimes with DNA evidence can also triangulate suspects via finding their relatives in the database. Finding two second cousins from different sides of a suspect's family have a guy currently on trial for murder who had never been arrested, but whose DNA was found on a dead woman's body and clothes.

MaysonLon What is a coder's worst nightmare?

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

MaysonLon A Summer from Hell Is Coming to U.S. Airports

from a 2001 low, it seems to have been on a steady upward trend to 2015, and has been flat to down since then.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/tourist-arrivals

MaysonLon Facebook and Google pressured EU experts to soften fake news regulations

I wonder: does the "fake news" regulation also apply to fake (i.e. false, misleading, fraudulent, conspiratorial) advertisements?

MaysonLon Adware Is Malicious, and It Uses Advanced Techniques to Infect

Why did I read that username as hero.us?

MaysonLon Aggressive Chess Openings (2012)

Many years ago I was playing in Rossolimo's chess studio in Greenwich Village, and he pitted me against a master, who played this variation 1 f3 … 2 kf2. It took me three or four games to be able to figure out how to use the tempi well enough to get a successful attack. After that Rossolimo allowed me to play him. After achieving what felt like an opening advantage, I managed to blow the game.