Hacker News Reader

pdogon A myopia epidemic is sweeping the globe

> Getting kids to go outdoors is a tough sell.

The problem isn't the kids. It's the adults.

> I just wish the guy in charge could apply the same systematic thinking to his approach to politics. I fear that the major short term risk to humanity is not the environment, but toxic politics.

Elon Musk is not (and never has been) a politician. What exactly do you think he should do differently?

pdogon Police say GPS tag darts can eliminate need for dangerous high-speed chases

> "The reality is that everyone runs from the police nowadays."

Since when? This should be a bigger story than the availability of GPS tracking darts.

pdogon Blowing Holes in Seymour Hersh's Pipe Dream

The sheer number of rhetorical fallacies employed in the opening of this "takedown" inclines me to believe that Hersh's reporting is a largely accurate and truthful account.

For example, stating that you could write "an entire post on the reasons why sounds entirely made up by someone with no real grasp of what that suggestion would actually technically entail" is a clear-cut appeal to ridicule[1] fallacy with no further elaboration.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_ridicule

pdogon Ask HN: What sort of systemic risk to crypto is Paul Graham referring to?

Not sure how to interpret these tweets:

> A person I have known for more than ten years, who I consider trustworthy, is convinced the cryptocurrency economy will shortly experience a systemic risk. I don’t know anything concrete, but if I were exposed, I would be concerned.

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1594446009010212865

> I didn't write that. He did. Since I don't know any details, I didn't feel I should edit it. And because I don't know any details, it's no use asking me what he means. If you've read the preceding tweet, you know as much as I do.

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1594447689961377795

pdogon Perpetual Bond

You don't need the concept of "time value of money" to value a perpetual stream of payments.

Intuitively, only a sucker would pay $1,000,000,000,000 for the promise of $1 per year in perpetuity, even in the absence of discounted cash flows.

pdogon U.S. interest rates have soared everywhere but savings accounts

If you have inflation, something is going up in dollar terms. The answer is "real" assets: physical assets that have an intrinsic worth due to their substance and properties. Real estate, infrastructure, and commodities are all examples.

pdogon David Deutsch’s Constructor Theory

How does constructor theory relate to Wolfram's Ruliad concept[1] and the physicalization[2] of metamathematics? It seems both theories would have major implications for the foundations of physics and mathematics.

[1]: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/11/the-concept-of-t...

[2]: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2022/03/the-physicalizat...

pdogon Stripe will review your YC application before you submit

Note: If you plan on competing with Stripe in any way, you may want to hold off on having them review your YC application:

https://www.twitter.com/theryanking/status/14857848236417556...

pdogon The case for induction cooking

Do you know what isn't bad for your health? Good, clean healthy home-cooked food. Which, in millions of homes, is cooked swiftly and efficiently on gas ranges.

Politicians and their media lackeys in the media need to stop trying to micro-manage peoples' lives.

pdogon Launch HN: Micro Meat (YC S21) – Technology for scaling cultivated meat

Can I see a picture of the bioreactors?

pdogon Trudeau Invokes Emergencies Act

Their most prominently stated demand is ending all state-backed mandates and lockdowns. Where did you see anything about the dissolution of their elected government? Or, are you referring to the parliamentary system?

pdogon Inflation rises 7.5% over past year, more than expected and highest since 1982

I'm struggling to understand how inflation is only 7.5% when every major line item comprising inflation is up much more than 7.5% over the past year.

pdogon Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds

Ilya Lichtenstein (YC S11) is the co-founder of YC-backed MixRank. Heather Morgan, his wife, is apparently a serial entrepreneur, investor, and "contributor" to Forbes.

pdogon What the Omicron wave is revealing about human immunity

> Somehow there's this idea that the Sars-CoV-2 vaccines need to prevent infection or symptomatic disease but that is an incredibly high bar that no respiratory viral vaccine has ever met.

In the U.S., health experts explicitly said the vaccines totally prevent symptoms and infection. The health experts said the vaccines were 100% efficacious, and this fact was repeated in the media and by leadership for months. As recently as seven months ago, they were still saying this.

pdogon Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online

"Scientific misinformation" is such an incredible example of Newspeak.

pdogon Masterclass on mathematical thinking

His dad is a doctor and his mom is an astrophysicist and mathematician. Do you think that is a coincidence?

pdogon Why is America so divided?

To paraphrase Ogilvy, half the country is being manipulated by a political party using misinformation to gain power; the trouble is I don't know which half.

pdogon Nearly two-thirds of Gen Z think they’ll become crypto millionaires

> People don’t think they can really reach goals related to life stability unless they win some sort of lottery.

People think this because it's true. The median U.S. income is no longer enough to cover a year of basic expenses, or achieve reasonable goals, even if you work for the entire year[1].

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/02/24/this-char...

pdogon Democrats want to give a tax cut to the top%, 6x bigger than any other bracket

By this logic, with no SALT deduction cap, a state could simply implement the federal income tax brackets for its own taxes and permanently deprive the federal government of any income tax revenue by allowing it all to be deducted.

pdogon Show HN: Long Range E-Bike

A city-wide charging network with standardized, user-replaceable battery packs would be the "holy grail" of short- and medium-range electric bike and moped commuting. Unfortunately, jury rigging a larger battery capacity is the only solution due to competing, non-interoperable solutions and outdated speed and distance regulations.

pdogon The metaverse is already here – it's Minecraft

With software improvements, our perception of time will eventually be slowed down in the metaverse to such an extent that one hour in the material world will equate to several days of perceived elapsed time in meta-reality.

pdogon The Sequoia Fund: Patient capital for building enduring companies

Good luck trying to get Sequoia to accept common shares from employees in exchange for diluting their own capital, when they already get preferred shares in a different class through their investments in individual companies.

pdogon NYC to mandate proof of vaccination for many indoor settings

The Supreme Court upheld concentration camps 76 years ago:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korematsu_v._United_States

pdogon Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

Isn't that what a credit card is for? Or is it somehow different?

pdogon Square to acquire Afterpay for $29B

$29B is a pretty significant, even for an all-stock acquisition and a company of Square's size.

It would be interesting to see the motivation for this beyond a "shared mission" or "economic empowerment."

pdogon Eric Clapton refuses to play venues requiring vaccines for concertgoers

Eric Clapton isn't forcing people to attend his concerts. Anyone can judge the risk for themselves.

pdogon Eric Clapton refuses to play venues requiring vaccines for concertgoers

Alternative headline: Eric Clapton refuses to play venues that aren't open to all concertgoers. Nothing to prevent a vaccinated concertgoer from attending, so what's the problem?

pdogon Artists, shrug off that imposter syndrome – the tech world needs you

My doctoral thesis was on precisely the question of what role the Great Eagles could have played before and during the War of the Ring to deliver the One Ring to Mordor. It's not simple enough to say they were great beings who would have been corrupted by the ring, or they were not interested in the power of the ring, or even that the story would have ended in ten minutes and therefore they couldn't do it. There is a lot of research and discussion[1][2][3][4][5][6] of this open question.

[1]: http://www.sean-crist.com/personal/pages/eagles/index.html

[2]: https://lotr.fandom.com/wiki/Great_Eagles

[3]: https://www.polygon.com/lord-of-the-rings/22432394/eagles-lo...

[4]: https://www.reddit.com/r/FanTheories/comments/6nysuy/lotr_cl...

[5]: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/2333/why-didnt-gan...

[6]: https://www.quora.com/Why-didnt-the-Eagles-fly-the-Ringbeare...

pdogon What Made Early Humans Smart

Animals tend to run away when you throw something like a rock or a big stick at them. It's possible the primary benefit of utilizing projectiles by early humans, even before they could fashion weapons or throw accurately, was as a defense mechanism that increased their survival rate.