Hacker News Reader

celiason DuckDB Ducklake

Motherduck is offering a free copy of O'reilly's "DuckLake: The Definitive Guide" book on their DuckLake web page

https://motherduck.com/product/ducklake/

celiason São Paulo resident transforms degraded area into urban forest

The Man Who Planted Trees

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aY_zuNtf3_g

celiason Talking About Dark Matter – Sixty Symbols [video]

Professor Ed Copeland discusses dark matter and an unexpected link with Lord Kelvin.

celiason 17,000 MCP Servers – and the Security Threats Nobody Is Talking About

The “S” in MCP Stands for Security (2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43600192

celiason Why Nearly Every Apple Has a Sticker–and What That Tiny Label Does

I like the honeycomb stickers on Sugarbee apples

celiason What Happens When You Crash a Bicycle at 175mph [video]

Neil Campbell is attempting to become the first human to cycle at 200mph...

celiason Whatever Happened to NFTs?

Robot dogs with human heads were recently pooping them out at Art Basel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZKj2gthm8M&t=731s

https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/beeple-pooping-robot-d...

celiason What's at [0,0] in space? – Sixty Symbols [video]

Professor Meghan Gray discusses space co-ordinates and what sits at position 0,0 in the sky?

celiason Apple Research unearthed forgotten AI technique and using it to generate images

Paper at https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/normalizing-flows

celiason Chinese paraglider survives accidental 8k-metre-high flight above the clouds

Reminds me of the story of William Rankin who "was the first person to survive a fall from the top of a cumulonimbus thunderstorm cloud"

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

celiason The largest sofa you can move around a corner

Up and Atom has a 2023 youtube video about the moving sofa problem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUNl_jJMTOw

celiason The NK Headwind Cycling will take place next Saturday

Global Cycling Network has a couple of videos about the competition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynT_z3TEJic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60Q6oP9NiFk

celiason VirtualBox 7.1

There is a version for silicon Macs - macOS/Arm host: Arm virtualization for Linux and BSD VMs

The Virtualbox Manager window still has BETA in the upper right corner. Installation of the arm64 version of ubuntu 24.04 server went without a hitch on a M2 Mac.

celiason A dishwasher can make or break a restaurant (2017)

Reminds me of Dishwasher Pete -

Professional Dish-Washer Shares Tales From the Pit [2007] https://www.npr.org/2007/06/12/10991537/professional-dish-wa...

Dish Out Of Water https://www.thisamericanlife.org/74/conventions/act-two-17

Dishwasher: One Man's Quest to Wash Dishes in All Fifty States [book] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060896426?ie=UTF8&tag=thi...

celiason Vedangi Kulkarni, trying for women's record for bicycling around the world [video]

In 2018, at just 19, Vedangi Kulkarni became the youngest female to cycle around the world. Now, she's back to break the world record as the fastest woman to do it... in under 124 days

celiason Vulture shortage threatens Zoroastrian burial rites

Radiolab and 99% Invisible have podcasts about this

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/towers-of-silence/

https://radiolab.org/podcast/corpse-demon

celiason The blunder that changed chickens forever [video]

The story of how Cecile Long Steele changed the chicken industry. More information here https://www.agriculturalmuseum.org/cecile-long-steele

celiason PyCharm 2023.3.5 Is Out

And check the disk space being used under "Clean up leftover tool directories..." There was about 39GB of stuff from older versions on my Mac

celiason What Is Benford's Law? Why This Unexpected Pattern of Numbers Is Everywhere

Radiolab did a podcast about some cases such as voting precinct tallies that don't follow Benford's Law

https://radiolab.org/podcast/breaking-benford

celiason Plastics producers deceived public about recycling, report reveals

Somewhat related article in The Washington Post - "The plastics industry would like a word with your kids"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/02/13/plastics-...

celiason Thomas Stevens (Cyclist)

There's also Frank Lenz who made it as far as Turkey in his attempt to circumnavigate the globe on a two-wheeled safety bicycle in the 1890s before disappearing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Lenz_(cyclist)#:~:text=F....

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-unsolved-case-of-...

celiason Energy efficiency: boiling water using electric kettle, gas or microwave?

Technology Connections has a youtube video titled "Why don't Americans use electric kettles?" in which he compares a few methods for bringing the same amount of water to a boil. The electric kettle was faster than a kettle on gas and electric stovetops.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yMMTVVJI4c

celiason Hookworm gave the South a bad name (2016)

Stuff You Should Know did an episode on hookworms

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-stuff-you-should-know-269...

celiason US police are selling seized phones with personal data still on them

https://policeauctions.cs.umd.edu

celiason Reloadium – Live change / hot reload Python code

Video from JetBrains with Sajan Thapa, showing reloadium in action

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TesqqQb8U7M

celiason Babysitting rates surged nearly 10% last year

Planet Money did a story about the "very weird, very broken market for day care"

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/02/1153931108/day-care-market-ex...

celiason Rebuilding in Rust

Planet Money did a story in 2020 about somebody who went through the apprenticeship system the article mentions

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/10/901110994/big-rigged

celiason DART’s Final Images Prior to Impact

Reminds me a little of the loss of signal from Cassini as it burned up in Saturn's atmosphere as the final step in the Grand Finale https://youtu.be/B2XQLHDtkqw?t=3108 https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/cassini/mission/grand-...

celiason Why it's time to talk about poo

Radiolab did a story in 2013 about the North River Wastewater Treatment Plant in New York City that talks about how the plant ended up shipping solids for fertilizer by train to the midwest for a few years

https://radiolab.org/episodes/poop-train

celiason “Uptime 15,364 Days – The Computers of Voyager” by Aaron Cummings

Episodes 5 and 6 of Blaine Baggett's "JPL and the Space Age" documentary are going live this week as part of Voyager's 45th anniversary celebration

Episode 5: The Stuff of Dreams https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/who-we-are/documentary-series-jpl-a...

Episode 6: The Footsteps of Voyager https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/who-we-are/documentary-series-jpl-a...