Hacker News Reader

baldeagleon State of Devs 2026

Was there pervasive access to birth control back then?

baldeagleon Profit Margins of the Largest Companies

Sorts profit numbers alphabetically instead of numerically. Pretty sure that is a sign of the quality of the rest of the reporting here as well.

baldeagleon Diesel prices could crush Republicans in the heartland

The egg price thing was price fixing by some of folks contributing both financially and in action to the Republican machine.

baldeagleon Lawmakers added $1 to car insurance policies. That money paid for Flock cameras

It’s hard to say. As the economic got better, trade policies stabilized and the price of commodities and therefore the metals in a converter dropped in value. As the price of the metals went down, the thefts dropped nationally. Texas thefts seemed to have dropped inline with the national trend. Since the supply side issues are picking up again, the thefts are going up likewise.

baldeagleon US hires over 2k video gamers as air traffic controllers

Just like real war…

baldeagleon Humanity renamed genes because of Excel

To be fair, humanity named those genes in the first place. They are now just named more robustly

baldeagleon I also filed the corners off my MacBook

https://a.co/d/0hXtPRfC

Amazon link to a debuting tool. It uses sharp harder metal to cut off sharp metal edges.

baldeagleon Texas grid flags risks as data centers, crypto sites fail voltage tests

Ahh, I was focusing on residential energy (the cost borne by most of the people in Texas), which is up 25% per that source. The bulk and stability of industrial power is keeping prices down in aggregate.

baldeagleon Texas grid flags risks as data centers, crypto sites fail voltage tests

Let's assume we're talking about core inflation (since headline inflation included changes in energy costs and that would hide the signal). Core inflation was us 23% from '19-24, but the energy costs in Texas were up 37%. Actually, headline inflation was up 25%, which is still below that set of price increases.

Please support your assertion that Texas energy costs decreased in that time period.

baldeagleon Texas grid flags risks as data centers, crypto sites fail voltage tests

I don’t think that is true.

https://www.electricchoice.com/historical-electricity-pricin...

baldeagleon Eka’s robotic claw feels like we're approaching a ChatGPT moment

The first voice accessed (in my brain) by this dialog was Harley Quinn, it took a moment for it to fall back to Rosie.

baldeagleon Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock

"Current law (cira 2013) requires BLM to sell off the crude helium remaining in the Federal Helium Reserve in order to repay the U.S. Treasury the $1.3 billion debt incurred creating it. This debt will be repaid this fiscal year and that, as a consequence, the helium program will terminate at the end of the current fiscal year (October 1, 2013), absent Congressional action. Currently, the Federal Helium Reserve supplies roughly 40% of domestic and 30% of global helium demand. Loss of access to the Federal Helium Reserve would result in significant disruptions to a large number of critical U.S. industries." https://www.energy.senate.gov/services/files/494b2f9e-c8f5-4...

Sounds like Obama kept the gas taps flowing, instead of locking it up because authorization to sell it had expired. Here is the whole record: https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/527/...

baldeagleon Qatar helium shutdown puts chip supply chain on a two-week clock

BLM was required (to sell it) by Congress in the Helium Stewardship Act of 2013, as the alternative was to not offer any H to the market due to the authorization to sell expiring. Sponsored by a Republican and passed basically unanimously with the proceeds used to pay of the debt (back when we cared about that)

baldeagleon EV-1 for Lease (1996)

I drove a electric Rav4, but couldn't stomach the 40 mile range for the price. But it was a fun car, and it seemed huge (compared to my miata).

baldeagleon Indefinite Backpack Travel

My wife dropped a small mint for darn tough socks like three years ago as a father's day gift. It's been delightful.

baldeagleon Happy 10k Day

Great product, put it in my RAV4 Prime and it just works. Makes my Bolt EUV super cruise look poor in comparison.

baldeagleon Murderbot, she wrote

The Texas A&M sci-fi convention mentioned in the article is coming up in early February. You can bounce over to Cushing library to check out the collection, including a copy of Fahrenheit 451 in an asbestos zipper case (obviously, you can't check that one out of it's special container).

https://www.aggiecon.net/

baldeagleon Show HN: Free mortgage analysis tool to avoid getting screwed by closing costs

At least put a patron link on there or something, so people can have a legitimate way to pay for the cost associated with running the website. Perhaps make a suggested amount of 10% of the savings.

This gives you a obvious profit motive, and makes you seem more sketchy because you now have more skin in the game to keep it operating as a valid and useful business service

baldeagleon Build systems, not heroes

This comment combined with a recent reflection on the ‘irony of automation’ makes me worried that the product I’m building to make life easier will instead lead to loss of craft, pride, and ingenuity.

Honestly, still processing through it to make sure that all the people in my products and systems are seen.

baldeagleon Apple Watch sleep apnea detection gets FDA approval

The 'ramp' setting made me panic and felt like a couldn't breathe. We go from zero to full force now, and it works just fine. I use a nose adapter.

baldeagleon Ask HN: Former gifted children with hard lives, how did you turn out?

Have you tried TMS (the magnet thing?).

It worked well for my friend that had ideation.

baldeagleon DAGitty – draw and analyze causal diagrams

I will give that a try. Thank you very much :)

baldeagleon DAGitty – draw and analyze causal diagrams

I hate to ask this question.... but I've moved to a python shop after working in the tidyverse for years, and am unimpressed with the DAG visualization capabilities. Does anyone have any recommendations for 1,000 plus node DAGs?

I still miss R and tidy quite a bit, but polars at least gets closer.

baldeagleon Breaking down a record-setting day on the Texas grid

What I want to know is how much we spent kicking crypto miners off the grid for a couple hours.

baldeagleon Porsche 911 Hybrid vs. Chevy Corvette E-Ray: Electrified Sports Cars Compared

I think these are more like EV boosted hybrids that’ll gas savers… though the Chevy will do much better in traffic with a few miles of energy stored up.

baldeagleon Hackers found a way to open any of 3M hotel keycard locks

When I worked mainteince on a big chain hotel in a major college town, we had a mark 2.0 crowbar if the key card didn't work. The real fun one was the flippy locks that you could kinda pop by slapping the non-working key card in, and slamming the door. The card would flex and spring the lock back. Then you could use the crowbar again. It wasn't too slow, but it was very loud.

They told me couldn't whistle and spin the crowbar nonchalantly before casually popping open doors that had a dead battery in front of the guest waiting to stay in that same hotel.

baldeagleon A Cycle of Misery: The business of building commercial aircraft

You mean like when they basically shut down Blue Bell for listeria? That is exactly what the FDA and CDC did.

https://www.cdc.gov/listeria/outbreaks/ice-cream-03-15/index...

baldeagleon Are we at peak vector database?

You may benefit from polars, it can multi-core better than pandas, and has some of the niceties from Arrow (which was the written / championed by the power duo of Wes and Hadley, authors of pandas and the R - tidyverse respectively).

baldeagleon Breakdown of faults by car brand: Tesla has replaced Dacia at the bottom

There is a concept in manufacturing called the andon cord (a button / pull that activates a claxon and stops the line). Once the line stops, everyone swarms the problem and works on a fix. Toyota in the 80s pioneered its use and then beat the big 3 at manufacturing quality.

baldeagleon Whisper: Nvidia RTX 4090 vs. M1 Pro with MLX

Only if Sam Altman is appointed to the Apple board. ;)