Hacker News Reader

liquidiseon No Exit: The Uncivil Folly of Libertarian Flight

Option 3 is to recognize that all societal freedoms exist within the construct of society. Limiting some of the rules of that society (as opposed to removing all of them) is often the focus of limited government types.

The Non-Aggression Principle[1] is generally accepted as rule #1 for a limited government or a maximally free society. I can't speak to the ideals or proposed solutions to this from the Hobbsian State of Nature types.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle

liquidiseon "Heaving oscillators" use wave power to extend shipping range

tldr: If global energy usage grows at 2% every year, and we generate 1% of the total demand annually with tidal energy, the Earth's rotation will cease in ~1000 years.

While i won't dispute that tidal energy is not truly sustainable, at least not in the way solar appears to be, i think we can agree that in the short team (a few centuries) cargo ships saving fuel would be a net positive with no measurable impact on the rotation of the planet.

Edit: after some more napkin math, i have a hard time taking this paper seriously at all. It appears to suggest that the available tidal energy would remain constant throughout this process? Also, 1.02^1000 equates to a roughly 400 million factor increase in the current energy demands of the planet. That's not something i'd expect such an advanced civilization to be trying to generate out of some waves.

liquidiseon "We pulled off an SEO heist with AI and stole 3.6M impressions."

A lot has been made of the "pre-AI" internet as a sort of barrier for training sets as it will flood the internet with AI content that will be difficult to parse out later.

For the bullish-AI types, is there a prevailing hope that "human content" may itself be an artificial barrier and a properly trained AI could generate better training content for future AI generations? Is this strictly in "AGI" territory?

liquidiseon Bevy 0.12

Fantastic release notes.

Perhaps some of this is too introductory for seasoned game/engine developers, but as someone who doesn't live in those worlds regularly i found this struck an excellent balance between discussing changes and explaining topics in a consumable way. Bravo!

liquidiseon 'It's quite soul-destroying': how we fell out of love with dating apps

By "wrong reasons" i am referring to the intentions of those new users.

Say your users are predominantly seeking long-term relationships, and your branding supports that. Then a bunch of men, fueled by gender-ratio marketing, flood your app seeking hookups. You will see short-term a bump in engagement and payments. A/B testing will suggest everything is great. But long-term your product loses value as your users lose faith in your ability to deliver on what they signed up for. The (in this case women) leave and the product becomes another graveyard.

liquidiseon 'It's quite soul-destroying': how we fell out of love with dating apps

For the reason you describe we consciously chose to never talk publicly about gender ratios. Having predominately female users (or even close to 50/50 actives) tends to attract people for the wrong reasons.

liquidiseon 'It's quite soul-destroying': how we fell out of love with dating apps

On our app we were about 60% women to 40% men. Nonbinary made up a small enough % to round to zero. DAU/MAU were roughly the same, though you might see seasonal swings toward one or another.

liquidiseon 'It's quite soul-destroying': how we fell out of love with dating apps

> "people are more magic in real life"

I CTO'd a fairly successful dating site for 4 years. I think a lot of the critiques of dating sites/apps miss the mark. The "they only stay in business by keep you single" sort of comments.

Instead, i think dating sites' issues are more fundamental. Thought experiment: write a dating profile for yourself in the 3rd person. Then have you 5 closest friends and family members each write one on your behalf. Now have everyone vote on which of the 11 profiles is the most "you". Do you believe yours comes in first? How about top 5?

When we fill out profiles, we naturally try to highlight some parts of ourselves and hide others. Your friends and family see you as you present. Only you see yourself as you intent.

The result of this all is that our dating profiles are a limited, and often misleading, approximation of ourselves. Any matchmaking app is thus matching my "Online Dating Approximation" with your "Online Dating Approximation". The hope is that if our approximations match, we can extrapolate us matching? Weak connection in my experience.

I think this is why Tinder and Bumble have had so much success with their frankly superficial model. At least the online vs reality is closer than more in-depth matching schemes. But we still hear tales of cat/hat-fishing, so maybe they suffer the same issues.

None of the dating apps ive seen have really keyed into the "monkey brain" side of love. The subtle things that make us truly love a person. To be seen if any get there, but there is just no substitute for getting to know someone in person vs flipping through people online.

liquidiseon Product Hunt cleans house with layoffs impacting 60% of staff

> Absolute scum of the earth.

Strikes me as harsh given that we know essentially nothing about the company's plans. The laid off employees were given severance and the CEO offered to personally intro people to hiring companies. The CEO stated it was to increase speed and focus (i read as reducing meetings/overhead).

I understand people are upset with layoffs taking place, but how do you think a company should behave when they realize they are wasting time and money?

liquidiseon Ask HN: Show me your half baked project

https://shipscoop.com/

I've been using Shipscoop for years now to the delight of many clients, but we've yet to finish its "go live" flow. That said if people want to try it out, it works quite well for turning git logs into weekly status reports

liquidiseon When 80 percent of US generals go to work for arms makers

I’m more surprised that 80%+ of generals feel they need to work after their discharge.

The presumption that employing former generals impacts the military spending budgets is, if true, a failure of the legislature and the budgetary councils, not these former government employees moving onto private sector jobs.

liquidiseon MP3 vs. AAC vs. FLAC vs. CD (2008)

I have much of what you describe: 3 listening environments between near field computer speaker setup, reasonably high end home stereo and dac/amp with high end iems.

I have tried multiple times to discern flac vs 320 mp3 across genres. Every time I believe I can figure it out and I consistently fail to exceed 50% (pure chance) accuracy.

Makes me wonder what ultra-linear source gear or speakers would highlight the differences in real-world situations, if at all. But for my purposes I’ll happily accept the roughly 80% file size reduction for no audible difference.

liquidiseon The Tao of Programming (1987)

Possibly the most thoughtful and profound reply to a typo i've seen.

liquidiseon [dead]

Are they? This article focuses on the temperature delta from 2022-2023, not our impact collectively. The thesis is that human (in)action can't explain the severity of the delta over a single year. The eruption appears to fill in the gap.

This qualifies as culture-war gas? The article does not ignore human climate impact. There's a big CO2 graph right in the middle.

liquidiseon Clearspace-1 space debris cleanup target struck by space debris

What a wonderful response to return to. Appreciate the work you put into this.

liquidiseon Clearspace-1 space debris cleanup target struck by space debris

In N. Stephenson's Seveneves, a major plot point was that sufficient falling debris can superheat the atmosphere. Granted, we've orbited a trivial fraction of the Moon's mass, but have we orbited enough material to cause any warming to the atmosphere upon re-entry? Are we many orders of magnitude away?

I'm frankly not even sure how to napkin math such a question.

liquidiseon What Will the World Look Like with Less Babies?

"Irreversible" feels like an overstatement for a planet that has documented swings in both its temp and atmospheric composition. I'd agree the timescales of changing warming trends is certainly slower than birth rates, though.

liquidiseon Bootstrapping to €600k MRR and getting killed by Shopify: Checkout X

I had the same thought. There is a a lot of value to be created with moves like this, but it is risky and does not have a long shelf life. Not necessarily a bad business play, but should be expected to be a short-lived one either way.

liquidiseon Fudge: Reverse Tetris

This is a great concept that feels like it's about 80% there. Some suggestions if the author is here/reading:

1. I badly want the ability to rotate pieces. Perhaps it's too strong to have this universally, but maybe i get 1-3 piece rotations recharged on each Reroll?

2. Having multiple of the same orientation piece isn't great, but a few times i got 3 pieces in identical orientations. This is really fun-sucking and i'd either code that case out or weight it to be very unlikely.

3. UX-wise it would be great to be able to hold my mouse down and drag across pieces to highlight them instead of needing to click on each block individually.

Feedback aside, i really love the concept here and think it's a great first pass. Some UX improvements i think could make this a really addicting game. Awesome job.

liquidiseon Ask HN: Could you please brutally review my product website?

I'm a hard disagree here as a dev. The timing is too slow for me (i'd half or third the delay) and perhaps lower the transition duration a hair. But the effect itself was quite nice and gave me a strong sense of polish and quality.

liquidiseon Musicogenic seizure

I was epileptic throughout puberty. After it was diagnosed and i understood what was happening, i started to recognize the feeling of absence/petite mal seizures before they happened. I used to refer to it as an "aura" because i had no better way to phrase it. Medication was a silver bullet for me and it all went away by my early 20s.

I've not had a seizure since, but the closest i have come to experiencing that "aura"-like sensation since has been times of extreme auditory load: loud, frantic music mixed with hustle and bustle around me. And i'm a regular (sober) concert attendee. I've never had a seizure from these situations, but the article puts to words a sensation i've never really voiced to others.

liquidiseon Blowing up my compile times for dubious benefits

While i enjoyed the article, the title and opening sentence really deserve credit for being genuinely fun to read.

liquidiseon The Staggering Frontiers of CSS

Flash was excellent for making buttons grow/shrink. So much so that many sites had flash-based navs driving static html pages in the top row of their table layouts.

Flash had its share of footguns in terms of code organization, but animating interaction was never a weak point.

liquidiseon Reddit Threatens to Remove Moderators from Subreddits Continuing Blackouts

This strikes me as a fair impression, as someone who doesn't really have a horse in this race. The job of moderators is ostensibly to foster communication and limit abuse within their subreddits. While i understand the motive of these protests, they appear to run counter to the moderator responsibilities?

liquidiseon Karl Guttag on Apple Vision Pro (Part 1)

Is the hesitance for social norm/style reasons?

Similarly, i wouldn't wear it at a coffee shop. But i could see it coming into style at co-working spaces. It feels like a no brainer in hotel rooms and airbnb's.

liquidiseon Karl Guttag on Apple Vision Pro (Part 1)

I only need to name 1 for myself: i travel a lot and work from a laptop often. AVP feels like an obvious choice for development if it delivers on the vision (heh). Working without a dedicated desk space, laptop stand, separate monitor, etc, laptop work just pales in productivity and comfort to my multi-monitor desk setup at home.

A wearable that acts as if i have floating monitors anywhere sounds like a massive win, in a device that appears to be far more portable than actually bringing the aforementioned accoutrements with me everywhere i go.

liquidiseon 3M heads to trial in ‘existential’ $143B forever-chemicals litigation

Care you elaborate? I'm genuinely curious about how this plays out in in practice.

From the perspective of a driver, this fits: i am held responsible for harm i cause even if i was otherwise driving lawfully. But should my car maker be held responsible for the harm their car caused under lawful use?

liquidiseon Octopuses, crabs and lobsters recognised as sentient beings under UK law (2021)

I'm unclear as well. TFA states:

> The review also evaluated the potential welfare implications of current commercial practices involving these animals. It recommends against declawing, nicking, eyestalk ablation, the sale of live decapod crustaceans to untrained, non-expert handlers, and extreme slaughter methods such as live boiling without stunning. It also includes suggestions for best practices for transport, stunning and slaughter.

But this reads more like additional recommendations than required by law under the new classification.

liquidiseon Colorado kills law that made it harder for cities to offer Internet service

The younger people (< 45) in CO are largely transplants. Many moved because of the outdoor life, pot legalization and because they visit friends and enjoy the culture. I think that younger influence plays a big role offsetting the traditionally conservative farmland.

Pedantically, though, the votes haven't been strictly progressive, more lowercase-L libertarian. Often the state votes to increase freedoms instead of traditional progressive/conservative lines.

Overall, i think the CO population is more drug-friendly than the average liberal US voting pool. Denver feels relatively moderate, politically, as we have so many influences from where people came from (east coast, california, texas). We have one of the most liberal (Boulder) and conservative (CO Springs) cities in the US. The things that the population collectively agrees upon is often the freedom-y bits.

liquidiseon Two types of software engineers

I've written about a similar topic in the past, referring to the Types 1 and 2 as "brave" and "careful" developers. The titles are less important than the impact each brings.

The "we'll just do X" developer tends to think about codebases as they do the customer. "We'll just refactor <huge system>" or "we can just include <major new subsystem>". Type 2 devs, in contrast, are far more careful in their approach to the codebase itself.

The two balance each other out in the right ratios. Left to their own devices, Type 1 will bring innovative changes to a system while Type 2 naturally improve the stability of the system. I just think you want 3-4 Type 2's for each Type 1 you have on a team.