Hacker News Reader

jaredandrewson Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension

Slightly related, Google is also tightening up Android 11 location permissions (with good reason). In this blog post[0] they outline a process for getting approval that was supposed to be underway by the start of May.

So far I have not been able to locate this form nor have I been able to find any Android developers who have.

If anyone here knows where it is or what the deal is, please let me know.

[0] https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/02/safer-loca...

jaredandrewson First Robotics Competition: An International High-School Robotics Competition

I have been hoping to find a multiplayer coding game to play with my FIRST students during this time. Googling "multiplayer coding game" yields many results, but none of the ones I have tried so far have been satisfactory. Ideally it would be more of a sandbox than a game, with little robots you can control.

Would appreciate any recommendations.

jaredandrewson Basic Information Regarding Tin Whiskers (2008)

Fascinating, anyone here ever experience problems due to this phenomenon?

jaredandrewson You have a set amount of “weirdness points” – spend them wisely (2014)

The problem is they would have to agree on that one issue. The philosophy does not lend itself well to any kind of organization.

jaredandrewson FDA bowed to industry for decades as alarms were sounded over talc

Good interview with a lawyer working on this case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM-4ZoM2rv8

jaredandrewson $15 minimum wage didn’t hurt NYC restaurants

From the source of the clowns mouth:

- What is the average age of a McDonald's employee?

- The average age of an 'hourly-paid' employee is 20. You might like to know that we employ 120,000 people of all ages, from school leaving age to people in their 80s. We're also one of the biggest providers of first-time jobs in the U.K.

https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/help/faq/18338-what-is-th...

jaredandrewson Switching my parents over to Linux saved me a lot of headache and support calls

Just to add another anecdote...

Back in 2008 or so, my relatives did the really nice thing of buying my Grandma the cheapest possible Walmart computer they could find. You know the sort of Windows eMachine that comes preinstalled with spyware?

Of course, my relatives live about 6 hours away from her and all of the "on site support" fell to me. In the first 2 years of my Grandma getting this computer I must have gone over more than 10 times to fix all sorts of stupid issues that were pretty much inherent to the machine.

I grew sick of this and one day I went over, backed up the few important files on the machine and installed linux mint. That was in 2010, it is now 2019 and I have gone over to fix my Grandmas computer twice since. Once to help her set up a printer, and another time when she accidentally cleared her cookies and couldn't figure out how to log back into anything.

The strange thing is that my Grandma never commented on the Mint interface and as far as I can tell she never noticed that I completely changed the operating system ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

jaredandrewson All Hail the Condom King

Back in college I had the great fortune of going to Thailand for 3 months and working for Mechai's non-profit. The man is a legend for real and this article barely scratches the surface. While it started with condoms his organization has done so much more since.

My student group worked with Thai students and we visited villages where the PDA had installed solar powered water pumps. We were basically tasked with checking in and seeing how it was going.

The whole experience really changed my perspective on a lot of things. Mechai's approach is based on empowering communities instead of telling them what to do. And guess what? It works.

As a bonus, here is a picture of me with an anthropomorphic condom I met at a Cabbage's & Condoms restaurant: https://imgur.com/a/pRnCrh9

Also, Mechai's TED Talk is worth checking out: https://www.ted.com/talks/mechai_viravaidya_how_mr_condom_ma...

jaredandrewson Posting Instagram Sponsored Content Is the New Summer Job

I take it you never worked in a customer facing position?

jaredandrewson Is Pop Music Evolving, or Is It Just Getting Louder? (2012)

> Would be interesting to see if there any hip hop masterpieces that have been arranged for classical music.

Nas with National Symphony Orchestra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei_l3h4J-Ck Deltron 3030: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7FxVSDLonY

jaredandrewson Show HN: Make a business model canvas in your browser

Very cool seeing this here! Hope things are good out in Nashville!

jaredandrewson Ask HN: How has working remotely for long periods affected your social skills?

27 single male, been working remotely for around 3 years. I would say it affected me slightly at first. I realized after leaving my office job that a fair amount of my social interaction was off-the-cuff activities with coworkers. Which I obviously wouldn't be around for anymore.

I basically had to learn to take more initiative when it came to arranging to hang out with people. I did and things have been going great since.

With remote work you definitely have the opportunity to isolate yourself on accident. So you have to been conscious of that and take action when you notice it.

I live alone now. But in the beginning of my remote career I had roommates. Roommates, who are actually your friends, are a great way of avoiding social isolation in the remote setting. And if they all have office jobs, you get the house to yourself all day!

jaredandrewson Rick Toone, Luthier

And his wooden pipe organ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5baNcgIA8o

jaredandrewson The Posh Pen Paradox: when writers and artists fear their tools

While I generally agree, a note I would add about guitars: you don't need to buy a super expensive guitar to start but you do want to make sure it's properly setup (usually costs < $50 at a guitar store). Action that is too high can be a huge motivation killer for the novice guitarist and they might not even know the issue can be fixed.

jaredandrewson The Lottery Hackers

Reading this article I was thinking, "I really hope someone from Boston who participated in this is on HN". Check the comments and there it is :D

Care to share any additional thoughts/experiences on this whole thing?

jaredandrewson Ivy – A static website generator built in Python

Not sure if OP is the developer behind this but...

As a happy user of Pelican[0], a different Python based static site generator. Why would I want to switch over to Ivy?

[0] https://blog.getpelican.com/

jaredandrewson Induction of self awareness in dreams through low current stimulation (2014)

Hah. I have only achieved lucidity in a dream once, after a period of trying to induce it. I can't really remember what was happening prior but when I realized I was in a dream I thought:

"I am in a dream, I want to fly."

Turns out my body doesn't actually know how to fly and I woke myself up it seems, in the process of trying to take off.

jaredandrewson Intentional Fire-Spreading by “Firehawk” Raptors in Northern Australia

I guess it's a little cutesy at times but I would recommend everyone in this thread check out /r/likeus[0] for examples of these things.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/likeus/

jaredandrewson Intentional Fire-Spreading by “Firehawk” Raptors in Northern Australia

> I'm not aware of any reliably documented case of animals communicating abstract concepts.

I guess this is difficult to prove. I'm not sure if it matches with the definition of "abstract concepts" but I was reading earlier today that Bottlenose Dolphins "transmit cultural knowledge across generations".[0] So maybe yes?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottlenose_dolphin#Tool_use_an...

jaredandrewson Intentional Fire-Spreading by “Firehawk” Raptors in Northern Australia

Elephants? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_cognition#Art_and_mus...

jaredandrewson Cryptocurrency Trading News

Dude, wtf? If you are going to provide a "reference" at least make sure it's about a real person and not an imaginary African a "former pentagon analyst and blockchain advocate" wrote about.

Also to a certain extent, I agree with your comment, "crypto is real". But is bitcoin? Maybe it was but now it's so unstable I can't use it to buy shit and neither can the hypothetical poor man discussed above.

I think this is a flaw in the current implementation. But not many "blockchain advocates" seem to be writing about that. I wonder why?

jaredandrewson What I'm Telling US Congress about Data Breaches

Love this one and I am going to start using it in real life, peace!

jaredandrewson Parsons code

I would be interested in hearing more about this technology being used in practice. Are these codes primarily "hand written" by an individual listener or are they encoded by computers?

jaredandrewson Millions Are Hounded for Debt They Don’t Owe. One Victim Fought Back

The body count in this article is unreal.

jaredandrewson The suicide rate for farmers in the U.S. is more than double that of veterans

> "Hey they should have sold the cell phone thats not a prerequisite to communication in 2017, their priorities are way too off for them to deserve any support"

Not to get too off topic here but during my college years I worked at a grocery store. I found it unbelievable how many times I had to listen to a customer complain about the cell phone that the customer who was in front of them had. "I just don't understand how they can afford a cell phone if they are on food stamps!"[0] "Uh cool, would you like plastic or paper?"

Keep in mind that a trac phone plan is less than $15 dollars a month and even cheaper if you are careful with it... but I wouldn't have dared tell the outraged customer that. It's always crazy to me how people think they can solve another persons life problems based on a 15 second observation.

[0] In Massachusetts the food stamp cards were/are a distinct blue color and easy to spot.

jaredandrewson What I'm Telling US Congress about Data Breaches

Indeed! I have recently been trying to come up with a new term to use instead of "identity theft" (open to suggestions). As the term itself seems almost Orwellian to me.

My identity wasn't stolen! You gave a loan/credit card/whatever to someone and didn't verify who they were. How is your organization not doing the proper work a "theft" of my identity? I'm not involved and I don't want to be!

jaredandrewson Fact or Fiction?: An Opera Singer's Piercing Voice Can Shatter Glass

From the article:

> "Even if you could excite the cup, that doesn't guarantee it would break. Fracture depends on the size of the initial defects."

I have to wonder if Jaime tapping the glass with a spoon in that video not only reveals the frequency he needs, but more crucially introduces tiny fractures.

jaredandrewson Iceland's attempts to replant its forests

If you are driving thru New England and pull over to any forest you can start walking and eventually you will find a short stone wall. These stone walls used to mark the borders of farm land but now they are in the middle of the forest. They are everywhere! Really gives you an idea of how much farming used to go on there.

Of course, that is anecdotal, you can read more here: https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/08/31/new-england-see...

jaredandrewson How many people are in space right now

Wow, whenever I am reminded that a human hasn't been on the moon since 1972 it just blows my mind.

I mean.. I guess it's probably easier and cheaper and safer to send a robot, but I would think that at least one nation would decide to flex their muscles in the "yea that's right, we can afford to do this" way. Oh how I dream of such forms of international posturing!