HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

kodis

305 karma · joined January 9, 2015

submissionscomments
kodis··on Tesla “Camper Mode” (2016)
I wonder what would happen if some good Samaritan busted out the window of a cop car to save the life of the K9 dog inside. I suspect that this would be treated as less than the heroic gesture that it is when saving a civilian dog.
kodis··on GM Apples That Don’t Brown to Reach U.S. Shelves This Fall
I'll buy a bag or two, just to encourage research into what benefits these types of genetic modification techniques can bring to market. I hope their business results are as successful as their produce results seems to be.
kodis··on High carb – not fat – intake linked to greater early death risk: study
It's appalling how so many nutrition experts have gotten this so wrong for so long.
kodis··on Biggest amateur-built sub sinks – owner is suspected of killing passenger
This sounds a bit suspicious, but I can't imagine what motive Masden would have for killing a journalist.
kodis··on Ask HN: If you were a coder who successfully changed careers, what do you do now?
I had a (not particularly exceptional) coworker with an electrical engineering degree go to work for the patent office. One of the perks was that the patent office would pay his way to becoming a patent attorney in return for a few years of service.
kodis··on The Tyranny of Other People’s Vacation Photos (2016)
I feel the same way -- I enjoy seeing my friends having a good time. More pragmatically, I'll frequently (like, just yesterday) see someone's vacation photos and think, "hey, that looks like fun! Maybe I should plan a trip there myself."
kodis··on NASA admits it doesn’t have the funding to land humans on Mars
I don't think that it's correct to say that NASA is getting less and less funding. At least according to the data on Wikipedia, NASA's budget has been between $15B and $20B per year in inflation adjusted dollars for the last few decades, and so increasing a bit most years to account for inflation.

The only budget metric that has been dropping has been NASA's percentage of the federal budget, and that's more due to the huge growth in federal spending rather than any decrease in the amount of funds that NASA has available.

kodis··on Delaney Introduces Bill to End Gerrymandering, Reform Elections
Sadly, I believe that you're correct: the bill was also introduced in the previous two congressional sessions, where it presumably went nowhere.
kodis··on The story behind the Connecticut deli math sign
A bit less concise but still my favorite: An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar (which I already think is funny) and the first orders a pint of ale, the second orders a half pint, the third orders a quarter pint. After this goes on for a bit the bartender looks disgusted, slams two pints on the counter and says "You mathematicians really have to get to know your limits!"
kodis··on A right to repair: Why Nebraska farmers are taking on John Deere and Apple
Also, car manufacturers are currently required to make replacement parts available for some period of time -- something like ten years after each model year. So no, not a stretch at all.
kodis··on Remote-control your Slack bots with JSON
> we had issues with people stealing cups before the pot was done (don't do this).

That's some amazingly annoying and inconsiderate behavior. We had the same problem at one place where I worked, so when the coffee pot was low I had to not only make a fresh pot, but then stand watch over it while it was brewing.

kodis··on Smart Watch Will Charge Itself Using Heat from Your Skin
I see the same problem here as with self winding watches -- the idea works well enough so long as a person has only one watch which they wear daily. Otherwise, the watch may lose enough energy that it stops keeping time and has to be reset the next time it's worn.

Watch collectors can buy "watch winders", a motor driven storage case that will keep their self-winding watches going when they're not being worn. I suppose that now the manufacturers will have to add little heating pads to keep these body heat powered watches going as well.

kodis··on Uber Self-Driving Truck Packed with Budweiser Makes First Delivery in Colorado
I suspect that what will happen initially is that a human driver will be tasked with getting the truck to and from the nearest highway entrance, with the autopilot taking it from there. This is similar to how ships operate, with local pilots guiding the ship in and out of harbors and the ship's captain handling the at sea portion of the journey.

Also, and only half in jest, Budweiser? In Colorado? Regardless of my opinion of their beers I would have expected a delivery of Coors instead.

kodis··on Tesla plunges in Consumer Reports' rankings
> The [CR] car reviews are awful. They like who they like.

So do they like Tesla or dislike Tesla? Only a year ago or so they rated the Model S as the best car they had ever reviewed; then there were a few Autopilot failures and some troubles with the Model X -- now the honeymoon seems to be over.

It's not that I think CR does a wonderful job with cars -- or with any other product that I'm familiar with -- but I think that their biases are more complex than a simple "they like who they like".

kodis··on Facebook apologises for removing breast cancer awareness video
I watched that Superbowl half-time show with my two young at the time children. What I remember was that although I barely noticed the one or two seconds of exposed nipple, I was really hoping that I wouldn't have to explain the need for the erectile dysfunction medicine which was being advertised later in the show.
kodis··on Nexus phones now identify suspected spam callers
Even stranger, I'll occasionally get a call on my home phone which the Caller ID identifies as coming from my home phone with me as the caller -- to myself! At least it makes it easy for me to spot as a spoofed caller.
kodis··on When police use robots to kill people
I think that the answer is in the article: paraphrasing, "when something (in this case, killing someone rather than waiting him out) becomes easier to do it tends to get done more often".
kodis··on New Cities
I don't know about Detroit, but Buffalo is in the midst of an amazing if long overdue recovery from its status as a dying old blue collar rust belt town. It wasn't the nerds and hipsters that pulled this off though, it was a few large wealthy real estate developers who saw a town with potential which due to collapsed real estate prices could be developed at a bargain.
kodis··on ‘Laws’ of Software Development
I'd be tempted to add Brooks' law, that adding staff to a project that's already late just serves to make it even later.
kodis··on Diffie and Hellman Win Turing Award
Nobel Prizes, at least in the science fields, follow the same pattern. I suspect that at least in part the Nobel committee wants to avoid awarding for something unproven such as cold fusion.

The committees in the humanities seem much less concerned about this, and are able to award much sooner.

kodis··on How Netflix's algorithm exposes technology's ​racial bias.​
Exactly right, but that wouldn't result in as controversial a headline.
kodis··on Judge tosses proposed class action accusing Google of CAPTCHA fraud
It really does serve to make lawyers look like extortionist thugs. Had the lawsuit gone forward, it would have been funny if Google had proposed compensating everyone -- lawyers and "victims" alike -- with free Gmail accounts.
kodis··on What Meetups Tell Us About America
Yes, but it doesn't have to be a single purpose beyond perhaps having fun in a group.

One of the more popular groups in the Baltimore / Washington / Annapolis is the Second Half Fun Rally group -- a group for people in the second half of their lives who just want to have fun. The activities can be anything from an easy hike to a get together for a concert, happy hour, museum visit, community festival, or most anything else that nearly anyone can take part in and enjoy. Beyond the range of activities, the organizer is able to arrange and attend several meetups each month which seems to help in a "maintain the momentum" sort of way.

kodis··on [dead]
Now that I'm in my 60's I've done some of these things, I routinely do some other of these of these things, and I think that a few of these things are ridiculous. I guess I'm doing alright for myself.
kodis··on The Guardians of London's Black Cab 'Knowledge'
Interesting article, but it failed to make mention of to what extent GPS based navigation apps have made acquiring "The Knowledge" obsolete. I'd hate to have spent the months or years of study required only to find out that similar routing information now fits in a shirt pocket.
kodis··on GNU Coreutils Gotchas
The chmod gotcha that I hit occasionally when I haven't used the chmod command for a while is the difference between "chmod -R <perm> <dir>" which recurses as would be expected and "chmod -r <perm> <dir>" which interprets "-r" as the <perm> spec, complains that the file <perm> doesn't exist, then removes read permission from <dir>.
kodis··on A billionaire targeting contrarian, underappreciated causes
Private industry has largely solved their pension problems by eliminating pensions and instead making contributions to an employee controlled 401(k) plan or similar. This eliminates some of the problems that come with pension plans, but at the cost of requiring some personal responsibility on the part of the individual employee.
kodis··on The Space Doctor’s Big Idea
He's also done a similar piece explaining how rockets work using only the thousand most common words in English. The one detail that I remember is that apparently "thousand" is not one of the thousand most common words, as it was rendered as "ten hundred".
kodis··on Guerrilla Grafting: Grafting Fruit-Bearing Branchesto Ornamental City Trees
So long as they are able to insure that the fallen fruit doesn't become a slip and fall hazard this sounds like a wonderful project.

It seems odd that "her efforts were repeatedly thwarted by [...] San Francisco nonprofit Friends of the Urban Forest", as that sounds like the type of organization that would support such an effort.

kodis··on Crush Point: When large crowds assemble, is there a way to keep safe? (2011)
It's a very long article, and the closest it comes to answering the question of "is there a way to keep safe" are these two sentences: "Keep your elbows akimbo, to protect your chest and give yourself enough breathing room. Don’t fight against the flow of the crowd if you’re trying to get out of it; rather, go with it, and during lulls try to work your way diagonally through the crowd to the perimeter. If you feel faint, grab on to someone, and, if you do fall, try to protect your head."
← PreviousPage 2 of 3Next →