Hacker News Reader

digitalroninon We don't know how to fix science (2021)

> Scientists used to be aristocrats interested in truth. These days they're just > interested in grants.

I'm not sure if that's actually what you're advocating, but personally I'm very much against science only being the domain of rich people who can afford to do it as a hobby.

digitalroninon I can't let go of “The Dunning-Kruger Effect is Autocorrelation”

If you had never listened to a professional play piano before then you'd have no idea what level of performance is possible. Similarly, if you had never seen skilled skaters perform on TV.

But we have done these things, so it's obvious that they're doing something that's very difficult.

Sometimes the things we find most impressive, in a demonstration of a skill we don't have, aren't the most difficult things.

I remember being absolutely blown away by some aerial circus tricks and stunts I saw at shows. Later, I started studying and eventually performing myself, and it's often the case that the most crowd-pleasing stunts are some of the easiest to perform.

As a performer, you could always tell which members of the audience knew their stuff, because they'd be the only ones applauding the tricks that might not have looked so spectacular, but were actually the most difficult.

digitalroninon Upper limits on partial Dyson spheres in the Milky Way

There's plenty. The vast majority of the 'shell' would be solar concentrators - basically aluminium foil or something like it. You can make a LOT of that by dismantling a few asteroids, never mind a planet or two.

Isaac Arthur's youtube channel goes into this in some depth (and is generally excellent, IMO). Here's an episode on Dyson Spheres:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlmKejRSVd8

digitalroninon Show HN: Leet Resumes – a free technical resume-writing service

I really like that you mention the geographic restriction clearly, and on the landing page.

I'm based in Japan, and often look at remote job boards. It's frustrating when you have to spend time digging into the content of job posting to find out you're ineligible - it's not much time per post, but it all adds up and it's annoying.

So kudos for being upfront about it!

digitalroninon XPS 13 developer edition 7th generation available

I disagree with the last part of this sentence. I know a lot of developers, the vast majority of whom have preferred Apple laptops for years, and very few of whom develop in Objective-C and Swift. I agree with a lot of other commenters that Apple are becoming more and more complacent and arrogant about the developer part of their customer base, which I think is larger than perhaps they realise.

digitalroninon The Quantum Age Is Almost Upon Us and We Need to Start Taking It Seriously

> Three hundred regular bits results in 600 possible states (2 x 300)

Wait. What?

digitalroninon Building a tiny blockchain

Could you explain the difference? Isn't the longest chain the one with the most cumulative proof of work?

digitalroninon All-Girls Teen Engineering Team Creates a Solar-Powered Tent for Homeless People

Sure, but it's a lot easier to switch on a light than to turn your tent inside out.

digitalroninon Nuisance call firm Keurboom hit with record fine

Not necessarily;

> From Spring 2017, firm directors can each be fined up to £500,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office, if they are found to be in breach of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-clamps-down-on...

digitalroninon Bitcoin hits 3-year peak, nears record high on U.S. ETF approval

Services like TransferWise and Xoom are great, provided both parties have access to good banking services. But, a lot of the remittances market is people working in a foreign country sending money back home to people who may well be unbanked. Some of the startups targeting that market, using bitcoin as the transfer layer, are pretty interesting.

digitalroninon Finland's Largest Trade Union Slams Basic Income as ‘Useless’

How utterly pointless is it to say "This experiment will fail" - they seem to have missed the point of what an experiment is.

digitalroninon Tatto-like Skin sensors could improve elderly, community, prenatal health

It looks like the link is broken.

digitalroninon Luciding – Induce Lucid Dreaming Through Transcranial Stimulation

I'm sorry, but the website is virtually unusable. A few barely-comprehensible paragraphs of hyperbolic sales talk, and links to the shop. Explain to me what your product does, and why I should care, and I might be interested.

digitalroninon How the Camera Doomed Google Glass

I think the article's conclusion, that a camera should not have been included, is naive.

Smart glasses with no way to get visual input from the environment would be a much less useful product. So, that means having a camera, and if you have a camera you can record the input from it. I'll be very surprised if anyone ever releases smart glasses with no camera.

Having said that, I'm not surprised Glass isn't doing so well. I think our culture isn't quite at the point where an always-on wearable video camera is socially acceptable. Give it a couple of years, and it probably will be.

digitalroninon CES: Worse Products Through Software (2013)

That's true, but what I'd really like is to be able to change the way the TV itself behaves. For instance, my Panasonic TV will automatically switch to the HDMI input if I turn on my Apple TV after turning on the TV. My Samsung TV won't - you always have to navigate the dumb "choose source" menu. That's the kind of thing I would want to be able to customise. A separate unit would be a good intermediate step (basically, something like AppleTV but with a tuner in it), but a truly hackable TV would be better.

digitalroninon CES: Worse Products Through Software (2013)

I haven't figured out why some chinese manufacturer doesn't make a TV with software that is hackable and replaceable by design. I'm fairly confident that a hacker community would soon make it into a seriously desirable product. Look at XBMC, it's an amazing product. I would queue up to buy a TV set on which I could run something like that.