Hacker News Reader

makerofspoonson My fridge has an RFID chip in the water filter, so a generic filter doesn't work

Coke is such a wildly wasteful company. So now not only are they introducing RFID plastic waste but also additional paper cups people are going to buy.

Another example of their ridiculous wastefulness is integrating OLEDs into the wrappers of their plastic bottles to market Star Wars: https://www.engadget.com/2019/12/06/star-wars-coca-cola-oled...

makerofspoonson Time to Stop the ‘Doomsday Clock’. – Lawrence M. Krauss

The clock now includes threats from climate change and disruptive technology, which global civilization is doing next to nothing about.

makerofspoonson Time to Stop the ‘Doomsday Clock’. – Lawrence M. Krauss

I think it's great that it includes factors like climate change and disruptive technology in addition to nuclear threats, which are just as grave of a threat as nuclear weapons. I disagree with the author that it's time to do away with the clock, the Bulletin is doing a great job of keeping it relevant and useful in the 21st century.

makerofspoonson Mozilla Wants Young People to Consider ‘Ethical Issues’ Before Taking Tech Jobs

I believe they meant 'CU Boulder' not 'CSU Boulder'.

makerofspoonson Microsoft’s quest to go ‘carbon negative’ inspires $1B fund

I for one can't wait to have a Mr. Fission in my utility room.

makerofspoonson Crashes, injuries spike after Michigan boosts freeway speed limits to 75 MPH

Look at those signs- 65 is the limit for trucks, you have cars pushing 80, and some drivers like the one interviewed in the article driving 70. A higher variance in vehicle speeds makes traffic less safe.

makerofspoonson Unremovable malware found preinstalled on low-end smartphone sold in the US

The PinePhone will be launching soon, and you could install any flavor of mobile Linux you want if you are still interested in owning a smart phone: https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/

makerofspoonson US emissions fell 2.1% in 2019

I'm upcycling an old motorcycle to be electric and then ditching my car. I'm expecting to use it for trips where public transit cannot take me, like my current workplace. Otherwise I just bought a townhouse near a transit hub and have dramatically reduced my car use. I use my utility's 'wind source' product to help subsidize renewables investment. I've changed roles so that I am no longer required to fly. I also have gone vegan after several years as a vegetarian. The AC in my new unit is quite old- I plan on trying to go without it this summer and just have it removed if it turns out I don't (I live in Colorado though so it's easier for me than others).

makerofspoonson Finland’s Prime Minister Calls for Debate on 4-Day Work Week

Nixon of all people talked about it in 1956: https://www.nytimes.com/1956/09/23/archives/nixon-foresees-4...

makerofspoonson Sound waves used to separate microplastics from laundry wastewater

Or we could stop making clothes out of materials that shed microplastics. And while we're at it, cotton too for the vast amounts of water it uses. Industrial hemp and linen are far more sustainable options. Tencel looks like a great replacement for cotton and uses wood cellulose.

makerofspoonson Climate talks break up with no agreement on carbon trading

Steep tariffs are needed on goods from countries that won't play ball.

makerofspoonson 'Green' energy relies on copper-nickel mining

That's because in their article all they've done is parrot oil and gas industry talking points.

Even when the electricity is generated by fossil sources, the lifetime impact of an electric vehicle is smaller than a conventional vehicle: https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric-vehicles-...

Cobalt use in lithium-ion batteries is falling: https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-3-batteries-cobalt-vol...

Ironically however what I feel the case is being made for is not his 'all of the above' energy policy- that doesn't follow from the facts. It supports investment in nuclear energy and decreased consumption.

makerofspoonson The Arctic may have crossed key threshold in a long-dreaded climate feedback

Please note that IPCC projections do not include carbon from permafrost in their projections: https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2018/02/the-permafros...

As a result, the carbon budget for keeping warming under two degrees over postindustrial (widely thought to be catastrophic but survivable) has shrunk. Dr. Peter Carter, one of the IPCC's reviewers, explains how we are likely to miss 1.5 and 2 degree targets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa13KrOvE2s

makerofspoonson SuperShuttle is going out of business

SuperShuttle hasn't served Denver International for a while. I remember seeing their vans frequently, but I have to imagine here the new airport train as well as ride sharing ate their lunch. I haven't not used the train ever since it opened.

makerofspoonson Greta Thunberg: TIME's Person of the Year 2019

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

With the exception of the government of Bhutan, the only carbon-negative country as of 2019.

makerofspoonson Greta Thunberg: TIME's Person of the Year 2019

Well deserved. She has brought the seriousness and gravity of climate change into the public discourse without the sugar coating and hand waviness activists have had in the past. The bluntness people criticize her for is exactly what we need now- world and industry leaders need to be held accountable.

makerofspoonson FBI warns that connected televisions can provide hackers a window into homes

A number of unpatched TVs could already be part of a botnet: https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/us/security/news/internet-o...

While not literally taking video and recordings of you, it's still problematic.

makerofspoonson The programmer behind the THERAC-25 Fiasco was never found

It is unbelievable to me that nobody knows who this was. It makes me wonder if somewhere out there is some software engineer, nearing the end of their career, who carries this in their conscience. Do they know about it? It seems it is such a famous case and the medical device industry so small that surely they must.

makerofspoonson Edward Snowden: How Your Cell Phone Spies on You

For those interested in a privacy focused phone, Pine64 still has preorder PinePhones available: https://store.pine64.org/?product=pinephone-braveheart-limit...

It has privacy switches for the microphone, camera, bluetooth, and LTE. It also supports open source mobile operating systems.

makerofspoonson Show HN: Borg Voice Generator

IIRC there are a lot of sound clips voiced by her on the Star Trek Encyclopedia CD: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_Trek_Encyclopedia

makerofspoonson Something Changed at Tesla

That would be fascinating if it could. IIRC there is an urban legend that the stainless steel St. Louis Gateway Arch is almost invisible to radar. That being said DeLorean DMC-12s are not invisible to radar speed detectors so I would doubt the Cybertruck is.

makerofspoonson Something Changed at Tesla

I think the author is reading way too much into the design.

It looks the way it does to drive down production costs and because of the limitations of the processes used to manufacture it: https://electrek.co/2019/11/24/teslas-cybertruck-looks-weird...

If there is some concern that Tesla is predicting some dystopian future it should have begun the moment they introduced 'Bioweapon Defense Mode'.

makerofspoonson Twitter prepares for cull of inactive users

I made some Alexa skills years ago that are still up running on Lambda. They've never been used enough to get me charged.

makerofspoonson Cut global emissions by 7.6% per year for next decade to meet 1.5°C Paris target

In terms of emissions we are tracking right along RCP 8.5, the worst case emissions scenario: https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-the-high-emissions-rcp...

makerofspoonson Google Game Builder shuts down, project moves to open source

Wow, this didn't even make it six months.

makerofspoonson Deepfakes: MIT brings Nixon's Apollo disaster speech to life

I hadn't thought about how deep fakes could help us explore alternate history before. That's a chilling clip.

makerofspoonson The world’s climate goals are not sufficient. They are also unlikely to be met

It's not about the jobs, it's about our continued ability to grow food and maintain a relatively peaceful world order.

makerofspoonson Home servers are greener than cloud

AWS exceeded 50% renewable energy usage for 2018. My house is powered by gas.

"I didn't have any quantitative estimates then, and still don't now. However, it's likely that a world in which there is one server per household or per street would be more electrically efficient than the current world of billionaire cloud servers."

My neighbors are powered by gas too. The only way this would work is if we all also bought solar as the author suggests, however encouraging your average homeowner to not only run a home server but also invest in solar for it is a non-starter.

makerofspoonson The transit of Mercury starts at 7:35 am ET and will last for 5.5 hours

30 years from now we could be looking back at 2019 fondly. By 2048 it is estimated at the current consumption levels salt water fish could be nearly extinct, for example. We could also be dealing with twenty days of lethal heat per year and one billion people displaced due to climate change.