Hacker News Reader

QuickToBanon Breaching a “carbon threshold” could lead to mass extinction

Did you forget just how easily the oligarchs provided hundreds of millions in funding for the Notre Dame when it caught fire this year? It doesn't deserve that funding, but climate change does. The oligarchs splurge like there is no tomorrow.

QuickToBanon Breaching a “carbon threshold” could lead to mass extinction

Various governments are still heavily subsidizing fossil fuels, and so it's an unfair game. How can renewables win in this scenario...

QuickToBanon Breaching a “carbon threshold” could lead to mass extinction

When meritocrats and technocrats fail to seize power, extinction ensues.

We are extinguishing the prospect of the only intelligent life we know of in the universe by not caring for the environment, although one could argue that only a small fraction are sufficiently intelligent.

The oligarchs of the world have more than enough money to fix all the climate issues, but since they derive their wealth from exploiting the climate, there is no hope for a fix from them.

QuickToBanon New Repository Provides NumPy Implementation of ML Models

What was wrong with scikit-learn that this had to be made? I don't see what advantage this offers over scikit-learn.

QuickToBanon Indoor carbon dioxide levels could be a health hazard

With enough climate change, everyone will breathe 800 ppm, and then everyone's cognition will be impaired.

QuickToBanon Indoor carbon dioxide levels could be a health hazard

The use of AC increases CO2 indoors, doubling or tripling it. Measuring is how I know. AC decreases ventilation.

QuickToBanon Indoor carbon dioxide levels could be a health hazard

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FYWU2IS/

It works well.

QuickToBanon Indoor carbon dioxide levels could be a health hazard

Buy and use a CO2 meter from Amazon or elsewhere.

QuickToBanon John Gustafson’s crusade to replace floating point with something better

That's great, but if the hardware doesn't support it, then wouldn't the implementation would be slow?

QuickToBanon John Gustafson’s crusade to replace floating point with something better

Posits seem great, but LLNL seems to favor ZFP[1], not posits.[2] Maybe new chips should then implement both posits and ZFP.

[1] https://github.com/LLNL/zfp

[2] https://helper.ipam.ucla.edu/publications/bdcws2/bdcws2_1504...

QuickToBanon Telomere shortening rate predicts species life span

You probably learned about the telomere length, not the shortening rate.

QuickToBanon Judge Blocks Rule Requiring Drug Companies to List Prices in TV Ads

Just how and why do corporations have free speech rights? Afaik, the Constitution doesn't grant any rights to corporations. Corporations are not individuals; they are capable of significant harm on a national or global scale.

From Wikipedia:

> Mehta ruled that requiring big pharmaceutical companies to disclose prices to consumers in television advertisements aimed directly at consumers would violate their free speech rights as corporations.[11]

QuickToBanon Ask HN: How do we fight the existential threat of climate change?

If you read any non-HN news at all, you would've seen it over the years:

https://www.apnews.com/2fef5c6a978b4fd5a79596020f0bac8a

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/07/weatherwatch-nu...

https://energynews.us/2016/09/09/midwest/nuclear-plants-feel...

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/health/20iht-nuke.1.57884...

It has happened in the US too. This aside, the Fukushima nuclear disaster is a reminder that nuclear fission is not desirable.

QuickToBanon Ask HN: How do we fight the existential threat of climate change?

An underlying problem is oligarchs that strongly influence the bribed politicians and government officials to continue taxpayer support for fossil fuels.

QuickToBanon Ask HN: How do we fight the existential threat of climate change?

Nuclear fission doesn't work because it requires a reliable flow of cool water. As such, it warms the planet too. Rivers are often too warm to cool nuclear plants, and so the plants have to pause operations. It's neither safe nor reliable.

QuickToBanon Expecting programmers to problem solve for 8 hours is stupid

If you want to work only 34 hours, expect to proportionately get only 85% of your salary. And definitely don't expect others to work Saturdays. Don't contact your coworkers over the weekends either.

QuickToBanon Best way to fight climate change? Plant a trillion trees

This idea needs to be repeated over and over until everyone in the world is aware of it.

QuickToBanon How Indian IT Workers Discriminate Against Non Indian Workers

People hire people that they can get along with. This is easy to overlook.

If truth be told, just statistically, non-Indian non-white minority women are the hardest to get along with in a workplace. They routinely make false complaints. I say this after more than a decade of workplace experience. If there is one of them in the team, I wouldn't join the team.

QuickToBanon Deserts 'greening' from rising CO2

Interesting, but the deforestation rate as a result of human activities, wildfires, and desertification is probably higher:

'Football pitch' of Amazon forest lost every minute

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48827490

QuickToBanon Photos of a Hail Storm in Guadalajara

See the collapsed roof in the middle of the picture:

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/f4ab1d36b0264645a09a556df2f2d...

QuickToBanon Photos of a Hail Storm in Guadalajara

I still see them at phys.org, but there are just a few of them that keep posting very many denier comments. I suspect they might be paid for by a common lobby that is opposed to all things healthful.

QuickToBanon Slack – Degraded service affecting multiple features

Why don't people use free software instead, e.g. a Matrix homeserver run via https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/ ? IRC without a BNC doesn't really work for a corporation due to disconnects.

QuickToBanon App Undresses a Photo of Any Woman with a Single Click

I don't think you have thought it through. Those work using a blacklist only. First, you can't force people to run DRM on their system. Even if you could, the ML based generator will always generate some new and random that foils the DRM. You will basically need to force people to run an ML model on their system which serves as an intelligent dyanmic DRM, and thia dictatorial idea is acceptable nowhere.

QuickToBanon App Undresses a Photo of Any Woman with a Single Click

This software is just a precursor to what could be possible in the future. You could conceivably tell the software a caption and it would generate a video for you. How can you control what software someone runs offline locally? You can't. I find it irrational to even think of such legislation.

Posting such generated content online is another matter though. It would probably already violate some preexisting laws.

QuickToBanon San Francisco Becomes First U.S. City to Pass an E-Cigarette Ban

Mental illness exists mostly due to controllable factors. Those who don't know of or understand these factors consider it a mystery that requires medical management. Medical management is legitimately required due to evidence of genetic or structural damage only. It is quite overused otherwise.

Here are many of the somewhat avoidable factors that result in mental illnesses: (1) insufficient sleep (2) insufficient physical activity (3) serious infections (4) excessive stress (5) high BP (6) high bad cholesterol (7) insufficient omega-3s (8) unhealthy processed food intake and/or SAD diet (9) vitamin and mineral insufficiencies (10) side effects of prescription drugs, not limited to PPIs and anticholinergics (11) narcotic use or abuse

If you fix the above lifestyle factors, there would be far fewer cases of "mental illness".

QuickToBanon San Francisco Becomes First U.S. City to Pass an E-Cigarette Ban

Actually I think that substance abuse (cigs, alcohol, heroin, etc.) is the reason why many of them are homeless to begin with. The right thing to do for them would be to medically cure their addiction, thereby making them capable of helping themselves. This is hard to accept for those who don't know how to cheaply and sustainably treat addictions.

QuickToBanon San Francisco Becomes First U.S. City to Pass an E-Cigarette Ban

I totally agree that it would be worse in the absence of an app based system. The point is to be adaptive and correct the legislative mistakes that get made. Adaptability is always a key requirement for the success of any system. Right now this rate of change is IMHO too bottlenecked.

A two-thirds vote can also be minimally required for major changes, so as to stabilize the system.

QuickToBanon San Francisco Becomes First U.S. City to Pass an E-Cigarette Ban

As a result the entire planet is in grave danger due to climate change. How do we fix this? To borrow a little from Switzerland, I think a direct democracy at every level of government is needed. But first we must have many more remote jobs so people don't feel pressured to live in cities. They can then result in the creation of new cities elsewhere with a direct democracy via cryptographically secure apps.

QuickToBanon San Francisco Becomes First U.S. City to Pass an E-Cigarette Ban

The homeless in SF use cigs, not e-cigs. It would've therefore been productive to actually ban the sale of cigs instead so as to drive out the homeless, but why would one expect an ounce of unbiased logic from politicians?

QuickToBanon Learning to Build Distributed Systems

I have to dispute this. A few months is sufficient to appreciate the stated concerns. A lot can happen in a few months. I am proof of the same. I think under two months is too short, however.