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chris5745on Global economy is probably in recession

You might be right on some of these points, but your delivery seems meant to cause doubt because it is unconditionally optimistic. It causes the reader to question you. Do you mean to cause doubt?

chris5745on Global economy is probably in recession

The first figure shows the percent change from the previous year, so it’s basically a moving slope of the actual trade volume. If it’s positive, trade is increasing. Compared to the slope in 2009, I wouldn’t call the current decrease a recession (but I’m not an economist). It may be negative but it’s still pretty close to zero.

The author’s thesis is that mistaken protectionist policies that affect trade are not in the interest of business and the economy. I don’t know that we can conclude that, as changes in policy tend to create new opportunities for businesses, both entrenched and new. The same cannot be said for policy that is continuous and non-changing.

chris5745on The Lonely Work of Moderating Hacker News

I understood this to mean the power of appreciating the societal consequences of technology, and the responsibility of educating others about those consequences, both positive and negative.

chris5745on Light Seems to Pull Electrons Backward

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1812.01673.pdf

> The photon-drag effect, the rectified current in a medium induced by conservation of momentum of absorbed or redirected light, is a unique probe of the detailed mechanisms underlying radiation pressure. We revisit this effect in gold, a canonical Drude metal. We discover that the signal for p- polarized illumination in ambient air is affected in both sign and magnitude by adsorbed molecules, opening previous measurements for reinterpretation. Further, we show that the intrinsic sign of the photon-drag effect is contrary to the prevailing intuitive model of direct momentum transfer to free electrons.

chris5745on Cassettes Are Back, and It’s Not About the Music

> an attachment not just to a record, but to a specific record, which hiccups in a specific place and has a specific rip on its sleeve

My first rock album was a CD copy of Nevermind, which I found in a roadside ditch while walking home from school one day. It was so scratched up and many tracks were damaged or not playable. I listened to that broken CD for years. Opened my eyes to a whole world beyond the country I was raised with.

chris5745on Scientists stunned by ‘city-killer’ asteroid that just missed Earth

I imagine without early and widespread warning, an asteroid impact could be mistaken by nation-states for an attack. What safeguards (if any) might we have or develop to prevent an asteroid hitting country 1 from causing a “counter” strike by country 1 against country 2?

chris5745on Apple's Texas Hold'em is back To celebrate AppStore's 10 year anniversary

Maybe it’s the graphics? That is massive!

I’d like to see a lightweight card playing app for playing games with people physically near me. I don’t know how popular that would be, but I’d play it.

chris5745on Ask HN: How do you maintain balance between all the things you want to do?

If you procrastinate because you feel overwhelmed, it may help to start with meditation and the bare essentials of the other items. That way you can work on aligning the part of your mind which seeks to accomplish these things (manager) with the part that actually does the work (laborer). You may find that the manager needs to lower its expectations while the laborer needs fewer tasks in order to do a good job at the tasks it is given.

Anecdotally, I’ve found that intrinsic motivation is more effective than extrinsic motivation. If you’re trying to keep up with someone else, question or examine that.

chris5745on A recap of the Philadelphia refinery explosion

> In the middle of the chaos, an operator in the central control room, located in the shadow of the Passyunk Avenue Bridge far from Unit 433, took quick action and shuttled the hydrofluoric acid to a separate container, according to O’Callaghan, the steelworkers president. The industry term for that is “rapid deinventory.” “The equipment that was installed to save the acid worked. She did a great job,” O’Callaghan said of the operator, who declined to be interviewed. “She saw it come up and she took action and followed her training.” “A refinery worker on the scene who wasn’t authorized to publicly discuss the matter offered this assessment: “She’s a f-ing hero. Whatever she did up there,” he said. “When you’re ‘on the board’ as we call it, your alarm screen looks like a slot machine, all the alarms are going off.” He said she may have “saved the city, really."

Thank god this operator took swift action and moved that HF. She is a hero.

chris5745on Too much money and too few places to invest it

I imagine raising the cost of labor in the U.S. would only encourage more outsourcing.

Maybe entrenched parties with lots of cash need special incentives to spur investment. I don’t know what those would be, but if all this cash is not being used to invest in public projects or new ventures, we may be witnessing the beginning of a huge socioeconomic shift.

Remember war bonds? We need road bonds. Bridge bonds. Something.

chris5745on Ask HN: How do I represent a hierarchy in RDBMS?

Also not parent commenter, and not a guru, but I did manage to implement this with an ORM.

https://github.com/BitWorks/xbrlstudio/blob/master/BookDatab...

chris5745on Launch HN: Prometheus (YC W19) – Remove CO2 from Air and Turn It into Gasoline

Re: “unchecked”: I was speaking more from an economic perspective, rather than a technical one. If there is a new CO2 sourced product with a long lifetime and the carbon does not return to the atmosphere for a long period, and it is in high global demand, it could open the door to the issues I’m trying to highlight in the original comment.

chris5745on Launch HN: Prometheus (YC W19) – Remove CO2 from Air and Turn It into Gasoline

Very exciting! I believe these types of approaches will be greatly beneficial in turning the tide of environmental change. However, I am curious about the long (very long) term effects of this technology.

If atmospheric CO2 becomes a resource for the production of goods that do not release the CO2 back into the environment for reuse, would there be a risk of O2 overabundance? If left unchecked it could overcorrect for global warming and usher in an ice age.

I imagine there’s a balance point for CO2 levels and finding and maintaining that balance will be what determines humankind’s success in the long (very long) term.

See, e.g., University of Maryland. "Rise Of Oxygen Caused Earth's Earliest Ice Age." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 7 May 2009. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090507094218.htm>.

chris5745on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking Freelancer? (May 2019)

SEEKING WORK | Technical Writer | Remote (US based)

Grant applications, proposals, manuscripts, manuals, documentation, reports, and other writing services.

Owner-operator holds an advanced degree in cell and molecular biology, has some experience writing software, and has about three years experience as a patent agent.

www.bitworks.tech

https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-campbell-5b330112

chris5745on Request HN: Can Someone Make a Dumb Phone for USA?

I used to own a Just5 Brick phone for a simpler phone experience. I don’t know if they’re going to continue selling them though, as they’ve been marked “sold out” for some time now.

http://www.just5.com/worldwide/en/brick/brick-red

chris5745on Show HN: XBRLStudio, a Windows 10 app for consuming financial data

Hi all,

I learned to program, then completed a rough draft of my first project, a visual approach for organizing and analyzing financial data formatted in eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL).

It was built using python, PyQt, and additional software. I welcome any questions or feedback, either publicly or through private messaging. MSI and ZIP files are available for download. I haven't yet paid for code signing, but for now have provided digests of the download files, which are on the website.

The full version of the software is currently for sale, but at this point I am primarily seeking valuable feedback for improvement in future releases. For this, the trial version should work on 64-bit Windows 10 machines.

Thank you! Chris

chris5745on Ask HN: What did you work on in 2017?

I worked on my first side project, XBRLStudio [1]. It's a Windows desktop application that allows users to organize and view XBRL quarterly and annual financial filings.

I'm traveling today, but would love to hear any feedback on the project.

[1] https://XBRLStudio.com