Hacker News Reader

coryrcon Reviewers rarely talk about reliability. Owners bring it up twice as often

I tried to make a "unicorn" review on AliExpress. IIRC you can only write a review in the first 30 or 90 days. Too bad because I was going to sell the praises of the thing.

coryrcon Iron Age salt-mining complex found beneath Hallstatt in Austria

1. Them and their germs are long dead

2. The salt will kill the germs, but also... it's huge... you can find a spot.

coryrcon Iron Age salt-mining complex found beneath Hallstatt in Austria

Only sad part is they don't let you ride the mine cart boat thing because a group of drunk soldiers drowned using it.

Also, I didn't find evidence of this after a quick search, but IIRC the miners have been bringing people since at least the 19th century. It's great fun.

coryrcon Quad9 to exit France

> what would we lose?

Who is "we"? Going back to the origin of Free Software to proprietary printer drivers causing hardware to be unfixable by its users and otherwise become ewaste. The loss is users are nearly beholden to the manufacturer to customize or maintain their own devices. Android phones, most ereaders, can have long lives when obsolete, but this is only because Linux is Free Software; with proprietary kernels they are entirely ewaste instead of a small fraction having continuing life. OTOH most do become ewaste. OAH this Free Software allows competitors to start from almost the same place and prevent total monopolies, hence why Apple makes most of the profit and I can buy a $150 phone instead of what appears to be $799 minimum from Apple.

But, I think 20 year-old software is probably mostly safe from the above effects and I'm not sure GP was arguing otherwise, just against total absence of copyright.

coryrcon I built a programming language that LLMs can't use

Which is exactly why this human does not enjoy Forth very much.

coryrcon Delta’s Biscoff cookies were supposed to be temporary

That is not true:

https://www.aaaai.org/allergist-resources/ask-the-expert/ans...

coryrcon The United Kingdom generates less electricity per person than in the 1970s

No, you pay full price and can use power at any time of day. People who don't mind the restriction pay substantially less than you.

coryrcon The United Kingdom generates less electricity per person than in the 1970s

Then you can pay a bit more for the battery capacity and others can take the discount to deal with the minor inconveniences. It works out for everybody.

coryrcon The United Kingdom generates less electricity per person than in the 1970s

Sadly not in the USA.

coryrcon The United Kingdom generates less electricity per person than in the 1970s

From a T&M standpoint it's affordable to use external insulation and cladding to safely insulate these old houses. But that runs afoul of planning/landmark laws (some places even mandate single-pane windows!) So some Brits freeze to death rather than hide some history. Their choice to make, I guess.

coryrcon The United Kingdom generates less electricity per person than in the 1970s

You won't be able to wash your clothes when you feel like, you will have to adapt to when there is spare power, like in developing countries.

In nearly every case, this is actually "we'll take 35% of your bill if you agree to let us sometimes turn off your A/C and clothes dryer between 5pm-8pm". It doesn't require everyone to take the deal, just enough people who want to save money. You can take the discount and use your own battery if you want, or you can pay full price so the power company can. And some will live with the mild inconvenience in exchange for money (which most of us are forced to do in so many different ways).

This is just charging people the costs of their decisions. That's capitalism at its best.

coryrcon OpenSCAD the Programmers Solid 3D CAD Modeller

What's worse is:

    x = 1;
    a = 2;
    echo(x);
    x = a;

Errors out with "line 1: a is not defined", because the override is implemented as is the tokens were present wherever the first declaration is. (If anybody looks up me, you'll see I've made a bunch of contributions and bitched about this particular thing which really fucks up a bunch of optimizations you'd want to do)

coryrcon I would like the value of my home to rise, while my property taxes fall

Reverse mortgage.

> How is this fair at any level?

How is it fair that working people have to pay 10x for housing than she did when she was young? How is it fair that the money goes to her inheritance while she made her working neighbors pay her share of taxes?

coryrcon I would like the value of my home to rise, while my property taxes fall

The boatman doesn't charge money, so what's the problem with that? They got to live somewhere other people invested to make nice without extra money out of their pocket.

coryrcon I would like the value of my home to rise, while my property taxes fall

Because boomers voted to defer fully funding pensions until later. Now it's later. We're paying for past work and current work.

In Washington State, Puget Sound Energy is a for-profit utility owned by mostly pension plans! Their guaranteed ROI is sucked out of the productive economy. Everywhere you look rent is being extracted either by the 0.01% or the elderly, and the working class must slave to get 1/10 what they gave themselves.

coryrcon I would like the value of my home to rise, while my property taxes fall

Either it's really valuable, and they can borrow money to pay taxes, or it's not and taxes are low. But people shouldn't be allowed to freeload on the work others do to make the property valuable.

coryrcon Denmark data breach exposes 8.8M people's personal data

I have another solution. I look normal online when filling out information. I use Facebook, whatever.

But whenever possible, I lie. Different name, birthdate, every question about "favorite pet"? A lie. "They" have tons of data on me, but more and more is wrong. Let it leak.

coryrcon Pixel 11 doesn't yet meet the GrapheneOS security standards and may be skipped

Summed over all phones I've ever bought, I don't think I've spent €650.

coryrcon What is going on with ceiling fans

> get up to speed faster

That's not something I've ever cared about.

coryrcon What is going on with ceiling fans

I don't know about those reasons, but an AC fan uses ~100W on low and my DC fan uses 5W. You tune out the hum, but the AC fans hum and the DC fans don't.

But I don't think torque or longevity are actual issues with AC fans. Just efficiency and noise.

coryrcon Vermont replacing power plants with home batteries

And when the power lines fall down in rural areas, how will people heat and power their homes? I guess they could buy some batteries, but then they'd sit idle most of the time. Maybe they could find some other profitable use and share the capital cost?

coryrcon Kids turned low-traffic NPR Spotify comments into a secret group chat

    BE SURE TO DRINK YOUR OVALTINE

coryrcon Show HN: TinyAIArena watch AI agents battle it out

Code link didn't work for me.

On mobile, I don't have enough room to scroll the background so I got stuck in a long text box.

coryrcon Does Georgism work? Five years later

I'm betting the developers are for single-family homes not apartments. The only NIMBY I'm for is anti-SFH.

coryrcon Italian parliament votes for return to nuclear energy

You're closer to right. I was remembering oil+coal=80%. Coal is 60% today and oil is 20%.

https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/china

coryrcon California is chasing wealth that has feet

It's not reset of you inherit, or a bunch of other bullshit exemptions.

We live in a gerontacracy. Every advantage and tax break and handout is given to the elderly and the ladder has fully been pulled up for the new generations.

coryrcon Italian parliament votes for return to nuclear energy

That's 50% of electricity, but not 50% of energy. Coal still provides ~80% of energy IIRC (roughly 10% is carbon-free and growing faster than the US). China burns so, so much coal, while much of the world has shifted to natural gas, which has much less carbon per energy.

coryrcon Italian parliament votes for return to nuclear energy

That only makes sense if you're burning hydrocarbons to heat your homes; about 1/3 of total energy use is space heating. Shifting to heat pumps and more wind before wasting money on solar panels at high latitudes is better ROI on energy independence and carbon reduction.

coryrcon George Lucas Returns to Earth, Bearing Gifts

> Some of the scenes between Anakin and Padme are just downright painful.

The worse part of that is seeing clips from between takes: they actually have chemistry! They were actually directed to be unrealistic and unbelievable.

> It really made me question whether the OT were as a good as they were because of him or in spite of him.

Harrison Ford is why Han Solo says "I know" in response to Leia's "I love you". Contrasts directly with Anakin/Padme. "in spite of him" is at least a big chunk of it.

coryrcon Microsoft killed FoxPro in 2007. Anyway, here's FoxPro revived

There was[0] Dabo, an attempt at a modern Visual Foxpro in Python https://dabo.leafe.com/

0: sort-of "is" rather than "was": https://blog.leafe.com/creativity-and-ai-models/