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nicd

196 karma · joined May 18, 2013

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nicd··on The $6.3B Binance hack was pulled off in just 20 minutes
The crypto economy has about the same market size as a country like Russia, Italy, or Brazil.

A country like Iceland is far smaller, and their currency famously fluctuated in 2008. Would you consider Icelandic króna as money? Most people do.

nicd··on Binance-hacker-1029 – $5.6B stolen from Binance
Because everyone knows how to inspect hardware against future supply chain attacks, right?
nicd··on Claude Now Works with Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides
Note: Claude has already launched Claude Docs!

https://support.claude.com/en/articles/16923645-get-started-...

nicd··on Whatever became of holography? (2011)
The Museum of Holography still exists! Worth a visit next time you are in NYC.

They also offer classes and a residency program that I have been keenly considering.

nicd··on ChatGPT now knows what you do on other websites via ad collector
I'm personally here for thought-provoking, high-quality content. To quote the HN guidelines, "Anything that good hackers would find interesting."

AI content is typically lower quality, but I'm not opposed to AI-aided content just on the principle of the thing?

nicd··on Ask HN: If Social network is created today, what do you want to see?
An emphasis on driving users towards IRL socialization, and strengthening geographically local communities.
nicd··on Facts about throwing good parties
Partiful works well?
nicd··on Signal is the number-one downloaded app in the Netherlands. But why?
They are not big-tech American, and as a non-profit, they aren't beholden to advertiser or investor interests.
nicd··on The Anti-Social Century
Very fair, and worth addressing. May I ask- what are the main barriers preventing you from socializing? Could intentionally designed apps or social structures reduce those barriers? What do you think would be most helpful?
nicd··on The Anti-Social Century
I'm not sure which happy, anti-social countries you are referring to.

"It may turn out that people aren’t hanging out at bars, but at home." I understand that entertaining at home has been in decline over the last few decades, and is at or near an all time low. Putnam discusses this in Bowling Alone, and all research I've seen lines up with that.

My belief is that most people agree that the decline of community is a problem (I'll cite the Surgeon General's report, for example). I'm open to reconsidering my position if you have sources for the opposing viewpoint.

nicd··on The Anti-Social Century
This is the issue that is top of mind for me at the moment. If you're frustrated by political polarization, this is one of the root causes! I'm very eager to hear any ideas on steps we can take to systematically reverse this damage to society.
nicd··on Launch HN: Double (YC W24) – Index Investing with 0% Expense Ratios
Because liquidating / selling your shares is a taxable event. If you purchased a simple ETF to begin with, your tax burden would have been lower.
nicd··on How to delegate effectively as your responsibility grows
In Apple's case, it is also a demonstration that leadership strongly cares about design (a core value of the company).
nicd··on Using the moiré effect to show different arrows to each observer (2018)
This also reminds me of Lumii (now Fathom), which is an MIT media lab spin-out that prints multiple inkjet layers to create a 3D effect:

https://www.inkworldmagazine.com/contents/view_online-exclus...

nicd··on Show HN: I made an AI image enhancer that boosts images 10x to 12k pixels
This image may not be a representative test case. It looks like it has heavy compression (including posterization), and overall poor quality. "Quality" meaning things like focus, contrast, and low noise- separate from resolution.
nicd··on Texture Enhancement for Video Super-Resolution
Instead of writing out frames at a fixed FPS (ie, 60 fps), the driver would send out updates to individual pixels at precise moments in time, and the unaddressed pixels would remain unchanged. I'm not sure whether or where this kind of technology is used in practice.
nicd··on Google Meet rolls out multi-device adaptive audio merging
Not sure what Gong's pricing is, but we evaluated a few different notetakers and settled on https://fireflies.ai/. $18 / month gets a recording and summary sent out to all invitees to the calendar invite, uploaded into Hubspot, etc. Very valuable for our sales calls.
nicd··on I should have loved biology (2020)
Fluorescence microscopy is a great tool for this!
nicd··on For Brilliant Color: Packaging the First LSD Blotter
Diffusion in liquid is relatively consistent. When paper is soaked and allowed to dry, it can produce uneven concentrations as regions evaporate at different rates, and solutes move along with the flow of solvent. A good example of this is water color painting: if you mix paint into water and then apply it to the paper, the resulting patterns may be less uniform than when applied.
nicd··on 23andMe updates their TOS to force binding arbitration
Imagine there were a set of a few common terms that businesses could select, each with an icon, a high-level explanation, and the detailed legal copy.

I think there is a common set of those that would probably cover 80% of needs.

The remaining 20% could be "extended", custom terms for this company.

Such a system seems like it would make things much easier for consumers to understand, and also save legal fees for most companies. Maybe a good standard for a TOS-generator company to design and promote?

nicd··on Dengue rates plunged after release of lab-altered mosquitoes
This assumes that the new ponds will pull mosquitoes away from existing ponds. Is this true? (Maybe mosquitoes are limited by suitable breeding grounds, and introducing decoys could have no effect.)
nicd··on Juice jacking: The urban legend about phone charging that just won’t die
It's less power efficient than a cable, so trivially it's going to generate more waste heat (sure, there might be small amounts of power released as RF, but typically, innefficies in electronics result in heat).
nicd··on Youtube2Webpage: Create Websites with Text from Videos
It would be really neat if after pulling the captions, an LLM was used to reword the content into an idiomatic "blogpost" (since speech is typically different than writing). Using LLMs, we could even choose the level of summarization and the output tone!

As someone who strongly prefers reading to watching instructional videos, I'd pay for this service :)

nicd··on Apple supports right-to-repair bill
Why not just connect the LED to the same rail that powers the camera?
nicd··on Impossible to cancel AWS – must pay them forever for zombie services?
We faced a similar problem with consultants on an old AWS account that had become obsolete. A week of back-and-forth with support ensued as we tried to figure out how to close the account. The process seemed excessively complicated since the only way to remove the consultants, who were merely members and not admins, required them to add a billing method first. It felt unreasonable.

Ultimately, we were able to close the account with the consultants' cooperation.

I get your point that it's wise to remove consultants promptly after their contract concludes, and I agree. However, this doesn't take away from the fact that AWS's account closing policies appear to be less than user-friendly.

nicd··on Microsoft Says New AI Shows Signs of Human Reasoning
In my experience with ChatGPT-4, I'll get a full 2-300 line class, with maybe 1-2 compilation errors (often a missing import or invalid function invocation). In most cases, I can copy the compilation error back into the chat, GPT will apologize, fix it, and it'll run correctly the second time.

It's obvious that this will be faster and more effective once a GPT4-class model is tightly integrated into the run-compile-test loop.

nicd··on How white can white paint get?
I understand Musou black has it beat: https://takemy.money/musou-black-the-new-blackest-paint-in-t...!

And the blackest (non-acrylic) paint is Vantablack, the carbon-nanotube-based paint that is infamously only available to Anish Kapoor.

nicd··on The vertical farming bubble is finally popping
What benefit is there to growing pot next to consumers? Compared to salads, for example, isn't pot easily stored and transported?
nicd··on Tesla to open some superchargers to other vehicles
As a consumer, the Tesla charging network is a significant selling point over other electric vehicles. It's unclear to me that standardizing the charger would benefit their business position (although I agree it would benefit society!).
nicd··on A manifesto on shower temperature control
In my experience (US), they seem to be uncommon in residential properties. I've seen them in many hotels, though.
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