Hacker News Reader

conscionon U.S. Secret Service Warns ID Thieves Are Abusing USPS’s Mail Scanning Service

There's a link at the bottom of every email to unsubscribe

conscionon Twitter to remove ‘like’ tool in a bid to improve the quality of debate

There's an option to bookmark tweets. They then show up in your bookmarks section.

https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/topics/product/2018/...

conscionon Women and the slowing global population

I think a lot of these articles miss an important consideration. The underlying economies of the world have functioned on an unseen assumption: the population (i.e. consumers & producers) always increase. This has been true for the entirety of modern history. There should be some discussion on how that changes once the population either stops increasing, or declines.

This is somewhat discussed with the aging baby boomer generation being larger than their childrens, but that dynamic will likely become the new norm in many countries. Japan in particular is experiencing this first hand with one of the lowest birth rates.

conscionon Microplastics found in 90 percent of table salt

Almost all plastic release chemicals having estrogenic activity [1] so not be default harmful, but probably harmful.

[1](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222987/)

conscionon Tell HN: Now Washington Post is asking to turn off Firefox's tracking protection

What I couldn't tell from their site, and what really is the "killer feature": Do I need to go through their site to access articles, or can I follow a native link and have Blendle automatically authenticate that I can read the article?

conscionon A Billionaire’s Sears Fiasco Is Finally Nearing Its End

He saw about $240 million worth of stock that he personally purchased evaporate as the shares tumbled. Another $287 million that he received in compensation has all but disappeared.

... so he made $40 million?

conscionon Leonardo da Vinci's tree rule may be explained by wind

From the article

Although researchers have previously proposed explanations for the rule based on hydraulics or structure, none of these explanations have been fully convincing. For instance, the hydraulic explanation called the “pipe model” proposes that the branching proportions have to do with the way that vascular vessels connect the tree’s roots to its leaves to provide water and nutrients. But since vascular vessels account for as little as 5% of the branch cross section (for large trunks in some tree species), it seems unlikely that they would govern the tree’s entire architecture.

conscionon Google Assistant’s latest feature: “Tell me something good”

While your point is true; that filtering news can be dangerous, it's a bit disingenuous for this post. The option to filter to only positive news is a good option.

Users are usually presented news as if it's "unfiltered", but editors chose the stories. It's the illusion of reality when it's actually a constructed narrative. Giving users the option to change the narrative gives perspective on how those narratives are structured.