Hacker News Reader

dmckeonon The Junk Mail Men: Selling Your Data for over a Century (2019)

Never thought I would feel nostalgic for old school address labels. The current version of marketing is much more, ah, specific. If you work with data about people, you should read Christopher Wylie's description of more powerful technology:

https://www.amazon.com/Mindf-Cambridge-Analytica-Break-Ameri...

dmckeonon The growth of command-line options, 1979-Present

Aww, shucks: rsync -aSHx src/ dest

dmckeonon Effects of Daylight Saving Time on Traffic Accident Risk

If a country does any no-adjustment approach nationwide, people may want a single common day of the month to do daylight sensitive schedule adjustments, such as outdoor sports practices.

I propose overnight on the first Sunday of a month. For example, the week before, in spring (Northern hemisphere) soccer (or whatever activity) practice is at 16:00, the week after at 16:30 or 17:00 or whatever. In fall, the reverse, but the schedules all change on the same day. (Outliers will happen - this is a 90:10 suggestion, not 100:0.)

Think of all the families with 2 or 3 kids who have 2, 3, or 4 different activities each week, all at different times. Do we really want their schedules to potentially change in every week of the month? Yes, super-soccer mom or dad could cope, but why not try to keep it simpler?

dmckeonon Oregon has first confirmed Covid-19 case

Roll-out of newer voting procedures (all vote-by-mail, fewer locations to return ballots) varies, depending on what county a voter is registered in: https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voters-choice-act/

dmckeonon Time.gov was upgraded today

There is also a Navajo enclave within that Hopi reservation/enclave: http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2016-May/023665.html

dmckeonon Cows Communicate with Unique Moos

Coming soon: machine learning system to analyze vocalizations in dairy herds to increase total herd production over time.

dmckeonon Show HN: Store your luggage in local shops

In the US, there used to (~1980s) be plenty of storage lockers at bus depots, train stations, and airports.

The gradual awareness in the US of the possibilities of terrorism - UNABOM, the NI/IRA "Troubles", the 1993 WTC bombing, and similar - gradually drove out most such anonymous-user lockers, and after 9/11 they tended to be blocked off or removed more quickly, even as people still had interest in cost-effective short-term storage. Current arrangements seem to want an existing relationship (overnight guest) or a paper trail (ID + credit card).

Package storage in NTC vehicles allows the possibility of having multiple devices being summoned to one or more specific locations at specific times. What could possibly go wrong?

dmckeonon Autonomous DeLorean drives sideways to move forward

Vehicle speed within traffic lane, or relative speed along a vector to/through the radar device - which vector might be at a significant angle to the traffic lane?

dmckeonon Visa warns of POS malware incidents at gas pumps across North America

Neither the article nor the malware reports it links to identify which merchant networks are affected.

dmckeonon Florida Keys Deliver a Hard Message: As Seas Rise, Some Places Can’t Be Saved

> The couple used to fly down from Long Island in a Cessna, until one day the runway at the island’s airport was underwater.

Sounds like time for a float plane certificate.

dmckeonon Losing the News: The Decimation of Local News and the Search for Solutions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

dmckeonon A Hacker Wants $5M in Ransom From Pemex By End of November

Sounds like a job for Normal man: https://www.propublica.org/article/the-ransomware-superhero-...

dmckeonon The FCC Has Fined Robocallers $208M, Collected $6,790

Try Nomorobo - took robocalls down by at least 90% for me, and I gladly pay ~$20US / year to not have flow interrupts. Works on iOS, free for VOIP numbers.

dmckeonon Mark Twain playing with electricity in Nikola Tesla's lab in 1894 (2013)

Mark Twain demonstrates the difference between “the lightning and the lightning bug”.

dmckeonon PG&E turning off power to protect against fire has created a new disaster

We replaced a failed generator with a 7500 watt gas-powered model for about US$950, including tax. Noisy, but handles most of a house (with careful load management). The fun part was finding a container for gasoline - Home Depot & about 10 other stores had sold out. Ended up buying a 2 gallon container of kitty litter, dumping out the litter, & rinsing out the container. Also saw a queue of about 10 Tesla owners waiting on (Super)charging spots - fun times.

dmckeonon Tesla’s new Solar Roof costs less than a new roof plus solar panels

Conventional roofs do not have live power and electronic components. Solar tiles (and panels) add "must not self-ignite" to the usual install requirements like "must not leak for N years".

Good, fast, cheap - between good and fast, I want good first. Cheap remains to be seen.

dmckeonon Tesla’s new Solar Roof costs less than a new roof plus solar panels

> And we’re actually going to have […] ‘installathons,’ ” Musk said, which will pit two teams against each other to see who can roof one of two similar-sized/designed roofs faster. Musk reiterated later that there’s “quite a bit of R&D just in the installation process itself.”

Not a short seller, but that sounds a lot like: “We don’t yet know how to do this well, but in the meantime we are going to optimize for speed.” This may look good to investors, but homeowners might cringe. Did Musk learn nothing from the pre-Titan installs? Somebody get him a copy of _The Mythical Man-Month_. This quote alone took me from possible early-adopter to wanting to wait 3 to 5 years until they decide to optimize installation for correctness and lowered risk of ignition.

dmckeonon Auto-brewery syndrome: probably an under-diagnosed medical condition

This situation has been used as a DWI/DUI defense since the early 1990s - search for “candidiasis” in https://spaf.cerias.purdue.edu/Yucks/V1/msg00034.html . It is good to see both a differential test procedure, and a treatment regime.

dmckeonon Stripe to move to South San Francisco

Four: rain, green, brown, fire.

dmckeonon SF to Establish Office of Emerging Technology

Hmm - will the OET offer NDAs for companies, or perhaps be able to leak plans and details to prospective competitors? Staying tuned.

dmckeonon Typhoon Lands in Japan – Windy Storm-Tracking Platform

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Ocean#Climate

> Cyclonic storms travel eastward around the continent and frequently become intense because of the temperature contrast between ice and open ocean. The ocean-area from about latitude 40 south to the Antarctic Circle has the strongest average winds found anywhere on Earth.

dmckeonon Inbreeding in a European ancestry sample from the contemporary UK population

“Johnny be Fair” https://mainlynorfolk.info/folk/songs/johnnybefair.html

dmckeonon Why do companies with unbounded resources still have terrible moderation?

Moderating a forum of a few hundred recurring posters, who nominally all want to participate in discussions of a few specified topics is usually feasible.

Moderating open venues with no sense of commonality or community where anyone can just show up and say anything is ... much less feasible.

dmckeonon The Evolution of the Hard Hat

Always fun to watch video footage of factories, construction sites, etc., and pick out who is who by hat color, whether suspension system has been adjusted or not, and what stickers may show up. In the US, yellow is often entry-level, white is usually supervisor or VIP visitor, but look for wear, scuffing, and dirt to be sure.

dmckeonon McCharge: McDonalds Is Now Charging EVs

s{(Super-size)}{$1 and Super-charge} me.

dmckeonon Cormac McCarthy on how to write a science paper

Know your primary audience. Allow for other audiences, but know who you are writing to. The audience for a science paper may be other researchers in your field, researchers in associated fields, or other fields, other scientists, or a more general audience. Audiences for hackers might be other hackers, programmers, computer scientists, users, investors, salespeople, technicians, translators, etc.

Pick one main audience, and a very few related audiences, and write so that any of them can understand without confusion or distraction. The red herring for an IPO does not benefit from leet-speak, nor does the FAQ for an online service benefit from legal disclaimers.

dmckeonon New federal rules limit police searches of family tree DNA databases

Or you now have 299,999,700 probable negatives, and 300 possible positives to review for motive, method, and opportunity before you start looking at/for alibis.

dmckeonon America’s New Sex Bureaucracy

Institutions often want their own tribunals so that they can more strongly influence both the outcome of investigations and decisions, and the public messaging about them. The underlying goals are not justice and equity, but protection of and advancement for the institution itself. Consider universities, churches, and HR departments.

dmckeonon Understanding Foreign Interference [pdf]

Perhaps more that the apparent “reality” of an online identity could be correlate-able with opinions expressed by the identity. I would be more interested in posts by a verified identity in a forum on political topics than in those from an unverified identity. On the other hand, in a forum about some fictional work, quality of content would be of more interest.

Problems arise when supposedly “real” identities misrepresent their actual identity, location, allegiance, etc. in a context where those things are expected to be trusted, and then abuse that trust.

dmckeonon The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think (2016)

The challenge for the UI and software designers is to create interfaces that are effective, easily learnable or intuitive, and, if possible, similar to some interface the user is already familiar with, regardless of their skills.