Hacker News Reader

celtainon ‘You Are Done’: The letter sent to King by the F.B.I (2014)

I'm not aware of any good evidence that MLK was in a open marriage. He was just cheating on his wife.

His wife stood by him as wives were often expected to do back in the day, but that doesn't mean she was a willing participant in a nonmonogamous relationship.

celtainon How do we save water: Stop growing alfalfa in Imperial County

Just give people money to buy food.

celtainon Change my mind: Density increases local but decreases global prices

>They moving there because they want to be in a big city - with friends, jobs, museums, and nightlife.

Sure

>So I don’t understand why Matt believes that building a few new apartments in some city - a very small move along that spectrum - would do anything other than make local prices go up.

Huh? Other than friends, none of the previously mentioned amenities are provided by apartment buildings.

Adding commercial real estate to a city adds jobs and amenities that make it more desirable, and thus more expensive.

Adding more housing does not.

That said, adding more housing raises the demand for commercial real estate (more available workers and customers), hence the cycle that leads to very dense, very expensive places like Manhattan. Strictly speaking though, adding apartments alone isn't enough to keep that cycle going.

celtainon Supreme Court asked to strike down immunity for police who brutally beat student

With qualified immunity the only people allowed to enforce that are prosecutors, but they often can't afford to jeopardize their relationship with police. Federal prosecutors are further removed from local cops and have better incentives on that front, but they often run into issues around jurisdiction.

The point of repealing qualified immunity is to let the victims sue as a means of enforcing checks on police.

celtainon Do I need to avoid dark chocolate now?

I didn't see any ads on their chocolate article, and according to wikipedia they don't accept any advertising.

celtainon Amazon employees push CEO Andy Jassy to drop return-to-office mandate

I still don't understand the connection. I assume the term "company store" is being used to invoke the exploitative nature of living in a company town and being paid in scrip.

How does "a major local employer wants the local economy to thrive" lead to more exploitation than usual? If anything, I'd expect a thriving local economy to mean that there's more competition for workers, increasing their bargaining power and reducing the probability/severity of worker exploitation.

celtainon The Hollywood sign debuted 100 years ago

Ok, but not everyone can afford it. When there's a dearth of apartments and you can't afford your own detached house, you're forced to share a house with other people.

People do not prefer sharing a house with roommates to having their own apartment.

Also the idea that people's preferences should be encoded into bans on certain housing types is completely absurd to begin with.

celtainon Apollo Layoffs

What would you prefer that they say instead? "I made no wrong decisions, I have no regrets leaving all of you unemployed."?

celtainon Fuel out of thin air: CO2 capture from air and conversion to methanol (2020)

Wow, I had no idea that there's currently a nuclear powered cargo ship in service: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevmorput

I'd love to see it, but I'm a bit pessimistic about the political viability of a significant revival of civilian nuclear ships.

celtainon A 100MW solar farm in Texas will mount panels directly on the ground

I expect that they are getting lower output per acre, but in places where land is cheap and as solar panels continue to get cheaper, the money saved on building the support structures could be worth those losses.

celtainon Consider Disabling Browser Push Notifications on Family and Friends Devices

Right, a more reasonable argument would be just that the risks outweigh the benefits for some users, especially if they aren't currently using notifications on any legitimate sites.

celtainon A 3D-printed ethernet RJ45 clip to secure/repair/fix broken tab (2020)

Thanks to USB-C I just keep my Ethernet cable plugged into my monitor (via a USB dongle), and now when I plug in my external display I not only get power but also wired networking.

celtainon San Francisco police consider letting robots use ‘deadly force’

I don't see how this is a relevant argument. Police can already use deadly force when someone poses an immediate threat to themselves or others. Using deadly force via a remote controlled robot when a suspect poses an immediate threat to others isn't an expansion of that use of force policy.

Killing somebody just because they're running from an outstanding warrant would be a new and terrible policy whether or not a robot was involved.

celtainon Mercedes locks faster acceleration behind a $1,200 annual paywall

I always understood speed to be the main problem, not acceleration. If you're going to lock something behind regulation, shouldn't it be speed?

celtainon Decades of air pollution undermine the immune system

That would explain a difference in price per square foot, but it doesn't explain why there are fewer small homes built further from busy roads. If anything you'd expect the opposite if it were just a reflection of people's preferences.

celtainon Body Doubling

3 more family members are about to move into my house. No matter how much I tell myself that having a larger household and more social time will be "good for me", and of course having help with childcare will be hugely convenient, I'm really starting to dread the loss of privacy.

celtainon Why does the US allow a controversial weedkiller banned across the world?

I've talked to one of my senators, three of my congressman, and my mom's congresswoman. I'm not that rich and I certainly don't make political donations large enough for them to notice. Your cynicism might be warranted in certain states/districts, but my representatives have been reasonably responsive to this fairly average constituent.

celtainon Test scores are not irrelevant

But classwork is what you'll have to do in college anyway. It's not the admissions criteria that's the problem, it's the format of undergraduate higher education itself.

A pull-up competition is a perfectly valid test if the job/program requires exactly that kind of upper body strength.

celtainon Test scores are not irrelevant

> I went back to the community college, got perfect grades

Presumably they had a separate GPA, or at least term-specific GPAs, from their second round of community college.

celtainon As Covid hit, Washington officials traded stocks with exquisite timing

A member of congress voting for $10B of useless defense spending because they're heavily invested in the relevant aerospace company isn't committing insider trading.

Perhaps this is unnecessarily pedantic, but what you're describing is a "conflict of interest" problem, not an "insider trading" problem. You can have either problem without the other, and depending on how you crack down on insider trading, it could be completely ineffective at solving the conflict of interest problem.

celtainon As Covid hit, Washington officials traded stocks with exquisite timing

>This should be a much bigger issue, IMO. We the People need to make them understand this blatant self dealing will not be tolerated.

Compared to the impact they can have at their job (positive or negative), this just doesn't seem like a big deal to me. Obviously I'd prefer if they didn't do it, but I don't see why it needs to be a bigger issue.

Insider trading causes two problems:

* Undermines faith in, and thus reduces efficacy of, financial markets

* Reduces the overall returns for everyone else a bit

While it becomes a problem when rampant throughout the market, I don't think a few hundred members of congress would collectively have much impact here.

I'm also a little wary of the kind of person who's willing to go into politics and isn't in it for the money. While there are a handful of truly dedicated public servants, most people who aren't in it for the money are either extreme ideologues or power hungry narcissists. I'll take a politician who's mildly financially corrupt over someone who wants to abolish either taxes or private property, and way over one who wants to become a dictator.

celtainon The rush to mine lithium could dry up the high Andes

https://qz.com/2156463/why-elon-musk-wants-tesla-to-start-mi...

>the average electric vehicle battery requires around 10 kg of [lithium]. In turn, 5.3 tons of lithium carbonate ore yield one ton of lithium

This would suggest that 53kg of ore would be enough to provide one car's worth of lithium.

celtainon Heavier cars are safer for their drivers, but far deadlier for everyone else

Yes, people should absolutely feel a social obligation to make at least some concessions to the greater good.

While this isn't a complete substitute for regulations that systematically fix issues causes by negative externalities, I'd rather live in a society where a lot of problems are avoided because my fellow citizens generally care about my well being, rather than one in which the government needs to intervene left and right.

celtainon Heavier cars are safer for their drivers, but far deadlier for everyone else

While those activists are being stupid, this argument is even worse. A heavier car is intrinsically more dangerous to those around it, as the article we're commenting on explains. People can also choose how large of a personal vehicle they want to buy.

Neither of those apply to race in the slightest.

celtainon Companies are buying large numbers of carbon offsets that don’t cut emissions

>You can thank the government for little oversight in the carbon offset process that they developed.

Carbon offsetting is a government program? I thought this was pretty much all the work of private companies, with buyers doing so voluntarily and providers self-regulating (hence the problems). Is that not the case?

celtainon Too many Americans live in places built for cars – not for human connection

Housing density becomes a problem above a certain level if everyone expects to use a car. Parking and traffic become annoying if not crippling, so communities widely support and enact bans on denser residential development.

Restricting supply like this can be fine if demand doesn't grow, but it can be a huge problem for housing affordability if your local economy is booming.

celtainon Korea shatters its own record for world’s lowest fertility rate

How does a patriarchal culture contribute to lower fertility rates? If anything I would expect the opposite effect.

celtainon Things people blamed on bicycles

I often see drivers arguing that not only is it ok to speed, but that drivers who obey the speed limit are actually doing something wrong!

I don't think I've ever heard of a cyclist getting mad at another cyclist for stopping at a red light. The propensity to violate traffic laws seems to be higher among drivers than cyclists.

celtainon Things people blamed on bicycles

>A helmet requirement is wholly incompatible with the role of cycling in NL. You hop on a bike anywhere, regardless of what you're wearing.

I don't really understand this. I keep my helmet clipped to my handlebars, so if I have my bike, I have my helmet. Is it really so much of an inconvenience?

I'm sympathetic to the overall anti-helmet-requirement position, even seemingly trivial concerns like "it messes up my hair" sound legitimate to me. The convenience argument in particular just never made much sense to me though.

celtainon Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

I don't know about policy consequences, but one political hurdle is that this would be attacked as "welfare for the rich" or something along those lines, since new construction is generally more expensive than existing units.