Hacker News Reader

maxericksonon The UN challenges five centuries of cartography

Web Mercator is easily the most used projection, now and in all of history.

maxericksonon Copyright does more harm than good and should be abolished

I meant more with the timing thing. If a workalike drug undermines the argument for long drug copyright, what are the implications of a copycat plot?

maxericksonon Flock Wants a Closely Surveilled World with No Exit

There's very little of those things in most places.

It would be nice if there were less, but that change shouldn't come at a significant cost.

As an example, the FBI has data on $10-20 billion in property crimes per year in the US. Wow, that's a lot. Of course, there's probably $5-$10 trillion dollars of personal property.

maxericksonon Copyright does more harm than good and should be abolished

Are you implicitly arguing that derivative art isn't a thing?

maxericksonon Smartphone makers don't bother to comply with EU repairability requirements

This regulation seems to relax the rules a bit for batteries that last longer.

I wonder if it will just lead to using same size batteries more gently.

maxericksonon How the Tobacco Industry Drove the Rise of Ultra-Processed Foods (2025)

It sort of illustrates the uselessness of the terms. Yogurt is made by sterilizing (likely homogenized) milk and introducing microorganisms that carry out some desired chemical reactions. They produce lactic acid, which is a stabilizer.

Everyone apparently knows that those are good things, so they don't count.

maxericksonon Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

Compare anthropogenic heat release to daily solar gain and radiative losses.

Then note that a higher temperatures will increase the radiative losses.

100x heat release and it's still about 1% of solar gain.

maxericksonon Global warming will exceed 1.5-degree limit, UN says

Ah yes, the profit motive kept us off of strict vegan diets. Right, sure.

maxericksonon Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

There is an antitrust exemption and a direct cap on school to athlete payments. Sure, third parties that aren't associated entities can still make payments to players, but its transparently the intent to lower the share of revenue going to the players.

maxericksonon Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

Why should the money get spread around? It's a business, pay the people that earn it.

I understand what is in it and wouldn't take any of it as long as it is combined with caps on player pay. Where's the cap on media revenues or stadium ticket prices?

maxericksonon Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

Protect College Sports Act not even on the radar for most people.

It's wild that a law that is more or less transparently about limiting player pay for their participation in a blatantly commercial activity gets cheered on by "fans".

maxericksonon 'People are going to get screwed' Pennsylvania voters unite against data centres

You misunderstood I think. They aren't arguing water is a bigger problem than energy. They are arguing that negative perception is mostly focused around water use.

maxericksonon Fish bad, sugar good, and other medieval ideas about food

The acidity in many traditional pickling methods is lactic acid produced by fermentation. No vinegar involved.

Looking it up, ocean water has the right salt content to facilitate this...

maxericksonon Fish bad, sugar good, and other medieval ideas about food

If you recognize something is bad but lack the knowledge to explain it, it isn't completely crazy to invent a taboo against it.

maxericksonon Thanks to Lake Ontario, MapQuest is popular all over again

How are they determining the relevant government bodies?

maxericksonon Urban Congestion Pricing and the Response Times of Emergency Medical Services

Well yes, the idea is to charge a tax.

Charging fees for things that are scarce certainly isn't perfect, but it's often better then simply leaving everyone to suffer.

maxericksonon Urban Congestion Pricing and the Response Times of Emergency Medical Services

I'll bet you a dollar that it is Austin.

I guess there are made up reasons not to use public transport there too.

maxericksonon Urban Congestion Pricing and the Response Times of Emergency Medical Services

Why do you assume it would be onerous? New York City apparently charges individuals in private cars up to $13.50?

And then imagine if there was offsetting spending.

maxericksonon Lake Ontario ("Lake America")

I feel like I am not good at anticipating election results, but anyway, the people arguing that the midterms will be a referendum on the economy make sense to me.

Expensive gas and groceries are pretty unpopular. I guess some chunk of people will find a way to wholly blame Biden or whatever.

maxericksonon 'Mad honey' that can stop your heart is being sold online

If you maintain the pairing with the statement about the concentration in the honey varying, it's somewhat harder to argue that it is overblown.

The concentration varies considerably due to bees harvesting pollen from different flowers and from some batches of honey being mixed and some not.

maxericksonon Student teacher arrested for private Snapchat message

I mean, the FBI guys that drove to the school probably read it.

maxericksonon You Rename My Lake – I Move My Hosting

The "So what, babies shit their diapers all the time" argument.

maxericksonon Zero-sum thinking will fuel resentment and scarcity

Lots of people want lots of things. Can they within the light cone of their existence?

That's pretty deep. I guess I think that they will work hard for more and thus expect economic growth. Especially with decreasing energy costs. If you want to bet that people will mostly choose to immiserate themselves, go ahead.

maxericksonon Zero-sum thinking will fuel resentment and scarcity

Economic growth (“growing the pie” vs zero sum thinking) was a function of population growth. Global population growth is rapidly ending, with 71% of global population living in countries below replacement rate. As the world ages and the population peaks, there will be few areas of potential economic growth. Older cohorts will increase in size, the working age population cohort will contact, and there will be less children born every year for the rest of our lifetimes.

There's still ~billions of people that would like to increase their consumption a fair bit.

And then most people reading this will probably be dead when the population actually starts shrinking.

maxericksonon Oldinsurancemaps.net is now a Charter Project

Sanborn was an insurance adjacent company that made detailed paper maps of many towns in the US in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

This project is scanning those maps and adding the information that modern mapping software needs to show them alongside other geographic information. Where the old paper maps overlap, they work to cleanly stitch them together rather than showing the edges of the paper.

Later: The project is sort of for people looking for the old maps, so I can see why the introduction doesn't spend a life of time explaining them.

maxericksonon New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

Yeah that's misunderstanding my point. The compliance software might, for example, only play an old format from USB. Probably at low resolution.

maxericksonon New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

It's pretty likely that manufacturers would charge handsomely for these requirements. At least at first.

You'd probably also get things like TVs with very basic software at import, with much better software available for people willing to obtain it outside the EU.

maxericksonon Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

How do you solve it when they beat you for having a phone that doesn't look like they want?

Like whatever arbitrary thing they decide it should look like that day.

maxericksonon America's Colleges Are Hurtling Toward an Enrollment Cliff

This is something like "how come there isn't more demand for unlicensed psychologists".

maxericksonon Field measurements of neighborhood-scale air temperature impacts of data centers

A nuclear power station puts out many times the waste heat of the sites mentioned in the article. We've apparently mostly made peace with the local impacts of those.

Thermal efficiency is in the 30s, so roughly 2x the electrical output as waste heat. Looks like waste heat from nuclear is still quite a bit more than from data centers.

Data centers are growing quickly and that's not including the waste heat from generating the energy the consume, just taking a quick look at the relative direct emission.