Hacker News Reader

kruipenon GPT 6.1 Sol: Near-Astra intelligence for a fifth of the price

Totally hand-wavy and non-objective ... just like how employees are billing their employers.

kruipenon Study links GLP-1 drugs to bigger jump in women's employment than a degree

Why is lookism supposed to be bad/stigma, but favoring intelligent people is good/meritocracy? Both are "unjust" in the sense that they are a result of genetic lottery. If anything, it's the intelligence you are born with that you can't do anything about.

Society is better off with more intelligence, but also with more beauty! As we automate intelligence, the selection pressure on good looks will only increase.

kruipenon We mourn our craft

This discussion is like the discourse about work from home/return to office.

kruipenon Tell HN: I'm a PM at a big system of record SaaS. We're cooked

> but this makes sense to me: https://x.com/DavidOndrej1/status/2019126831761572169

AI slop.

kruipenon The behavioral cost of personalized pricing

Don't ban it, just require that next to the current price merchant displays low/high/median price for the same good/service in the last 30 days.

kruipenon Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2025)

NautiKron seems to show the current hour in the top row. Why not project it on the tide curve?

kruipenon The Intelligence Age

Newsom

kruipenon Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

https://www.spacepak.com/

kruipenon What will happen in 2023

What will happen on 2022: https://avc.com/2022/01/what-is-going-to-happen-in-2022

kruipenon States Can Require Internet Tax Collection, Supreme Court Rules

All nine Justices agreed on the merit, including Justice Thomas who was in majority on Quill which he now voted to overturn. The decedent argued that the precedent, while wrongly decided, should be upheld on stare decisis grounds, and it should be left to Congress to correct the mistake.

kruipenon Quantum Development Kit preview

Quantum computer would enable systematic approach in areas like material sciences and molecular biology, which today are essentially trial and error.

kruipenon Show HN: ThingsOnReddit – Products linked to on Reddit

The top product on cooking page [1] shows the folly of using reddit for product recommendations...

[1] https://thingsonreddit.com/things/r/Cooking?page=1&order_by=...

kruipenon Math Professor Fighting Gerrymandering with Geometry

What is wrong with gerrymandering?

It is a political solution to political problem. It pushes decisions locally (to the "laboratories of democracy"). It is responsive to "We The People" but with a built in delaying mechanism to smooth out changes. It generally leads to competitive (but not toss-up) districts (the goal is to get as many seats as possible so huge margins are wasteful).

What's not to like?

kruipenon The World’s Most Innovative Economies

Better comparison is tax burden/spending as % of GDP:

                        Tax %   Gov. spending %
    United States       25.1    41.6
    Sweden              44.5    51.2

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

kruipenon Building Better Interfaces with SVG (2015)

https://github.com/artursapek/mondrian

kruipenon How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists

The touch screen on the Surface has one killer application: scrolling while reading. It's very natural to scroll content with a thumb on the edge of the screen.

kruipenon Asciinema 1.3 Switches from Go Back to Python

Or:

    f <$> f <$> x

kruipenon Project Soli – touchless gesture interactions by Google

Using a physical button to move slides...

kruipenon Peter Thiel on the Global Economy, Technology, Artificial Intelligence [video]

I don't think this is a good URL change. It is not like http://conversationswithbillkristol.org is a blog spam for "Conversations with Bill Kristol". And the original site has video divided into chapters which is useful.

kruipenon Google rolls out “If This Then That” support for its $200 OnHub router

https://on.google.com/hub/blog/2016-03-17/speedy-wi-fi-with-...

kruipenon Wine Tech Upstart Drops Smart Bottle on a $300B Industry

Private Preserve [1] is a good, inexpensive solution to this problem.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Private-Preserve-Wine-Preservation-Spr...

kruipenon Mast Brothers obscure the fact that they originally used remelted chocolate

Since you are an expert, what do you know about Costco branded oil?

I admit I buy it for two reasons: it's cheap (I use a lot of olive oil) and is marked with the harvest date. It is sold as Italian oil (from Tuscany, I believe). Is it?

kruipenon Let's Encrypt is Trusted

Prisoner's dilemma?

kruipenon How to know if where you live is “up and coming”: fried chicken vs. coffee shops

Relax. Even if there is such a law it certainly is not illegal in USA to "advocate (...) opinions (...) in public". See what happened last time someone thought advocating opinions was illegal [1]...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

kruipenon Two HN Announcements

empressplay 5 minutes ago [dead]

I think the algorithm for story ranking is a bit more complicated than that...

kruipenon WordSafety – Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreign languages

Only if it could be formally proved wrong...

kruipenon Beijing to Shut All Major Coal Power Plants to Cut Pollution

Worth noting that the AQI scale you are citing (100, 150, etc.) and the ug/m3 used in the article are different numbers. AQI of 85 is not so bad. 85 ug/m3 isn't good.

kruipenon Leatherman Tread, a New Wearable Multi-tool

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       ,                        ,                      ,   
      ,        men who         , ,       men who        ,  
     ,         want to        ,   ,      need a          , 
     ,         wear a         ,   ,      phillips        , 
     ,        bracelet        ,   ,     screwdriver      , 
      ,                        , ,                      ,  
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kruipenon What Heartbleed Can Teach The OSS Community About Marketing

There is no doubt that masterful branding of the bug helped with patching of vulnerable systems in this case. It is not at all clear that the trend it will surely start will be a good thing. Marketing does improve visibility. But it also, inherently obscures the truth. Even in this case: some people on HN don't know that it was a Google researcher who first discovered/reported the bug; the actionable/technical information on the bug was hidden below the fold because the primary goal of the page was to be a long term marketing tool for the security firms, not the shortest path to patch vulnerable systems. We will see how this trend develops but I would not be surprised if we get more and more marketing with less upside (necessary visibility) and more downsides.

kruipenon What I Would Do If I Ran Tarsnap

I don't really have any objections, or really any opinion on whether Colin should or should not charge more.

I was just pointing out that it is a good thing that there are smart people who are "bad at business", who are "irrational" as you put it. Many good things we have came from such irrational people (that was the point about Linux parallel) and many ugly things come from people who are only following the bottom line.